Free Republic

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner sent official documents from her government e-mail address to a personal account, according to House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa and his colleague, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. “This raises some serious questions concerning your use of a non-official e-mail account to conduct official business,” the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to Lerner demanding all documents from her non-official account for the period between January 2008 and the present. “Additional documents related to the Committee’s investigation may exist in these non-official accounts over which you have some control, and the lack of access...

...Remember on Friday how one of President Obama's efforts to get people to trust the government more concerning the NSA's surveillance efforts was to create an "outside" and "independent" board to review it all?... ...Except, that was Friday. Today is Monday. And, on Monday we learn that "outside" and "independent" actually means setup by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper--the same guy who has already admitted to lying to Congress about the program, and has received no punishment for doing so. This is independent? From this we're supposed to expect real oversight?!? This is from the letter sent to Clapper:...

Financial QUESTION: Obama and Democrats Trying To SEIZE Retirement Accounts (IRAs, 401Ks) ? Aug 9, 2013 I want to know what other Free Republic Members know about this H.R. 2035: Automatic IRA Act of 2013 I got an e-mail stating: "Obama & BIG Government Are Planning To Seize Retirement Accounts!" President Obama’s FY2014 Budget Plan brings us one Large step closer to De-Privatizing IRA’s & 401k’s. Much like Obamacare, Obama’s “Automatic IRA” will force employers with 10 employees or more, to “automatically” enroll their workers in the new Government run accounts. Obama’s Automatic IRA will be managed by the Social...

<p>The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.</p>

The email service reportedly used by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden abruptly shut down on Thursday after its owner cryptically announced his refusal to become "complicit in crimes against the American people."Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance."I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or...

Confidential sources close to Conservative Report have confirmed that Valerie Jarrett was the key decision-maker for the administration, the night of the Benghazi terrorist attack on 9/11/2012.

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- The White House has approved a deal that will exempt members of Congress and their staff from some of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, Politico reported late Thursday. Under the law, popularly referred to as Obamacare, lawmakers and their aides were required to source health insurance "created" by the law or offered through one of its exchanges, and without the subsidies they currently enjoy, the members of Congress would have faced thousands of dollars in additional premium payments each year, the report said.

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American...

The establishment press's general refusal to cover clearly newsworthy developments in the Obama administration scandal involving the targeting of conservative, tea party, prolife and other groups by the Internal Revenue Service has been so negligent and blatant that several leading conservatives, including the MRC's Brent Bozell and talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, called it out in an open letter earlier this week. Consistent with the rest of their colleagues, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, appears to have had no substantive story on the scandal since July 18 -- and that one was about primarily Democrats beating the false meme...

It’s been a rough couple of days for any freedom loving American. Two big stories broke in relation to the NSA scandal and neither bodes well for the future of privacy in this country. Yesterday’s big story came from CNET. That is significant in and of itself because CNET is not exactly what you would call a site for political news junkies. CNET is more for the computer savvy techies. They are reporting that the feds are applying intense pressure to gather passwords. CNET reports: The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users’ stored passwords, according to...

Confiscation? What are you talking about? We would never….. Posted on July 22, 2013 by Miguel Part of a letter from the friendly folks at NYPD, Licensing Division to NY City Gun Owners: See? If you surrender your weapon (under threat of coming down on your sorry ass with all the power that the City of NY and Mayor Bloomberg can exercise) , it cannot be confiscation! Now, who are you gonna believe? Us or them paranoid rednecks from the NRA? Related Article on Gun Watch: Gun Registration is Gun Confiscation 

The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, met with Obama on April...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department says it is looking into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin to determine whether federal prosecutors should file criminal civil rights charges now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the state case.

<p>The legal watchdog Judicial Watch released an audio recording Thursday of a Department of Justice staffer urging Sanford, Fla., city officials and the minority advocacy group Dream Defenders to seek justice for Trayvon Martin, because “if a community perceives that there’s something wrong in the black community, there’s something wrong.”</p>

Texas Congressman Steve Stockman announced on Thursday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now refusing to transmit to the House of Representatives the amnesty bill, which the Senate voted on and passed two weeks ago. According to Stockman he believes Reid fears it will be returned to the Senate on a “blue slip” resolution, which he threatened to use to kill the bill in the House. “Even Harry Reid now admits the Senate’s amnesty bill is unconstitutional and cannot become law. Any bill that raises revenue must start in the House” said Stockman. “By creating their own amnesty taxes...

Ron Kelly, a 20-year Army veteran, recently tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle at the Wal-Mart in Tomball, Texas. He was turned away because he failed the FBI background check. He appealed the rejection, and last month he got a Justice Department letter explaining that he was legally disqualified from owning guns, after handling them in defense of his country for two decades, because of a 42-year-old marijuana conviction. As a high school student in Durham, North Carolina, he had been caught with a small amount of pot and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession, receiving a sentence of probation because...

