Free Republic

Presently, the Internet is awash with liberal attempts to blunt whatever affect the scandal surrounding Benghazi may have on President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Bettybb, our resident liberal, left a comment yesterday with an embedded link that supposedly proved Benghazi was a completely manufactured scandal, perpetrated by the GOP to make it look like the Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton, was up to their eyeballs in a coverup of what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The story she linked to is based on a report from CBS News. In that report, Major Garrett makes the claim that unnamed...

[ . . .] Perhaps because the Obama speech to Planned Parenthood coincided with Gosnell’s homicide trial, the president did not utter the word “abortion” once. But the timing notwithstanding, that omission was hardly surprising in an address that may have set a new standard for deliberate misrepresentation of reality. For it requires willful moral blindness about reality to say that “what Planned Parenthood is about” is helping “a woman from Chicago named Courtney” make sure she could start a family, by providing “access to affordable contraceptive care to keep her healthy” in the face of a fertility-threatening disease. Today,...

In short, Obama has never addressed his duty to govern. He has instead maintained a non-stop process of campaigning and fund-raising. It did not work in 2010 when voters returned power to the Republicans in the House and now he is doing everything he can to regain Democrat control there in 2014.

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...

First Lady Michelle Obama has expanded her anti-obesity campaign to museums, enlisting them to offer “healthy food options,” and change their menus. Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative is now calling for museums, zoos, gardens, science and technology centers to “join the call to action,” to decrease obesity among children. The first lady is recruiting these institutions to join the “Let’s Move! Museums and Gardens” project because of their power to “influence real and sustained behavior change” on the eating habits of kids. “With their impressive reach and great potential for impact, museums and gardens can launch community efforts to create...

My Dad often said: "Intrigue only begat intrigue". He was usually right. One conspiracy leads to another like a room full of mirrors reflecting themselves. Still, here goes. I have been watching Youtube collections of stuff from the talking heads and interviews today. I am cementing my earlier view... this IRS abuse is a massive smoke screen to hide something even bigger from attention. A lose the battle win the war tactic. Sure, this IRS scandal is a big deal and it is just the kind of attack on liberty all the right can get behind. Just the kind of...

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 jailed doctor who helped the U.S. track down Usama bin Laden was convicted by a tribal court on bogus charges, according to a classified Pakistani government report. Portions of the voluminous 357-page Abbottobad Commission Report, which has yet to be made public and were obtained exclusively by Fox News, acknowledge Dr. Shakil Afridi’s conviction last year by a government-sponsored Jirga has undermined Pakistan’s credibility. The report calls for Afridi to be given a new trial.

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...

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...

President Obama's Press Secretary Jay Carney bristled at the suggestion the Administration is embroiled in three major scandals. “What scandals?” Carney demanded to know. “The President has been giving his utmost to this country and now people are trying to package a run of bad luck into a series of scandals? It's unfair.” The “run of bad luck,” as Carney sees it, is “a media that is paying undue attention to relatively minor screw-ups by low level employees. Rather than being lauded for his efforts to employ a broader range of the 'differently- abled,' the President is now pilloried for...

More Damned Freeloaders Obama is coming down hard on the immigration of educated White Europeans, but he is maintaing the purity and integrity of his ethnic minority immigrant policy.The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld his administration’s decision to deny asylum to the Romeike family, a religious German family that has been prosecuted and threatened with the loss of their children because of their belief in homeschooling. The Romeike family fled their homeland in 2008 to avoid criminal prosecution for homeschooling. In 2010, they were granted asylum by Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman. His decision was overturned by the...

BALTIMORE — President Obama insisted Friday that he is focused on improving the lives of middle-class Americans, despite being buffeted in Washington by a trio of controversies that have threatened to distract him from his second-term agenda. Capping one of the most difficult weeks of his tenure, Obama left the Beltway for this city 40 miles north to try to change the subject from the problems of his administration and refocus attention on his efforts to create middle-class jobs. He toured an elementary school, manufacturing plant

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...

This is a very interesting article by Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News. It’s very long and covers different topics surrounding Benghazi, from the decision not to deploy FEST to how the talking points came about. The quote below talks about how certain anonymous White House officials say that the missteps in Benghazi was less about malice and more about incompetence. For instance, they claim that the reasoning behind not deploying the counterterrorism unit known as FEST stemmed from a misunderstanding of FEST’s role and ability. One official does pin the decision not to send in FEST on Under Secretary Patrick...

Arizona scored a huge victory against President Obama’s tyranny! A federal court UPHELD my Executive Order and Arizona's law denying driver's licenses to illegal aliens who President Obama has allowed to remain in our country under his outrageous deferred action program. The court ruled that Obama’s program DOES NOT preempt Arizona’s ability to determine who can receive a driver’s license. This is a great victory for state’s rights and the rule of law! Let me be clear: this fight has never been about the “Dreamers.” As Governor, I have taken an oath to uphold the laws of Arizona and I...

