The FBI has still not contacted any conservative group that was harassed by the IRS.
And we still don’t know who the lead investigator of the FBI investigation is.
This “FBI investigation” is a fraud. Obama might have expressed public outrage over the IRS scandal, but in private it appears he instead ordered that nothing be done and that FBI act as a shield for the guilty parties.
The lawyer for IRS official Lois Lerner is pushing to get her full immunity in exchange for her full testimony to Congress.
The article makes two very good points: One, it will be difficult to prosecute anyone at the IRS for its harassment of conservatives, and two, Lerner’s full testimony is likely not going to have any earthshaking bombshells. She will state that the White House had nothing to do with the harassment (whether that is true or not), and that the harassment was merely the result of some bad management decisions.
And thus, the government’s power over us will rise, and freedom will experience another cut in its continuing death of a thousand cuts.
The Obama administration finds out what’s in it: The White House today announced that it is delaying until 2015 the requirement in Obamacare that companies with more than 50 employees offer health insurance.
The law requires companies that employ 50 or more workers to offer coverage or face fines. The Treasury Department and the White House said that, based on complaints by employers that the system for reporting the coverage was too onerous, they would simplify that system and give employers an additional year to comply. “We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively,” Mark J. Mazur, the assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department, said in a statement posted online. “We have listened to your feedback. And we are taking action.”
The mandate was originally set to kick in for 2014, but will now start in 2015. The decision effectively means that penalties that would have been assessed against non-compliant businesses will be delayed until 2015. The administration encouraged employers to provide insurance anyway.
In other words, they are finally discovering what everyone on the right has been saying for three years: Obamacare is an unworkable law that is also killing business and industry. Look for increasing numbers of Democrats willing to join with the Republicans to repeal is incredibly stupid law.
A university supervisor orders a student at Sonoma State University in California to remove her cross necklace because “it might offend others.”
The university has responded properly, apologizing and stating that the supervisor was “completely wrong.” However, it remains horrifying that there are individuals in power in a university that somehow don’t understand the very basics of religious liberty.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has picked names for Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons, rejecting Vulcan, the first choice of the public.
After the discovery [of the moons], the leader of the research team, Mark Showalter (SETI Institute), decided to call for a public vote to suggest names for the two objects. To be consistent with the names of the other Pluto satellites, the names had to be picked from classical mythology, in particular with reference to the underworld — the realm where the souls of the deceased go in the afterlife. The contest concluded with the proposed names Vulcan, Cerberus and Styx ranking first, second and third respectively. Showalter submitted Vulcan and Cerberus to the IAU where the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) and the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN) discussed the names for approval.
However, the name Vulcan had already been used for a hypothetical planet between Mercury and the Sun. Although this planet was found not to exist, the term “vulcanoid” remains attached to any asteroid existing inside the orbit of Mercury, and the name Vulcan could not be accepted for one of Pluto’s satellites (also, Vulcan does not fit into the underworld mythological scheme). Instead the third most popular name was chosen — Styx, the name of the goddess who ruled over the underworld river, also called the Styx.
I just can’t wait until there really is a robust population of space-faring colonists, if only because those colonists will then tell the IAU to go to hell when it tries to tell them what to name things.
The Washington Post admits that most of the Democratic claims that sequestration would cause disaster were either outright lies or a gross exaggeration.
I said it then that they were lying about the consequence of sequestration. I say now that they will be lying again when the the next sequestration cuts arrive in October.
I suspect you could cut the federal budget by at least one third, bringing the numbers back to what they were about ten years ago, and not notice any loss of service.
Better not buy bottled water in Virginia: It will put you in jail.
When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.
That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.
A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot.
Thugs. What a bunch of thugs.
Want some patient privacy? Don’t call the Obamacare healthcare help line.
The uncertainty of science: A science poster released at an American Geophysical Union conference this week finds again that the global warming climate models used by policy makers have all failed to predict what has actually happened.
Some devastating quotes from the poster:
» Read more
The words of a Canadian yesterday: “This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms.”
The reason? The Mounties had been breaking into the homes of a town (evacuated due to flooding) and seizing firearms. When the residents found out about this they were not pleased.
Officers laid down a spike belt to stop anyone from attempting to drive past the blockade. That action sent the crowd of residents into a rage.
