NIXON HAD HIS 18-MINUTE TAPE GAP, OBAMA HAS A 10-HOUR BENGHAZI GAP: And amazingly enough, considering the legions of people on the Internet calling themselves “investigative journalists,” America still has no officially confirmed idea of what President Barack Obama was doing during the Benghazi Massacre that killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevenson and three U.S. security specialists who bravely held off the inevitable for long hours.

Magoo at the Daily Gouge is asking an interesting question about all this today: “We know the MSM’s still playing cover for him, but this doesn’t explain why not even a single individual who puts truth and honesty above the continued protection of the first un-American occupant of the Oval Office has surfaced.”

Three years ago, Washington Post columnist and former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen pointed to the best place to start looking — the Presidential Diarist records. And he suggested what may well be confirmed there – Obama was doing debate prep while Americans were being murdered in Benghazi. Obama advocates could end the continuing speculation today simply by telling the truth. A novel concept, to be sure, but worth a try.

A 400 PERCENT INCREASE IN STEM VISAS? Latest Pew Center analysis of the number of foreign students graduating from U.S. schools and then opting to remain here and work shows a veritable explosion, according to LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby.

THEY WOULDN’T DO THAT … WOULD THEY? Yes, they would and they are, according to former House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. The “they” here are the Department of Justice officials who Issa claims are “lying through their teeth” about their “slow-walking” responses to congressional document requests and subpoena in hopes they will be drowned by a blue wave in November.

DON’T DO BUSINESS WITH IRAN, BOLTON WARNS EURO FIRMS: Isn’t it refreshing to have a White House team that speaks directly and can be trusted to follow through on its promises and warnings?

MAKE HILLARY NEW YORK’S NEW AG? YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT? Believe it or not, Clinton loyalists in politics and media are releasing lots of trial balloons to see if the failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee can succeed the disgraced Eric Schneiderman as New York’s top law enforcement official.

After he finally stopped laughing and picked himself up off the floor, Charles Ortel explains in LifeZette why the decades of charitable fraud and abuse by the Clinton Foundation make the notion of putting Hillary Clinton in as New York Attorney General is ludicrous on its face.

CAN YOU NAME THE FIVE FEDERAL JUDGES WHO HAVE MOST THWARTED TRUMP? LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby can and he’s got the details on how each one of them made the list.

NO, THE CLINTONS ARE NOT TOO BIG TO JAIL: Remember the megabuck Wall Streeters who were “too big to fail” without putting the entire economy at risk. Well, Charles Ortel makes the case in today’s LifeZette that Bill and Hillary are not too big to jail without fears the civilized world will come crashing down.

WHICH SIDE IS JEFF SESSIONS ON, ANYWAY? Questions like that become unavoidable when Department of Justice officials who are supposed to answer to the Attorney General continue to give congressional subpoenas the middle finger.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes is now warning Sessions will be held in contempt if such defiance of congressional oversight doesn’t stop. If Nunes is threatening Sessions with contempt, how long before President Donald Trump makes it a moot issue?

IF YOU’RE FROM BANGLADESH, $30K GETS YOU SMUGGLED INTO THE US VIA MEXICO: It costs more if you want to be smuggled alone instead of with a bunch of other illegals on a tractor-trailer, but being from Bangladesh, odds are you are accustomed to over-crowding. LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby reports on the swelling tide of border-crossers who are not from south of the border. You know smuggling humans into the U.S. is extremely lucrative because, as one of the Border Patrol agents tells Kirby, “every sector of the border is controlled by a particular drug cartel.”

40 QUESTIONS SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT MUELLER NEEDS TO ANSWER NOW: Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says that 40-questions routine earlier this week by the New York Times goes both ways. He’s got his own 40 questions (more than that, actually, but Congress has its own unique way of posing queries) for Mueller that the Texan conveniently posted on LifeZette to make it easy for the special counsel to find them.

TIME TO DECLARE CLINTON FOUNDATION BIGGEST CHARITY FRAUD EVER: The evidence just keeps piling up. And my inside sources tell me there is much more coming from Charles Ortel in LifeZette.

YES, CNN IS NOW THE ALL-PORN STAR LAWYER ALL THE TIME CABLE OUTLET: If you don’t believe it, well, LifeZette’s Kathryn Blackhurst can set you straight.

“EXTREME” IMMIGRATION VIEWS ENJOY HUGE PUBLIC SUPPORT: What if most Americans want to reduce immigration by 75 percent? Washington elites better brace themselves because a new survey of 1,000 likely voters found 49 percent would slash green cards by three-fourths. Only 17 percent would keep things as they are.

Most of the respondents think businesses should be required to use the E-Verify system for new hires. Lots more heretical opinion found in the survey conducted by The Polling Co. (sound familiar? It should, it’s Kellyanne Conway’s old firm) for NumbersUSA, which is an advocacy group that supports tougher immigration enforcement policies. LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby has more.

And speaking of Brendan Kirby and more, that’s what he has this morning on the huge kink in the immigration court system that slows everything down to a snail’s pace. A snail in molasses, that is. Just to cite one illustration – the system still uses paper files for each case. Maybe somebody should let the immigration judges know about this amazing thing that’s been invented called “computers.”

