Free Republic

Senator Charles Grassley, who launched the first Capitol Hill investigation of Operation Fast and Furious more than two years ago, today blasted the treatment of a chief whistleblower in the investigation by the former U.S. attorney in Arizona, and subsequent attempts to discredit him by the Justice Department. Grassley released a statement after the Office of Inspector General released a report Monday morning that shows former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke leaked “a sensitive document” to a Fox News reporter in an attempt to discredit John Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The IG’s...

President Obama believes in the public sector. He thinks it should be made ever more expansive and entrusted with ever more complicated tasks. Its unions should be powerful. It should be hailed by all the great and good, and attract the nation’s best and brightest. This is how the president portrays the public sector at a level of glittering generality. Then there’s the reality of all that government that is too big for him to monitor, the workings of which he learns about only when he reads the newspapers and watches TV. There’s the incompetence, the dishonesty and the self-justification....

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demanded information about conservative groups’ college-aged interns, prompting outrage from one of the country’s top conservative activist organizations and leading one former intern to wonder whether his family’s pizza parlor would be endangered. The IRS requested, in an audit, the names of the conservative Leadership Institute’s 2008 interns, as well as specific information about their internship work and where the interns were employed in 2012, according to a document request the IRS sent to the Leadership Institute, dated February 14, 2012. The IRS requested: “Copies of applications for internships and summer programs; to include: lists...

Back in their day, the tea party folks were riding high, fueling indignation over alleged government-run death panels, a treasonous Federal Reserve and the like. They commandeered sparsely attended Republican primaries, managing to nominate for Senate seats a dabbler in witchcraft in Delaware, holders of strange views on rape in Missouri and Indiana, and in Nevada, a candidate suggesting armed insurrection if her people didn't win elections. All lost -- some in races an old-fashioned Republican would have won. In the interest of party self-preservation, Republican leaders sidelined the more extreme tea partiers, or tried to. Meanwhile, the tea party's...

If everyone is put under oath one by one out of the site of cameras while being isolated, someone is going to spill the beans. All you have to do is say the other guy already talked. These libs aren't professional liars, evidence what we have seen so far. There is no reason that these scandals can't be traced to the white house.

Drudge editor and Washington Times staff writer has been tweeting since May 14th... "Drudge editor Joseph Curl: ‘CIA source says still one more shoe to drop’ for Obama admin" And again today via Red Flag News... "CIA: Fox News Scandal “Goes Much Deeper,” White House Sitting On Something that has Top Obama Aides “Terrified." And again via Fox News today... http://nation.foxnews.com/james-rosen/2013/05/20/you-must-read-tweet-joseph-curl

Our friends at Breitbart have been doing an outstanding job focusing attention on some of the grievous abuses of power we see coming from this administration. Here’s yet another example: Dr. James Dobson was a guest on the Hannity show Friday night to talk about the treatment his Christian, pro-family, group, Family Talk Action got from the IRS when they applied for a 501(c)(4), a process he said “went on and on and on” for 19 months. When his lawyer called the IRS to find out what the problem was, an IRS rep named Medley told him, “we don’t think...

As a major tea party group plans protests Tuesday at Internal Revenue Service offices across the country, a new national poll indicates that the IRS controversy has given the four-year-old movement a shot in the arm. The week-and-a-half-old controversy, which involves the IRS targeting of tea party and other conservative groups which were seeking tax exempt status, has dominated headlines and put the White House on the defensive. And according to a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday, it's also boosted the favorable rating for the tea party movement. Thirty-seven percent of people questioned said they see the tea party in...

Scores were injured and numerous buildings were burnt to the ground in the city of Itsnotsobad in the Islamic Republic of Whereizitstan, after a riot was started by peaceful Muslims who expressed outrage over five straight days of no provocation or insults from the West. Mahmoud Iwannariotbad, a local businessman who sells detonators, wire, and dynamite to the local mosque construction industry, stated that the violence began when a group of men hanging around in his store began discussing the fact that no new anti-Islam films, subway advertisements, or Pamela Geller blog postings had appeared for a number of days....

