Two attorneys representing eleven organizations claim that the IRS’s targeting of conservatives is still ongoing and plan to file suit.
A Democratic Senator analyzes the First Amendment: “Are these people [bloggers and tweeters] journalists and entitled to constitutional protection?”
Yeah, makes sense. Protect some people, but really, no one ever thought the first amendment applied to those people.
The stupidity of gun free zones.
On Monday, May 20, Dan was teaching gym and carrying his handgun in an inside-the-waistband hip holster. So, there was zero chance that his gun would fall out of his holster or hurt his students and a 100 percent chance that Daniel could defend his students if a gunman breached the school. Daniel is highly competent with firearms; he practices at the range monthly and also takes yearly classes to advance his firearm skills.
Another teacher observed what must have been the silhouette of Daniel’s handgun beneath his clothes while he was actively teaching his students. This teacher-observer panicked and told the principal that Daniel had a gun. Without investigating, the principal immediately called the police. Despite the fact that Daniel is a concealed-carry permit holder with a spotless record, the police arrested him for carrying in a “gun free zone.”
A few police officers tried to remove Daniel’s gun from his holster and were unable so Daniel had to tell them how. Which, again, speaks to how secure Daniel’s gun was at his side. To reiterate, there was no chance that his gun would endanger children; there was a very large chance that Daniel could use his gun to save their lives. The Wichita Police Department is a 12-minute drive and seven miles away from White Elementary. In the event of a mass attack, hundreds of defenseless children and teachers could be killed before the cops would arrive.
The man stands to go to jail, for doing nothing more than being prepared to defend the lives of the children he teaches.
Pushback: The Virginia veteran who was arrested simply because of his political posts on Facebook has sued the police and other government workers over his arrest.
How a high school band triumphed over a bureaucracy and union that tried to kill it.
The kids took to their social media of choice, Facebook, condemning the teacher’s union with harsh, sometimes obscene, language. On the afternoon they were supposed to report to the school library instead of the band room, they staged a mass sit-in on the concrete steps that led to the band room. The local newspaper went wild with letters of complaint from parents and community members.
The union reps went on damage control. Their goal, they insisted, was not to hurt the kids. They told the local volunteer choir director, whose class they had also forced into cancellation, that they did it “for the good of the kids,” arguing that only credentialed teachers should be allowed to teach children.
But here’s where this sad saga turns more sensible. [emphasis mine]
I want to note the anger the teenagers felt toward the union. Seems the union kinda shot itself in the foot. These kids will think badly of unions for the rest of their lives.
Coming: A two-tiered health care system.
As the article notes, this process is only being accelerated by the implementation of Obamacare, and is the result of third-parties interfering in the relationship of doctors and patients. Obamacare, however, will finish the process, condemning most Americans to bureaucratic medicine. slow, inefficient, and badly done.
The House Ways and Means committee request for information from anyone targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs is apparently bearing fruit.
Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, a member of Ways and Means, confirmed to The Washington Examiner on Thursday that the evidence being sent to the committee includes secret recordings with IRS officials. This information comports with legal sources who have clients who believe they were targeted by the IRS because they are politically active conservatives who opposed President Obama’s re-election.
O goody: The IRS has created eight different offices, as well as an undetermined number of enforcement teams, to enforce the Obamacare regulations.
Pushback: Despite a demand by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to shut up, the sheriffs of New York have joined a lawsuit against the state’s new gun control law.
Want a clear idea of the chain of command for the IRS scandal? Check out this official IRS organizational chart of the Tax Exempt Government Entities division.
A series of letters signed by IRS official Lois Lerner show that she was directly involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.
I want to make one point that I haven’t read anywhere about this scandal. The problem here really isn’t that the IRS was investigating the legitimacy of giving these conservative organizations tax exempt status. The problem is that they specifically chose to only investigate conservative organizations. Leftwing organizations got a pass.
Either investigate all, or none. I prefer none. But either way, playing favorites for the sake of politics is a partisan corruption of the tax code, and a misuse of the power of government.
Lois Lerner has been put on administrative leave by the IRS, according to one report today.
Don’t criminalize the investigations. immunize the witnesses!
If we criminalize the investigations, if witnesses are afraid they will be indicted, prosecuted, and punished if they tell the truth about what they’ve been up to, our chances of getting the full picture will be enormously, maybe even fatally, diminished.
We want the truth, the whole truth. The best way to get it is to immunize congressional witnesses who tell the story. That way, they will be part of a common effort to understand what went wrong, rather than targets of a criminal investigation. It may surprise you to learn that there are many civil servants who have quietly asked to be subpoenaed so their superiors will not accuse them of ratting out their bureaucratic cohorts. Fair enough. Subpoena them, and give them the protection of immunity, provided they tell the truth.
The cudgel of criminal action should be reserved for those who insist on clamming up, for they are obstructing investigations desperately needed to protect and advance our freedoms.
And I say, right on! For example, I am not enthused about the claim that Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights by her testimony yesterday, thus allowing Congress to force her to speak or charge her with contempt. I fear this will only make her a convenient martyr to be used by the tools of the Obama administration to distract us.
It would be far better to give immunity to as many low level employees as possible. That way, we get the truth out, and the handful who lie to protect Obama and the Democratic Party will be exposed.
Did contributing to Mitt Romney’s campaign last year cause the IRS to target you for an audit?
At the moment the data is anecdotal, but it appears that Coburn’s office might be accumulating some interesting information.
“Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.”
The issue here is not sexual orientation, but the government forcing a certain set of beliefs on its employees.
A former IRS worker points out that the law allows the immediate termination of any IRS worker who violates certain clear rules.
