The Internal Revenue Service, according to an inspector general’s report, was not reacting to political pressure or ideology when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny in evaluating requests for tax exemptions. It acted inappropriately because employees couldn’t understand inadequate guidelines.
Seriously? A bunch of people who just happen to be activist Democrats spontaneously and collectively lost their ethical sense because they couldn't understand inadequate guidelines? So, the NY Times is saying it isn't even the perp's fault, it is the fault of some as yet unnamed writer of guidelines, whose guidelines were apparently perfectly understandable to all those employees who were not Democrats as those employees didn't engage in politically motivated targeting- but the guidelines were incomprehensible to Democrat party hacks. Riiight. And when the writer of guidelines is ientie it will be someone else's fault or else the writer will be given a sideways promotion made to look like a resignation and the NY Times will let it drop.
The tragedy in Benghazi,
It's not a tragedy it was a terrorist attack carried out by terrorists the Democrats bragged and assured us they had put on the run.
Libya, never a scandal to begin with, has devolved into a turf-protection spat between government agencies,
The NY Times needs to get off of its arse and show us where Obama issued a CBA to an in extremis operation. Only then can it be determined if it is "not a scandal." If there's no CBS then it's a freaking big deal.
and the e-mail messages Republicans long demanded made clear that there was no White House cover-up.
A tiny fraction of censored e mail is not what Republicans demanded. 99 email pages and one page of notes does not equal the some 22,000 email messages sent, particularly if the emails start on Sept 13 days AFTER Benghazi attacks and not before when those soon to be slain and others were pleading for more security.
The only example of true government overreach was the seizure of The Associated Press’s telephone records
Actually, the White House leaked the information to make itself look like it had al qaeda on the run and going after AP's communications was a wild goose chase to direct investigators away from the White House. It looks like an investigation was going on but it was intended to go nowhere and at the same time maybe allow for unrelated intelligence to be gathered on political opponents. In any case, the only reason this AP thing came up now is because the administration sees it as a chance to pass a media shield law to permit unlawful leaking of classified intel to handicap intelligence agencies legitimate work, and to deny bloggers and private citizens the same free speech rights and privileges as government-approved press outlets. Believe me, AP is ALL FOR THAT because they are already happy to act as state-run news, as is the NY Times. The Media Shield Law is an effort promoted by Dan Ellesberg, who both wrote and stole the Pentagon Papers that undermined the US in the Vietnam war, and the theft provied him with a living. He was involved in an earlier equally fake effort to promote a media shield law that came up when the left concocted the Joe Wilson ambassador to Gabon and Valerie Plame superspy myth and cried about her "exposure."
If there’s no CBA then it’s a freaking big deal.
Thank you!Believe me, AP is ALL FOR THAT because they are already happy to act as state-run news, as is the NY Times.I haven’t been a bit happy about the AP brouhaha, and you have articulated/clarified my own thoughts. The AP newswire is a virtual meeting of all major American journalism outlets, and it has been going on continually since before the Civil War. Adam Smith’s dictum that
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)implies that by now the AP is, and has long since been, little else but “a conspiracy against the public.” A conspiracy to promote journalism, and politicians who go along and get along with journalism, at the expense of the people and organizations which do not merely boast and propagandize but which efficiently get the needful things done. To hear the journalistic cabal tell it, its second guess is of greater value than the first guess of the businessman, the soldier, or the policeman. To hear that cabal tell it, any law with a noble-sounding name must be beneficial, because the only danger to the public comes from people who will obey the law and will not adjust their affairs in response to a change in law. To hear that cabal tell it, people who live outside of US jurisdiction, people who disregard US law even though it applies to them, and people who will respond to the law - Chinese who are currently building coal-fired electric power plants by the dozen, scofflaws who commit violent crimes in “gun-free” zones, employers who will make certain not to employ enough people to trigger the “Affordable Care” law, and so forth - cannot matter.
To my understanding, the causality runs pretty much the other way. The government is run by “liberals,” because “liberals” go along and get along with the journalism cabal and therefore “liberals” get elected. The very fact that “liberals” are called “liberals” - a positive label whose meaning was inverted in the 1920s - must be due to the cooperation, if not the leadership, of the journalism cabal.
The Media Shield Law is an effort promoted by Dan Ellesberg, who both wrote and stole the Pentagon Papers that undermined the US in the Vietnam war, and the theft provied him with a living. He was involved in an earlier equally fake effort to promote a media shield law that came up when the left concocted the Joe Wilson ambassador to Gabon and Valerie Plame superspy myth and cried about her "exposure."