Attribution:DailyKos/GoogleMaps: According to a new PPP survey, 39 percent of people who think Benghazi is the biggest scandal don't know that it is in Libya, including 6 percent who think it's in Cuba.

From Public Policy Polling's latest national survey:

"One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don't actually know where it is. 10% think it's in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess."

True, these numbers aren't really that big a shock. If you're dumb enough to think that Benghazi is the biggest scandal ever, it's not surprising if you don't know where it is. And 74 percent of Republicans think Benghazi is worse than Watergate.

Just to be clear, the attack on the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, and the fatalities that included U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens were horrific and are not at issue today. What the GOP is trying to make an "issue" of -- and with the willing help of the "Liberal" media -- is their claim that initial speculation that the attacks were a spontaneous response to a video were over-emphasized by the Obama administration, and they are taking issue with the investigation and the response by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

And as we've already seen, if there is one thing the Republican party of today is actually good at, it is dragging out absolutely nothing for an incredibly long time.

The poll also showed that most Americans trust Hillary Clinton over Republicans on Benghazi, by a 49-39 margin.

On Thursday, the Pew Research Center found that, for the first time in 40 years of polling, the majority of Americans support marijuana legalization. According to a national survey, 52 percent of American adults support pot legalization, up 11 points from 2010, while 45 percent are against it. A full 65 percent of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 32, along with 50 percent of boomers, are pro-legalization, Pew said. Only 38 percent of poll respondents agreed that marijuana is a “gateway” to harder drugs, and less than a third find smoking pot “morally wrong.” In terms of party lines, 59 percent of Democrats support legalizing pot, while only 37 percent of Republicans do.

The Silent Generation -- those born between 1925-1945 -- continues to be less supportive of marijuana legalization than younger age cohorts. But the percentage of Silents who favor legalization has nearly doubled –from 17% to 32% – since 2002.

According to the survey, an increasing percentage of Americans say they have tried marijuana. Overall, 48% say they have ever tried marijuana, up from 38% a decade ago. Roughly half in all age groups, except for those 65 and older, say they have tried marijuana.

On Liberty Counsel’s “Faith and Freedom” radio show Sunday, host Mat Staver honored the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by likening federal funding for Planned Parenthood to “enriching Hitler.” Funding abortion, he said, is no different from funding a “Hitler kind of killing machine, or Pol Pot, or some of these other genocide tyrants.”

Staver's views fall in line with other extremists who have issues with women's rights to privately consult with a doctor to make their own health care choices without some nutjob executing their physician in the middle of a crowded Sunday church service, or being assaulted with "holy water" while entering their medical clinic.

Or this at another women's health center in Alabama recently:

"Pro-choice marchers recalled a particularly painful event last month when a woman whose baby had died en utero was coming to the clinic to have it removed. In an awful coincidence, that was the day, Watters said, when the pro-life demonstrators collected a children’s choir on the sidewalk to sing “Happy Birthday, Dead Baby” to anyone driving in."

Staver and other anti-women's rights extremists do nothing to further their views with such expressions or actions, as a new poll makes clear.

For the first time since the groundbreaking Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, a majority of Americans want abortion to stay legal—and seven in 10 respondents oppose overturning the case. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday, the intense rhetoric about abortion and rape by Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock and the debate over contraception have caused attitudes to shift toward abortion. Fifty-four percent of adults said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and a combined 44 percent said it should be illegal with no exceptions. And 70 percent said Roe v. Wade should not be overturned—with 57 percent backing that sentiment strongly.

I think Nate Silver just tossed in all these decimal points to mock Politico and Joe Scarborough.

Dallas Morning News:

"For all the talk about whether Mitt Romney should distance himself from George W. Bush -- and the policies of the last GOP White House -- a new survey shows that the former president actually has better favorability ratings than the Republican nominee."

The most recent Bloomberg poll shows Bush with a 46% to 49% favorable rating as compared to Romney's 43% to 50%.

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What a difference one TV interview can make! Embattled Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill has now jumped to a 10-point lead over her Republican challenger, Congressman Todd Akin, in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race. Most Missouri Republicans want Akin to quit the race while most Missouri Democrats want him to stay.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Show Me State finds McCaskill earning 48% support to Akin’s 38%. Nine percent (9%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

[Via]

Anonymous has trounced Reddit to take the top spot in the 2012 Time 100 poll, an annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. With Time posed to pick the ‘real’ winner, the Internet has had its say in who is really shaping the world.

Time:

When the poll closed at 5 p.m. on Friday, Anonymous had racked up more than 395,000 “yes” votes, up from just 40,000 a day earlier, leapfrogging not only over Martin (who ends up with over 264,000 “yeses”) but also over Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of India’s Gujarat state, who finishes in third place. Modi supporters had shown some muscle during the polling: they cast nearly 257,000 “yes” votes for their favorite. The controversial politician, however, had high negatives: he received almost 267,000 thumbs-down votes.

The full list of nominees here.

Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear argument on the central issue in the challenges to the Affordable Care Act, whether the individual mandate which requires almost all Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a fine is constitutional. Exemptions are allowed for persons unable to afford to purchase insurance.

A survey of Supreme Court clerks and lawyers found that most of them expect that at least the central portions of President Obama’s health-care law will stand inspection by the justices. Only 35 percent of insiders surveyed thought it likely that the highest court in the land would nix the individual mandate. According to the roundup, even those who had clerked for the court’s conservative justices said that the chances they’d uphold the mandate topped 50 percent.

The most sweeping provisions of the Affordable Care Act don't take effect until 2014, when in the state of Michigan alone, another 500,000 people become eligible for Medicaid.

Continuous updates on the hearing at USA Today. Also at Daily Kos, Armando gets down to brass tacks on constitutional law.