TV News LIES

Republican attempts to turn the row over the IRS into a scandal engulfing the White House fizzled on Friday when the ousted head of the agency delivered a public apology at a congressional heading into the affair.

Steven Miller, who was fired on Wednesday, portrayed the tougher scrutiny meted out to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status as the result of overworked employees struggling to cope with a flood of applications, rather than a partisan effort.

In the month before attackers stormed U.S. facilities in Benghazi and killed four Americans, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens twice turned down offers of security assistance made by the senior U.S. military official in the region in response to concerns that Stevens had raised in a still secret memorandum, two government officials told McClatchy.

Why Stevens, who died of smoke inhalation in the first of two attacks that took place late Sept. 11 and early Sept. 12, 2012, would turn down the offers remains unclear. The deteriorating security situation in Benghazi had been the subject of a meeting that embassy officials held Aug. 15, where they concluded they could not defend the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The next day, the embassy drafted a cable outlining the dire circumstances and saying it would spell out what it needed in a separate cable.

Presumably few Republican operatives have a better handle on the national Repubublican party's efforts to court Hispanic voters than Pablo Pantoja, a native of Puerto Rico, and Florida State University alum appointed by the Republican National Committee to oversee Hispanic outreach in Florida last year. He also worked as a field director in the 2010 midterm elections.

Now - amid another debate over immigration reform and a widely touted Heritage foundation study on immigrants touted by a fellow who used to argue that Hispanics have a lower IQ than non-Hispanic immigrants - Pantojo has decided he's more comfortable joining the Democratic party.

In a wide-ranging interview aired Sunday, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended the administration's handling of the Benghazi attacks in Libya and addressed U.S. involvement in Syria, Iraq and North Korea.

Gates told host Bob Schieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation" there was no time to reach the Americans under attack in Benghazi - and had he been in the job at the time, "my decision would have been just as theirs were."

On Wednesday, Religious Right activists and members of Congress gathered together for a prayer event held in Statuary Hall at the US Capitol called "Washington: A Man of Prayer."

Among the speakers was Rep. Michele Bachmann, who used the opportunity to promote the 9/11 prayer event being organized by Birther-king Joseph Farah, saying that "it is no secret that our nation may very well be experiencing the hand of judgment" and declaring that both the original 9/11 attack and the attack in Benghazi on 9/11 of last year were God's judgment.

Richard Scrushy provides his first on-camera interview since serving six years in prison for allegedly bribing Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Scrushy told HuffPost Live why believes Siegelman is innocent and the victim of a political prosecution motivated by Karl Rove.

Ex-Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's daughter, Dana Siegelman and former Alabama Congressman, Parker Griffith joined HuffPost Live in December 2012 to discuss the political conflicts of interest and judicial misconduct that they claim played a role in the former governor's conviction on bribery and mail fraud charges.