Politics in Pakistan - You thought getting an Obama interview was hard? Muhammad Lila tried to get up close to Imran Khan, the celeb candidate in Pakistan - http://abcn.ws/15IQ03p

Rep. Steve Stockman managed on Twitter to tie in the Jodi Arias verdict, the Benghazi hearing and the Philadelphia abortion doctor trial.

He tweeted this:

" Rep. Steve Stockman?@SteveWorks4You Right now Jodi Arias is regretting not killing an ambassador or Philadelphia infant."

Moving right along…

Diplomat Says Requests to Send Help to Benghazi Were Denied - And he was asked not to help House investigators.

John Parkinson reports on sometimes emotional testimony before Darrel Issa's House Committee on Benghazi…

Gregory Hicks, who became the top diplomat in Libya after Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed during an attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11, 2012, told a congressional committee today that the attack left him scrambling for help that failed to arrive in time.

"Is anything coming?" Hicks said he asked a defense attache as he worked to coordinate a response from Tripoli, Libya, during the attack. "Will they be sending us any help? Is there something out there?"

Hicks, believed to be the last person to speak with Stevens before he was killed, recalled his final phone conversation with the ambassador as news began to reach him in Tripoli, Libya, just shortly after the attack had begun in Benghazi.

"I got the ambassador on the other end, and he said, 'Greg, we're under attack,'" Hicks recalled, speaking slowly and purposely throughout his testimony. "It was also a bad cell phone night in Tripoli. Connections were weak. And I said, 'OK,' and the line cut." http://abcn.ws/15qdVoB

Jon Karl reports even the witness list was political. Amb. Thomas Pickering, who led the State Department's Benghazi review, said he wasn't allowed to testify. Issa's office said Pickering wouldn't. - http://abcn.ws/13hYqeS

Benghazi All About Clinton? - The Washington Post's Philip Rucker had a good post this morning about how now that she's no longer in office, Hillary Clinton is more overtly the target of the GOP's Benghazi inquiries… "The GOP-led investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012, assaults that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others now centers heavily on the State Department and whether officials there deliberately misled the public about the nature of the assault…. To Democrats, the efforts amount to a baseless and less-than-subtle crusade to tarnish the credentials of Clinton, one of the country's most popular political figures and the overwhelming favorite for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination." More from Rucker - http://wapo.st/16hXv0Y

Amazing Nerdy Interactive by Yahoo!'s Chris Wilson - compare job growth (and loss) for every state in every industry tracked by the Census bureau. How did the garment industry stack up with the Repo industry, say, during the years of the Great Recession?

Wilson: The absolute figures in this sort of data can be hard to make sense of if, like me, you are not an economist. Is the fact that 504 people were employed in the formal wear and costume rental business in Illinois in 2011 good news or bad news?

You can toggle between viewing the map in terms of total jobs gained or lost, or as percentages-something like the "Obama View"and the "Romney View," to put it crudely.

To see the epitome of the Romney View, select "Total for all sectors" on the menu and set the time frame at 2008 to 2011. Whether you look at totals or percentages, you will find that only two states are in a better position today than they were before the worst of the recession hit: North Dakota and Alaska. This can largely be attributed to fossil fuels.

For a happier picture, just drag the left handle of the slider to 2010. For the most-recent two years of data, all but nine states have added jobs after shedding them like the plague the previous two years.(You can drag the blue region between the handles on the slider to move both at once.)"

http://yhoo.it/18usFkV

Immigration Amendment Pile-On - They get underway editing the immigration bill in the Senate Judiciary committee tomorrow. There are more than 300 amendments that have been filed and between ABC and Fusion we've amassed two different guides -

1. Amendments Concerning Immigration Reform - Fusion's Jordan Fabian and Ted Hesson report: Most of the amendments come from Republican legislators who oppose the bill and they would carve up some of its central parts, such as the pathway to citizenship, and beef up others, like the border security requirements.

But Democrats have also proposed changes, such as granting same-sex couples equal recognition, that could also challenge the delicate bipartisan coalition that backs the bill. - uninews.us/12gS0dt -

2… And the Amendments That Have Nothing to Do With Immigration Reform - Amendment Pile-On: Where Beef and Immigration Reform Collide- What does U.S. beef in South Korea have to do with immigration reform? Well, nothing. Except that Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has proposed tying visas for certain South Korean applicants to the South Korean government's decision to allow the importation of U.S. beef. http://abcn.ws/16hNlgS (Abby Phillip)

Welcome Back Sanford: Ex-Gov Wins House Seat- Welcome back, Mark Sanford. The former South Carolina governor will soon return to Washington, D.C., having pulled off an improbable political comeback, winning South Carolina's First District special election against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, after his 2009 Argentinian affair scandal knocked his star out of the Republican Party's sky. Sanford will take back the seat he represented in the 1990s, making his return to Washington and serving in the House again for the first time since January 2001. http://abcn.ws/12ey7VR (Chris Good)

Gay-Rights Backers See Progress in Year Since President Obama Backed Gay Marriage- A year ago this week, President Obama folded himself into a chair in the White House Cabinet Room to make an announcement that had no impact on federal law or policy - but one that was filled with emotional meaning for the president and many of his strongest supporters. "I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," the president told ABC News' Robin Roberts in an interview last May 9. http://abcn.ws/16Zlm5F (Rick Klein)

No Quit in 'Accidental Activists' for Gun Background Checks- In a Newtown, Conn. high school Tuesday night, family members, friends, and neighbors who've become "accidental activists" for gun control gathered to contemplate the future of their movement three weeks after background-check legislation failed in the Senate. Their verdict: Keep up the pressure. But is it working? http://abcn.ws/11Sq1Af (Abby Phillip)

Military Sexual Assault - In light of the recent increase in reported sexual assaults in the military, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., is pointing the finger at who she says is to blame - and it isn't just the Armed Forces. Speier, the author of three recent bills intended to reform the military's handling of rape and sexual assault, took members of the legislature to task for their role in what she called "a broken system." http://abcn.ws/13ixvj0 (Sarah Parnass)