Free Republic

Some 25 years ago I changed my life. A visit inside a church opened my eyes to the destructive life I was living, financed by welfare checks generously provided by American taxpayers. I got off welfare, went to work, got politically active and became a Republican. I didn’t become a Republican because of what the party looked like. I became a Republican because of what the party stood for. Individual freedom, traditional values, with a view that government’s role is to protect our freedom at home and abroad. For the next 25 years I had to suffer indignities from liberals...

Sen. Ted Cruz doesn't have as many friends as he says he does. In the latest round of Cruz's simmering debate with Sen. John McCain (who labeled Cruz a "wacko bird"), Cruz spoke of "my friend, the senior senator from Arizona" while painting him as out of touch with his party and country. It usually takes a while for senators to learn how to weaponize compliments and imprecations of friendship, but Cruz is a quick study. After a patient attack on McCain's understanding of history, Cruz said: "I know my friend from Arizona is well aware of that because he...

<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>

The Ted Cruz vs. John McCain feud is on, so proclaimed the Washington Post on May 24, 2013. The two senators have already clashed on raising the debt ceiling, with Cruz proclaiming that he does not trust Republicans like McCain and then betting the older senator that he could not get a majority of the GOP senate caucus to sign on to a debt ceiling increase. McCain has more than once expressed irritation at Cruz and his uncompromising version of conservatism. But it an ironic way, the former maverick from Arizona has only himself to blame. In a fit of...

For the far right, dreams die hard and delusions never end. As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who represents a congressional GOP with unpopularity of 75 percent, prepares to summon former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with popularity above 60 percent, to testify, the overreach of House Republicans now threatens Republican control of the House. The triumph of the Tea Party within Republican politics is a gift to Democrats in 2014, as the disastrous vice presidential nomination of Sarah Palin in 2008 helped propelled Barack Obama to a two-term presidency. In the latest poll I've seen about 2014, a generic poll...

My fellow Americans, I wish to speak to you not as a political activist, but as a Christian. In all candor, my heart is heavy. Numerous headlines suggest that we are losing the culture war. As of January first, The Boy Scouts of America will accept gay scouts, but not gay scout masters. As expected, a move is already underway to force the Boy Scouts to accept gay scout masters as well. Let me be clear, there has always been gay boy scouts. But when you officially accept openly gay scouts, you are in essence approving the activity. Conservative Virginia...

A long-simmering feud between establishment Republicans and Tea Partyers broke into full view Thursday, with Sen. John McCain accusing younger colleagues of overplaying their hands and tempting Democrats to change Senate rules that protect the minority party. Tactics for dealing with the government’s budget and debt became the latest quarrel In a string of them between McCain —sometimes joined by....

Lerner signed IRS cover letters to conservative groups demanding intrusive tax-exemption info — after she learned what was going on posted at 11:21 am on May 24, 2013 by Allahpundit Via Andrew Stiles, no wonder the IRS wants her out.Now that she’s gone quiet, we can’t know what her defense would be to the ACLJ’s charges. But I can guess. We now know through her own testimony and from the Inspector General’s report that Lerner was briefed about this unlawful targeting scheme in June 2011. But nine months later, beginning in March 2012, she sent cover letters to many...

It seems like only yesterday that IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner was claiming she knew nothing about the dastardly work of those shadowy "low-level employees in the Cincinnati office" - who somehow remain shadowy to this day, despite having been blamed for the worst abuse-of-power scandal in living memory. The Incompetence Defense beloved of this administration, and so effective with a media that would never accept it from a Republican official, was deployed with gusto. Lerner was shocked, shocked, to discover gambling against Tea Party groups going on at Rick's Tax Exempt Organizations Cafe American. But now National...

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...

Despite failing in courts across the country, Plaintiffs have continued to file lawsuits alleging that President Obama is ineligible to serve as the American President because he is not a natural born U.S. citizen. However, as set forth above, federal courts cannot grant Plaintiffs the relief sought because the issues which Plaintiffs raise in their pleadings are constitutionally committed to the jurisdiction of another branch of the federal government. If Plaintiffs believe that President Obama has violated the law, their remedy is to alert Congress to the alleged wrongdoing. Congress could then initiate impeachment proceedings with the aid of an...

