Free Republic

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli joked at the Virginia Republican Convention, where he was nominated by the state GOP for governor, that the Obama administration must not think he's a conservative: He hasn't been audited by the IRS. The IRS nevertheless found a way to exact vengeance on the slayer of government-lawbreaking, who has sued several federal government agencies -- and even wrote a book about why the Obama administration is America's biggest lawbreaker. Yesterday Cuccinelli blasted the IRS for withholding payment of $125 million in money owed to Virginia. Cuccinelli won the second largest Medicaid fraud settlement is U.S....

The IRS has notified congressional staff that top officials in the agency’s Affordable Care Act implementation team were recently placed on administrative leave for potential improprieties, according to a congressional source. The agency told lawmakers that Fred Schindler, who is Sarah Hall Ingram’s deputy, and another staffer in the division were put on leave. The move is the result of gifts the staffers allegedly received — including $1,100 in free food and other items — while attending a 2010 health care conference. The IRS didn’t immediately comment. The agency is surrounded in scandal after acknowledging last month that it wrongly...

Some Democrats participating in the House IRS hearings have used the opportunity to ask tough questions and promise to punish any government employees who unfairly singled out conservative non-profit applicants for unfair treatment. Not Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore...He even took the opportunity to trash 501 c(4) advocacy groups that advocate things he doesn’t like, such as the traditional legal definition of marriage:

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) not only blamed the victims of the IRS's targeting on Tuesday--he also implied the IRS would have been justified targeting conservative and Tea Party groups if the agency did so based on what the groups stood for instead of on the words in their names. At a House Ways and Means hearing in which six leaders of organizations the IRS had targeted were testifying, McDermott said the "mistake here was the staff used the names of the organizatiions instead of the work they do." [video] McDermott lashed out at the witnesses, saying "each of your groups...

Testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday, witnesses from Tea Party, pro-life and patriotic educational groups from around the country testified about their experience of intimidation and targeting from the Internal Revenue Service. Witnesses described being sent hundreds of pages from the IRS asking invasive questions about members, books, contents of prayers and the names of anyone attending meetings, including children. "The IRS sought documentation of our meetings, rallies, events, or candidate forums. That included video and audio transcriptions, notes, copies of all handouts; the political party of speakers, and an “issues” list. The IRS sought identifying information on employees; data on...

Another great speech from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PN):

...Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., went on a bit of a rant earlier against the victims of IRS targeting who are testifying in today’s hearing. He was not the only Democrat to defend the IRS’s behavior....

The chairman of an anti-gay marriage group testified Tuesday that his organization has proof that the IRS leaked confidential donor details last year, calling for prosecution into what he described as a "felony." "This just smells and I hope this committee gets to the bottom of it," John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, said at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee. Eastman testified Tuesday alongside several Tea Party activists who all claim they were targeted by the IRS. The Tea Party groups offered a first-hand account of how the IRS singled them out when...

CNSNews.com) – The government has “forgotten its place,” Becky Gerritson, president of the Wetumpka, Ala. Tea Party, told the House Ways and Means Committee at a hearing on Tuesday on the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative groups. “I am a born-free American woman – wife, mother, and citizen – and I’m telling my government that you have forgotten your place,” Gerritson said. “It is not your responsibility to look out for my well-being or to monitor my speech.”

If you’re going to step in the ring with your government, you should expect to get punched in the face. And by “step in the ring,” I of course mean “avail yourself of the same perfectly legal tax strategies that are routinely permitted to liberal nonprofits.” I confess, while I expected some stupid and predictable Democratic scandal spin this week, I didn’t expect to watch a congressman indirectly defend government discrimination on grounds that the victims could have avoided it by simply not asserting their statutory rights in the first place. And yet here we are.That’s not the only problem...

A tea party witness from Alabama launched into emotional testimony Tuesday as she described her group’s political abuse at the hands of the Internal Revenue Service. “We peacefully assemble. We petition our government. We exercise the right to free speech. And we don’t understand why the government tried to stop us,” Wetumpka Tea Party President Becky Gerritson said during her opening statement before the House Ways and Means Committee. “I’m not here at as a serf or a vassal,” she went on, beginning to choke up. “I’m not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother...

Here is a copy of the Democratic talking points at the House Ways and Means Committee hearing today in Washington DC. Democrats handed this out to the press before the hearing. Democrat Sander Levin, the ranking member on the committee, said the IRS targeting scandal is not a partisan scandal.

LIVE: Conservative Groups Testify to Lawmakers on IRS Scrutiny 10am EDT (7am PDT)

While appearing Tuesday on KABC’S morning show, “McIntyre in the Morning,” veteran ABC News analyst Trey Hardin dropped a bombshell when he said he is convinced that the IRS scandal emanates from the West Wing of the White House. Hardin states his case with “with a very strong sense of certainty,” but does not offer any new information to support the claim: “I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that...

May 31, 2013 White House defense: Visitor logs too unreliable to reveal whether Shulman actually visited 157 times Vince Coglianese The White House on Friday pushed back against news that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times from 2009 to 2012.Shulman is a central figure in the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, having led the agency while those groups were singled out for harassment.When challenged last week by congressional investigators about just 118 of the 157 apparent White House visits, Shulman did not dispute the number, only identifying several reasons why he visited so...

The entire pretext by which the Obama Justice Department justified spying on James Rosen was flimsy enough. They trumped up the notion that they might charge him as a criminal co-conspirator to justify the warrant that allowed them to read his e-mails and access his phone records. This was always absurd, based on ridiculous notions about how Rosen approached his reporting work.

If you're not gonna love me, fear me. That, my friends, is the bottom line on all these White House scandals--trust me. To intimidate. To bully. To use the powers at your disposal to dispose of those who challenge your power. I don't know where this IRS intimidation of conservative groups goes. Or the Justice Department targeting journalists goes. Or Health and Human Services hitting up private companies to promote a controversial healthcare law goes. But I do know what it says, what all these scandals say. That this White House doesn't play nice. But it does play rough. Get...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Bush had one White House visit by the IRS commissioner. Why did Obama have 157? If you’re not already familiar with the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups under Obama, you can read all about it at entry #170 in this earlier post of mine: Here are 180 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, government waste, and other misdeedsThere are two new things in this next article, and I’m not sure which of the two is more interesting.First, during Obama’s presidency, the IRS commissioner made more visits to the White House – by a...

Obama officials who’ve visited the White House (As prepared by The Daily Caller) Shulman’s extensive access to the White House first came to light during his testimony last week before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Shulman gave assorted answers when asked why he had visited the White House 118 times during the period that the IRS was targeting tea party and conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny and delays on their tax-exempt applications.

If you put together all of the White House visits by Cabinet members Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius, and Hillary Clinton, you might approach the number accumulated by a non-Cabinet official from an agency in the news lately. Douglas Shulman visited the White House far more often during the Obama administration than the closest members of Barack Obama’s own team, with perhaps six times as many visits as Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood: Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more...