Rand Paul Grills Clinton at Benghazi Hearing Prior to this morning's hearing on Benghazi, Senator Rand Paul swore he'd press Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the attack that left four Americans dead. He said she would have to accept full responsibility, and went so far as to compare Mrs. Clinton's alleged failings with those of government itself: "That's the problem with government - government is anonymous and so no one is accountable." That Mrs. Clinton had previously accepted responsibility for the attack, and did so again in her prepared remarks this morning, didn't faze him. He just upped the ante. "I'm glad that you're accepting responsibility," he said. I think that ultimately, with your leaving, you accept the culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11. Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan apparently don't count. He also brought up a terrifying counterfactual. If he'd "been president at the time" of the attack, he said, he would have fired Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Paul's chief complaint was that the State Department failed to provide adequate security for its personnel in Libya: "They should have never been sent in there without a military guard. This should have been an embassy like in Baghdad, in a war zone, and it should have been under military guard, significant military guard, Defense Department command. He didn't mention the fact that, in February 2011, he proposed cutting the State Department budget by 71 percent. At least Mr. Paul kept his attention on the attack itself. Senator Ron Johnson instead dredged up the conspiracy theory - popular prior to the election - that the Obama administration tried to orchestrate a cover up. I'm going back to then Ambassador Rice five days later going on Sunday shows and what I would say purposefully misleading the American public. Why did Ms. Rice mention a street protest? Couldn't the administration have "easily ascertained" that there was no protest, and that the assault did not spring out of a protest? Eventually an exasperated Mrs. Clinton put Mr. Johnson in his place: "Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again. Preventing another Benghazi was never the Republicans' priority. Or if it was, they had a strange way of showing it. Ever since the attack took place in September, up through today's hearing, Republicans have kept their focus on laying blame and on questioning the administration's public response, not on avoiding future missteps.