The IRS's leaders refuse to account for the agency's corruption and abuse. "I don't know." "I don't remember." "I'm not familiar with that detail." "It's not my precise area." "I'm not familiar with that letter." These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service officials who testified this week before the House and Senate. That is the authentic sound of stonewalling, and from the kind of people who run Washington in the modern age—smooth, highly credentialed and unaccountable. They're surrounded by legal and employment protections, they know how to parse a careful response, they know how to blur the essential point...

See for yourself. Issa’s committee was told last year that the report would be ready in September, two months before the election. Eight months later, the bomb finally dropped. Why? Did the IG initially underestimate the volume of malfeasance and how long it would take to dig it up? Or are there other, more cynical reasons?Even if the report wasn’t ready, Issa claims the IG had a statutory obligation to keep Congress updated on its findings as they were made. He didn’t. Why not? Issa is referring to part of the Inspector General Act that requires watchdogs to report serious...

IRS Scandal: The inexplicable raid nearly two years ago on a guitar maker for using allegedly illegal wood that its competitors also used was another targeting by this administration of its political enemies. On Aug. 24, 2011, federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. One of the top makers of acoustic and electric guitars, including the iconic Les Paul introduced in 1952, Gibson was accused of using wood illegally obtained in violation of the century-old Lacey Act, which outlaws trafficking in...

A long-simmering feud between establishment Republicans and tea partyers is in full view again with Sen. John McCain accusing younger colleagues of using tactics that might tempt Democrats to change Senate rules that now protect the minority party. How to deal with the government’s debt and spending became the latest quarrel between the GOP’s 2008 presidential candidate and tea party champions such as Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. …

Lois Lerner didn’t just take the Fifth. She gave a little speech first saying she had done nothing wrong. That certainly opens her up to some questions, although the extent to which it does is debatable. Imagine the following sequence of questions: 1) Did you do anything wrong? 2) Do you think that it would be wrong to target conservative groups because of their ideology? 3) Did you target conservative groups because of their ideology? Given that Lois Lerner gave an opening statement in which she said that she had not done anything wrong, it would be interesting to see...

RBPundit pointed out this press release earlier today on Twitter. It’s a March 2011 missive from the president of the National Treasury Employees’ Union, which represents, among others, IRS employees:

Starting in the fall of 2010, ten leading Democrats - including Max Baucus, Chuck Schumer, and Al Franken - wrote the IRS demanding that the agency crack down on conservative groups. 500 conservative and Christian groups were illegally targeted by the Obama IRS starting in 2010. For twenty-seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status while at the same time the Obama IRS approved dozens of progressive applications. Now these same top Democrats are feigning outrage.

Voter ID didn’t reduce turnout, but the IRS may have. By John Fund The 2012 election season was filled with angry cries of “voter suppression,” almost all of them regarding attempts by states to require voter ID and otherwise improve ballot integrity. Bill Clinton warned that “there has never been — in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting — the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.” Democratic-party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said “photo-ID laws, we think, are very similar to a poll tax.”

I wanted to give you a quick summary on the 3 urgent bills that need attention IMMEDIATELY. They are: Senate Bill 346 (SB 346) is designed to discourage people from giving to Tea Party groups who wish to replace RINO's with conservatives. It is a Saul Alinsky device to identify donors so they can be targeted and then discouraged from giving to conservatives. It is incredible, as the WSJ points out in an editorial in today's paper, that a Governor in Texas would even contemplate such a thing. But such is the fear in the RINO Establishment's nostrils. It not...

".......Since 2006, with the beginnings of the breakaway of populist conservatives from the national Republican Party via the Tea Party movement, the GOP has been trying to figure out how to co-opt and capture it once again, just as George W. Bush did with many elements of the conservative movement in the early years of the 21st century." ".......Men and women of the Establishment Republican Party like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who previously regarded the Tea Party Movement as something unpleasant and unsophisticated, are now trying to be their friends."

