Free Republic

The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time. In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that "a small number of line IRS...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Compilation of the IRS’s actions in its targeting of conservatives In May 2013, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional reviews. Organizations with the words “tea party” or “patriot” were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide a list of donors, details about their internet postings on social networking websites, and information about their family members.When this was first reported by the media in May 2013, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that had conducted these illegal activities, claimed that only low level employees had...

If there's one foundational lesson for conservatives of various stripes to glean from the recent revelations about the atrocities routinely committed by the IRS, it's that there are reasons the Founders considered property rights among the most sacred of all rights -- and rights that a limited government must protect. Several groups focused on "values voters" and "moral issues" have learned recently just how difficult it is to accomplish anything for their values when the IRS is using the awesome weight of a massive federal government to confiscate resources, perform harassment audits, and withhold non-profit status... --snip-- Of course, it...

Daniele Perazzi, president of the Italian Perazzi Shotguns firm, was taken into custody yesterday by Adams County Deputies [see update, below] along with several prototype shotguns. The executive was picked up in the parking lot of the Denver Merchandise Mart, hosting the high-end Colorado Gun Collectors show this weekend, after a taxi driver, likely reacting to a suspicious activity reporting outreach program conducted by law enforcement, told authorities he thought he could be transporting an armed “foreign speaking” terror suspect. “He loaded prototype shotguns into the cab on the way to the Merchandise Mart,” gun rights activist and newly-elected National...

Talkin a lot more than a tax audits now... Houston-based True the Vote is an organization dedicated to preserving the integrity of the voting process. They're a outfit any normal, good-faith American ought to be glad exists, what with 160 U.S. counties showing more people registered than the actual number of live, eligible voters in existence. Alas, the compulsively-crooked Obama White House despises them. True the Vote IS NOT a Republican outfit, and promotes no candidates nor political issues- they're merely focused on ensuring legal/fair/inclusive voting. In just the previous 18 months, voter fraud cases have been prosecuted in 36 states, so...

Some establishment types are shaking their heads as they warn conservatives that we must not politicize the Administration’s Benghazi bungling, its Obamacare shakedowns, its AP records grab or its IRS abuses. Like hell we mustn’t. We must. Big time. The last couple weeks’ revelations of fresh and compelling examples of the kind of duplicity and petty tyranny we conservatives have been screaming about for five years have presented us with what military folks call a “seam.” A “seam” is the border where two different units meet, and it is generally the kind of weak point you want to drive your...

Chilling effect. That's the term lawyers and judges use to describe the result of government actions that deter people from exercising their right of free speech. There have been plenty of examples in the past 10 days. The Obama administration's Justice Department issued a sweeping demand for two months of office, cellular and home telephone records from multiple Associated Press reporters and editors to investigate an alleged breach of national security. The AP story in question, on a foiled terrorist plot, had been withheld for days at the request of the CIA. It finally went out on the wire on...

Senior White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer is set to perform the 'full Ginsburg' on Sunday, appearing on all five major Sunday morning news shows in the latest sign that the Obama administration is determined to fight for control of the news cycle following an explosion of major scandals in the past several days. Pfeiffer will appear on CNN's State of the Union, ABC's This Week, CBS's Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox News' Fox News Sunday. The White House began suffering unusual setbacks in the media following the revelation that its edits to "talking points" on the...

A union representing 12,000 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers will publicly oppose the Senate Gang of Eight immigration plan Monday, giving critics of the overhaul effort additional political ammunition as they work to defeat legislation working its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a release announcing the group's opposition to the bill, National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council president Kenneth Palinkas writes that the bill would fail to address an "insurmountable bureaucracy" at the federal agency overseeing immigration documents and argues that USCIS personnel are currently "pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and...

The Senate’s immigration bill will raise national security risks and the Obama administration will do little more than “rubber-stamp” illegal immigrants into the program, endangering Americans, says the labor union representing the 12,000 employees who will have to approve the applications. Kenneth Palinkas, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 119, which represents officers and staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, will deliver a damning critique of the Senate bill Monday, according to a copy of his statement obtained by The Washington Times. His statement goes well beyond the current debate, portraying an agency intent on approving...

The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department. Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans' information from all news outlets.

See the video of the exchange via the link DAN PFEIFFER, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR: The point that our Chief of Staff is making is that this is the Republican playbook here which is try, when they don't have a positive agenda, try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings and false allegations. We're not going to let that distract us and the President from actually doing the people's work and fighting for the middle class. BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: You know, I don’t want to compare this in any way to Watergate. I do...

Clearly, the New York Times couldn't run with Jonathan Weisman's headline or opening sentence in the report he filed shortly after Friday's portion of Friday's testimony at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee in its Saturday print edition. And it didn't. The original headline at Weisman's story, as seen here (HT Ann Althouse via Instapundit), was "Treasury Knew of I.R.S. Inquiry in 2012, Official Says." His opening sentence: "The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was auditing the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for...

