“President Barack Obama defended his handling of last month’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, saying the size of the federal government can lead to mistakes, and promised he is still committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” the Wall Street Journal writes. “Mr. Obama, in a pre-taped interview Thursday on Comedy Central’s ‘Daily Show With Jon Stewart,’ faced repeated questions about about his administration’s shifting accounts of what led to the Benghazi attack and the appearance that the White House and the State Department were not on the same page.”
Obama: “Every piece of information that we get, as we got it we laid it out to the American people. The picture eventually gets fully filled in.”
And on security in Benghazi, the president said a word – “optimal” – that Republicans have seized on: “If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal,” he said. “We’re going to fix it, all of it. And what happens, during the course of a presidency, is that the government is a big operation and any given time something screws up. And you make sure that you find out what’s broken and you fix it.”
(But it’s worth noting that “optimal” was used in Stewart’s question of Obama: “Even you would admit, it was not the optimal response,” Stewart said preceding Obama’s answer.)
The Boston Globe wraps Obama in New Hampshire yesterday. He said of Romney: “I’m going to give you a little tip. When a politician tells you he’s going to wait until after the election [to release details], it’s not because their plan is so good that they don’t want to spoil the secret.”
“Democratic convention organizers broke their pledge to put on their quadrennial gathering in Charlotte, N.C., this year without corporate donations, using $5 million from a committee financed by companies such as Bank of America, Duke Energy and AT&T to rent the Time Warner Arena for the three-day event,” The L.A. Times writes. “The payments, revealed in reports filed Wednesday evening with the Federal Election Commission, came after party officials said they would produce the convention without corporate money, a self-imposed ban set by the Democratic National Committee.”
More: “The host committee still has more fundraising to do: It ended September $8.7 million in debt, with just $1 million in the bank. Contributing to the hole was nearly $900,000 the committee paid to rent the Bank of America Stadium for the final night of the convention — only to scrap that plan and remain at the arena when the weather turned ominous.”
“Despite a promise to shun corporate money, the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was funded in part by millions of dollars in such donations, according to Federal Election Commission filings,” the Boston Globe writes.
AP: “Democratic chairwoman says she knows nothing about sources of money raised for 2012 convention.”