The rule is Section 1023 of the Internal Revenue Code. The violations pertaining to this scandal are these:
-(2) providing a false statement under oath with respect to a material matter involving a taxpayer or taxpayer representative;
-(3) with respect to a taxpayer, taxpayer representative, or other employee of the Internal Revenue Service, the violation of – (A) any right under the Constitution of the United States;
-(6) violations of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, Department of Treasury regulations, or policies of the Internal Revenue Service (including the Internal Revenue Manual) for the purpose of retaliating against, or harassing, a taxpayer, taxpayer representative, or other employee of the Internal Revenue Service;
-(7) willful misuse of the provisions of section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 for the purpose of concealing information from a congressional inquiry;
I like to say it isn’t what people say that counts, it is what they do. If President Obama was truly outraged about this scandal, he could do something about it. That he has not, and has in fact supported and promoted the key players at the IRS suggests instead that he is very happy with their performance.
Pushback: Gun rights advocates counter a Michigan county gun buyback program with their own “Guns 4 Cash” operation.
It is interesting to read what happened after the County Executive himself observed the gun rights advocates:
From that moment forward until the event ended, the gun rights activists were harassed by all day by Wayne County deputies. Their first act was to park one of their marked cars by the parking lot’s entrance and started directing people further up the street to the church.
Then a deputy went into the fast-food restaurant and talked to the manager on duty. We do not know what they told the manager, but suddenly, the restaurant reversed its decision to allow gun rights activists onto its property. Prior to contact with the deputies, their presence was allowed as long as it did not interfere with customers buying food. Thus, the gun rights activists were ejected from the parking lot and had to move their cars. Apparently, the deputies thought their actions were enough to deter the activists. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The activists adjusted by walking up and down the public sidewalk while holding their signs.
The deputies responded by telling them that they would start writing tickets for both being on and obstructing the sidewalk in front of the church. It would be a hour or so later before discussions with the top deputy in charge confirmed that walking on the sidewalk was legal and that all deputies would be apprised of that fact.
This harassment by police of Americans, very carefully doing legal things, is appalling. More appalling is how common this is becoming.
Working for the Democratic Party: When IRS official Lois Lerner was head of the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement office in 1998, she was accused of stopping an investigation because Al Gore was involved.
Pushback: A lawsuit was filed today in federal court in Connecticut against the new gun control laws that were passed recently after the Newtown shooting.
The lawsuit seeks immediate injunctive relief and a ruling declaring the new law unconstitutional under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It alleges that Connecticut’s new firearms law is not only unconstitutional but dangerous, since it makes both citizens and law enforcement less safe by depriving citizens of firearms that are in common use throughout the country. The very firearms and design features banned by the new law are commonly used in part because of safety, accuracy and ease-of-use features that make them effective in the hands of citizens who must defend themselves and their families against criminals and the mentally ill who do not obey such laws.
Stonewalling: IRS official Lois Lerner invoked the Fifth amendment to Congress today, defiantly refusing to answer any questions.
An early sign of Obamacare’s impending collapse?
Stonewalling: The IRS today failed to comply with a Congressional deadline to provide documents relating to the IRS scandal.
A detailed analysis of the IRS’s chain of command in Cincinnati, proving the harassment of conservatives came from high up the chain.
The article names names, and places them in the chain of command both in Cincinnati and in relation to Washington. The new key person in that chain is Cindy Thomas, who appears to have been at the top of the chain in Cincinnati, reported directly to Washington, and also was the person who signed off on the illegal release of data to ProPublica.
All of it makes the claims of the White House and the IRS that this was done by a few low-level rogue agents look absurd and dishonest.
The journal Science struggles to find the harm done to NIH from sequestration’s 5% cut.
Given that sequestration lopped off a staggering $1.55 billion from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) budget this year, it shouldn’t be hard to find examples of how the cut is harming research labs. Although sequestration “has already dealt a devastating blow,” said NIH Director Francis Collins at a Senate hearing last week, it turns out it’s not that easy to spell out the damage.
First of all, this cut was hardly “staggering.” All it did was bring NIH’s budget down to $29.15 billion, which is almost exactly the budget the agency had in 2008. Somehow, NIH managed quite well with this amount of money in 2008, and in fact probably wasted quite a bit of cash even then.
Second, this fact — that the cut wasn’t really that “devastating” — might explain why Science can’t find any obvious damage to any program. In its budget articles the journal routinely makes it a point to lobby for more money for scientists. Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised when it tries to spin any cut — or even a small reduction in the rate of growth — as a disaster. The fact that Science still has trouble making that spin seem believable in this case is solid evidence that sequestration was a good idea, and that there was a great deal of fat that could be trimmed from the budget.
Photos from various tea party protests across the nation today.
The protesters wearing targets on their backs were especially clever, considering the vicious attacks after the Tucson shootings two years ago against Sarah Palin for using tiny target graphics in some of her literature. Back then, Palin and conservatives got slimed for this irrelevant act, something they had nothing to do with the Tucson murders. Now, the IRS has made them real targets. And it both cases, they are innocent, doing nothing more than expressing their beliefs and ideas.
How “Hope and Change” became spying on the press.
Pushback: Another conservative organization that was harassed by the IRS has filed suit against the tax agency.
IRS official Lois Lerner will invoke the Fifth Amendment when she testifies to Congress about the IRS’s harassment of conservatives.
She has the right to do this, but this action puts the lie to the Obama administration claim that no laws were broken in the IRS scandal. Her lawyer very clearly knows that she risks prosecution for breaking the law, and that is why he is advising her to invoke the Fifth.