The war in Afghanistan may be winding down. But the Pentagon’s chief of irregular warfare still sees a war against al-Qaida that will last decades, all over the world -- a prospect that prompted astonishment and constitutional debate in the Senate. ... - Wired.com, 5/16/2013 Two Islamist brothers terrorized Boston for days in April. Just a few days ago Fazliddin Kurbanov was charged in Boise, Idaho with "conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists," according to the Idaho Statesman. The FBI itself said that: ... The Idaho indictment...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State John Kerry challenged Congress on Monday to go beyond its investigations of embassy security and help ensure that U.S. embassies and consulates abroad have the resources they need for appropriate security. His comments come as the Republicans continue to press for answers about the Obama administration's handling of last year's deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. Speaking to State Department trainees at the Foreign Service Institute, Kerry said the administration would spare no expense or effort to protect American diplomats overseas. However, in a sign of frustration with congressional Republicans...

The scandals of the Obama administration seem to be hurting not just the White House but MSNBC as well while Fox News Channel scored its second-best week of the year. After double-digit gains during last year’s presidential election, May 13-17 saw the progressive-aligned “Lean Forward” news network hit new lows as the IRS scandal erupted and revelations that the Justice Department secretly obtained AP records became public. With 350,000 viewers on average and 94,000 among the adults 25-54 demo, MSNBC had its least-watched and lowest-rated total-day results of the year last week. That was also the lowest total-day demo result...

Complete Headline: Michelle Obama Tells Grads: ‘I Could Take Up a Whole Afternoon Talking About’ Barack Obama’s Failures First lady Michelle Obama in her commencement speech at a high school in Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday said she could “take up a whole afternoon talking about” her husband’s failures. “And then there’s this guy, Barack Obama, who lost – I could take up a whole afternoon talking about his failures, but – he lost his first race for Congress, and now he gets to call himself my husband,” she told graduates of Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School during commencement...

But officials admit new program could just create more corruptionStrengthening Kenya’s county governments, at cost to U.S. taxpayers of millions of dollars, could spark the redistribution of political power across the African republic, whose national government is viewed as one of the most notoriously corrupt in the world. Efforts to bring about such decentralization, however, may inadvertently create 47 equally corrupt county systems, the Obama administration has acknowledged. Obama, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, nonetheless intends to dole out upwards of $50 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to help the Kenyans get it right, according to contracting documents...

New evidence has emerged that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez may have improperly prosecuted Wells Fargo, Bank of America and dozens of other banks for lending discrimination by using deficient mortgage data in investigations. IBD has learned the special prosecutor spearheading Perez's record number of statistics-based cases of racism against lenders told federal bank regulators in 2010 he lacked key home loan data needed to conduct the kind of iron-clad "regression analyses" that would hold up in court. Still, Perez's civil-rights division used the shaky data to force bank defendants into a record $600 million in settlements, including loan set-asides...

Liz Trotta on the Obama Scandals -- 5-19-2013

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus accused President Obama of having “built up an atmosphere of guerrilla warfare” that created fertile ground for the scandals now roiling his administration.

Liberals think crap like this is leadership, go figure.

White House Explains: Obama Didn't Know What He Knew When Everyone Else Knew What He Should Have Known Submitted by Tyler on 05/20/2013 18:04 -0400 House Oversight Committee President Obama Treasury Department White House Yesterday, when we reported that as a result of new disclosures regarding the timing of who learned what, but most importantly when, in the White House regarding the IRS persecution (if not prosecution) of conservative groups, we made it quite clear that the narrative enacted by the White House, which could simply be summarized as "we'll make it up as we go along", was nothing more...

White Americans are more likely to see anger in the facial expressions of President Obama than non-white Americans are, according to a study from the University of Arkansas that will be published in the journal Political Psychology in July.

