Free Republic

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...

What was the IRS chief counsel doing in a meeting with the President of the United States?  According to the Daily Caller and Dick Morris and verified by downloadable visitor logs, William Wilkins came to the White House on April 23, 2012 at 3:54 in the afternoon and departed shortly after 11 pm that evening.  Assuming that Jay Carney doesn’t personally know three William Wilkins who would get seven hours of face time with Barack Obama, it appears that the man who at least knew of the targeting of Tea Party and other groups had an opportunity to brief the...

Hitler uses the Obama excuse: "I don't blame people for being outraged. I'm outraged too. I learned about this holocaust from the news reports, just like the rest of you." One of the comments by C Stanley on the Althouse blog made this darkly humorous comment in the headline. Remember, there are no written orders from Hitler ordering the extermination of the Jews. Perhaps his supporters just assumed that's what he wanted done and went ahead on their own, like the IRS underlings in Cincinnati. Could it be that Hitler has been wrongly accused all this time? That he would...

Top IRS officials, whose agency was under investigation for targeting conservative groups, visited the Obama White House more than 100 times over two years while the probe was going on, far more often than in previous administrations ... reports Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner. Granted, some of the meetings were about the IRS' role in implementing ObamaCare. But take note of this: Former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman visited the White House 118 times between 2010 and 2011. Acting Director Steven Miller, who took over at the IRS in November, also made numerous visits to the White House,...

<p>Abuse Of Power: Any scandal investigation that expects a "Eureka!" moment, a White House e-mail, or Oval Office smoking gun will be misguided. In fact, the dots are already connected directly to the president.</p> <p>Barack Obama is not foolish enough to have a tape recording system hidden in his desk. And his administration staff are not careless enough to send one another incriminating e-mails.</p>

What did the White House know about the IRS targeting conservative groups and when did it know it? Crucial evidence needed to develop an accurate answer to that question would include the records of any communications that went back and forth between the IRS and the White House on the topic. ... The IRS--which requires working Americans to file their tax returns by an April 15 deadline each year or else face penalties--did not comply with this deadline imposed by the congressional committee that has oversight over its activities.

The idea that this targeting practice was isolated in some off-shoot Ohio office was preposterous from the beginning. Even if no other office were involved, Cincinnati is the central office for clearing tax-exempt applications and has been since the late ’90s. Its location in Cincinnati just gave apologists a convenient way to imply it was not involved in carrying out a national policy.Since the early days of this scandal, we’ve learned, even if it was buried in the Style section of the Washington Post, there was a “directive.”Now, National Review‘s Eliana Johnson reports there was guidance from Washington’s Technical Unit...

Carney: Obama Didn’t Ask Why He Didn’t Know about IRS Before News Reports By Andrew Johnson May 21, 2013 4:12 PM Comments 21 Jay Carney told reporters that President Obama did not ask his senior staff why he was learning about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for the first time through news reports two weeks ago, rather than from his staff. The administration has admitted that White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was informed in late April of the inspector general report detailing the targeting and that she shared the information with members of the the president’s senior staff. The...

A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue ServiceÂ’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agencyÂ’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agencyÂ’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents. The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters: As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, donÂ’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume theyÂ’re engaged in partisan...

— from the State Department to the CIA, the military leadership, the IRS and Justice — filled with sycophants under the sway of Obama's referent power. Since Obama was elected president, the political right has been ridiculed for questioning his choice of people to fill administrative posts, creation of a quasi-Cabinet of policy “czars” to skirt Senate confirmation, heavy-handed executive orders, bullying of Supreme Court justices during a State of the Union address, unconstitutional recess appointments and use of the presidency as a celebrity magnet to enhance his image. The knee-jerk press reaction against the right was to blame any...

The Internal Revenue Service scandal may be the worst of all the current Obama administration fiascoes. It is an easily understood gross misuse of the powers of government to target opponents of the president. What is more, the administration’s supplicants in the lefty punditocracy can no longer claim this is just an IRS scandal. The Post reports: J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s top tax watchdog, said Friday he had informed top Treasury officials starting last spring about problems related to the special attention the agency was paying some conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status. George said he shared the information...

The Internal Revenue Service scandal now devouring the Obama administration — the outrageous use of the federal taxing authority to target tea party and other conservatives — certainly makes for meaty partisan politics. But this scandal is about more than partisanship. It's bigger than whether the Republicans win or the Democrats lose. It's even bigger than President Barack Obama. Yes, bigger than Obama. It is opening American eyes to the fundamental relationship between free people and those who govern them. This one is about the Republic and whether we can keep it. And it started me thinking of years ago,...

George Soros-Funded Groups Prod IRS to Investigate Conservative Organizations Women walk out of an Internal Revenue Service office in New York, April 18, 2011. By Melissa Barnhart , CP Contributor May 16, 2013|6:07 pm Amid the uproar over shocking revelations that the Internal Revenue Service strategically targeted conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status are new findings that George Soros-funded organizations are sending letters to the IRS prodding them to investigate conservative groups, such as Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS. President Obama on Wednesday announced the firing of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who will leave the IRS in June, following the...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official who apologized for targeting conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny is married to an attorney whose firm hosted a voter registration organizing event for the Obama presidential campaign, praised President Obama’s policy work, and had one of its partners appointed by Obama to a key ambassadorship. IRS Exempt Organizations Division director Lois G. Lerner, who has been described as “apolitical” in mainstream press coverage of the IRS scandal, is married to tax attorney Michael R. Miles, a partner at the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. The firm is based in Atlanta but has...

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Sander Levin (D.-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has joined Rep. Dave Camp (R.-Mich.), the committee chairman, in demanding that the Internal Revenue Service answer by next Tuesday thirteen questions posed by the committee relating to IRS discrimination against conservative and pro-Israel groups and, where relevant, provide all internal agency documents and communications substantiating the answers. The committee's bipartisan demand for documents includes all communications between the IRS and the White House about the IRS's targeting of conservative groups. The committee also warns the IRS in the letter not to destroy, modify...

US President Barack Obama has said the federal tax agency's targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny was "intolerable and inexcusable". He said those responsible for the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) actions would be held responsible. Mr Obama spoke after a treasury department report placed the blame on "ineffective management" at the agency. The US attorney general earlier ordered an FBI inquiry into the IRS conduct before the 2012 presidential election. Eric Holder told a news conference that agents would determine if any laws had been broken. The actions of tax officers, if not criminal, were "certainly outrageous and unacceptable",...

Barack Hussein Nixon (M.Ryan) ABC News’ Trey Hardin: West Wing Of White House Authorized IRS-Gate Targeting Gee, it wasn’t a local IRS office scandal after all. ABC’s Trey Hardin suggested “with a very strong sense of certainty” that the West Wing of the White House authorized the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Via ORYR: [Video] From the video: Trey Hardin: “I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are...

Full Title - "Carney: White House notified of IRS targeting tea party ‘several weeks ago;’ Obama: I found out Friday [VIDEO]" White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a press conference Tuesday that the White House was notified about the IRS targeting tea party groups “several weeks ago.” This comes a day after President Obama said he found out about it from news reports on Friday of last week. During a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday, President Obama was asked about the IRS scandal. He responded, ”I first learned about it from the same...