HERE’S HOW OBAMA AND STATE OFFICIALS KEPT FOOD STAMP ROLLS JACKED UP: Unemployment benefits tend to follow the ups and downs of the economy, right? So why shouldn’t related welfare programs like Food Stamps? Traditionally, that was the case but not so after the Great Recession of 2008.

Brendan Kirby of LifeZette asked why not and found a bunch of signs pointing to Donald Trump’s predecessor in the Oval Office and like-minded folks in various state governments. Next question: Is this a sign of the presence of a permanent underclass in American society or just a temporary exception to a normal long-term trend?

DOESN’T THE LAW APPLY TO FORMER PRESIDENTS, TOO? Apparently not in the case of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund (BCKF), which was a joint project of George H.W. Bush and his successor, Bill Clinton, following the disastrous hurricane that nearly wiped out New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. The fund was done under the initial auspices of the Clinton Foundation.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: Federal and many state laws bar charities from asking for donations before they are officially recognized as legitimate organizations. The official date for the BCKF was Oct. 4, 2005, but, as investment banker/turned crack anti corporate and charitable corruption sleuth Charles Ortel makes clear this morning in LifeZette, millions of dollars were sought and received for at least a month prior to that date.

As is so often the case, the most troubling aspect here is the role of Clinton, who, Ortel notes, “was not named as an officer, director, or trustee of the Clinton Foundation or BCKF. He does not appear to have registered as a professional fundraiser. So it is unclear how he acquired lawful authority to solicit funds for Katrina victims in the name of either charity.”

And who is this “Lois Lerner” person of the IRS? Haven’t we heard about her somewhere else before???

HERE ARE THREE SCARY FACTORS YOU MUST UNDERSTAND IN FBI SCANDAL: It all makes sense once you understand this trio. Well, everything but those two chatty FBI lovebirds.

SENATE ETHICS PANEL SAYS MENENDEZ GUILTY: Of a lot, including accepting multiple gifts “of significant value” and failing to report them, as required by Senate rules and federal laws. Senate Select Committee on Ethics released its Letter of Public Admonition late Thursday.

ORNERY OKIE, SCOTT PRUITT, ISN’T GOING DOWN QUIETLY: And he may not be going down at all, though it’s unclear this afternoon how the embattled EPA administrator’s appearance earlier today before the House Energy and Commerce Committee affects his standing with the President. LifeZette’s Kathryn Blackhurst looks at some interesting data comparing Pruitt and two of his Obama-appointed predecessors.

NOW GOOGLE HAS CREATED THE BUREAUCRAT’S ULTIMATE COVER-UP TOOL: It’s called “Expiring Email” and it has many on the Left and Right sides of the transparency community worried that government coverups just got supercharged.

“CRUMBS CHRONICLES” DOCUMENTS HOW TAX CUTS ARE BOOSTING REAL FAMILIES: LifeZette’s Michelle Blood is talking to individuals and families in Flyover Country and hearing lots of stories about the blessings of getting bigger paychecks. Are you listening, Nancy Pelosi?

A SERIOUS FBI CLINTON FOUNDATION PROBE WILL GRILL THESE TWO WITNESSES: You have almost certainly never heard of these two individuals but Charles Ortel knows about them because he has closely tracked their public filings on behalf of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. He details today in LifeZette just a small part of what his investigation turned up.

LIBERAL SUPPORT FOR CENSORSHIP IS NO NEW THING: Arthur Milikh of the Heritage Foundation points to multiple European examples of the urge to shut down dissent from the conventional wisdom of liberal statism.

IF THE PULITZER WAS WORTH ANYTHING, LUKE ROSIAK WOULD HAVE ONE: I’ve been saying for more than a year that if the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Luke Rosiak doesn’t get a Pulitzer for his exposure of the Imran Awan scandal in Congress, there’s no justice in this world.

Imran Awan was Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’ IT aide who, along with half a dozen family members and friends, did IT work for dozens of prominent House Democrats, including members of the House intelligence and foreign affairs committees. They had access to members’ email, documents and contacts.

Among much else, Imran Awan was caught downloading data from the House IT network to a private server. His latest documents Imran Awan’s family links to the Pakistani intelligence service, which is notorious for playing all sides (and for playing the U.S. for rich fools for many years).

Considering the depth of irrelevance to which the Pulitzer has lately sunk and the growth of Right journalism, it’s time for somebody to endow a new award to recognize investigative reporting excellence by folks like Rosiak.

FUTURE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT DECIDED IN ONE OF THESE THREE CASES? It could very well be a decisive blow either way could result from one of this trio of potential legal landmarks in First Amendment litigation.

Definitely worth keeping a scorecard. Author Michael Farris, BTW, spent years defending and growing homeschooling and now he’s running one of the pre-eminent First Amendment litigation shops in the country, the Alliance Defending Freedom. I understand that he sleeps once in a while as well.

UH-OH, THIS COULD BE THE END OF THE DEMS’ IMPEACHMENT PLANS: New Marist Poll finds more people will vote against a congressional candidate who promises to vote for impeachment than the reverse.