ABC’s Rick Klein gets it right when he stated the following: “[...] having the Democrats saying that implementing Obamacare has the potential to be a train wreck. Well now you have the prospect of a ‘Slow-Motion’ train wreck.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Forbes is reporting: Not qualified for Obamacare’s subsidies? Just lie — Govt. to use ‘Honor System’ without verifying your eligibility. Sounds a lot like the same process for how Obama got elected. Forbes goes on to report the following: If you thought the delay in the employer mandate was bad news for Obamacare, just wait. On Friday, Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar...

A Louisiana lawman is livid over the federal government’s decision to cut off funds for two programs to help troubled young people -- all, he says, because he refused to sign a pledge to bar prayer or any mention of God at their meetings. Julian Whittington, the sheriff of Bossier Parish, Louisiana, told Fox News that the Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights de-funded $30,000 for their Young Marines chapter as well as a youth diversion program. Federal officials objected to a voluntary student-led prayer in the department’s youth diversion program and an oath recited by the Young Marines...

Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland By the time this is published, the Senate, doing the bidding of the Obama administration, may have treasonously voted to cede our national sovereignty to the globalist agenda of open borders and unchecked illegal immigration. We can no longer fool ourselves into thinking that we live in a representative republic. Our “representatives” in the Senate are turning a belligerently deaf ear to the outrage of the vast majority of American citizens who demand that they have no part in leaving our borders unsecured while granting blanket amnesty to illegal aliens who have...

Under the Gang of 8’s backroom immigration deal with Senators Schumer, Corker and Hoeven, formerly illegal immigrants who are amnestied will be eligible to work, but will not be eligible for ObamaCare. Employers who would be required to pay as much as a $3,000 penalty for most employees who receive an ObamaCare healthcare “exchange” subsidy, would not have to pay the penalty if they hire amnestied immigrants. Consequently, employers would have a significant incentive to hire or retain amnestied immigrants, rather than current citizens, including those who have recently achieved citizenship via the current naturalization process. The issue is really...

A WTHR-TV Indianapolis investigative report exposes a fraudulent scheme wherein the IRS is sending $4.2 billion per year to illegal immigrants as an "additional child tax credit" for children who don't even live in the U.S. Further, the IRS and Congress have been ignoring the scheme for years. The Inspector General's office has repeatedly identified the problem in audit after audit. The IG, Russell George says, "The magnitude of the problem has grown exponentially," but the IRS is doing nothing to stop it. "It's so easy it's ridiculous," the tax preparer whistleblower who exposed the fraud admits. Names are simply...

After you read this- you will wonder what country we are in. Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his "paint" program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form. On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of "Police!" The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could "take a look around." Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn't want any return visits) -...

... Bill Hemmer asked the judge what he thinks we need to understand about what Snowden is telling us. Judge Napolitano explained that the government has granted itself this sweeping authority without a national debate about how much privacy Americans are willing to sacrifice... He said the government wants Americans to sacrifice liberty in return for the promise of security... ...

A subset of visitors to New York City looks, on the surface, just like the rest. Some are high profile, like the boxer this year, and the football player, and the Tea Party leader from California. They are joined by the anonymous: the military wife from Minnesota, and the hazardous waste expert. There was a minister, and a surgeon, and someone in pest control. What sets them apart is what each brings along on a visit to the city. A handgun. The guns are legally owned, with the home state permits all in order. The visitors have locked the gun...

Elizabeth Hofacre has turned out to be a gold mine to investigators of political corruption at the IRS. The Cincinnati-office specialist didn’t take kindly to having the entire mess dumped on the shoulders of her colleagues and herself, and has made it plain in depositions that this was no low-level innovation. The Hill became the latest media outlet to peruse the transcripts, and added a little more to the growing public record of the targeting effort’s genesis in Washington rather than Cincinnati: An IRS staffer in Cincinnati told congressional investigators that a Washington official was the driving force behind the...

Glenn Greenwald ✔ @ggreenwald Read this tweet and what follows: https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289 … 5:00 PM - 8 Jun 2013 194 Retweets 47 favorites Remember that tidbit about the Chinese president deciding not to sleep over at the lush Sunnylands estate with President Obama because of concerns of eavesdropping? Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. According to a series of tweets by Atlantic editor-at-large Steve Clemons, U.S. intel officials aren’t very careful about speaking their minds in public. Steve Clemons @SCClemons In Dulles UAL lounge listening to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on #NSA stuff should be...

Heads or Tails?- By: Larry Walker II -Carla Dean: “Well, who's gonna monitor the monitors of the monitors?” – Quotes from Enemy of the StatePRISM is allegedly a covert collaboration between the NSA, FBI, and nearly every tech company you rely on daily. PRISM has allegedly allowed the government unprecedented access to your personal information for at least the last six years. I say allegedly because every tech company in question denies its existence.According to the Washington Post: The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio...