The families of three fallen Navy SEAL Team Six members say President Obama and Vice President Biden are culpable for the deaths of their sons for publicly identifying the unit that killed Osama bin Laden and pursuing policies that coddle Muslims and put our own troops at a tactical disadvantage. SEAL Team Six carried out the daring raid in Pakistan in early May 2011. Three months later, three members of the unit were among 38 killed in a Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Twenty-five of the dead were special operations forces. Larry Klayman is founder of Freedom Watch, a WND...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 176 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, government waste, and other misdeeds In the 2008 United States election, I wrote in Ron Paul for President. In the 2012 election, I voted for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Those who are of a more leftist persuasion than myself might want to consider voting for the Green Party in future elections. Some of the things on this list are major events that should scare the daylights out of any true liberal who cares about civil liberties.Other things on this list are medium things...

During the summer of 2010, the dozen or so accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati got a directive from their manager. A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the Tea Party had begun applying for tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing as rogue agents,” said Bonnie Esrig, a former senior manager in the I.R.S. office in Cincinnati. The specialists, hunched over laptops on...

President Obama continues to insist that he first became aware of his IRS targeting conservative groups a week ago Friday when the news first broke. This, despite the fact that his White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, had been informed of the probe on April 22. And despite the fact, as the New York Times reports, that officials in his Treasury Department knew in March that tea party groups had been targeted. President Obama continues to insist that he first became aware of his IRS targeting conservative groups a week ago Friday when the news first broke.This, despite the fact that...

Military Response Questioned in Benghazi Attack The latest Congressional hearing on the attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya focused on whether the U.S. military could have responded more quickly to end the assault. (May 8) WASHINGTON (AP) — Steady drips of information about a horrific night in Libya are fueling Republican arguments and ads designed to fire up the conservative base and undercut the Democrats' early favorite for president in 2016.Strategists in both parties disagree on the issue's power to influence elections next year and beyond. But after eight months of trying, Democrats are still struggling to move...

(Newser) – Probably a good sign that Republicans see the IRS controversy as very fertile ground politically: Bobby Jindal—who famously warned the GOP not to be the "stupid party" of unhinged attacks—is going after the scandal hard today, reports Politico. The potential 2016 challenger plans to tell Republicans in Virginia that those responsible for the "un-American" plan of singling out conservative groups for scrutiny should go to prison.   “You cannot take the freedom of law-abiding Americans, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom," says the Louisiana governor's prepared remarks. "When you do that, you...

Move over, Chris Matthews; there’s a new flip-flopping liberal “journalist” in town and his name is Piers Morgan. Morgan has had a revelation: Maybe, just maybe, government can become tyrannical after all. In a conversation with Penn Jillette, CNN’s anti-gun zealot – who has spent the last six months deriding the suggestion that the American government can’t be trusted when it comes to gun control – has had a change of heart after watching the IRS and DOJ/APP scandals unfold. Yep, Morgan went all Chris Matthews (the flip-flopping one) on Jillette when he came to the

Camelot Is Burning by Christopher Burton 18 May 2013, 4:40 PM PDT It began in earnest last Friday. A flash mob of latte drinking, tofu eating media that has done its best to quell, rather than fan the flames of truth, turned on one of their own. Jay Carney lay bludgeoned at the base of the podium, a victim of friendly fire. Ironically, the attack was reminiscent of the one in Benghazi he has repeatedly denied the Administration he represents bears any responsibility for. “Changed twelve times?!” came the cries. And with good reason. We were misled; no, lied to....

On Friday, former acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, said that America’s tax system is “voluntary.” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) agreed. Miller offered this perspective as he was grilled about his involvement in the IRS scandal wherein the IRS targeted conservative groups, particularly Tea Party organizations. This line has been used before by none other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Interviewed by Jan Helfeld in 2008, this is how the conversation went: Helfeld: If the government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people in order to provide welfare...

James C. Goodale, the so-called “father of reporters’ privilege” and the author of a new book called Fighting for the Press (CUNY Journalism Press, 255 pp., $20), was in his office at the Debevoise & Plimpton law firm, where he’s a partner, comparing Barack Obama to Richard M. Nixon. “Nixon and Agnew were like listening to a Fox News program all day long, every day,” he said. “In their eyes, the Eastern establishment press were against them and they were against it and they were going to destroy it as best they can.” But, he said, “Obama has all these...

As a rookie cop, he performed a deed which earned him an invitation to attend President Obama’s first congressional address, and sat next to the First Lady Michelle Obama during the president’s address

The Internal Revenue Service's watchdog told top Treasury officials around June 2012 he was investigating allegations the tax agency had targeted conservative groups, for the first time indicating that Obama administration officials were aware of the explosive matter in the midst of the president's re-election campaign. The disclosure to the Treasury general counsel and the deputy secretary was a cursory one, according to J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. He said he didn't reveal conclusions of the probe, which was in its early stages, and his disclosure came as part of a routine update to Treasury...

WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans, not resting with the Internal Revenue Service scandal, are moving to broaden the matter to an array of tax malfeasances and “intimidation tactics” they hope will ensnare the White House. Republican charges range from clearly questionable actions to seemingly specious allegations, and they grow by the day. On Friday, lawmakers sought to tie the I.R.S. matter to the carrying out of President Obama’s health care law, which will rely heavily on the agency. Whether they succeed holds significant ramifications for Mr. Obama, who will soon know if he is dealing with a late spring thunderstorm that...

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda? The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something his administration, and big government generally, undermines – trust. [emphasis added] Liberalism’s agenda has been...

When I saw the photo on The Drudge Report my reaction was the same as almost any other current or former member of the Armed Services—disgust. It reminded me of the Clintons who used uniformed military officers as servers to pass drinks and hors d’oeuvres at one of their White House gatherings. Do Democrats have no understanding of whom and what military people are? Do they not understand that the role of the military is one that less than one in ten Americans are willing to do? Apparently they are unaware of the sacrifices military men and women have made...

(Read the whole article) Things will probably have to get a whole lot worse before a critical mass of voters choose the path of despair that the National Journal warns against: the point where they exit the game. The difficulty is that the restraint does not so far seem symmetric. What is perhaps most disturbing is the sheer effrontery of the administration. They seem unabashed and oblivious to the damage they are causing. They are telling lies that nobody can be expected to believe, almost as if the stranger hiding under the marital bed explains that he’s looking for change...

<p>CEOs of large organizations all face the same problem – driving their agendas in organizations too diverse and geographically dispersed to manage directly.</p> <p>They hire competent managers for their units, set goals and establish clear metrics for evaluating performance. As in politics, competition in business is tough, and CEOs must set ethical boundaries for their managers’ conduct.</p>

“The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism.” — President Obama, remarks at a news conference, May 13, 2013 Once again, it appears that we must parse a few presidential words. We went through this question at length during the 2012 election, but perhaps a refresher course is in order. Notably, during a debate with Republican nominee Mitt Romney, President Obama said that he immediately told the American people that the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya “was an act of terror.” But now he says he called it...

New York City, N.Y., May 18, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA).- Bill Donohue of the Catholic League said he was “stunned” that the IRS investigated his organization in 2008, charging that the Democrat-leaning group Catholics United filed the complaint and used it to argue that CNN should drop him as a commentator. “This was a fishing expedition meant to intimidate me and create a chilling effect on my freedom of speech,” Donohue said. “I still couldn’t believe that a couple of weeks after the election, I was being asked to spend my entire Thanksgiving trying to defend the Catholic League...

•Fast And Furious (guns for drug lords, resulting in murder of Americans and Mexicans)

In the wake of one of the worst abuses of government power in recent history, many are rushing to frame the Internal Revenue Service scandal as simply an attack on conservative activists. That view risks creating a partisan political football and misses a fundamentally scarier abuse that exceeds the scandals of Watergate or any other prior government abuse. The IRS has admitted that since May 2010 it targeted grassroots-conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, unfairly subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny due to their political leanings. Such groups were told they were required to comply with IRS requests, no...

There was a running joke in the fall of 2008 that John McCain should simply re-air Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m. phone call” ad, which highlighted Barack Obama’s lack of experience and meager knowledge of world affairs, and just tack on “I’m John McCain, and I approve this message” at the end of the ad. The point was that thanks to the bitter primary battle between the Clintons and Obama, Democrats had already developed the most effective lines of attack against Obama, and Republicans needed only to nod their heads in agreement. Something similar is taking place amid the several Obama...

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Friday urged congressional leaders to raise the debt limit and insisted that the White House is not going to negotiate over the increase because lawmakers have "no choice." "We will not negotiate over the debt limit," Lew wrote. "The creditworthiness of the United States is non-negotiable. The question of whether the country must pay obligations it has already incurred is not open to debate." Lew said that while President Obama is willing to discuss plans to reduce the nation's deficit with Congress, those talks must be kept separate from any effort to raise the nation's...

Democracy: The IRS targeting of Tea Party groups is mind-boggling not only for its abuse of government power. It's also disturbing for what it intended to do: destroy civil society, opening a door for tyranny. The formation in 2009 of hundreds of Tea Party groups at the rallying cry of CNBC news editor Rick Santelli, from places as diverse as Lowell, Mass., Pleasanton, Calif., Asheville, N.C., Yuma, Ariz., and Lincoln, Neb., among hundreds of others, was a spontaneous reaction by ordinary American citizens to an overspending, oversized government whose overreach called into question its constitutionality. Yet it was these very...