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 says Ezra Klein, who may turn out to be one of the stupidest people ever to be given column inches in a printed medium of any variety. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) After reading Klein’s desperate attempt to map onto reality his own desires, written in the form of a serious news piece, I’m tempted to say something like “fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” But then, the movie that comes from is, like, 35-years old. And back then, slave owners were still running things, and men in tri-cornered hats were acting all pissy and dumping perfectly...

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...

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...

Eventually the media will be sufficiently distracted by Team Obama to go cover other issues, so here’s an idea how the GOP can keep the Obama IRS Scandal in the news: Start parading the victims of the IRS witch-hunt before the cameras. Think about it. Whenever the Democrats want to push an issue, be it gun control, immigration reform, women’s issues or healthcare, what do they do? They find “victims” to use in tear-jerking fashion in order to advance their agenda. Consider who Victim Number One in their contrived War on Women was. Out of thin air they found a...

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...

President Obama vastly exaggerated the spending cuts and deficit reduction his budget plan would produce, while dramatically undercounting the level of tax hikes, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of his budget released Friday. When Obama put out his budget in mid-April he said that it "will reduce our deficits by nearly another $2 trillion," and "does so in a balanced and responsible way, a way that most Americans prefer." But the CBO report finds that Obama´s budget will cut 10-year deficits by just $1.1 trillion, with annual deficits starting to rise again after 2017.

The City of Philadelphia shut down a career fair for ex-offenders today after an unexpected crowd of thousands showed up, résumés in hand. There were lots of disppointed job seekers and potential employers this morning. The city was expecting about 1,000 people to show up, but about three times that number were standing in a line that wrapped around the Municipal Services Building, across from City Hall. And when someone jumped the line, order collapsed. There was no yelling, no shoving — just 3,000 people all trying to get into the job fair at once....

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.

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...

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...

IT GETS WORSE! The Obama IRS demanded that several Tea Party groups provide back-end access to their websites. From reliable sources: This happened to several Tea Party groups! The source has this in writing. It states they wanted access to everything the members had access to, which would be chats, email, contact information, etc. The group raised less than $600. She was targeted as early as October 2010....

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)...

I have a prediction about how the current scandals facing the Obama administration, from Benghazi, to the Associated Press intrusion, Barack Obamato the IRS harassment of right wing groups, will resolve themselves: President Obama will walk away from all of these scandals completely unscathed. The worst that might possibly happen is that Eric Holder will be forced to resign.

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...

Today, the Thomas More Society offered over 150 pages of analysis and evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee about repeated IRS harassment of pro-life organizations. At the request of Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL), Thomas More Society President Thomas Brejcha, Executive Director Peter Breen, and Special Counsel Sally Wagenmaker, prepared the legal memorandum with solid evidence of IRS harassment of pro-life organizations dating back to 2009. Shock asked the IRS commissioner today if this discrimination is appropriate and he was unable to say yes or no. The memo details the history of IRS misconduct in the cases of three...

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. ...

'It made him look like a butler': Retired general blasts President Obama for ordering U.S. Marine to break military rules by holding an umbrella The President unwittingly forced two U.S Marines to break protocol and regulations as he ordered them to use umbrellas Former United States Air Force Lieutenant Thomas McInerney criticized the President for making the officers look like butlers By DAVID MARTOSKO, JAMES NYE and DANIEL BATES 16 May 2013 President Obama humiliated the marine who he asked to hold his umbrella by making him ‘look like a butler’, a respected military general claimed today. Thomas McInerney, a...

Yesterday on Morning Mika, er Morning Joe, Donny Douche Deutsch revealed the new liberal argument regarding the trifecta of scandals plaguing the Obama regime. The first part was Deutsch using the targeting of Tea Party groups to hammer Tea Party groups: That's when Deutsch used the story of the IRS demonizing tea party groups to further demonize tea party groups. Basically what it is going to do, it’s going to force, in the primaries, to galvanize the Tea Party. You’re going to get more extremist candidates. They’ll lose in general election. Come general election time, if somebody voted against background...

http://youtu.be/9cc-HC1CnJgIf you believe in Obama's rainbows and unicorns, don't watch this video. Just join the ranks with the RINOs like McCain and Rubio and march with the Progressives. We can join this insanity and feel good about ourselves. Lest we forget, on September 11, 2012, America was attacked by radical Islamists once again. Four Americans were killed, including our ambassador to Libya. President Obama and Secretary Clinton made every effort to blame the attack on America. Hunting and killing the terrorists seems to have never been a consideration. The infamous video, that no one besides the administration knew existed, caught...

