Free Republic

Gov. Chris Christie today defended his starring role in publicly funded tourism ads that Democrats say gives him an unfair advantage in the race for governor. “I’m happy and proud to have me and my family in those ads and I hope that what they do is they bring people to the Jersey Shore,” the Republican governor said at a campaign event where he got the endorsement of Burlington Mayor Jim Fazzone, a Democrat. “There’s nothing political about the ads.” The Star-Ledger was first to report that Christie, First Lady Mary Pat and their four children will appear in six...

DENVER (Reuters) - A group of Colorado county sheriffs, angry about two new state gun control laws passed in the wake of last year's mass shootings in Connecticut and Colorado, filed a federal lawsuit on Friday seeking to block the laws from going into effect. The two laws, passed by the state's Democratic-controlled legislature with scant Republican support, ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds and require background checks for all private gun sales and transfers. All but 10 of the state's 64 county sheriffs signed on to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver. In...

Republican lawmakers are launching an investigation into claims that the Environmental Protection Agency, while giving preferential treatment to environmental groups, made it harder for conservative groups to obtain government records. “According to documents obtained by the Committees, EPA readily granted FOIA fee waivers for environmental allies, effectively subsidizing them, while denying fee waivers and making the FOIA process more difficult for states and conservative groups,” wrote Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Darrell Issa and Sens. David Vitter, Chuck Grassley and Jim Inhofe in a letter to the EPA. Citing a report by The Daily Caller News Foundation, Republicans are asking the...

Indiana has just given every state that agreed to adopt Common Core national education standards and tests a lesson in prudent governance. On Saturday, Governor Mike Pence (R) signed the Common Core “Pause” bill into law, halting implementation of Common Core until state agencies, teachers, and taxpayers better understand the implications of Common Core adoption. Indiana law now requires that the Common Core standards be evaluated and compared to existing state standards, and that a cost assessment be conducted by the state’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) before implementation moves forward. It’s something every state that adopted Common Core...

Thief in Venezuela tries to carjack a man after locking up his store. The thief is in for a rude awakening.

How the College-Industrial Complex drove tuition so high. Class of 2013, No one else is going to tell you this, so I might as well. You sit here today, $30,000 or $40,000 in debt, as the latest victims of what may well be the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history. It is a conspiracy so big and powerful that Dan Brown won’t even touch it. It’s a conspiracy so insidious that you will rarely hear its name. Move over, Illuminati. Stand down, Wall Street. Area 51? Pah. It’s nothing. The biggest conspiracy of all? The College-Industrial Complex. Consider this: You have...

Two members of Congress are asking if the Treasury Department disproportionately targeted more Republican or conservative owned auto dealerships during the government-lead restructuring of General Motors in 2009. Breitbart.com reported today that Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Jim Renacci (R-OH) released a letter asking Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to release documents regarding the process and methodology that determined which GM dealerships were closed. GM was loaned $50 million by Congress as part of the restructuring included consolidating dealerships and closing some of the under-performing GM dealerships. In 2009 and 2010 there were several reports in the press raising the question whether...

For 92 percent of requests from green groups, the EPA cooperated by waiving fees for the information. Those requests came from the Natural Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, The Waterkeeper Alliance, Greenpeace, Southern Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity. Of the requests that were denied, the EPA said the group either didn’t respond to requests for justification of a waiver, or didn’t express intent to disseminate the information to the general public, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner. CEI, on the other hand, had its requests denied 93 percent of the...

The IRS under the Obama administration painted targets on the backs of conservatives beginning in 2010, and ousted acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller apologized to the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday. But members on both sides of the aisle were furious, and castigated him for the mismanagement and political gamesmanship the IRS engaged in on his watch. Texas Republican congressman Kevin Brady had the harshest criticism for Miller. ‘Is this still America?' he asked him. 'Is this government so drunk on power that it would turn its full force, its full might, to harass, and intimidate, and threaten...