“What’s next? Tear gas?” shouted one resident. “It’s just like Nazi Germany, just taking orders,” shouted another. “This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms,” said Charles Timpano, pointing to the group of Mounties.
Officers were ordered to fall back about an hour into the standoff in order to diffuse the situation and listen to residents’ concerns. [emphasis mine]
Obviously, the rage of the citizens had some positive effect, as it forced the police to fall back.
The Obama administration issued finalized rules Friday allowing religious-affiliated organizations opposing the use of contraception to opt out of the Obamacare mandate.
While this might suggest the Obama administration has backed down, the rules appear very complex and will probably not work for many religious organizations. Moreover, what about individuals or private companies (such as Hobby Lobby) that also object for religious reasons?
As always, if you nonchalantly rely on the government to dictate the rules for everyone, you guarantee those rules will oppress someone along the way.
A teenager, in jail since March, faces 8 years in prison for making a sarcastic remark on Facebook.
Read the story and weep.
It is now reported that the charges against the high school who refused to remove his NRA t-shirt have been dismissed.
No details yet, however, so it might be too soon to celebrate the return of sanity to this small spot in West Virginia.
Update: The dismissal of charges is confirmed. I think the prosecutor saw the political winds and decided he’d be a fool to pursue this case.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced that it has filed charges against former Democratic Governor/Senator Jon Corzine for his part in the embezzlement of customer funds at MF Global.
The article says that most of the embezzled funds have been recovered, but that’s not only news to me, I don’t see how it’s possible. We are talking about the misuse and loss of one billion dollars.
Treasury’s inspector general has revealed that while only six progressive groups were targeted for investigation by the IRS, 292 conservative groups, 100% who applied, were investigated.
The new America: The prosecutors trying to put a high school teenager in jail for a year because he refused to take off his NRA t-shirt have tried to put a gag order on the teenager and his parents.
Prosecutors said they wanted to stop White, Marcum, and Marcum’s fathern Allen Lardieri, from sharing their story with the press, claiming the gag order would serve Marcum’s better interest. “These are the same individuals that are trying to prosecute him, so as far as them knowing what is in his better interest, I have a lot of questions about that,” Lardieri said.
A petition to intervene in the gag order hearing on behalf of WOWK-TV and the free press was prepared. Before WOWK reporter Charlo Greene could deliver the petition to the court clerk, she was asked twice to leave the courthouse by a bailiff who told her Judge Eric O’Briant, who presided over Marcum’s case, had requested she be removed from the courthouse. Greene then was told she would be arrested and charged with obstructing an officer if she did not comply with the bailiff’s orders.
One of the lawsuits against the IRS has added 16 more conservative organizations for a total of 41 which claim they were harassed for the political point of view.
Man, those two rogue agents in Cincinnati were damn busy. If only the government workers with real work were as dedicated!
Congress passes a law: The toxic combination of Obamacare and the proposed Senate immigration bill would create a big financial incentive for employers to hire non-citizens.
Under Obamacare, businesses with over 50 workers that employ American citizens without offering them qualifying health insurance could be subject to fines of up to $3,000 per worker. But because newly legalized immigrants wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges until after they become citizens – at least 13 years under the Senate bill – businesses could avoid such fines by hiring the new immigrants instead.
Not surprisingly, the idiots who voted for this immigration bill haven’t read it and have no idea this problem exists.
Despite some recent reports, liberal groups were not targeted by the IRS.
It appears these recent reports, that “progressives” were also targeted, are merely spin, an effort to defuse the scandal. A closer look reveals two facts about this so-called leftwing targeting: One, the liberal organizations were not “targeted,” merely “flagged.” Nothing was done to them at all, which is why none has come forward to complain. Second, the liberal organizations were 501c3 non-profits, not 501c4. The former get a greater tax exemption in exchange for not engaging in any political activity. Thus, such non-profits are normally subjected to greater scrutiny by the IRS.
It didn’t take much research to note these two details. That several major news organizations, including the Chicago Tribuine above and CNN, didn’t bother to check and simply regurgitated the spin, tells us a great deal about them.
Update: in related news, it appears that twelve different units at the IRS were involved in the targeting of conservatives.
That’s a far cry from one or two rogue agents in a single IRS office, as Lois Lerner claimed.
The religion of peace: Islamic gunmen kill ten mountain-climbers in Pakistan.
