A heckler at a Mitt Romney campaign event yelled the question, “What about climate? That’s what causes monster storms…”

And the crowd responded by booing loudly, then breaking into a sustained chant of, “USA! USA! USA! USA!”

Just the latest appalling example of why I ran away from the Republican Party as fast as I could.

Another word for the argument David Frum is making: “extortion.”

Frum: The GOP Will Destroy America if We Reelect Obama, So We Must Let the GOP Win.

“The question over [Romney’s] head is not a question about him at all. It’s a question about his party — and that question is the same whether Romney wins or loses. The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won’t reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP — and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013. Added bonus: a Romney presidency likely means that the congressional GOP will lose seats in 2014, as they deserve.”

Here’s an open thread while we do some more server debugging…

The right wing’s attempt to hype up a fake outrage over the Benghazi attack is continuing to fall apart: New Detailed Account of Benghazi Attack Notes CIA’s Quick Response.

Intelligence officials have disclosed a new detailed timeline of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, acknowledging the CIA played a greater role in responding to the attack than has previously been disclosed.  A senior U.S. intelligence official also insisted that the CIA security team that initially responded to the attack was not given orders “to stand down in providing support,” as had been suggested in media reports.

The timeline provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official gives the first precise account of how CIA security teams provided the first response to the Sept. 11 attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

The attack has become a political hot potato in the presidential campaign, with conservatives accusing the administration of not being transparent.  The State Department has previously released a detailed account of the night’s events, but did not acknowledge a CIA role in the response.  The timeline given by a senior Intelligence official  confirms that the facility previously described by the State Department as an annex, was in fact, a facility housing CIA security officers.  It does not provide any additional details on the current intelligence assessment that the attack was an opportunistic result of earlier protests that day outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo over an anti-Muslim movie.

The official says there was “no second guessing” of those on the ground in Libya by senior officials either in Libya or Washington.