Free Republic

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was openly irritated both with Attorney General Eric Holder and with the U.S. House of Representatives over whether executive privilege allows Holder to withhold documents on Operation Fast and Furious. But she also signaled she would rule against Holder in part, making it likely that Congress—and the public—could learn the truth about a gun-running scandal that ended with a murdered federal agent. Berman began today’s hearing in Washington, D.C.’s federal district court with an opening statement about this case “concerning the suspected illegal flow of firearms from the United States to Mexican drug cartels.”...

Less than a day after former IRS official Lois Lerner was found in criminal contempt of Congress, her old agency has agreed to turn over copies of all her emails and other correspondence to one of the Republican-led House committees investigating the scandal that led to her retirement. The agency´s quick concession came after Wednesday night´s 231-178 contempt vote, which closely followed the passage of a second resolution demanding the appointment of a nonpartisan ´special counsel´ at the Department of Justice. Lerner has twice refused to answer questions in congressional hearings after lawmakers issued a subpoena for her appearance. ´This

Catherine Herridge on FOX News broke this story Monday morning… New Benghazi Documents Reveal Obama White House Hid Truth From Congress The materials provided to Congress were more heavily blocked out than the documents provided to Judicial Watch by a federal court

South Carolina Republican congressman Trey Gowdy claimed he has evidence of “a systematic, intentional decision to withhold certain documents from Congress” about the Benghazi attacks and alleged White House cover-up. Gowdy spoke with Fox News’ Greta van Susteren about Speaker of the House John Boehner’s Friday decision to form a select committee on Benghazi. The congressman explained that the committee will allow a more complete investigation into the issue, unburdened by the jurisdictional restraints that often plague other committees. “If you want to have Greg Hicks and the station chief from Tripoli and Hillary Clinton all sitting at the same...

Speaker of the House John Boehner on Wednesday night condemned the Obama administration for going to “extraordinary lengths to mislead, obstruct, and obscure what actually took place” during the Benghazi terrorist attack of 2012 now that it is clear the White House has not turned over all pertinent documents. The Ohio Republican made the comments after the release of new emails this week by a conservative group, which obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act request. The emails indicate that the White House played a bigger role than previously admitted in crafting the now-debunked initial talking points on the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Internal Revenue Service told House Republicans on Wednesday that it would take years to provide all the documents they have subpoenaed in their probe of how the agency handled tea party groups' applications for tax-exempt status. The comments by IRS chief John Koskinen drew a frosty response from Republicans who run the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, one of several congressional panels investigating the controversy. The panel's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., warned him he should comply with the request "or potentially be held in contempt" of Congress, a sometimes threatened but...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is pressing the White House to provide documents for his probe into potential Hatch Act violations. In a letter Tuesday to White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Issa raised questions about whether the White House political office is improperly using taxpayer money to promote Democratic party and its candidates. Issa asked McDonough to "produce all documents and communications, including e-mails, related or referring to the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach or the reopening of the Office of Political Affairs, as soon as possible, but by no later than noon on April...

It's Sunshine Week, so perhaps some enterprising White House reporter will ask press secretary Jay Carney why President Obama rewrote the Freedom of Information Act without telling the rest of America. The rewrite came in an April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved "White House equities." That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the...

Government, Obama, FBI, CIA are insisting that NSA was and is collecting only information on foreigners, terrorist, to protect us. With all the stuff they record and archive, the NSA should be perfect source of evidence what happened before, during and after Benghazi attack. Our elected representatives should look into this with at least such veracity as the liberals do chasing innocent citizens. Lives and country's future are at stake. Please pass this to your reps, lets have those responsible accountable and lets not the lies and treasonous actions flourish.

Everyone who carries a cellphone generates a trail of electronic breadcrumbs that records everywhere they go. Those breadcrumbs reveal a wealth of information about who we are, where we live, who our friends are and much more. And as we reported last week, the National Security Agency is collecting location information in bulk — 5 billion records per day worldwide — and using sophisticated algorithms to assist with U.S. intelligence-gathering operations. How do they do it? And what can they learn from location data? The latest documents show the extent of the location-tracking program we first reported last week. Read...

The British government tried to cover its tracks. But a new cache of documents Robert Spencer and I have received in our battle to overturn our being banned from Britain reveal that a chief reason why we were banned from the country was because we strongly support Israel. As part of our lawsuit against the Queen of England and the Home Secretary et al, we have received numerous documents between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Office of Security and Counterterrorism, and the Home Secretary. In one of them, an official in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office whose name was...

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The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee—which is probing the Internal Revenue Service’s discriminatory treatment of Tea Party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status—says the IRS has thus far handed over to the committee only about 10 percent of the documents the IRS itself has said are responsive to the committee’s demands for documents. The committee subpoenaed the Treasury Department for relevant documents from the department and the IRS more than seven weeks ago at the beginning of August. “To date, the IRS has produced to the committee only about 10 percent of all responsive materials that it has...

The House Oversight Committee slammed the Treasury Department on Thursday for withholding documents related to the committee’s investigation of the administration’s expansion of subsidies in the Obamacare exchanges. Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Health Care Subcommittee chairman James Lankford (R., Penn.) threatened in their letter to use legal force against the department if it does not turn over the documents by Aug. 29. The committee has been investigating for over a year the administration’s decision to expand subsidies to the federally run health insurance exchanges mandated by Obamacare. The 2010 law creates subsidies for insurance purchased on...

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...

The UK Guardian is making good on its promise to release more information provided by Edward Snowden, revealing a Powerpoint presentation marked top secret, used to train NSA analysts in using the vast data gathering resources the agency provides. Glenn Greenwald writes: The files shed light on one of Snowden´s most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".

(CNSNews.com) - In a belated and incomplete response to the House Ways and Means Committee’s request for Internal Revenue Service documents relating to the agency’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups for heightened scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has informed the committee that the agency is in the process of reviewing approximately 64,600,000 pages of documents from IRS officials “who may have potentially relevant information” about the targeting. Werfel also suggested to the committee that he believes the ultimate answers to who knew what and when in the White House and the...

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.

Signaling that it intends to conduct an aggressive investigation into how the Internal Revenue Service targeted certain conservative-leaning groups, the Senate Finance Committee has asked the agency’s outgoing acting commissioner to document any communications with top Obama administration officials about the unfolding scandal. Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who lead the Finance Committee, wrote to Steven T. Miller on Monday making 41 specific requests for information. They include documentation of all attempts to elicit information from groups seeking tax-exempt status; a list of all the words and phrases used to target applicants for additional scrutiny; how...

JEFFERSON CITY — Less than six months after the state Revenue Department began scanning driving applicants’ personal documents into a state computer system, Missouri lawmakers sent the governor legislation Wednesday that would force the department to stop.