Two more IRS agents have been put on leave.
Both are charged with accepting free food and other items inappropriately. One is also implicated in the IRS harassment scandal and is the deputy to Sarah Hall Ingram, who now runs the IRS Obamacare office and was in charge of the enforcement division when it was implementing the harassment policy.
The first annual College Stupidity Awards.
I especially like this one:
A Hispanic student group at Northwestern University instructed members of the campus community to forgo eating tacos and drinking tequila on Cinco de Mayo, so as not to offend Mexican culture. But Mexican students, who indeed wanted to spend their holiday eating tacos and drinking tequila, took offense at the assumed offense. The Hispanic student group ended up with huevo on its face.
The EPA has acknowledged that it illegally released personal information of farmers to several leftwing environmental organizations.
Mistakes do happen, but like the IRS scandal, this mistake was all one way, helpful to the left and harmful to their opponents. And like the IRS scandal, this one way harm suggests this was not a mistake, but quite intentional.
The new freedom: An eleven-year-old in Maryland was suspended from school for merely talking about guns.
Hmm: A liberal campaign finance reform activist, who had called for the targeting of conservative organizations, had meetings with Obama about the time the IRS harassment began.
The House testimony today of one tea party person:
“I want to protect and preserve the America I grew up in, the America that people cross oceans and risk their lives to become a part of, and I am terrified it is slipping away.”
Watch the full video below. It is heart-rending.
Did an IRS employee illegally leak the donor list of a conservative organization to one of its left wing opponents?
The left’s unmistakable trend toward weaponizing the tax code.
What was once a neutral instrument used for the purpose of collecting revenue for legitimate governmental functions is now employed to punish behavior that powerful people don’t like.
The day of reckoning looms: A new report from Social Security has raised its predicted unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years by one trillion dollars, for a total of $9.6 trillion.
According to the report, “Through the end of 2087, the combined funds [OASI and DI] have a present-value unfunded obligation of $9.6 trillion.” That is “$1.0 trillion more than the measured level of $8.6 trillion a year ago,” states the report, in reference to the data available for 2011. That $9.6 trillion shortfall equals approximately $83,894 per household based on the Census Bureau’s latest estimate that there are 114,430,000 households in the country.
The report also looks farther into the future and saw the shortfall rise to $23 trillion.
Said by an ABC news reporter today.
In related news, it appears that the IRS not only targeted conservative organizations which applied for tax exempt status, the tax agency also targeted the donors to those organizations.
Transcript excerpts of House testimony by two IRS employees show that the policy to harass conservatives was ordered by supervisors in Washington.
When these employees testify publicly, it will not be pretty for the Obama administration. The next question will of course be: Who were those supervisors, and who gave them their orders?
Working for the Democratic Party: When IRS thug Lois Lerner worked for the FEC she offered to drop a case against a conservative running for the Senate if he promised never to run for office again.
The conservative refused, and the case went to court, where all charges were dismissed. Nonetheless, the conservative subsequently decided that the harassment from the government, which also included a visit from the FBI, was not worth it, and has not run for office since.
In other words, Lerner’s harassment worked, to the benefit of the Democratic Party.
The 100 words used on the web that Homeland Security considers dangerous and thus a justification for spying.
The IRS has told a House investigation that almost 90 IRS agents were involved in harassment scandal.
If I was Obama and had anything at all to do with this policy, I would be very very nervous. With this many IRS agents involved it will be impossible to control this scandal. Someone is going to spill the beans and tell us who established this harassment policy, and it certainly wasn’t some “low level rogue agents”, as Lois Lerner first claimed.
Above the law: The IRS has refused to meet the deadline for answering questions put to it by the Senate Finance Committee concerning its harassment of conservatives.
The questions were focused on trying to find out exactly who established the IRS’s policy in this scandal. If Obama was as outraged as he claims about this, and had nothing to do with it, he should have been very willing to make the IRS respond to this quickly. That they are instead stonewalling once again tells us that they, and Obama, do not really want the public to know who conceived the harassment policy. I wonder why.
In California, Obamacare will increase individual health insurance premiums from 64% to 146%.
The article is a very detailed response to the claims made last week by California that Obamacare is lowering rates.
Working for Islam: An attorney for the Obama Justice Department is warning Americans they could be prosecuted if they use social media to criticize Muslims.
In other words, Muslims can commit murders and terrorists acts, but don’t you dare say anything bad about them or else the Obama administration will come after you. And based on the IRS scandal, they are very much willing to do it.
Smith looks at the published construction and flight timelines for the government’s Space Launch System and the private company Golden Spike, and finds something I’ve been noting for several years, there is a new space race going on. And I think private space will win it.
Another perspective — the one I have — is that this creates a new Space Race.
In the starting gate at High Bay 3 is the SLS, a program larded by Congressional pork, dubbed the Senate Launch System by its critics. Many observers believe that it will one day fall to innate political and bureaucratic flaws, as did Constellation before it.
In the other starting gate at High Bay 1 is Golden Spike — all talk so far, but the pieces seem to be falling into place to make the company a viable lunar option. Add to the mix the May 23 teleconference discussing the NASA agreement that allows Bigelow Aerospace to ally NewSpace companies into a possible commercial cislunar program. The report hasn’t been released yet, but it’s logical to assume that Golden Spike is one of those companies.
As with all space programs — government or commercial, crewed or unmanned — these timelines should be viewed with the greatest of skepticism.
But we’re starting to see all the pieces fall into place for the great Space Race of the 21st Century. To the victor goes access to the Final Frontier.
Based both on computer models and satellite data a team of scientists has concluded that the increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making arid regions greener.
This study illustrates one possibility that is always ignored in the climate debates — that there is a really good chance that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will be beneficial.
