Free Republic

Why is the Obama Administration buying Russian 7.62×39 ammo among others not used in US forces weapons? By Fred Brownbill on July 27, 2013 in Constitution Legal Watch Save America Foundation campaign to save the 2nd amendment Writer: Kit Daniels The U.S. Army is now looking to stockpile nearly 3,000,000 live rounds of Soviet-era Russian ammo popular with civilian shooters. A U.S. Army solicitation posted July 18 on the Federal Business Opportunities web site asks for “non-standard” ammunition from vendors which includes: - 2,550,000 rounds of 7.62x39mm ball ammo - 575,000 blank rounds of 7.62x39mm ammo and - 425,000 rounds...

On August 12, Joe DiGenova, attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told Washington D.C.'s WMAL that one of the reasons people have remained tight-lipped about Benghazi is because 400 U.S. missiles were "diverted to Libya" and ended up being stolen and falling into "the hands of some very ugly people." DiGenova represents Benghazi whistleblower Mark Thompson. He told WMAL that he "does not know whether [the missiles] were at the annex, but it is clear the annex was somehow involved in the distribution of those missiles." He claimed his information "comes from a former intelligence official who stayed in...

A new video shows Lois Lerner talking about the pressure being brought to bear on the IRS to halt GOP money going into the 2010 election: Newly uncovered video shows Lois Lerner discussing the political pressure that swirled around the IRS in 2010. Lerner says "everyone" was "screaming at" the IRS to stop the flood of money pouring into the 2010 elections through 501(c)(4) groups as a result of Citizens United. Lerner spoke to a small group at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy on October 19, 2010, just two weeks before the wave election that brought the Tea Party...

America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver. Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased. Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer....

Valerie Jarrett is a well-known figure in the Obama administration. She has been around Barack Obama for several years and is probably most remembered for her statement that payback time would come after the 2012 election. Many have speculated that she is the real power in the White House and given Obama's infatuation with her, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that was the truth. What really troubles me is how she seems to be at the center of every important decision or event that takes place within the Obama administration. Her name is continually popping up and Benghazi is...

The New York Times Company may be facing some serious scrutiny over its planned sale of the Boston Globe to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry for a mere $70 million, after having paid $1.1 billion in 1993. The owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Douglas Manchester, is alleging that his higher bid was rejected by the company. John Lynch of the Boston Herald writes: A losing Boston Globe contender is claiming his San Diego media company outbid Red Sox owner John Henry - and would have gone even higher - a bombshell allegation that he says could delay the...

The Federal Reserve Bank, with a capitalization of $62 billion, has recently lost $192 billion, as interest rates have risen, according to ETF Guide and Scott Minerd, the Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners. This, despite attempts by the central bank of the United States to keep interest rates much, much lower "Our estimate shows that the spike in bond yields since the first quarter of this year,” writes Minerd, “has caused a mark-to-market loss of $192 billion on the Fed’s holding assets, equivalent to approximately all of the unrealized gains that the Fed had accumulated since it began...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama has chosen a retired corporate and government official with experience managing numerous organizations in crisis to take over an Internal Revenue Service under fire for targeting political groups. Obama said his nominee for commissioner of the tax agency, John Koskinen, "is an expert at turning around institutions in need of reform." "With decades of experience, in both the private and public sectors, John knows how to lead in difficult times, whether that means ensuring new management or implementing new checks and balances," Obama said in a statement. "Every part of our government must operate...

Amazingly, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew doesn't think it's "appropriate" for him simply to ask the IRS's chief counsel (and President Obama's political appointee) William Wilkins what he knows about the targeting scandal. Obviously, it's much easier to continue to insist that there's "no evidence" of wrongdoing if one goes far out of one's way to avoid learning any potentially unwelcome facts. Jack Lew Refuses To Answer If William Wilkins Has Been Asked About IRS Targeting

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...

Barack Obama issued an executive order on July 16, 2013 titled “HIV Care Continuum Initiative” which he claims will be a national movement and federal involvement in the war on HIV/AIDS. According to the executive order, recommendations are that HIV testing be administered for “all individuals ages 15 to 65 years” and this will be overseen by the US Preventative Services Task Force, coordinating with, you guessed it, criminal Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services.

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals,” p. 126 As the amnesty debate rages on, one has to ask: Why is it so important to this criminal administration to give a license to illegals to come into America? While most Americans are under the delusion that people favor this administration, the real question is, who exactly supports Barack Hussein Obama? Let’s go down memory lane and recollect just who (so you’ve been told) gives him all this support. If you remember...