The Justice Department’s secret subpoena for AP phone records included the seizure of records for five reporters' cellphones and three home phones as well as two fax lines, a lawyer for the news organization tells NBC News. David Schulz, the chief lawyer for the AP, said the subpoenas also covered the records for 21 phone lines in five AP office lines -- including one for a dead phone line at office in Washington that had been shut down six years ago. The phone lines at four other offices – where 100 reporters worked — were also covered by the subpoenas,...

There is far too much subversion for a small Government to handle. The Administration needs to be protected no matter how high the cost.Considering all the matters with which our grand and glorious Federal Government is forced to deal on a daily basis we need more, not less, of it. It cannot be expected adequately to respond to the many vicious attacks coming from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy unless it expands sufficiently to deal with them. Here, for example, is a vile attack published by one member of that disgraced conspiracy, the Daily Pest Beast. Following the attack in...

A few weeks back, the Tea Party was little more than a relic of political history, and its former superstars such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were lost in a sea of irrelevance. Now the Obama administration has gotten the Tea Party started again. The trio of scandals that are rocking Washington smack of the exact kind of government overreach and abuse of power that fueled the movement in the beginning. Suddenly, Tea Party darling and likely presidential hopeful Rand Paul is selling out speaking events from Iowa to New Hampshire, and PalinÂ’s tweets are making headlines again. The...

THREE Fox News staffers were monitored by DOJ. WOW. WOW. WOW.— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 20, 2013 Whoa.Drip, drip, drip.Megyn Kelly is reporting that it was not just James Rosen who was targeted by Obama’s Department of Justice. @MegynKelly on @FoxNews now reporting not just Rosen targed by DoJ; 3 Fox News staffers.— Brian Faughnan (@BrianFaughnan) May 20, 2013 Not just one! Three Fox News staffers in DoJ sites reports @megynkelly #fb— johnny dollar (@johnnydollar01) May 20, 2013 Now @megynkelly reporting @JamesRosenFNC, another FNC reporter and producer were targeted by DOJ— Andy Lancaster (@andylancaster) May 20, 2013 Evidently, two...

Why Sarah Palin? Because when I write a blog here on Jeb Bush or President Obama, it will bring in maybe 10 comments. A piece on Sarah Palin last week brought 135. Same every time. She strikes a chord which runs deep. She has a purpose here. She may be today the most important person in American culture and politics. She may always have been. The flak you draw tells of your truth and importance, and no one has taken more flak than Palin. Most has been neutralized now as Tea Party meets the mainstream with the IRS affair in...

The U.S. Attorney in Arizona violated Justice Department policy by providing Fox News with information apparently aimed at undercutting the credibility of a federal agent who helped reveal the botched arms-trafficking probe called Operation Fast and Furious, the Justice Department's inspector general said Monday. There was substantial evidence in the 2011 incident that then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke's motive for disclosing a memo by federal agent John Dodson was retaliation, the inspector general's report said. In testimony to a House committee just two weeks earlier, Dodson had raised serious concerns about Operation Fast and Furious. In Dodson's memo, which was eventually...

joseph curl�@josephcurl8m CIA source says Fox News scandal the "4th Shoe"; says it goes much deeper; says WH also sitting on "something" that has top aides terrified.

A Fox News correspondent was accused in a Justice Department affidavit of being a possible criminal "co-conspirator" for his alleged role in publishing sensitive security information -- in a leak case that takes the highly unusual step of claiming a journalist broke the law. According to court documents, the Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about Fox News' James Rosen's conversations and visits to the State Department. This included a search warrant for his personal emails. The effort follows that by the department to secretly obtain two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a...