A student’s bid to become associate vice president of diversity and inclusion at Northwestern University was derailed last Wednesday over accusations that his status as a white heterosexual male would make it impossible for him to perform the position’s duties. Stephen Piotrkowski was apparently denied a position on Northwestern's student government because he is a "heterosexual white male." The Wednesday hearing began with student senator Jesse Seitz reportedly asking the nominee, Stephen Piotrkowski, how he could possibly interact and serve a minority community as a white male. Piotrkowski reportedly attempted to appeal to the Student Senate on the grounds that...

Treasury has not one, but at least two departments tasked with keeping an eye on the IRS. We’ve heard from Treasury’s Inspector General already in his report released this week. Now, the IRS Oversight Board has chimed in. The Oversight Board is a nine-member independent body charged to oversee the IRS in its administration, management, conduct, direction, and supervision of the execution and application of the internal revenue laws. The Secretary of Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue are members of the Board. Today the IRS Oversight Board released this statement: The IRS Oversight Board is deeply troubled by...

Richmond judge gives babysitter maximum term in abuse case Copyright..refer to link..............http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/local/crime/article_e9864e31-0d33-54ea-bdb3-eeeba4c11908.html

Where were you? You clearly remember where you were when planes, piloted by our enemies, crashed into three of America's most prominent sites on September 11, 2001. Since 2009, America --- conservatives in particular --- has been under attack by enemies, not from without, but from within. The planes have pilots from: Homeland Security (Fast & Furious), Treasury (IRS' high crimes and misdemeanors), Justice (AP phone surveillance), State & White House (Benghazi), EPA (CO2 emission rules & Keystone Pipeline foot-dragging) and The Democrat-controlled Congress of 2009-11 (Obamacare). Just to name a few. How many more hits can America take? How...

May 16, 2013 Column One: Obama and the ‘official truth’ Caroline B. Glick Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been sitting in a US federal prison in Texas since his photographed midnight arrest by half a dozen deputy sheriffs at his home in California for violating the terms of his parole. As many reporters have noted, the parole violation in question would not generally lead to anything more than a court hearing. But in Nakoula’s case, it led to a year in a federal penitentiary. Because he wasn’t really arrested for violating the terms of his parole. Nakoula was arrested for producing...

STAUNTON — The topics of immigration and taxation were a part of Thursday’s Shenandoah Valley Tea Party Patriots meeting, but so was the burgeoning IRS scandal that had touched the local group’s application for federal nonprofit status. Members gathered at the Staunton VFW Post on Thursday night for a regular meeting. While they were anxious to talk about immigration reform, they also wanted to know what the FBI will learn as it investigates the IRS targeting of conservative organizations. The Shenandoah Valley Tea Party Patriots needed 26 months and 235 hours of volunteer labor to answer all the IRS questions...

Obama, IG Report refuse to touch powerful Treasury Employees Union headed by ex-IRS agent. “My question is who is going to jail?” — House Speaker John Boehner on the IRS Scandal The President couldn’t even bring himself to breathe a word of the truth. He could fire some hapless Acting Commissioner, but last night Mr. Obama never came close to discussing that which must never be discussed. The IRS? It’s about a union: the National Treasury Employees Union. The NTEU. A left-wing union representing 150,000 employees in 31 separate government agencies, including the IRS. A union that not only endorsed...

DENVER - County sheriffs from across Colorado are trying to bring down two gun control measures signed into law in March with a constitutional challenge filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Denver. "Today represents a line in the sand," El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said. "The filing of this lawsuit is our only option. We did not want this. We did not ask for this, but we will not stand by silently while good citizens are deprived of their rights and criminalized." Maketa is one of 54 sheriffs challenging the constitutionality of the state's ban on high-capacity magazines...

Dear Commissioner Shulman: We write to inquire if the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") is investigating or intends to investigate whether groups designated as "social welfare" organizations, and thus receiving tax and other advantages under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), 26 U.S.C. 501(c)4), are improperly engaged in a substantial or even a predominant amount of campaign activity.... Signed, Michael F. Bennet, U.S. Senator Al Franken, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, U.S. Senator Tom Udall, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator

Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that. Last year, Schumer, along with Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Jeanne Shaheen and Al Franken, penned a letter calling on the agency to cap the amount of the political spending by groups masquerading as “social welfare organizations.”