Tempers flared in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday, with members on both sides of the aisle castigating the Internal Revenue Service for targeting conservative groups with special scrutiny, and then hiding the practice from Congress.Rep. Darrel Issa, the committee's chairman, said that the committee learned just yesterday that the IRS completed its own investigation a year before a Treasury Department Inspector General report was completed.But despite the IRS recognizing in May 2012 that its employees were treating right-wing groups differently from other organizations, Issa said, IRS personnel withheld those conclusions from legislators.'Just yesterday the committee interviewed...

WASHINGTON — Internal Revenue Service officials are not fully cooperating with efforts to learn who is responsible for targeting conservative groups, lawmakers learned Wednesday during the third and most tense, dramatic hearing on the scandal. First, the director of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations at the heart of the scandal invoked her constitutional Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions during an appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.Then, a Treasury Department inspector general told the committee that IRS employees in the Cincinnati office that handled applications for tax-exempt designations were not being fully...

On the surface, conservatives and progressives seem to be in agreement about what should be done about the IRS scandal: Larry Kudlow: “…must find out exactly what happened and who was involved, and then come up with a fix so it never happens again.” Steven Rattner: “…the matter needs to be fully investigated, those responsible need to be held accountable and procedures need to be put in place to ensure that nothing like this can happen again.” However, abuse of IRS power has been going on for almost 80 years. It began under FDR, not long after the IRS was...

Carol Platt Liebau and Eliana Johnson aren't exactly Woodward and Bernstein --yet. But if both reporters keep up their relentless focus on the details of the IRS scandal --"Targetcon," "Targetgate," "Senseless in Cincinnati" --their names will be far and widely known as the first two serious reporters to take the burgeoning scandal seriously. Liebau labors at Townhall.com, and most her work appears first there in its "Tipsheet" column and eventually ends up easy to find and comprehensively categorized at CarolLiebau.com. Johnson's work appears most frequently in "The Corner" at National Review Online, though her work on the IRS is getting...

Two dozen Connecticut Tea Party Patriots assembled at the Robert N. Giaimo Federal Building in downtown New Haven at noon on Tuesday, May 21, to protest the perceived criminal activities attributed to the Internal Revenue Service. Recent revelations about IRS targeting conservative and patriot groups validated years of concerns that the Obama Administration was making war against its political opponents. Many of the Tea Party folk were attending their first rally. At the same time an equal number of protesters were rallying at the Federal Building in Hartford. Connecticut is on the front lines in the battle to preserve the...

About two dozen members of the Dalton Tea Party gathered outside the Internal Revenue Service office on Professional Boulevard in Dalton on Tuesday during the lunch hour protesting the agency on the national level for singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny. “They went way overboard in demanding information and throwing up obstacles to some groups and allowed groups that weren’t conservative to sail through. That isn’t fair,” said Warren Tatum.

When you get right down to it,the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the Tea Party. Rick Santelli,one of the Tea Party founders and my CNBC colleague,was the first to make this point. I’ve taken it a step further: The IRS was taking the Tea Party out of play for the 2012 election,as it looked to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another Tea Party landslide.… But there can be only one reason for the stalled-out approval process for conservative groups. The IRS was trying to put them out of business....

The short answer? The highest-ranking official in the Cincinnati office where, the IRS would have us believe, a few rogue employees initiated a scheme to target conservatives. SNIP When an application for tax exempt status comes into the IRS, agents have 270 days to work through that application. If the application is not processed within those 270 days it automatically triggers flags in the system. When that happens, individual agents are required to input a status update on that individual case once a month, every month until the case is resolved. Keep in mind, at least 300 groups were targeted...

I’m a fan and regular reader. Thanks for your yeoman’s work on the IRS scandal. I’m also retired from a 35-year law enforcement career, 22 of which were at the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, so I have some insight into the Service and its workings (although I spent all but one year doing money laundering – narcotics, and organized crime cases – rather than tax.) I’m quite surprised that no one has mentioned Section 1203 of the Internal Revenue Code, which mandates terminations of IRS employees who commit any of what are known in the Service as the “10 Deadly...