...The Internal Revenue Service, apparently determined to get out ahead of an inspector general report critical of its handling of tax exemptions for Tea Party groups, came up with a plan: Lois Lerner, the official responsible for the tax-exempt division, would publicly apologize in response to a question at the American Bar Association conference in Washington... ...It was the day after Lerner had testified to Congress last week, failing once again to disclose the extent of the Tea Party targeting even under direct questioning. The damning inspector general report would come out any day, and Lerner and Miller wanted to...

The House Ways and Means Committee holds the first Congressional hearing on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) subjecting applicants for tax-exempt status to higher levels of scrutiny based on political leanings. Witnesses include Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller who resigned on Wednesday and the Treasury Department’s Inspector General Russell George for Tax Administration. Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) said the IRS' targeting of "American taxpayers based on politics is both astounding and appalling." He stated that the Committee will "get to the bottom of this practice and ensure it never takes place again.” In announcing the hearing, Ranking Member Sander...

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....

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:

GOP Rep. Mike Kelly was a huge hit at Friday’s House hearing on IRS harassment of conservative groups as he skewered acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller. Some tasty highlights from his fiery rant:Rep Kelly to Miller: You think this is uncomfortable? Try being a citizen being targeted by the IRS.Kelly: "This confirms that the #IRS can do anything they want, anytime they want, to anyone they want. " "Where you're sitting, you should be outraged, but you're not." Rep, Kelly to Miller #IRS #Waysandmeanscommittee "Is there any limit to the scope as to where you folks can go? … It's...

Coach is Right published this article well before the current IRS scandals had broken. We thought readers might be interested in taking another look at this slight infraction committed by our “voluntary” taxing authorities. In September of 2011, 60 million health records involving 10 million Americans were illegally confiscated by members of the IRS. The theft took place at an unidentified place of business in California. Referring to itself as the John Doe Company in a lawsuit filed last week against the 15 IRS agents who took part, plaintiffs claim that...

Another key question which must be answered is what important activity was being conducted at our Benghazi mission compound to cause Stevens to have to be there on the night of Sept. 11 to meet the Turkish consul general, even though he feared for his safety? According to various reports, one of Stevens‘ main missions was to facilitate the transfer of military equipment to jihadists and other Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, which also fought our forces in Iraq. This is a major betrayal that cost the lives of four Americans. Congress...

WASHINGTON — Senior Treasury officials were made aware in June 2012 that investigators were looking into complaints from tea party groups that they were being harassed by the Internal Revenue Service, a Treasury inspector general said, disclosing that Obama administration officials knew there was a probe during the heat of the presidential campaign. J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testifying alongside ousted IRS head Steven Miller on Friday, said he had told the department's general counsel about his investigation on June 4, 2012, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin "shortly thereafter." But, George cautioned, those discussions...

In response to The Smoking Gun’s publication of a classified CIA terrorism report, the Department of Justice launched a lengthy leak investigation that included subpoenaed telephone records, interviews with dozens of government officials, polygraph and computer examinations, and “a fair amount of time trying to dig up information about the site itself,” according to FBI records.

USBC News Wire- Rather than being a single instance of scandalous targeting of citizens by the IRS, questions are arising as to whether the scandal has merely exposed a more institutionalized abuse of the power in the Internal Revenue Service. In 2012, Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Al Franken (D-MN), both urged the IRS to clamp down on 501(c)(4) organizations, which are precisely the types of conservative organizations the IRS revealed it has been targeting for increased scrutiny during the Obama administration. Former comedian, Sen. Al Franken is reportedly said to have commented on the ability of groups to form...

The fallout from the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal is going to be felt in many other federal agencies and programs, including Obamacare and immigration reform, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker says. "This episode is going to have a big effect … There are multiple, multiple issues that have to be addressed,'' Corker told "The Steve Malzberg Show'' on Newsmax TV. "This is a wakeup call for all of those who see our large government and the way people can be coerced … For instance, as we move to immigration reform, just being aware … of judgments that take place within...

The underlying theme that connects Benghazi to the Tea Party, to the subpoenaing of AP phone records, to Z Street, to Nakoula is that they all have challenged the administration's "official truth." One can only hope that Obama's thuggish creation and corrupt defense of his "official truth" will anger, disgust - and frighten - all Americans.

Higher-than-expected premiums, combined with the scandal-ridden IRS, are putting a shadow over Obamacare, with House Republicans vowing to keep up the fight against President Barack Obama's key agenda item. On Thursday, the House voted once again to repeal Obamacare. This time around, two Democrats, Reps. Jim Matheson (Utah) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.)., sided with Republicans on the vote. All GOP members voted to repeal the health care issue. In Saturday's weekly GOP address, Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris vowed his party will keep up the fight, discussing a report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that detailed how insurance...