Tea Party leaders from around the country gathered in Washington Thursday to vent outrage at the Internal Revenue Service for targeting them and other conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt-status and threatened to sue the agency for damages. "They lost membership and donations, they missed the election cycle, they missed key moments, they were not able to bring speakers in," Jordan Sekulow, a lawyer representing Tea Party organizations, told reporters outside the Capitol. The IRS last week confirmed that it had targeted conservative groups and the Justice Department responded Wednesday by announcing an investigation of the tax agency's practices. The IRS has...

With each passing hour, it becomes more and more clear that the truth was concealed from the American public prior to the election about two major Obama administration scandals. Benghazi was very much in the news prior to the election. The concealment went to the culpability of the Obama administration in failing to heed warnings about security at the Benghazi consulate, the nature of the pre-planned al-Qaeda attack, the scrubbing of the talking points used by Susan Rice, the failure to go to the aid of Americans in trouble, and the claim that the attack was a result of a...

You consider yourself a law abiding citizen, and you are not starting a nonprofit organization with conservative ties. Even so, you may be a candidate for a tax audit—and you may have no clue what you have done to warrant the attention of the IRS. The nation's tax collectors have long made it a practice to look for discrepancies, omissions and suspicious activity to uncover tax evasion and fraud. And lately, the IRS has expanded its monitoring to include social media. The agency now keeps an eye out for online discussions about nonpayment or underpayment of taxes, and even sale...

So, this is NJ huh? Second Amendment activist, James Kaleda, was forcefully removed from a hearing on a new gun control bill in NJ during his testimony. I guess this is how they handle dissent in NJ, remove it from the building with armed guards.

No one can deny that Barack Obama is a highly skilled politician, at least by the measure of election outcomes. His record is undefeated, save for an ill-advised 2000 primary challenge to an entrenched incumbent congressman. His 2008 presidential victory, after a fraction of a term in the U.S. Senate, was especially dazzling. It disproved those who said that Hillary Clinton was invincible, that a left-wing Democrat couldn't win, and that America wasn't ready for a black president. No one can deny that Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were highly skilled athletes. But their accomplishments are forever tainted by their...

How the IRS could deny something that seems plainly true.SNIP In short, according to the IRS, if you're minding your own business and the agency decides to go after you or your group about your taxes -- for an examination or an audit -- you've been targeted. But if you apply for your group to be a tax-exempt one and your application gets sat on for more than a year or you receive a flurry of excessive and/or illegal information requests, that's not targeting. That's what former acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller, speaking at a new Ways & Means hearing,...

Speaking at Ohio State University this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who "incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity." Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists, with a straight face, that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he "learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this." Like you, all he knows is...

Fewer groups sought recognition as 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations that year than in 2009, according to the Treasury Department.A number of people have sought to explain the IRS targeting of Tea Party, patriot, and 9/12 group applications -- as well as those from other conservative groups -- for "specialist team" treatment (mainly delays and excessive and inappropriate questions) in 2010 by pointing to the Citizens United decision that year allowing for unlimited, undisclosed fundraising by such groups. That's the explanation IRS official Lois Lerner gave a week ago when she first revealed that the agency had improperly handled a slew...

The embryos killed are the first class of victims; the second class of victims will be the rest of us. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is the sort of timeless morality tale students read as an antidote, or at least an objection, to the hedonism that seems to follow naturally from youthful ideas about immortality. The story is familiar to many: Dorian Gray is a narcissist who wishes that a portrait of him — his copy in paint — would age in his place. His wish comes true, and though his life is corrupted by a pursuit of...