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin Last February Maxine Waters in an interview stated “The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” She continued to reveal “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before”. This week Americans were surprised to learn that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting phone call information of American Verizon customers. Like all of the...

As a Second Amendment organization representing 375,000 members, we are writing to express our concern over Health And Human Services’ (HHS) proposed rule that was printed in the April 23rd, 2013 issue of the Federal Register. These regulations would, by executive fiat, waive all federal privacy laws and encourage doctors to report their patients to the FBI. Please understand a couple of things: First, the standard which a doctor would use to turn in a patient is embodied in Clinton-era ATF language and in the anti-gun Veterans Disarmament Act of 2007. Specifically, a doctor would report a patient if he...

The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities. The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.'s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers. The agency is using...

Americans are showing high levels of pessimism about their system of government, with a notable divergence along party lines, amid gridlock in Washington and recent high-profile controversies. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll out Wednesday found that 31% of respondents said they were generally optimistic about the American system of government and how well it works, with 29% saying they were generally pessimistic. That number is particularly dismaying when compared with historical optimism levels. In August 1974 – two years after Watergate and toward the end of the Vietnam War – a majority of Americans, 55%, said they were...

CAPITOL POLICE SUDDENLY WANTS TO SEE TEA PARTY WEBSITES BEFORE PROTEST APPROVED. And they are taking weeks to grant the request.The Tea Party Patriots were planning a rally in Washington DC on Wednesday June 19th. But they ran into a wall. The Capitol Police want to see their websites first. Kevin Mooneyhan from the Tea Party Patriots described this latest assault on the Tea Party: Below is the timeline of events surrounding our June 19th rally at the Capitol. We haven’t done anything to publicize this event yet because we wanted to make sure we had the permit in hand....

The corrupt—even criminal—activities rife in the Obama Administration has panicked its staunchest defenders. Forget the comparisons to Watergate or even to classic TV sitcom’s “I know nothing; I see nothing” Hans Schultz. Oh so yesterday. The triage of scandals, which initially stunned Democrats and Obama apologists into uncharacteristic silence, has since been re-branded to be something quite different than it actually is. For this, they owe Groucho Marx a debt of gratitude. Lying and cover-ups regarding Benghazi; stomping on the First Amendment; the IRS criminally targeting American citizens? Time to roll out the “Groucho Defense:” Who are you going to...

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...

Ahead of new hearings on the IRS abuse scandal, the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has released transcripts of depositions it has taken with IRS employees. The employees directly contradict IRS honcho Lois Lerner’s claim that the targeting was merely the work of “rogue� employees in the IRS Cincinnati office. Q: So is it your perspective that ultimately the responsible parties for the decisions that were reported by the IG are not in the Cincinnati office? A: I don’t know how to answer that question. I mean, from an agent standpoint, we didn’t do anything wrong. We followed...

Former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman is under fire from Congress for his agency's targeting of Tea Party and other conservative organizations. Shulman himself is under suspicion for his numerous visits to the White House compared to other administration officials. Additionally, Shulman's wife Susan L. Anderson reportedly works for the Washington D.C. based liberal organization Public Campaign. In fact, according to Anderson's Twitter feed, she worked on the Obama campaign: En route to airport after working 3 days 4 OFA, MiL just asks me If I know abt the Chrysler ads :) #Obama2012Anderson tweeted about spending time with union...

Watching the celebration at the NRA convention over the defeat of background checks was the most nauseating experience of the day. I am not a New York gun control liberal, either. I support a shotgun for home defense, a handgun for limited conceal/carry, and an assortment of hunting rifles to balance West Virginia's exploding deer population (as evidenced by hourly collisions with cars). So, I am hardly out of the mainstream. But, the gun safety debate is B.S. This foaming at the mouth, Obamar is coming for the guns, Nanny Bloomberg is a bad billionaire, and most despicable of all,...

Could the situation at the IRS get any worse? McClatchy joins CBS News in postulating that the scandal may well expand to more than just applications for tax-exempt status. Both news agencies are starting to take complaints about predatory and punitive audits and other actions and put them into a very ugly pattern — and ask some very difficult questions of the Obama administration: While the developing scandal over the targeting of conservatives by the tax agency has largely focused to date on its scrutiny of groups with words such as “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, these examples...

After I graduated college and before I landed my first real-deal job that included insurance benefits, I took out my own independent health insurance plan that covered all of the bases a young and healthy person like myself might need. It cost me about ninety dollars a month, and seeing as how I didn’t have any regular health care needs, it was pretty much just catastrophe insurance in case I happened to break my leg or get into a car accident or catch malaria or some other relatively unlikely scenario. I felt secure about the situation, knowing that I would...

