Free Republic

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.

<p>Shulman rallied for Rangel: Jason Furman, Media Matters, Fox News, Jarrett and a job.</p> <p>And the Liberal Dog Whistle Blows.</p> <p>Congressman Charles Rangel of New York.</p> <p>Ex-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.</p> <p>The new chairman of the president’s Council on Economic Advisors, Jason Furman.</p>

[VIDEO at LINK] IRS Scandal Live testimony... Dr. Karen Kenney, blasts congress in a very interesting speech. She and her group were targeted by the IRS.. she also takes down Occupy Oakland. She is a psychotherapist that helps soldiers coming back from war and started the San Fernando Vally Patriots a Tea Party Group in California.

The chairman of an anti-gay marriage group testified Tuesday that his organization has proof that the IRS leaked confidential donor details last year, calling for prosecution into what he described as a "felony." "This just smells and I hope this committee gets to the bottom of it," John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, said at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee. Eastman testified Tuesday alongside several Tea Party activists who all claim they were targeted by the IRS. The Tea Party groups offered a first-hand account of how the IRS singled them out when...

Testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday, witnesses from Tea Party, pro-life and patriotic educational groups from around the country testified about their experience of intimidation and targeting from the Internal Revenue Service. Witnesses described being sent hundreds of pages from the IRS asking invasive questions about members, books, contents of prayers and the names of anyone attending meetings, including children. "The IRS sought documentation of our meetings, rallies, events, or candidate forums. That included video and audio transcriptions, notes, copies of all handouts; the political party of speakers, and an “issues” list. The IRS sought identifying information on employees; data on...

Last week, I argued that the political corruption at the IRS revealed last month should give momentum to throwing out campaign-finance “reform” regulation, and produce massive simplification through the end of direct donations and the imposition of immediate transparency. That would effectively strip the IRS of any role in policing political activities, a role which it should never have had in the first place. To reduce the ability of the IRS to conduct mischief through other means, Congress needs to simplify the tax code as well, Rep. Peter Roskam argues in Roll Call, and the scandal may have finally provided...

Uh Oh….. The IRS scandal is “about to explode.” There’s a paper trail that leads “all the way to top levels” in D.C. Hat Tip Joseph Curl

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa appeared to be getting under the skin of Democrats as they hit back hard — bringing up the congressman's past from more than four decades ago. Issa's allegations about what the White House knew about the IRS targeting conservatives rattled Democrats into sending out a barrage of counter claims. Former senior Obama aide David Plouffe ripped Issa in a Twitter message, referring to allegations from as far back as 1972 when Issa was still a teenager. "Strong words from Mr Grand Theft Auto and suspected arsonist/insurance swindler. And loose ethically today," Plouffe tweeted. Plouffe's...

Simple logic via the Weekly Standard: If the IRS is already this corrupt at its current funding level, imagine how much more corrupt it’ll be once there’s less money to pay for oversight and ethical training of IRS employees. By the same token, presumably if we increased the agency’s budget tenfold, we’d see a sharp decline in corruption thanks to all the extra oversight and training IRS workers would be getting. I wonder if Serrano has a ballpark figure on how much extra we’d need to pay the agency to get them to not harass conservatives in the future. If...

Former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, a frequent White House guest during the period when the IRS was targeting conservative nonprofits, is married to the senior program advisor for Public Campaign, an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.”

Could the situation at the IRS get any worse? McClatchy joins CBS News in postulating that the scandal may well expand to more than just applications for tax-exempt status. Both news agencies are starting to take complaints about predatory and punitive audits and other actions and put them into a very ugly pattern — and ask some very difficult questions of the Obama administration: 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 their names, these examples...

President Obama may have promised “to hold the responsible parties accountable” for the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative non-profit groups, but one of the agents at the center of the scandal was recently promoted, an IRS source tells The Washington Examiner. Through 2012, then-Exempt Organization Specialist Stephen Seok signed many of the intimidating letters sent to conservative nonprofits. For example, this January 2012 letter sent to the Richmond Tea Party demanded the date, time and location of all group events, as well as copies of all handouts provided at the events, and the names and credentials of all organizers....

If you put together all of the White House visits by Cabinet members Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius, and Hillary Clinton, you might approach the number accumulated by a non-Cabinet official from an agency in the news lately. Douglas Shulman visited the White House far more often during the Obama administration than the closest members of Barack Obama’s own team, with perhaps six times as many visits as Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood: Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more...

Scandal: One IRS commissioner visited Obama's White House 118 times in 2010 and 2011. His successor also dropped in often. But under George W. Bush, the tax chief visited once in four years. Time for an audit. IRS Schedule O As the Washington Examiner noted last weekend, ex-commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Douglas Shulman went to the White House some 118 times in 2010 and 2011, while Steven Miller, the acting director who took over from Shulman last November, himself made numerous trips there, White House visitor logs show. Business as usual for one of the most powerful arms...

The IRS scandal that revealed targeting of conservative groups by the Treasury Department has reopened speculation that the Obama-orchestrated auto bailouts unfairly targeted Republican-leaning dealerships for closure. Republican Congressmen Mike Kelly (PA) and Jim Renacci (OH) have penned a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew requesting documentation so that an investigation can determine what criteria was used to shutter dealers that appear to have had one thing in common: their political affiliations. The outrageous behavior of the IRS in targeting non-profit organizations with conservative roots, like the Tea Party, for extra scrutiny came at around the same time that General...

One of the beauties of a free society, particularly one built on the rule of law, free markets and individual liberty is that people are often free to pursue things that are simply not possible elsewhere. Entrepreneurship in the United States thrives like it does in no other place. From restaurants that let you choose how you want your food cooked to more cable channels than your cable box can handle to the frivolity of branded apparel and Christmas antlers, the United States is a study in the science of the division of labor. Over the course of our American...

IRS Directed to Lock Down All Agency Data By Eliana Johnson May 28, 2013 12:50 PM The Internal Revenue Service is in the process of locking down all computer data across the agency, a sign that investigations into the scandal-plagued agency may be taking a broader sweep than initially anticipated. Agency employees last Thursday received an e-mail alerting them, ”This is a late breaking top priority and things could change in the future,” according to an IRS employee who asked not to be named. Employees were directed not to “wipe, re-image or otherwise destroy any hard drives” on any machine...

Welcome back to work. With a rare three-day weekend behind you, you may be reading these words on your office computer or perhaps on a mobile device en route to your workplace. After barbecuing, relaxing with loved ones, and remembering America’s fallen GIs, it may be tough to focus today on meetings, deadlines, and distracting colleagues who drop by to chat. Too bad you are not Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS’s exempt-organizations office in Washington, D.C. She now has America’s easiest job. Having pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee last Wednesday, Lerner...

We have put together what might be called a basic “timeline of tyranny.” A timeline that connects the dots of IRS behavior in the Obama administration not just to the specifics of the IG’s timeline, but to other events of a similar nature. Events that set the stage for what was to come, and most importantly events that illustrate the mindset of the American Left when it comes to free speech, to dissent — and how that mindset plays out when married not just to money but to a perceived or very real access to serious government power. Drawing on...

Did President Obama and his team of Chicago cronies deliberately target the Tea Party in hopes of thwarting free speech and political participation? Was this part of a campaign to win the 2012 election by suppressing Republican votes? Perhaps, but I’ve warned that it’s never a good idea to assume top-down conspiracies when corruption, incompetence, politics, ideology, greed, and self-interest are better explanations for what happens in Washington.Writing for the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney has a much more sober and realistic explanation of what happened at the IRS.If you take a group of Democrats who are also unionized government employees,...