As the old saying goes, beware of Greeks bearing gifts; but as the new saying goes, beware even more of Republicans bearing bribes. In either case, one could get destroyed (or at least corrupted) from the inside by trusting the wrong people. Since 2006, with the beginnings of the breakaway of populist conservatives from the national Republican Party via the Tea Party movement, the GOP has been trying to figure out how to co-opt and capture it once again, just as George W. Bush did with many elements of the conservative movement in the early years of the 21st century....

teaPatriots, I got this horrible feeling watching the MSM on the cable news TV shows playing down the Obama scandals. I thought, does Obama being liberal and “black” trump any and everything? Will the MSM continue to side with him no matter what? Will all of the lies, corruption, betrayals and probable criminal activity simply roll off the Obama Administration's back like water off a duck? Will Obama and company get away with it all? Heaven forbid! Heck no! Not on our watch! On the Fox News show, The Five, it was reported that some are calling the current Administration...

From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, according to both IRS sources and the inspector general’s report released in mid May. Officials in the Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office played an integral role in determining how the targeted applications were treated, provided general guidelines to Cincinnati case workers, briefed other agency employees on the status of the special cases, and reviewed all those intrusive requests demanding “more information” from tea-party groups. At times, the Technical Unit lawyers seemed to...

Cold Case Posse Commander Mike Zullo of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on submitted a devastating 57 page 207 paragraph affidavit to the Alabama Obama ballot challenge appeal case that is before the Alabama Supreme Court. He did this at the request of Attorney Larry Klayman representing the appellants. Now Alabama Democratic Party attorney's Barry Ragsdale and Thomas Woodall have fired back with a 'Opposition To Motion To Strike'. They slam Zullo and the Cold Case Posse's evidence confirming Obama's birth certificate and selective service registration card are forgeries. They state in their motion to strike that Mike Zullo's affidavit...

You know you are a serious societal pestilence when even politicians can kick you around. Which is why the Senate Finance Committee called Steven Miller, former acting IRS commissioner, to testify about the agency’s scheme targeting conservatives for tax punishment. Right away, Mr. Miller got down to the business of reminding everyone why we all hate the IRS so much. “Unfortunately, given time considerations,” he began, “the IRS was unable to prepare written testimony.” Given time considerations? Unable to prepare? Are you kidding us? Have you ever heard of April 15? Can you imagine if we called up the IRS...

As the old saying goes, beware of Greeks bearing gifts; but as the new saying goes, beware even more of Republicans bearing bribes. In either case, one could get destroyed (or at least corrupted) from the inside by trusting the wrong people.

The signs keep accumulating that the IRS scandal is worse than liberals are willing to concede. On Bill Press's radio show yesterday, a reporter with left-leaning Politico told Press that the Internal Revenue Service dragging its feet on applications for tax-exempt status from tea party groups probably affected the outcome of last year's election. (Video after the jump) Here's what Politico's Lauren French told Press (audio) -- PRESS: So, Lauren, you've been covering this IRS scandal. How big is it really? How serious is it really, do you think? FRENCH: I think it's really serious, depending on the groups that...

Scandal: The rest of us must answer IRS questions under threat of perjury, but the agency's execs can take the Fifth. A Tea Party targeted by the IRS — and the FBI and OSHA and the ATF — thinks that's unfair. We do too. Lois Lerner, chief of the IRS' exempt organizations division when the Tea Party and other conservative groups were targeted for their opposition to President Obama, has invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to be questioned on her earlier testimony, her opening statement or any knowledge she may have of who ordered the targeting, who created the...

Highlights of Tea Party Patriot Protest at Denver IRS Headquarters. IRS Denver Tea Party Protest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YixFDFibPDY

In this riveting interview Mike answers 9+ questions from listeners, viewers, and bloggers who desire more detail in this case.

Annals of the Security State: More Airplane Stories James Fallows May 21 2013 "My dad fought a war so this can never happen in America. I will not dishonor my father's memory by giving up what he fought for. No, sir. With all due respect, I will not consent to a search without a proper warrant." Over the weekend I related the story of Gabriel Silverstein, a businessman and pilot who for no apparent reason was subjected to a two-hour detention and invasive search by Homeland Security officials as he traveled across the country in his small plane. The picture...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The IRS hearings today, the Issa committee. Folks, yesterday, after the Apple tax hearings at the Senate, I said, "This is all just a game," and I think this thing that happened this morning with Lois Lerner showing up... Issa basically let her get away with it. She's gone. He looked clueless, like didn't know what was going on, didn't know how to deal with this. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, let me tell you what happened today at the IRS hearings. Lois Lerner, who ran the whole kit and caboodle and was... By the way, this was...

