About that Paula Broadwell Video...

We're now learning that the FBI had stumbled on to the affair between CIA Director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell several months ago when the female recipient of an allegedly threatening email from Broadwell went to the authorities. It's being reported, however, that investigators didn't talk to Petraeus until recently.

Via Washington Post:

The investigators first interviewed Petraeus about two weeks ago, the officials said. They reviewed the evidence with him but did not suggest that he should resign or that he would be charged with a crime, according to the officials.

One of the officials said Justice Department officials were unclear on what steps to take after they concluded that there would be no charges against the CIA director or Broadwell and that there had been no breach of national security.

“What was our responsibility?” said one of the officials. “We were in an area where we’d never been before.”

The notification finally came Tuesday evening, while polls were still open across the country in an election that would return President Obama to office for four more years.

According to the Daily Telegraph, investigators first interviewed Broadwell on October 21st about what they had found. Yet, five days later, on October 26th, while speaking at a University of Denver Symposium, Broadwell seemed to openly divulge something that, if true, would have been a bombshell. Investigators reportedly first spoke with Petraeus just two days later, on October 28th. Fast forward to the 35:50 mark, at which point Broadwell says:

“Now I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually had taken a couple of Libya militia members prisoner. And they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that’s still being vetted.”

Neil Munroe at the Daily Caller is reporting that the CIA is adamant that Broadwell's aforementioned claim is false and that the Libyan annex held no prisoners:

The Central Intelligence Agency denied charges Sunday that its annex in Benghazi, Libya secretly held a few jihadi prisoners until it was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack. Paula Broadwell, the girlfriend then-CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus, made that claim during an Oct. 26 speech in Denver, Colo.

Munroe also cites a Daily Beast find, which very well could be the best explanation for where Broadwell got her information - a Fox News report from Jennifer Griffin, which was actually dated October 26th; Broadwell even referred to a news report from Griffin in this speech. Here is the excerpt in question, from Griffin's report:

According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces.

Of course, making it even more unlikely that Broadwell was revealing sensitive or classified information is the fact that the FBI had interviewed her only five days prior to this speech about both her emails to Kelley as well as the nature of her relationship with Petraeus.

That her words may be getting increased scrutiny is likely an unintended consequence of scandal. It also could cause more media interest in Benghazi-gate.

**UPDATE** The above video has since been removed but below is a shorter excerpt from the speech that consists of the controversial few minutes in question. Pay attention at the 2:45 mark as Broadwell discusses what appears to be Jennifer Griffin's aforementioned report from earlier that day:



Something that needs to be cleared up...

Did Broadwell get information about the annex taking prisoners from Jennifer Griffin's report that she made reference to or was it separate?

If Griffin reported on October 26th that there were prisoners at the annex and Broadwell talked about that report later that evening while making specific reference to it, how did Broadwell divulge secret information?

Why Romney lost the Hispanic vote

Mitt Romney is the latest in a long line of Republican establishment moderates who failed to win elections. George H.W. Bush rode Reagan's coattails into his first term and was sunk by reneging on his 'no new taxes' pledge; it was then Bob Dole's turn in 1996; that was followed by a conservative-talking George W. Bush who won on such talk but governed as a moderate, especially in his second term. We've also learned that his wife is pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage. In 2008, RINO John McCain was saved from a Walter Mondale-like thumping solely because of the energy Sarah Palin brought to the campaign; he still lost but Palin was blamed by Republican elites, as the reason, which is absurd.

It is that mentality which perhaps best explains the establishment's reaction to Romney's loss. That reaction?  It's the fault of allegedly unyielding conservatives, despite the fact that Romney was the establishment's guy. Those mean, uncompromising conservatives forced Romney to 'twist himself into pretzels' and then blamed him for losing, according to the likes of David Frum.

Make no mistake. This is nothing more than the establishment's unwillingness to admit that moderates don't win elections. A moderate was nominated at a time when a moderate supposedly couldn't lose. Instead of conceding to the reality, establishment types actually blame the base.

House Speaker John Boehner (RINO) now says things like it's long overdue for Republicans to work on comprehensive immigration reform, which is the politically correct way of saying 'lets cave on amnesty to get more votes'.

Boehner is saying this because he's thinking in terms of demographics and that if Republicans want to win more of the Hispanic vote, they'll have to pander to get it. If Boehner was truly concerned about the welfare of Hispanics, he wouldn't have sat by for nearly two years, doing all he could to minimize the work of House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa on Fast and Furious, an operation run out of the Obama administration that led to the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans (even more will die because so many of the guns are still in circulation). It was a scandal that Boehner wanted to dry up an blow away. Though there had been signs throughout, that was made patently obvious when he scheduled the Eric Holder contempt vote on the same day as the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare.

Where was Boehner when it was time for accountability relative to the murder of Hispanics instead of now eagerly pandering to them?

Candidate Romney expressed little to no interest in tackling the Fast and Furious scandal either. Earlier this year, after Barack Obama announced that amnesty would be granted to nearly one million illegal aliens living in the United States, Romney had the perfect opportunity to draw a contrast between an Obama that was pandering to the Hispanic vote with an Obama administration that wasn't coming clean on its role in the murders of more than three hundred Hispanics.

Instead, Romney punted. In so doing, Obama won the argument and his challenger came across as someone who wasn't able to formulate a cogent message.

Take a look at the list of victims in the Fort Hood jihad attack. It is strewn with women and minorities. In fact, one woman - a Hispanic named Francheska Velez - didn't just lose her own life but that of her unborn baby. Yet, when Mitt Romney had the opportunity to ask the President directly in the last of three debates why the massacre that killed 14 and injured 32 has still not been identified for what it is - a jihad attack / act of war - or why none of the victims were awarded purple hearts because the shootings had been identified as the result of workplace violence, he punted again.

Why? Because the establishment's political playbook told him to.

It's a failed playbook and its adherents are doing what too many losers do; they're blaming others.

Simply telling the truth about Democrats would have been a better strategy.

The odds of such a strategy being implemented would have gone up, had a conservative been nominated.

Audio: Today's Podcast

On today's program...

Will the re-election of Barack Obama cause business owners to "go Gault" in 2013?

What does the sex scandal involving CIA Director Petraeus mean for Benghazi-gate?