On Wednesday the Obama White House dumped 100 pages of emails related to the Benghazi cover-up scandal. Even this cherry-picked selection of documents cast serious doubts on the official White House story line. The universal conclusion among commentators was that the emails, intended to stem the crisis, raised more questions than they answered.... Sadly the dumped emails do not help because the first of them was time-stamped 67 hours after the Benghazi attacks began. This 67 hour gap makes the 18 and a half minute gap in the Nixon tapes look like a hiccup. However, even if the White House...

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service is caught in an election-year struggle between Democratic lawmakers pressing for a crackdown on nonprofit political groups and conservative organizations accusing the tax agency of conducting a politically charged witch hunt. In recent weeks, the I.R.S. has sent dozens of detailed questionnaires to Tea Party organizations applying for nonprofit tax status, demanding to know their political leanings and activities. The agency plans this year to press existing nonprofits like American Crossroads, on the Republican side, and Priorities USA, on the Democratic side, to justify their tax-protected status as “social welfare” organizations, a status that...

More than 26,000 members of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) have come out in favor of creating a Watergate-style investigatory committee that would be tasked with determining the truth behind the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

If you have been following the Internal Revenue Service scandal over the past 24 hours or so, you may be reeling, just a bit. And if you haven’t, you’ve missed an out-of-body experience in which the IRS, the administration and Democrats seem to think Americans are a bunch of dopes. 1. At his contentious hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, Steven T. Miller, the IRS’s outgoing acting commissioner, denied anything illegal was done. He denied targeting groups. But yes, groups with “tea party” and other conservative flags got different treatment. It was bad, what they did, he allowed....

Acting IRS Head Steven Miller was not sure of much of anything during his testimony on Friday at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing in the wake of an ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal. The controversy erupted after IRS official Lois Lerner apologized during a conference for targeting conservative groups applying for tax exempt status. The move by the IRS has made many question the powers of the vast government agency.

Via the Examiner and NRO, a few more credible, confidence-inspiring breadcrumbs from this morning’s Ways and Means hearing. It’s starting to make sense now why protesting Planned Parenthood might present a risk to your tax-exempt status, isn’t it?The second clip is of Miller saying that he did indeed ask his underlings who was targeting conservative groups, and they told him, but now he can’t remember the answer. Really. The disdain this guy harbors for the proceedings is palpable, but that’s probably in his best interest: The more antagonistic he is, the more liberal support he’ll have when the administration inevitably...

Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller and J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified today at the House Ways and Means Committee hearing. Top IRS official Steven Miller told the committee, “I cannot reply to a specific case.” Miller wouldn’t say who was responsible in targeting conservative individuals. Commissioner Miller just dropped this line, “I don’t think targeting is wrong.”(VIDEO-AT-LINK) UPDATE: Later in his testimony Miller admitted that progressive groups were not targeted.

Could President Obama have read this op-ed by Ron Paul before his joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron this morning? The president’s assessment of the Benghazi scandal was remarkably similar to that of the former congressman. Both men called the controversy a “sideshow.” While Obama primarily went after Republicans for trying to politicize his administration’s response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya last September, Paul chose a more equal opportunity approach in his article, published this morning on the website of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. “Congressional hearings, White House...

In no uncertain terms and with no hedging, The New York Times reports that the Obama Administration was aware of the fact that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups as far back as June of 2012. The Treasury Department's Inspector General confirmed that he told senior Treasury officials in June of 2012, a full five months before Election Day: The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware...

Al-Hamad, who is Wahhabi (extremist Sunni) and harbors a sectarian hatred for Alawite and Shiite Muslims, said he has another gruesome video of his killing a government soldier from the Alawite faith. “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites]. ... Human Rights Watch (HRW), which validated the video, released a report on May 13 identifying al-Hamad as a well-known commander responsible for the recent cross-border shelling of a Shi‘ite Lebanese village that killed two. The organization called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes...