July 18,2013 IRS Political Targeting Scandal: Democrats, Media Desperate to Shut It Down as Links to White House Emerge by Graham Noble A damning indictment of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) continues to emerge Thursday, during a Congressional investigation into the agency’s targeting of Conservative organizations. Congressional Democrats and their friends in the mainstream media are desperate to shut this investigation down as details linking the IRS strategy to the White House emerge. The Democrats are arguing that delays in processing applications for tax-exempt status from TEA Party and other ‘patriot’ groups – plus the extra scrutiny that these groups...

Scandal: A retiring IRS lawyer implicates the IRS chief counsel's office, headed by an Obama appointee, as well as the head of the IRS' exempt organizations office. The targeting included a Tea Party Senate candidate. In Thursday's hearing before the House Oversight Committee, 72-year-old retiring IRS lawyer Carter Hull implicated the IRS chief counsel's office headed by William J. Wilkins, who attended at least nine White House meetings, and Lois Lerner, head of the exempt-organizations office, in the IRS scandal. In so doing, he made clear the targeting of Tea Party groups started in Washington and was directed from Washington....

Congressman Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, said today on the House floor that survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements: "On Tuesday I raised the question of why none of the Benghazi survivors, whether State Department, CIA, or private security contract employees have testified publicly before Congress," said Wolf. "According to trusted sources that have contacted my office, many if not all of the survivors of the Benghazi attacks along with others at the Department of Defense, the CIA have been asked or directed to sign additional non-disclosure agreements about their involvement in...

(CNSNews.com) – White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that the suggestion that Obamacare is reducing full-time employment is “belied by the facts.” After reports that businesses are shifting to employ more part-time workers in light of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Carney was asked if the White House is considering making changes to the requirement that employers with more than 50 employees must provide full-time workers with health insurance. A full-time worker is defined as a person working at least 30 hours per week.

A government watchdog has found for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases...

Prosecutors froze the financial assets of senior leaders in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, in a sign of a deepening crackdown on the group. The move against 14 of the Brotherhood's leaders came two weeks after an estimated tens of millions of protesters thronged streets throughout the country to demand the resignation of former President Mohammed Morsi, who the Brotherhood backed.

By Chris Mitchell, Middle Eastern Bureau Chief JERUSALEM, Israel -- From the West Coast of Africa to the deserts of Sinai, Bedouin tribes are conducting a human trafficking trade on a massive scale. It's no secret. The trade reaps millions of dollars and deals with human misery. It could be stopped but so far no one has dared. "By that time I had lost sense (sensation) in both my hands," an Eritrean torture victim told CBN News. "It was a result of the accumulated torture but mainly because (both) of my wrists were tied up so tightly, (and I was)...

The IRS has been credibly accused of targeting conservatives as a way to minimize their participation in the 2014 elections. But there is a mirror image to their suppression in the last cycle; the Obama campaign's utilization of Big Data to bring liberal partisans to the polls. It was something that the press writing of admiringly both before and after the election, for example: Time: How Obama's number-crunchers helped him win Businessweek: Google's Eric Schmidt Invests in Obama's Big-Data Brains Other outlets have confessed to some trepidation: Gizmodo: How the Obama Campaign Uses Your Personal Information to Get Your Money...

“There are legitimate questions to be asked about political groups that are hiding behind a 501(c)4 status,” Nyhart said in a statement provided to ABC. “It’s unfortunate a few bad apples at the IRS will make it harder for those questions to be asked without claims of bias.” Visitors to the 1133 19th St. NW office floor shared by Common Cause and Public Campaign are greeted at the sign-in desk for Common Cause, with Public Campaign’s office located to the visitors’ left-hand side. Nyhart described the close relationship between the groups in his April 23 eulogy for Edgar on the...

In the summer of 2010, with Republicans poised to take over the House and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) in line to lead the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the White House started urging reporters to write negative stories about the congressman’s past, a new book says. (article continues at link)

This is one of those many instances when we realize how dangerous (and stupid) big government really is. If there is one thing we can almost always depend on, it is that any legislation that is passed by Congress and signed into law by the President will have unintended consequences. Many times, legislation is used for purposes for which it was not intended. Immigration reform meeting Obamacare fits that description nicely. It is also a good example of what happens when the people we vote into Congress fail or refuse to do their jobs. Would it be too much to...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal heated up today when Greg Roseman, Washington D.C. Metro Area Contracting Officer and Deputy Director of the IRS, invoked his constitutional Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering questions in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to determine if he fraudulently steered $500 million in IRS computer contracts to a $250,000 a year company fronting for IBM.

Twelve different groups within the IRS targeted conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, according to the attorneys representing tea party plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the IRS. The revelation disproves the suggestion by a top congressional Democrat that only one IRS group was responsible for scrutinizing tea party and conservative applications.

The public won't officially see or hear President Obama's climate change speech before he delivers it this afternoon at Georgetown University, but liberal supporters already have it — and are even commenting on it hours in advance.