Scandal: One IRS commissioner visited Obama's White House 118 times in 2010 and 2011. His successor also dropped in often. But under George W. Bush, the tax chief visited once in four years. Time for an audit. IRS Schedule O As the Washington Examiner noted last weekend, ex-commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Douglas Shulman went to the White House some 118 times in 2010 and 2011, while Steven Miller, the acting director who took over from Shulman last November, himself made numerous trips there, White House visitor logs show. Business as usual for one of the most powerful arms...

It is a petition to end what many Tucson drivers describe as a traffic light trap. John Kromko is the man behind the petition. His group, Tucson Traffic Justice, claims the cameras are a scam. ... Ditching the cameras is not as far-fetched as it may seem. More and more cities are shutting down the system including San Diego, Los Angeles and Tempe.

The Illinois Ag Dept. illegally seized privately owned bees from renowned naturalist, Terrence Ingram, without providing him with a search warrant and before the court hearing on the matter, reports Prairie Advocate News. Behind the obvious violations of his Constitutional rights is Monsanto. Ingram was researching Roundup’s effects on bees, which he’s raised for 58 years. “They ruined 15 years of my research,” he told Prairie Advocate, by stealing most of hisstock.

Included among the suspected terrorists were Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. At the time it was revealed, the program called “Operation Vigilant Eagle” caused some controversy but was quickly forgotten and buried by the media. For the DHS, Vigilant Eagle was the expression of the misdirected paranoia that exists at the agency’s highest levels, which since President Obama stepped into office have issued multiple reports about a supposed wave of terrorism by American conservatives of various stripes, from Tea Party members to off-duty cops.

IRS Directed to Lock Down All Agency Data By Eliana Johnson May 28, 2013 12:50 PM The Internal Revenue Service is in the process of locking down all computer data across the agency, a sign that investigations into the scandal-plagued agency may be taking a broader sweep than initially anticipated. Agency employees last Thursday received an e-mail alerting them, ”This is a late breaking top priority and things could change in the future,” according to an IRS employee who asked not to be named. Employees were directed not to “wipe, re-image or otherwise destroy any hard drives” on any machine...

An editorial at Investors Business Daily may wind up being filed under how did I miss this one? Following the recent revelations of cases where the administration appears to have used the muscle of the federal government to go after its political enemies, IBD takes a walk down memory lane to the strange case of Gibson Guitars and the federal raids on their facilities for alleged illegal importing of exotic woods used in their products. They reach one provocative conclusion. The inexplicable raid nearly two years ago on a guitar maker for using allegedly illegal wood that its competitors also...

The Justice Department begged a federal judge to not tell Fox News reporter James Rosen that it was tracking his telephone calls and emails in a probe regarding a national security leak. U.S. Attorney Ron Machen argued in 2010 that the traditional 30-day notice period did not apply to Rosen as Justice secretly monitored his Gmail account, according to new exhibits unsealed this week and disclosed by The Hill. “Where, as here, the government seeks such contents through a search warrant, no notice to the subscriber or customer of the e-mail account is statutorily required or necessary,” Machen wrote in...

The Internal Revenue Service, charged with implementing the biggest change in tax laws in 20 years due to Obamacare, has created eight offices and special "teams" to handle the chore, way more than initially revealed. Besides the top office headed by the woman in the middle of the IRS-Tea Party scandal, there are seven others and a special enforcement team that make up an organization chart that mirrors the organization of the IRS itself, according to a Treasury Inspector General's report. The June report focused on concerns that the IRS, which is filling the Obamacare offices with 2,137 agents and...

She is being questioned because of her reported actions of soliciting donations from non-profit organizations that are “directly implementing” Obamacare. Twenty-six members of Congress, including Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and John Culberson sent a letter on May 16 questioning the actions of Sebelius. “We are deeply concerned with the recent reports that you have made numerous phone calls soliciting financial donations for non-profits that are working to enroll individuals in the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act exchanges (or ‘marketplaces’ as you now call them),” the letter began. The letter also reminds Sebelius that if such calls were made, that...

It seems like only yesterday that IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner was claiming she knew nothing about the dastardly work of those shadowy "low-level employees in the Cincinnati office" - who somehow remain shadowy to this day, despite having been blamed for the worst abuse-of-power scandal in living memory. The Incompetence Defense beloved of this administration, and so effective with a media that would never accept it from a Republican official, was deployed with gusto. Lerner was shocked, shocked, to discover gambling against Tea Party groups going on at Rick's Tax Exempt Organizations Cafe American. But now National...

When you get right down to it,the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the Tea Party. Rick Santelli,one of the Tea Party founders and my CNBC colleague,was the first to make this point. I’ve taken it a step further: The IRS was taking the Tea Party out of play for the 2012 election,as it looked to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another Tea Party landslide.… But there can be only one reason for the stalled-out approval process for conservative groups. The IRS was trying to put them out of business....