Acting IRS chief Steven Miller on Friday said he did not believe agency officials did anything illegal when giving extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Miller, who was forced to resign this week by President Obama, said he didn’t believe the scrutiny was illegal even as he apologized for the IRS’s actions, which have turned into a political storm for the White House. He also admitted under questioning from House Ways and Means Committee members that facts could emerge that might change whether he thinks anyone in the agency committed a crime, and he said one staffer involved...

Obama's Two Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Week in Office5/16/2013Obama and the IRSIRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care OfficeIRS tax exemption/Obamacare exec got $103,390 in bonusesObama evades question on White House knowledge of IRS targetingObama: No Special Counsel Needed on IRSHolder Says 'No´ to Special Counsel to Investigate BenghaziIRS's Lois Lerner, 'active member' of 'umane Society, may have delayed investigating group's tax statusThe Nine Lies of Lois LernerEmbattled IRS Official Lois Lerner’s Husband’s Law Firm Has STRONG Obama Connections..Republican senator: New IRS commissioner a "White House insider," will do "absolutely nothing" to restore public trustSpeaker Boehner...

Among the criticisms leveled at the new Senate immigration bill is the secretive manner in which it was written. And given the details, it's hardly any wonder that the eight senators overseeing the proceedings - the "Gang of Eight" - refused to hold hearings or debate until after the bill's release. Tucked away in the measure are two sections that would route a combined $150 million or more to "public or private, non-profit organizations" that are "community, faith-based or other immigrant-serving." Recipient groups could use funds to aid potentially tens of millions of illegal immigrants and family members to obtain...

If President Obama were to stand before the magic mirror and chant, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, whose is the most jobless recovery of them all?” the mirror would answer, “Yours is, Master.” We are now 46 months into our third jobless recovery since 1991, and this one is the most jobless by far. But wait! First quarter GDP growth was up from 4Q2012, and the stock market is hitting new highs almost every day. Doesn’t that mean that there is finally hope for the labor market? No, it does not. With current economic policies, the employment picture is not...

Former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Acting Commissioner Steven Miller, who only took over in November and resigned this week at President Barack Obama's behest, will testify before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday on his role in targeting Tea Party and conservative groups for audit or excessive review. Miller was the first senior IRS official to be disciplined in the scandal, though the problems began before he took over the IRS, and other senior officials were aware of the problem and appear to have misled Congress. Though Miller's resignation was reported as a decisive step by the president, his...

More than $92 million in bonuses averaging $5,500 per employee have been handed out by IRS executives to thousands of the tax agency’s employees since 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner. The average annual salary of the employees receiving at least one bonus during the four-year period between 2009 and 2012 was slightly less than $94,000, indicating that the extra tax dollars mostly went to managers and executives eligible for performance-based incentives. The IRS’s overall workforce includes more than 97,000 employees. According to the data, which the agency provided in response to the newspaper’s Freedom of Information...

Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012. More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency's Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS' regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today **snip** High-ranking career federal civil servants like Ingram are eligible for recognition through citations known as Distinguished and...

Now that everyone is paying attention to the scandal stories Republicans have been pushing for months against President Obama, they have a bit of stage fright. They're trying really, really hard to be cool and not let the trio of scandals slip away like they did during Bill Clinton's second term, when a congressman shot a melon to prove the death of a White House lawyer was murder, not suicide.

The woman who ran the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt organizations division has been promoted, and now heads the agency's health-care office, ABC News reported. Sarah Hall Ingram was commissioner of the embattled IRS office from 2009 to 2012, roughly the period that the agency is accused of singling out Tea Party and conservative groups for extra scrutiny, based on nothing but their political bent. As a firestorm grows around the IRS, Ms. Ingram quietly left the tax-exempt office and was made director of IRS Affordable Care Act Division...

If at first you don't succeed... The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law on Thursday in a symbolic move aimed as much at healing internal Republican rifts as demonstrating dogged party opposition to "Obamacare." "No matter what, Americans will not want a politicized agency to have access to their most personal, intimate health care information or be in charge of important health care decisions," Bachmann said. The 229-195 vote occurred largely along party lines and marked the 37th time the House has voted to repeal or defund the 2010 Patient Protection and...

NBC's Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election:

Kill and eat a baby manatee live on television? Urinate on the Lincoln memorial? Torch the US flag? Fly Air Force One into the Empire State Building with a final cry of Allahu Akhbar? Maybe you can help me. I’m trying to think of the things President Obama would have to do in order for the rest of the US to appreciate what a few of us have known for some time: that the man is an abomination – easily one of the most financially reckless, viciously partisan, damaging, dangerous, divisive and downright un-American presidents of all time, with a...