The recent IRS and NSA scandals reveal that the Federal government, during the first term of President Obama, used the IRS to weaken the political campaigns of Obama's opponents, and that the NSA collected and stored personal information on virtually all Americans under the guise of national security. The IRS scandal proved that Federal agents refused 501(c)3 and (c)4 status to conservative political groups. That tax-exempt status was needed for political groups to receive donations. The Supreme Court has ruled that campaign donations -- to any political group or party -- are free speech. The IRS then, by denying tax...

This is one of those stories that you have to read and check twice to make sure it's not some delayed April Fools Day joke. Guess what government agency needs a little "mail room quality control"?  or what agency doesn't seem to care just how much they spend on postage? The answer is the IRS, the "Star Trek" or "line dancing IRS"! Here is the story:  The IRS mailed 23,994 refund checks to the same address in Atlanta. Wonder what the neighborhood mail man said about that?  Did he notice a heavier bag or a stuffed mail box?  Did...

(CNSNews.com) - The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta. The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth...

In an email sent hours before his death in a fiery single-car crash in Los Angeles Tuesday, award-winning journalist Michael Hastings reportedly wrote that he was working on a “big story” and was going to “go off the radar for a bit.” The subject of the email was “FBI investigation re: NSA,” KTLA reports. A copy of the email, sent on Monday, was reportedly provided to KTLA by Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, who was a recipient of the email. “Hey [redacted copy], the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates.’ Perhaps if authorities arrive ‘BuzzFeed GQ’, er HQ, may...

"IRS Sent $46 Million in Tax Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens — All at the SAME Address in Atlanta" The IRS sent more than $46 million in tax refunds to 23,994 “unauthorized” alien workers who all listed the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to an audit report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). However, the Atlanta address that received millions of dollars in refunds was not the only address apparently housing thousands of “unauthorized” aliens. In fact, it wasn’t even the only address in Atlanta that was claiming such a situation.

Not only did the former IRS commissioner visit the White House dozens of times during his tenure, but his chief of staff was reportedly making those visits even more frequently. The Washington Examiner reported Friday that Jonathan M. Davis, the chief of staff for former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, appears to have visited the White House campus up to 310 times between late 2009 and early 2013. Sources told the Examiner that Davis, who had little background in tax policy, largely served as a political aide. It's unclear what he was doing at the White House all those times. Shulman,...

The IRS Is Defying An Obama Administration Order To Give Employees $70 Million In Bonuses Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated PressJune 20, 2013 WASHINGTON (AP) — Already reeling from a pair of scandals, the Internal Revenue Service is drawing new criticism over plans to hand out millions of dollars in employee bonuses. The Obama administration has ordered agencies to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts, but the IRS says it's merely following legal obligations under a union contract. The agency is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses, said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the...

The IRS is set to pay roughly $70 million in employee-union bonuses, contrary to an Obama administration directive to halt such rewards amid the deep, government-wide budget cuts known as sequestration. The apparent deal with the National Treasury Employees Union is scheduled for Wednesday and was made public by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Grassley's office said the information came from a "person with knowledge of IRS budgetary procedures." The IRS is already facing widespread criticism, which started last month when IRS officials acknowledged that agents had improperly targeted Tea Party groups and conservative organizations for additional scrutiny...

James O’Keefe is back – this time targeting cell phone stores participating in the government program to offer free phones to low income individuals – or ‘Obamaphones.’O’Keefe’s latest video features his investigators getting free phones from a store in Philadelphia, explicitly telling the employees that they planned to sell them for cash to buy designer hand bags or heroin.One employee responds, “Hey, I don’t judge.”Another responds, “Just keep it to yourself.”Another employee reminds an investigator that it’s illegal to sell the phone, but tells her to “plead the Fifth” if she is caught.

As Hillary Clinton prepares for a possible presidential run in 2016, it appears that she could have knocked then-candidate Barack Obama off the 2008 primary ballot in Indiana. If anyone, including her campaign, had challenged the names and signatures on the presidential petitions that put Obama on the ballot, election fraud would have been detected during the race. But at the time, no one did. On Monday, there was some closure to the case, though, as the four defendants who were convicted or pleaded guilty in the state's presidential petition fraud scandal were sentenced. Only one received prison time for...

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says she was personally involved in scrutinizing some of the earliest applications from tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including some requests that languished for more than a year without action. Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Her assertion contradicts initial claims by the agency that a small group of agents working in an office in Cincinnati were solely responsible for mishandling the applications. Paz, however, provided no evidence...

The Democratic National Convention may be long over, but its organizers have not forgotten the almost half a million dollars worth of electronics they seem to have lost. Organizers of the Charlotte, N.C., convention have filed a police report for lost and stolen electronics, some of which they appear to have valued at as much as 62 times the listed market prices. A reportedly stolen 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop? $75,537. The price listed on the Apple website is $1,199. A lost iPhone? $30,503. A lost Blackberry? $54,250. The DNC did not respond to a request for comment. Calls to the...