The full face of political evil and arrogance showed its ugly features when progressives went up against the folks. And what we saw were the cruel, prideful, insensitive machinations of an Obama administration whose mantra involves the ends justifying any of their means. Showing no interest in their oath to maintain the public trust, these progressives revealed in real time television their demonic minds at work. When the outgoing IRS chief smirked at one Congressman’s question, hid behind the bureaucrat’s trompe l’oeil of “I don’t know,” and then used the intellectual’s latest, snarky transitional word “So,” we saw how he...

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was applauded at a congressional hearing Wednesday, after he objected to Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner pleading the Fifth Amendment and refusing to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. After invoking her right to avoid self-incrimination, Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt division of the IRS, was dismissed from the hearing, which is examining the agency’s inappropriate targeting of conservative groups. After giving a brief opening statement -- in which she said she did nothing wrong -- then refusing to answer any questions, Lerner was dismissed by Committee Chairman...

Farhad Manjoo thinks the IRS scandal should teach the right something Imagine you're an overworked IRS employee, charged with finding, in your massive stack of 501(c)(4) applications, the groups most likely to make electioneering their main focus. Wouldn't it make a little sense to focus on self-proclaimed Tea Party groups? Sure it would. And there's a word for that shortcut, Farhad Manjoo at Slate observes: profiling. By making decisions based on surface details like a group's name, "the IRS was acting like the TSA agent who pulls aside the guy in the turban." Which is ironic, because the right...

It is the Washington way. Egregious misconduct surfaces, showcasing the militantly officious nature of bloated big-government bureaucracy. But the Beltway and the commentariat cry in unison for a special counsel, ensuring that the symptoms — a few corrupt bureaucrats — will get all the attention while the underlying cancer metastasizes. In the unfolding IRS scandal, we already know President Obama’s conservative political opponents were targeted for the revenue agency’s version of waterboarding. On cue, prominent Republicans and conservatives are starting to call for a special counsel — clearly under the misimpression that a “special counsel” would mean a prosecutor “independent”...

Although there’s still a great deal to be learned about the scandals and controversies swirling around the White House like so many ominous dorsal fins in the surf, the nature of President Obama’s bind is becoming clear. The best defenses of his administration require undermining the rationale for his presidency. “We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It’s actually closer to us being idiots.” So far, this is the administration’s best defense. It was offered to CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson by an anonymous aide involved in the White House’s disastrous response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya....

As Tea Party groups stage successful rallies at Internal Revenue Service offices nationwide, one California organization is staging a frontal assault on this government behemoth. One of the largest and most active Tea Party groups in the nation is filing the first of what is expected to be many lawsuits against the government for allegedly singling out conservative organizations. The NorCal Tea Party Patriots, based in northern California, claim the IRS violated its rights when it either held up or rejected its applications for tax-exempt status…. The NorCal lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Cincinnati. The...

MADISON – Call it a quiet controversy. But there are a lot of people who don’t much care for Common Core State Standards. Opposition to the K-12 academic benchmarks that some conservatives have described as Big Brother education has swept the nation, and there is a growing core of Common Core combatants in the Badger State. They just don’t seem to get a lot of attention. Several tea party groups, however, plan to be front and center at 10 a.m. Wednesday in room 411 of the Capitol for an informational hearing on Wisconsin’s implementation of the Common Core. The joint...

ARMED DHS GUARDS greeted St. Louis Tea Party protesters at the Town and Country IRS office on Tuesday. Around 300 protesters turned out anyway. DHS parked their vehicles right outside the IRS office just in case the Tea Party protesters got crazy and violent. But the DHS intimidation was not isolated to St. Louis. In Los Angeles DHS put a chopper in the air and told Tea Party protesters they could not be on federal property. They had to move away from the building. This report came from a Tea Party protester in California. Many of our 300 tea party...