Free Republic

Obama administration investigators now have everything they need to provide Congress with Lois Lerner’s emails, The Daily Caller has learned. Treasury Department deputy inspector general Timothy Camus last testified that his office found more than 30,000 of Lerner’s emails, including emails from 2011 that were on a backup tape at a storage facility in West Virginia that the IRS never went to. (RELATED: Search For Lerner Emails On Hold Over Software Problems). But Camus said that the investigation was on hold because his office was haggling over licensing issues with a company that makes special software that Camus said he...

As the current administration piles pounds of regulations on the American public through uncontrolled executive branch agencies, most of us watch this impervious to their actions unless it directly affects our daily lives. This year the IRS changed the rules regarding deduction of repairs, maintenance, and supplies, tormenting the tax-preparation community and eventually saddling owners of businesses and rental properties with extra cost in their tax preparation. If you are not a business owner or a rental owner, you will end up paying as well through increased costs or rents. The IRS decided that the rules regarding deduction of repairs...

The U.S. Commerce Department is relinquishing its hold over the group that manages the Internet’s architecture amid pressure to globalize its functions in the wake of reports about NSA surveillance. The National Telecommunications & Information Administration, a Commerce Department agency, said Friday it is transitioning the function to the “global Internet community.” The decision marks a dramatic change. Since the Internet’s inception, the United States has played a leading role in the management of critical back-end Web work, including management of .com and other domain names. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has performed those functions under...

Opponents of H.R. 3590 (Health Care Reform Bill) have focused primarily on its large tax increases, steep Medicare cuts, and its heavy interference in the doctor-patient relationship. Perhaps, far more attention should be paid to the Democrats’ plans to give massive new powers to that most beloved of American institutions, the Internal Revenue Service. To execute their new mandates the IRS will need to collect an additional10 billion dollars in taxes over the next 10 years. Moreover, upon whom will the taxes needed to pay for all this fall? President Obama promised that he would not sign a Health Care...