At the President’s 2009 address to Congress, Michelle Obama was seated next to a potentially very dangerous man (no, I’m not talking about Joe Biden). 27-year-old Richard DeCoatsworth, a former Philadelphia police officer hailed as a hero, has been arrested and charged with rape, sexual assault, and terroristic threats. He allegedly produced a gun and forced two women to use drugs and perform sexual acts. On Thursday around 2:00am, DeCoatsworth left a party with two 20-year-old females. The trio then went to the home of one of the women. This is where the episode involving a firearm, and “forced” sexual...

When analyzing the statements issued by the late President, Richard Nixon, and current U.S. President, Barack Obama, on the Watergate and Obamagate scandals - including the IRS, Benghazi, AP-wiretap scandals, and a multitude of other Obama administration scandals - one can't help but notice an uncanny similarity between their respective statements. There are also a few salient disparities in their statements, all of which can be seen in the Video.

Top White House aides first learned of a draft report detailing IRS abuses in targeting conservative groups in late April, but they chose to insulate President Obama by not informing him until it exploded in the press, the president’s spokesman said Monday. White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Monday that White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler learned about an IRS inspector general’s draft report looking into the singling out of conservative groups on April 24. She advised senior White House staff including chief of staff Denis McDonough — about the then-draft report, but Mr. Carney said she believed that...

Raymond Maxwell, the only official at the bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to lose his job tells Josh Rogin that he’s been scapegoated by Hillary Clinton’s team. Following the attack in Benghazi, senior State Department officials close to Hillary Clinton ordered the removal of a mid-level official who had no role in security decisions and has never been told the charges against him. He is now accusing Clinton’s team of scapegoating him for the failures that led to the death of four Americans last year.

Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday. The acknowledgement is the White House’s latest disclosure in a continual release of details concerning the extent to which White House officials knew of the IG’s findings that IRS officials engaged in the “inappropriate” targeting of conservative non-profits for heightened scrutiny. Previously, the White House said counsel Kathryn Ruemmler did not learn about the...

"In two weeks the naysayers will find out just how wrong they have been" - Mike Zullo

Remember Enron? Remember Kenneth Lay? How about the tens of billions that were lost in that scandal? It was a series of events that will be talked about for decades to come, yet history seems to be repeating itself in 2013. Not in the private sector, but in the Federal government. For those who may not know or need a refresher in history, Enron was once one of the largest companies in the world. Its business was primarily in the energy sector. Unfortunately, accounting fraud and corruption led to its ultimate downfall, one of the largest bankruptcies in history, and...

With new reports today that the Obama Department of Justice leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, it is now more obvious than ever that this administration has, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) created a “culture of intimidation” that stretches from the White House down to myriad agencies of the executive branch. *** Department of Justice: Today’s report from the Department of Justice Inspector General, showing that former US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in Fast and Furious, are only the...

McCain warns Obama-Nixon comparisons are ‘overreaching’ Monday, May 20, 2013 PrintEmail Comments (37) By: Hillary Chabot U.S. Sen. John McCain bucked the party line coming from many of his fellow conservatives this morning, saying suggestions that compare the trio of scandals gripping the White House to Watergate are “overreaching.” “I think it’s overreaching. We need a full and complete investigation and then we will decide the dimensions of it,” said McCain while campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez in Dorchester. “It is terrible but we have to have a full investigation before we leap to conclusions.”

Why the "I Am A Black Man" speech by the president ? Was it a simple invocation to young Black graduates or the president circling the wagons and rallying his troops? It was disguised as a Brother Souljah moment when the occupant of the White House gave a speech at Morehouse College last weekend telling young Black men to live a responsible life and stop making bad choices. He spoke about the "special obligation" he feels as a Black man to help those left behind. The president praised Martin Luther King and spoke of how the civil rights movement cleared...

President Obama talked about “racism” at Morehouse College this weekend. The timing is interesting because the trial of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin in February 2012, will begin in June. Zimmerman is Hispanic and Martin was black. President Obama stated at Morehouse, “We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made quite a few myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not...

The Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about a Fox News correspondent's conversations and visits as part of an investigation into a possible leak, The Washington Post reported Monday -- in the latest example of the government seizing records of journalists. The information follows the charge that the department secretly obtained two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a separate leak probe. In the case involving Fox News' James Rosen, a government adviser was accused of leaking information after a 2009 story was published online which said North Korea planned to respond to looming...

Judge Andrew Napolitano joined FM Newstalk 97.1 morning host Jamie Allman today to discuss the widening IRS targeting scandal. Judge Napolitano told Jamie that if Obama knew his IRS was targeting conservatives during the 2012 election, and did nothing, it is an impeachable offense. "Now it has become a question of integrity. What did he know and when did he know it? Because if he knew during his campaign that the IRS was targeting his opponents and he did nothing to stop. In other words, he let the IRS do this stuff in order to help him defeat Mitt Romney,...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson. The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to be inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.” “We are referring to OPR our finding that Burke violated Department policy in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to a member of the media for a determination of whether Burke’s conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct for the state...

When it comes to the IRS’s ongoing, repressive behavior against conservative groups, you’re likely to hear different verdicts: The hard Left says, of course, that this is a molehill that the Republicans are scandalously trying to turn into a scandal. (The New York Times perfectly exemplifies this line of thinking.) Others on the Left admit incompetence, but refuse to assign moral blame. Conservatives are willing to assign moral blame but think that no one really cares. I believe that everyone should care because what we’re seeing now is a new type of scandal in American history, and the biggest crime...

He’s compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, evoked nostalgia for John F. Kennedy, sought to emulate Ronald Reagan, (belatedly) praised George W. Bush, and enlisted the assistance of Bill Clinton in his 2012 re-election effort, but as his second term stumbles along, the president with whom Barack Obama finds himself being compared is Richard M. Nixon. My father, Lou Cannon, covered the White House with distinction for the Washington Post for many years, beginning in the Nixon administration. He employed an easy rule of thumb when fielding phone calls from anonymous tipsters: If the caller said, “I have...

Move on to What? By Chris Stirewalt Published May 20, 2013 | FoxNews.com “Already, officials that would normally talk to us, and people we talk to in the normal course of newsgathering are already saying to us that they’re a little reluctant to talk to us. They fear that they will be monitored by the government…It’s not hypothetical, we’re actually seeing impact already.” -- Gary Pruitt, president of the Associated Press, on “Face the Nation.” How does an administration move on from scandals that are still unfolding? The answer: Not very effectively. President Obama and his team tried last week...

The White House is circling the wagons as one of the most feverish periods of President Obama’s tenure enters its second week. Obama and his aides have taken a more aggressive stance in recent days after fumbling their initial response to headline-grabbing scandals at different government agencies. The administration’s strategy is centered on a simple defense: “Our basic thrust is that nobody, here, did anything wrong,” an Obama administration official told The Hill. “That’s why none of this is going to stick.”Even though there is no evidence yet of wrongdoing in the White House, it does not mean that Obama...

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has reviewed the White House logs looking for a relationship between meetings listed there and the timeline found in the Inspector General’s report on the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups issued last Tuesday. Lord’s work represents yet another example of alternative media scooping a lazy or negligent establishment press. What Lord has found is that President Barack Obama met with the President of the National Treasury Employees Union Colleen Kelley, on March 31, 2010. The NTEU is “the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies.”...

President Barack Obama has an important new ally as emboldened Republicans work to derail his agenda: John McCain. The shift is striking: The 2008 rivals never got along throughout Obama’s first term in office. McCain has been Obama’s chief tormentor on issues ranging from the budget to Benghazi, tartly saying in late 2010 that the two men had “no relationship.” Yet during one of Obama’s toughest times as president, there was McCain, sitting down last week with him in the Oval Office for a private strategy session. At the urging of new White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who...

During an interview with Geraldo River this morning, Dennis Kucinich said that president Obama has "constructed a framework" that shields him from taking responsibility.

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.