Over the past week, details have emerged on how the Internal Revenue Service subjected certain groups to undue scrutiny in a systematic manner over an extended period of time. It is deeply concerning that the same IRS that just admitted to the political profiling of Americans who oppose a big-government agenda is also tasked with enforcing the myriad mandates, taxes and regulations in Obamacare. Americans have entrusted the IRS with a tremendous amount of power, and that power has been systematically abused over the course of months and years. While this fact is chilling enough for many of us,...

Via NRO’s Andrew Johnson, Joe Scarborough isn’t the only TV show host rethinking his scorn of gun-rights advocates this week. Piers Morgan, who engaged in some of the worst demagoguery outside of the White House and Capitol Hill over the last six months on that issue, routinely derided the idea that the American government couldn’t be trusted to abide by the law and tell the truth. Now, after watching what happened at the IRS — and to the Associated Press — the CNN host admits to Penn Jillette that maybe people had a point about creeping tyranny after all: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)...

A woman in Toledo, Ohio, found herself the victim of an attempted home invasion on Thursday. After having her car broken into two mornings in a row, she refused to be a victim for a third time, especially not in her own home. She stopped the intruder before he kicked the door in, holding him at gunpoint until the police arrived. According to a report by an ABC affiliate, the incident happened just before 5 a.m. Betty Collins was home alone, her boyfriend, Mike Billick, had just left for work. However, he was at a nearby gas station when he...

The recent spate of Washington scandals has some liberals finally confessing in public what many of them have said privately for a long time. The Obama administration is arrogant, insular, prone to intimidation of adversaries, and slovenly when it comes to seeing that rules are followed. Indeed, the Obama White House is a strange place, and it’s good that its operational model is now likely to be finally dissected by the media. Joe Klein of Time magazine laments Obama’s “unwillingness to concentrate.” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post tars him as a President Passerby who “seems to want no control...

“Their question, specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa, ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers,’" Schock declared.

Recently retired, I have more free time to watch the news programs. My initial reactions to the recent Chicago-Way activities making the News was why was much of this information NOT brought up before the elections?. IMHO I believe that many in Congress (reps and dems) may want this administration gone soon. It will be much more difficult to impeach Obama than it was to impeach Nixon for various reasons. My wishful thinking is that "people" in the know have been saving their ammunition (proof of the various criminal activities) until it was a more suitable time for impeachment hearings....

Former White House Counsel during the Clinton Administration, Lanny Davis, is calling for the resignation of Obama White House Counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler. ... the White House counsel's office reportedly knew about the Inspector General's investigation into harassment ofdconservative groups, since April. Davis contends that if this is true and Ms. Ruemmler chose not to inform President Obama of the investigation and the possible legal and political ramifications, she should step down. ...

Two Congressmen are asking the Treasury Department if it inappropriately scrutinized conservative-owned businesses the same way it targeted Tea Party groups filing for tax-exempt status. Republicans Mike Kelly (PA-03) and Jim Renacci (OH-16) circulated a letter Thursday requesting Treasury Secretary Jack Lew release documents detailing the process and methodology the Automotive Task Force used to shut down General Motors dealerships in 2009 during the automotive industry crisis. Renacci's Northeast Ohio Chevrolet dealership was closed in 2010 after losing a battle with General Motors. Congress loaned General Motors $50 billion in 2009 after declaring bankruptcy, which resulted in the federal government...

<p>Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that.</p> <p>The IRS’s admission last Friday that it had singled out tea party and other groups for extra audits and delays has raised concerns that President Barack Obama’s administration quietly attempted to stymy opponents through intimidation. But many prominent Democrats — including Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the New York Times editorial board — had been publicly calling for tighter restrictions on 501(c)(4) groups affiliated with the tea party and conservatives.</p>

Slim majorities of Americans are very or somewhat closely following the situations involving the Internal Revenue Service (54%) and the congressional hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and its aftermath (53%) -- comparatively low based on historical measures of other news stories over the last two decades. These results are based on a May 14-15 Gallup poll. Despite extensive news coverage of these stories in recent days, the level of attention being paid to each is below the average 60% of Americans who have closely followed more than 200 news stories Gallup has measured over...