JAMES TARANTO: The Pretextual Presidency: The Obama administration and the embassy rioters find common ground. “In its public statements, the Obama administration has put no daylight between itself and the embassy rioters in insisting that this is all about the video. . . . If you think of the Obama administration as an extension of the Obama campaign, it’s easy to understand its insensitivity to civil liberties and its eagerness to embrace the pretext that the embassy riots were about the video. From the standpoint of Obama’s re-election, it is imperative that voters be as distracted as possible from Obama’s failures. The murders in Libya and riots across the Middle East underscore failures both tactical (insufficient protection of diplomatic missions and personnel) and strategic.”

Plus, this damning question: “Other than a Nobel Peace Prize, what exactly does Obama have to show for being a ‘different kind of president’?”