by Steve Timmer

May 14, 2014, 7:30 PM

Benghazi, merchandised

This baby is available at CafePress, but you will have to find it on your own.

This is the most straightforward and honest expression of what the new “select” House committee’s Benghazi investigation fiasco is about that I have seen. This also sums it up pretty well:

[T]he likelihood of the select committee actually uncovering shocking new information is effectively zero. The deadly violence in Benghazi in September 2012 has been investigated and re-investigated, by multiple agencies and news organizations, to the point that there are no revelations left to learn.

Indeed, the committee’s new chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), keeps talking about the key questions he intended to pursue, unaware of the fact that each of his questions have [should be “has,” but never mind] already been answered.

According to the linked story, of the 233 House Republicans, 206 of them wanted to be on the select committee.

I submit this is a singular obsession. In view of this obsession, it is especially amusing that Rep. John Kline, last Saturday’s avatar Republican, castigated President Obama and the Senate Democrats for not focusing on the economy. Among the things that Rep. Kline points to proudly as being for the economy is that the House voted in favor of building what Charlie Pierce calls the Keystone XL pipeline:

the continent-bisecting death funnel that will carry the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel through the heartland of America and to the refineries of Texas, and thence to the world

Rep. Kline is from Texas, and he obviously loves him some fossil fuel.

One wonders if Rep. Kline was angling for a spot on the select committee, or whether his remarks struck him as even slightly ironic.

I’d say probably yes on the former, and no on the latter.