Free Republic

WASHINGTON – Though President Obama insists the Internal Revenue Service is not guilty of political targeting of nonprofits, WND has learned the agency contracts with an avowedly “progressive” organization supported by George Soros to process data filed by smaller tax-exempt groups. The federal agency process sends details contained in the annual filings for organizations with $50,000 in annual receipts or less to the Urban Institute, which is funded at least partly by government payments as well as contributions from far-left activist George Soros. The IRS page directs groups to file with the Urban Institute, although apparently other providers also can...

Testimony related to the IRS Targeting investigation Testimony: Catherine Engelbrecht Shortly after filing IRS forms to establish 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations, an assortment of federal entities –including law enforcement agencies and a Congressman from Maryland, Elijah Cummings –came knocking at my door. http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Engelbrecht.pdf Catherine Engelbrecht Founder and President Other testimony can be found here: http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/irs-targeting-investigation-administration/

Americans for Prosperity has two new ads targeting House Democrats in swing districts, both of which make the case that Obamacare "doesn't work" and should be repealed. The first ad, running in New Hampshire, tells Democratic congresswoman Annie Kuster to "stop thinking about politics and start thinking about people." Watch it below:

In Wisconsin, dozens of conservative groups and allies of Gov. Scott Walker are undergoing political intimidation from the left at the hands of a special prosecutor. Subpoenas have been issued demanding correspondence and donor information of right-leaning organizations and individuals and raids have been conducted resulting in law enforcement officers taking computers and files in a secret investigation, according to reports. “In recent weeks, special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has hit dozens of conservative groups with subpoenas demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaigns to recall Governor Walker and state legislative leaders,” the Wall Street Journal writes. It continues,...

AFP - Al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on Europe's high-speed rail network, German mass circulation daily Bild reported on Monday, citing intelligence sources. The extremist group could plant explosives on trains and tunnels or sabotage tracks and electrical cabling, said Bild, Europe's most widely read daily. Bild said the information came from the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States, which had listened in to a conference call involving top Al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks on Europe's rail network was a "central topic" of this call, Bild said.

The Internal Revenue Service continues to target pro-life conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status despite pending investigations into the IRS targeting scandal, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller. The IRS’ infamous Cincinnati office, which handles applications from groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, badgered pro-life groups for information on their protesting activities as recently as late June 2013, well after IRS investigations began on the floor of the House of Representatives and elsewhere. “We’ve had three more groups come to us that have had problems with the IRS — some very recent, some current or still pending. One...

Last thing I remember hearing on the IRS targeting of conservative groups was that none of them nor their attorney's had been contacted. That aspect has dropped off the face of the earth. Have they been contacted?

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...

Are these agency scandals being deliberately leaked by team Obama to cause Americans to hop on board for a new form of government? Are these scandals all part of Obama's coup d'tat on our government? Why did the IRS plant a question with a reporter that would trigger a scandal implicating itself? Why was a subpoena leaked, implicating the DOJ for spying on Fox News' journalist James Rosen? What better way to get Americans to hate their government than to tell them they're being spied on by the NSA? Gee, thanks Mr. Snowden! In less than 6 months Obama has...

They are only working with democrats and is another organization being converted after the campaign to a standing entity. Listen carefully to what they say they can do... This is pretty scary and does make me wonder if there is some sort of a connection to the NSA here. If not directly perhaps through a handoff of technology?

The Internal Revenue Service has failed to turn over documents requested by the powerful Senate tax-writing panel, which is investigating the tax agency´s practice of targeting conservative organizations. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the panel´s top Republican, gave the IRS a May 31 deadline to answer dozens of questions related to the special scrutiny the agency was giving to right-leaning groups seeking tax-exempt status. But the troubled IRS let the deadline go by.

MSNBC host Krystal Ball excused the actions of IRS agents who targeted conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status on The Last Word Monday night, saying budget cuts left them without the resources to do their jobs and they had to “enforce the law as they understood it.” “The other big story here I think that has been missed in the press is the fact that the IRS budget has been cut to the point that these agents can’t do their jobs,” she said. “They do not have the resources to do their jobs, so they were trying with the limited resources...

The watchdog who exposed the IRS' targeting of conservative groups testified Monday that nobody in the Ohio office being blamed for the scandal would tell his investigators who directed the program, as the new IRS chief vowed to "get to the bottom" of that growing question. Nearly a month after the scandal broke, the issue of who directed agents in Cincinnati to single out Tea Party and other groups is perhaps the most glaring unanswered question. Inspector General J. Russell George, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, revealed Monday that his audit of the agency tried -- unsuccessfully -- to...

As this post from yesterday pointed out, it's hardly news to those who read the IRS IG report that Americans were targeted by the IRS -- not just based on membership in the "Tea Party" or "9/12" -- but based on their political sympathies generally. Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported on another example of this phenomenon.  Apparently, an IRS probe of Freedom Watch began in (surprise!) the unit headed by Lois Lerner (still enjoying a full-pay and full-benefits vacation, courtesy of the taxpayers she harassed).  According to the WSJ: In February 2010, the same month the tea-party targeting...

Yesterday, Stephanie Cutter, Deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, appeared on Jake Tapper’s show The Lead on CNN. During the segment Stephanie Cutter admitted she had attended meetings with then IRS Chief Douglas Shulman at the White House: “A couple of facts here that I think are important for us to stick by, number one, the only reason we know about these visits is because the president makes everything public. Number two, what we’re really looking at some of these visits… What we are looking at the number of times that Mr. Shulman was cleared into...

WASHINGTON A group of anti-abortion activists in Iowa had to promise the Internal Revenue Service it wouldn’t picket in front of Planned Parenthood. Catherine Engelbrecht’s family and business in Texas were audited by the government after her voting-rights group sought tax-exempt status from the IRS. Retired military veteran Mark Drabik of Nebraska became active in and donated to conservative causes, then found the IRS challenging his church donations. While the developing scandal over the targeting of conservatives by the tax agency has largely focused to date on its scrutiny of groups with words such as “tea party” or “patriot” in...

The White House insists President Obama is "outraged" by the "inappropriate" targeting and harassment of conservative groups. If true, it's a remarkable turnaround for a man who helped pioneer those tactics. On Aug. 21, 2008, the conservative American Issues Project ran an ad highlighting ties between candidate Obama and Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground. The Obama campaign and supporters were furious, and they pressured TV stations to pull the ad—a common-enough tactic in such ad spats. What came next was not common. Bob Bauer, general counsel for the campaign (and later general counsel for the White House), on...

A series of letters suggests that senior IRS official Lois Lerner was directly involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups as recently as April 2012, more than nine months after she first learned of the activity. Lerner, the director of the IRS exempt organizations office in Washington, D.C., signed cover letters to 15 conservative organizations currently represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) between in March and April of 2012. The letters, such as this one sent to the Ohio Liberty Council on March 16, 2012, informed the groups applying for tax-exempt status that the IRS...

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.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The man who led the Internal Revenue Service when it was giving extra scrutiny to tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status told Congress on Tuesday that he knew little about what was happening while he was still commissioner. Douglas Shulman, who vacated his position last November when his five-year term expired, told the Senate Finance Committee he didn't learn all the facts until he read last week's report by a Treasury inspector general confirming the targeting strategy. In his first public remarks since the story broke, Shulman said: "I agree this is an issue...