“Remember when she said, ‘well who cares how this happened,’ in a rather emotional way?” McCain asked guest host Martha Raddatz. “A lot of people care.” It’s too bad Raddatz didn’t tell the senator that no, she didn’t remember that – because Clinton never said it.

Remarkably, I’ve seen no one follow up on McCain’s misstatement today either. (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Instead, reporters are breathlessly parsing each new GOP charge on Benghazi (while also decrying the very real abuse of the IRS overscrutinizing the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.) The National Journal’s Ron Fournier tweeted “Welcome to the 90s,” with no apparent irony or self-awareness about the role of the media in ginning up that decade of phony scandals that paralyzed our last popular second-term Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

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Addressing a crowd of veterans and ROTC members at the University of Southern California, Petraeus spoke of his "personal journey" since resigning from the top intelligence role, and apologized for the pain his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell caused family, friends and supporters:

I join you keenly aware that I am regarded in a different light now than I was a year ago.

I am also keenly aware that the reason for my recent journey was my own doing. So please allow me to begin my remarks this evening by reiterating how deeply I regret — and apologize for — the circumstances that led me to resign from the C.I.A. and caused such pain for my family, friends and supporters.

But as the New York Times reports, Petraeus has remained active in political circles since news of the scandal broke:

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The investigation found that the Pentagon sent a veteran of America's "dirty wars" in Central America, Col. James Steele, to oversee the torture centers.  Another retired colonel worked with Steele to set up the detention centers and reported directly to Petraeus when the general was sent to Iraq in 2004.

Via the Guardian:

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Infidelity, sex tapes and scandal -- oh my!

You would think it was 1998 from our shock at the power of sex to take down powerful men. But no, it's 2012, and we still find ourselves shaking our heads at the thought that David Petraeus could risk his position as head of the CIA by carrying on an extramarital affair with his biographer, that a team of Secret Service agents could put their jobs on the line for a Colombian prostitute or that Chinese politicians could be captured in flagrante at a sex party or fall for a so-called "honey trap." We're astounded that Kristen Stewart could possibly desire more than Edward Cullen himself or that 76-year-old Fred Willard could be arrested at an adult theater. And when our upstanding neighbors are revealed to be clients of the "Zumba prostitute," we still clasp our pearls.

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The Post obtained audio of a 90-minute conversation from the spring of 2011 between Petraeus, then commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, and Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst and former Pentagon aide.

During the course of the conversation, McFarland says that she's there on behalf of Ailes, who suggests that Petraeus should not accept a position as CIA director, which President Obama was expected to offer him soon after. McFarland said: The “advice to you from Roger Ailes is ... He says that if you’re offered [JCS] chairman, take it. If you’re offered anything else, don’t take it; resign in six months and run for president.”

The Post summarizes the conversation:

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“I screwed up royally,” Petraeus writes in the note to Shelton, sent November 20. He also notes that he and his wife are trying to work through the affair: “Team Petraeus will survive though [I] have obviously created enormous difficulty for us,” Petraeus wrote. “Holly is, however, once again demonstrating how incredibly fortunate I was to marry her.”

Shelton leaked the note to the New York Post, ABC News and the Daily Mail.

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It couldn’t be clearer now that, from the shirtless FBI agent to the “embedded” biographer and the “other other woman,” the “fall” of David Petraeus is playing out as farce of the first order.  What’s less obvious is that Petraeus, America’s military golden boy and Caesar of celebrity, was always smoke and mirrors, always the farce, even if the denizens of Washington didn’t know it.

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Benghazi:

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the top Republican in the Senate Intelligence Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he expects Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will testify before the Senate about the Benghazi attacks. "At some point [Rice] needs to come in and say what the president or the White House directed her to say," Chambliss said.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory also pushed chair of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), on whether the White House and Rice had misled the public in saying early on that the attacks were spontaneous protests, while intelligence pointed to a terrorist plot.

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To judge by what representatives of each party told the press after the hearing, you’d think they attended entirely different meetings. Republicans seem to think that Petraeus completely undercut the Obama administration’s account of the attacks on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, while Democrats insist he backed up that account.

"The fact is, the reference to al-Qaida was taken out somewhere along the line by someone outside the intelligence community ... We need to find out who did it and why,” said Republican Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who attended the first of two back-to-back hearings with Petraeus. (The second was with senators.) "The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda ... He completely debunked that idea," said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of the very same meeting.

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The media has been gushing, even fawning, in its description of Petraeus’ accomplishments, and his disgrace is being portrayed as a national disaster.

The reality is much more mundane, as is the man at the center of all the fuss. His fall from grace is a personal tragedy, and he and his family will have to deal with that. Petraeus was a fine officer with a keen mind and an impressive work ethic. But he is not the miracle worker that is now being painted.

Even in disgrace, Petraeus is indispensable. The just-resigned CIA director was called to testify Friday at congressional hearings about the September attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

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But if they thought they were being smart, they were wrong. Broadwell and Petraeus were undone, says ACLU privacy and technology expert Christopher Soghoian, by their "lack of knowledge of operational security" and "poor tradecraft." "Draft" messages are stored in Gmail's server cloud just like all other sent and received messages. And the FBI turned out to be more than capable of correlating the Internet Protocol addresses that identified the origin of Broadwell's supposedly "anonymous" emails with hotel records that showed Broadwell as a guest at the same time the messages were sent.

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Eleven basic training instructors have been charged with offenses ranging from inappropriate touching of female recruits to rape. Two commanding officers have been removed, and Air Force Gen. Edward A. Rice Jr., commander of Air Education and Training Command, said at a press conference Wednesday that six more have received "disciplinary action." Forty-eight women -- some as young as 17 or 18 years old -- have come forward with stories of sexual misconduct.

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This man had been involved in a consensual relationship with another adult and for reasons both ridiculous and obscure, the other adult thought it just and meaningful to reveal herself and her complaints, making explicit all of the unique and varied ways in which she and this man had expressed their sexuality. And my, wasn’t he a weird one. And wasn’t it funny.

When that story broke, I was standing in the newsroom of the Baltimore Sun and I remember my growing distaste watching reporters and rewrite men as they were sucked, joking and snickering, into the breaking news. And no one had any doubt that it was news. The man was a national sportscaster, for the love of god. A more public figure this nation cannot muster.

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The dismissive attitude is best exemplified by The Petraeus Affair tumblr, a site that attempts to mock our tabloid media's misplaced priorities by posting Petraeus headlines beneath photos documenting the devastating wrought by Hurricane Sandy. This is cheap, unhelpful trolling. (And, you know, New York got it pretty rough, Tumblr person, but Haiti got it much worse. Plus there's a war on in Gaza! WHY ARE YOU CARING ABOUT NEW YORK WHEN THERE'S A WAR ON?)

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Remember, there are always going to be trade-offs for increased security , the more you encrypt your data to make it impossible for snoops to access, the more inconvenient it will be to get at your own information yourself. So be forewarned -- you can find an astonishing plenitude of information on the Web about how to secure your information, but complete privacy is never going to be hassle-free.

1) Your smartphone

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