"(Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show. 

"The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks. ... 

"Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film."

"[A] mom of two Marines just put it to me very well: 'Amb. Stevens would have loved a horse or a bayonet or a Marine with either one.'  

"Quite."

"The argument about Obamacare is often framed as a moral issue. It's the caring and compassionate against the cruel and heartless. That's the rhetoric; the reality is different. Many of us who oppose Obamacare don't do so because we enjoy seeing people suffer. We believe that, in an ideal world, everyone would have insurance. But we also think that Obamacare has huge drawbacks that outweigh its plausible benefits. 

"It creates powerful pressures against companies hiring full-time workers -- precisely the wrong approach after the worst economic slump since the Depression. There will be more bewildering regulations, more regulatory uncertainties, more unintended side effects and more disappointments. A costly and opaque system will become more so."

"President Obama has declined to outline a second-term agenda. He doesn’t say what he would do about the fiscal cliff that looms in just a couple of months. He hasn’t addressed the glaring challenge of an aging population and entitlement spending that is careening toward insolvency. (On the contrary, he has significantly hastened the emergency by piling on new entitlement spending.) He hasn’t proposed policies to improve the economy. He promises nothing more on Iran than to maintain ineffective sanctions. 
 
"We can glean this much: He’d like to hire 100,000 new teachers and he wants to raise taxes on 'millionaires and billionaires.' That’s a flimsy agenda for a great nation. ..."

"Within the first few minutes of the second presidential debate, Obama said 'not true' more times than Lance Armstrong, Mark McGwire and Baghdad Bob -- combined.
 
"Sure beats talking about the economy. ... 

"The dictionary describes a 'liar' as someone who intends to deceive. But to paraphrase economist Thomas Sowell, today the word 'liar' means a conservative who is winning an argument with a liberal."

"At Tuesday’s Hofstra University presidential debate, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney duked it out over pay equity for women, just as they have fought over female votes in the national polls.
 
"While Obama made the empathetic case for his single mother and his belief in equal pay ... he did not address reports this year that demonstrated that his own White House pays women less than men. ... 

"According to a report published by the Free Beacon in April, the 2011 annual report on White House staff revealed that the median annual salary for female White House employees was 18 percent less than male employees — $60,000 compared to $71,000. 

"And in 2008, Scripps Howard syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock noted that as in Obama’s U.S. Senate office, women were paid less than men: While the average male staffer brought home $54,397, female staffers averaged $45,152."

"How it must gall President Barack Obama’s reelection team to try to talk down Mitt Romney by talking up his talent. 'He is a great salesman,' top Obama strategist David Axelrod said on Fox News Sunday. 'That is what he did as a professional; he is very good at it.' ...   

"There is a delicious irony in Obama’s aides complaining of someone else’s superior salesmanship. Do they have no self-awareness? They might want to reacquaint themselves with how Barack Obama became president. It wasn’t his long record of legislative achievement. It wasn’t his executive experience. It wasn’t his fine-grained agenda. It was a winning smile, a great narrative, and a slogan that fit the temper of the moment: 'Hope and change.' Not to mention a determined effort to obscure and sand away the rough edges of his leftism. It was, in short, a great sales job.
 
"For the Obama campaign to turn around and complain that Mitt Romney is just too persuasive is like the late, great TV pitchman Billy Mays warning that the other guy is better at peddling OxiClean."

"What if we’ve already had an October surprise in this campaign, in September, and the mainstream media are failing to follow up? An issue becomes a real issue only if enough people give it the attention it’s due. 

"Many people in the diplomatic and intelligence communities say that the Obama administration, behind the scenes, is in complete disarray in the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. ... 

"It’s no surprise that everyone in and around the Obama administration is trying to keep the lid on the Libyan scandal. It’s also not surprising that the media — so far — haven’t been asking nearly enough questions about the administration’s conduct in the scandal."

"You don’t win a nationally televised debate by being rude and obnoxious.  You don’t win by interrupting your opponent time after time after time or by being a blowhard.  You don’t win with facial expressions, especially smirks or fake laughs, or by pretending to be utterly exasperated with what your opponent is saying. 
 
"That’s why Vice President Joe Biden didn’t win the one and only debate last night with his Republican rival, Mitt Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan.  ... 

"There’s a way to disagree with your opponent without acting like a jerk.  The most recent example:  Romney’s firm but polite disagreements with Obama in their debate last week.  One can be assertive but affable, tough but cool.  Come to think of it, that was Obama’s style in the entire 2008 presidential race.  It worked brilliantly.  Biden did the opposite in front of tens of millions of American voters.  It didn’t work brilliantly."

"The election campaign of the 44th U.S. president is now calling another candidate for the American presidency a 'liar.' This is a new low. It is amazing and depressing to hear this term being used as a formal strategy by people at the highest level of American politics. ... 

"It will be interesting which variation of 'lie' -- if any -- comes out of Joe Biden's mouth in his debate with Paul Ryan. Mr. Biden comes from a political generation that could play rough, but it knew the limits of going too low at the presidential level. Or used to."