WASHINGTON — The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The Post reveals. The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers. ... “Department intakes of new . . . officers since the hiring surge a decade ago have reportedly been flawed, with ‘mitigation’ of troubling histories including criminal matters,” according to a December 2012 memo...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog When Obama carried out his Solyndra con game, he broke the same law that Martha Stewart went to prison for breaking In 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million to Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs. However, instead of creating those 4,000 new jobs, the company went bankrupt. It was later revealed that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign, that the company had spent a large sum of money on lobbying, and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials. It was also revealed...

The State Department has been tainted by an internal memo that revealed security personnel and even diplomats may have committed inappropriate, illegal behavior during overseas trips. Some of the behaviors: One State Department security staffer in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on embassy guards, and members of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s security team may have “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries,” CBS reported the memo as stating. The prostitution allegation was especially egregious — described as occurring so frequently to rise to the level of “endemic,” CBS said. And one more alleged activity, in the...

Well, golly, this might be just a tad inconvenient for the establishment spin on PRISM, if true. After the Washington Post and then the Guardian exposed the NSA’s Internet snooping program, a few of the named Internet companies denied giving the NSA any access to their servers. Instead, they told the New York Times that they provided blocks of information pursuant to FISA court orders and placed them in virtual dropboxes for the agency to access. That would, as Red Alert Politics notes, make the program legal and narrower than originally thought, although still a worrisome development for privacy. However,...

I agree with Jonathan’s post both in terms of substance and the media response to the NSA/surveillance stories. On the former: the PRISM program, in the right hands and used with discretion, can be justified based on the threats to America. But in the wrong hands–in executive branch hands that have abused power and punished political enemies–it has the potential to be misused. Which brings me to the current chief executive. My views on President Obama are such that very little would surprise me in terms of the ethical lines he would cross in order to gain and maintain political...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Computer forensics shows that IRS employee committed crime that calls for five years in prison The National Organization for Marriage, a conservative organization, claims that it has forensic evidence which proves that its donors’ private information was illegally leaked by the IRS. The Blaze reports:John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, accused the IRS of intentionally leaking confidential donor information to groups hostile to his organization.“This just smells and I hope this committee gets to the bottom of it,” he said, adding that his group had “identified that [the leaked information] came from within...

LIVE THREAD House Oversight Committee on IRS Spending Practices Witness list http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/collected-and-wasted-the-irs-spending-culture-and-conference-abuses/

In 2010, the Internal Revenue Service dropped $4 million on a swanky conference in Anaheim, California where IRS employees learned, among other things, how to be “direct and honest, open and transparent” when speaking with taxpayers. The IRS employees learned from a “pioneer in the field of eliminating defensiveness” how to stop communicating using the “rules of war.” The pricey event included lavish hotel rooms for IRS officials at the Anaheim Marriott and elsewhere, according to a report by the Treasury Department Inspector General. Ellison was paid $7,000 by the IRS for conducting four 90-minute workshops, according to the Inspector...

It must be nice to be a leftist. The solution to every problem is more of someone else's money. That's the favored solution over on the Democratic Party side of the aisle when it comes to the IRS' targeting of conservative non-profits. In a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano of New York suggested, "There is no clearer way to promote more scandals than by cutting funding that could be used for oversight, training and reform. At the level of this subcommittee is funded right now, we're just asking for more trouble at the IRS and elsewhere." This...

The White House sought to pressure House Republicans into a budget conference with the Senate on Monday, warning President Obama would veto any 2014 spending bills based on the House GOP budget. In Statements of Administration Policy, the White House said Obama would veto all spending bills unless they pass Congress "in the context of an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future." That language suggests the administration, like congressional Democrats, wants to use the conference to turn off the automatic...

Scandal: The president's deputy campaign manager attended the "nonpolitical" ObamaCare implementation meetings with the former IRS commissioner at the White House. She wasn't there to discuss the Easter Egg Roll. A clue as to whether the targeting by the IRS of Tea Party and other conservative groups was discussed at the 157 meetings that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman had at the White House may be found in remarks by Stephanie Cutter, deputy manager for President Obama's 2012 reelection campaign, in a recent appearance on Jake Tapper's show "The Lead" on CNN. As reported by Gateway Pundit, Cutter attempted to...

<p>Shulman rallied for Rangel: Jason Furman, Media Matters, Fox News, Jarrett and a job.</p> <p>And the Liberal Dog Whistle Blows.</p> <p>Congressman Charles Rangel of New York.</p> <p>Ex-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.</p> <p>The new chairman of the president’s Council on Economic Advisors, Jason Furman.</p>