During a heavy news week, questions continue on the mystery focusing on the silence and whereabouts of President Barack Obama on the night of Sept. 11, 2012 while a deadly attack on Americans was under way in Benghazi, Libya, observes Grumpy Editor.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a super sleuth to uncover that, with a campaign fund-raising event the next day --- Sept. 12 --- in Las Vegas, obviously the president was gearing up for his speech and Sin City activities.
Noteworthy, however, is that the White House schedule for Sept. 11 shows a 5 p.m. (Eastern) meeting with then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in the Oval Office.
The question: What did they discuss, since the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stephens, started mid-afternoon Washington time on that day.
Quizzed yesterday by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday on the president’s whereabouts on the night of the Benghazi attack, Dan Pfeiffer, senior advisor to the president for strategy and communications, declared: “I don’t remember what room the president was in that night. That’s a largely irrelevant fact.”
The president and others last week called the renewed debate on Benghazi “a sideshow.”
Updated information last week on the Benghazi attack was competing with other front-page reports on the Obama administration’s role with a secret probe of the Associated Press and its confidential sources plus revelations of political targeting by the Internal Revenue Service.
There’s hope for print journalism
Grumpy Editor finds it refreshing that 21-year-old Michael Happ, on the weekend prior to his graduation from Creighton University, produced the first issue of the Elm Creek (Neb.) Beacon-Observer since he became publisher.
The weekly’s Thursday edition kept him up until 3 a.m. putting on the finishing touches, according to Jessica Kokesh, regional editor of the daily Kearney (Neb.) Hub.
Kokesh relates that “Happ owns the Beacon-Observer building and built an apartment for himself in the back room where the printing press used to be."
The young publisher tells Kokesh he "hopes to introduce online coverage once things have slowed down, and plans to redesign the Beacon-Observer when he’s more familiar with the design software.”
“Happ was on spring break in March when his father called to tell him about the opportunity to buy the Beacon-Observer,” writes Kokesh. “He was immediately interested and called the (owners) to take a look at the office in Elm Creek that day.”
He seeks "an entire new look, kind of a grand opening for the paper” and plans to widen the newspaper’s coverage to include Loomis, Pleasanton and other area communities.
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While most broadcast and cable networks carried the press conference of President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, a local NBC affiliate beamed its own program with a world-shaking discussion on: How many swimsuits do you own?
