Friday, January 8, 2016

IRS Cartoon


Public school recruits students to work for Hillary Clinton campaign


A public high school in Maine was caught red-handed trying to recruit students to work on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as a “community service opportunity” – without the knowledge or consent of parents.
Could you imagine the national media firestorm had the school been recruiting for Donald Trump’s campaign?
Students at Marshwood High School in South Berwick received an email from the Clinton campaign – urging them to sign up for positions as unpaid “fellows”.
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“Hillary for New Hampshire is looking for smart, energetic winter fellows who are committed to winning the New Hampshire primary for Hillary Clinton,” read the email from a campaign staffer. “Everyone working on the campaign now started off as a fellow at some point so it is a great way of getting a different skill set whilst helping an important cause.”
Tim and Elita Galvin were furious that their teenage son had received the solicitation – calling it “disingenuous and sneaky.”
“My son didn’t appreciate being targeted by anybody via his school email for a political campaign,” Mrs. Galvin told me. “I’ll be honest – he’s not a fan of Hillary Clinton to begin with. He’s done his homework and he doesn’t like her.”
The Galvins reached out to Paul Mehlhorn, the principal of the high school. They provided me with a copy of his emailed response.
“We often receive information from outside sources regarding opportunities for students to get involved in their communities,” he wrote. “We pass on this information to provide students with ways they may meet the requirement to perform 50 hours of community service to graduate.”
Mehlhorn went on to explain that students are not obligated to volunteer for Clinton’s campaign, “nor does it suggest the school supports a particular political candidate, religious doctrine or branch of military.”
“If other ‘campaigns’ were to seek volunteers, we would pass that on also,” he noted.
The principal went to say that the email solicitation sounded like a great way to have a conversation with their children about understanding their choices in getting involved or not.
As you might imagine, Mr. and Mrs. Galvin were not all that thrilled with the principal’s explanation.
“Politics doesn’t belong there – Republican, Democrat, green, purple, white, whatever,” Mrs. Galvin told me.  It doesn’t belong in the schools. The kids get, we get so much of this -- we get bombarded during the political campaigning season, which now is almost never ending. Those kids should be able to go to school and learn without having that noise around them or targeted at them.”
I reached out to Mary Nash, the superintendent of schools. She told me it was a mistake to send out the email.
She said a school staffer had forwarded the email to students without providing “additional information regarding this community service opportunity.”
However, the intentions were pretty well explained in the email. They wanted minors to pound the pavement for Hillary Clinton.
She directed the principal to send a letter to moms and dads.
“In general, all staff must refrain from sending out any solicitations supporting any non-school organization,” the principal wrote.
Mrs. Galvin said there is absolutely nothing wrong with students getting involved in political campaigns. However, the school overstepped its boundaries.
“If you want to campaign for someone – that’s fine – but that’s between the child and the parents,” she said. ‘That’s not for the campaign to target you at school and it’s not for the school to suggest to you. That’s between you and your parents.”
Well said, Mrs. Galvin.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is "God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values." Follow Todd on Twitter@ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.

IRS nixes controversial plan to collect Social Security numbers of charity donors


A wave of complaints forced the IRS on Thursday to withdraw its controversial plan to have nonprofit charities report the Social Security numbers of donors who give just $250 in any given year. 
Under the proposed rule, the IRS would have created a voluntary system for nonprofits to collect and send the IRS personal donor information in their yearly report. The idea was to simplify the process for nonprofits – ranging from traditional charities to churches – and donors alike.
But lawmakers and nonprofits cried foul, and warned even a voluntary program could scare off donors who don’t want to give out their Social Security numbers. Plus there were concerns that nonprofits would need to beef up data security to protect the information from hackers.
A new IRS notice to be published in the Federal Register says that, in the wake of these complaints, the proposal is being pulled.
“The Treasury Department and the IRS received a substantial number of public comments in response to the notice of proposed rulemaking,” the notice said. “Many of these public comments questioned the need for donee reporting, and many comments expressed significant concerns about donee organizations collecting and maintaining taxpayer identification numbers. … Accordingly, the notice of proposed rulemaking is being withdrawn.”
An IRS official confirmed to FoxNews.com that the plan was withdrawn in reaction to the public comments.
The relationship between certain nonprofits and the IRS already suffers from trust issues in the wake of the controversy over officials subjecting conservative groups to additional scrutiny – and data breaches. The reporting proposal revived some of that tension.
“There's a big caution here. There's a big yellow light that should be flashing,” Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam told Fox News last month. “… Number one, the IRS has not demonstrated its capacity to hold this type of information from confidentiality and a security point of view.”
Tea Party Patriots, which had opposed the rule, cheered the latest decision on Thursday.
“This is a huge victory for American democracy, the First Amendment and our grassroots supporters. President Obama’s IRS is abandoning its blatantly heavy-handed regulation to ask charities to disclose the Social Security numbers of donors giving $250 or more annually,” TPP President Jenny Beth Martin said in a statement.
The IRS earlier described some of the pushback as “misimpressions and inaccuracies.”
The agency said the change was proposed in September in part because some taxpayers who were being audited said they lost their donation records – and if charities had a record, it would help them verify deductions.
“[S]ome … organizations and donors were interested in using this option,” the agency said. “This proposal would impose no mandatory changes to existing rules.”
Some were concerned, though, that the voluntary option could eventually become mandatory.
As it stands, nonprofits are required to send any contributor of $250 or more a “contemporaneous written acknowledgement (CWA)” that includes the amount of the donation and any services or gifts received in return. This document is used by the donor when filing for deductions from income taxes.
The proposed rule would have allowed nonprofits to send all that information – along with Social Security numbers – directly to the IRS on a single form.

Eligibility questions causing headaches for Cruz camp, as McCain piles on


A casual jab by Donald Trump over Canada-born Ted Cruz’ eligibility for president has snowballed into a campaign trail headache for the Iowa GOP caucus front-runner.
The Texas senator was born in Calgary, Canada, a fact he’s hardly kept secret. Despite some questions last year about his eligibility to run, legal scholars have said Cruz indeed is a “natural born citizen” and eligible because his mother is American. Plus he renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014.
But Trump, who famously challenged President Obama’s birthplace and eligibility years ago, dredged up the same issue with Cruz earlier this week, warning it could lead to a drawn-out court case.
Cruz tried to brush it off. But other lawmakers – most recently, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. – have kept the questions alive.
McCain, who is not exactly a Cruz ally, needled his Senate colleague in a radio interview with Phoenix-based KFYI. He said Cruz’ case is different from his own situation – McCain was born on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone.
“I think there is a question. I am not a constitutional scholar on that, but I think it’s worth looking into. I don't think it's illegitimate to look into it," McCain said.
Pelosi, asked about Cruz on Thursday, said it’s a matter for Republicans to decide but added: “I do think there is a distinction between John McCain being born to a family and serving our country in Panama than someone born in another country.”
Following McCain’s interview, Trump tweeted:
The Cruz campaign hit back at McCain Thursday, with communications director Rick Tyler suggesting the senator is just trying to boost Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“I imagine that the Gang of Eight will stay together and he’ll be for Rubio, so … why not help?” he told Fox News, referencing the 2013 “gang” that worked on an immigration reform bill.
Pro-Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise 1 also said in a statement: "As Cruz rises in the polls, his opponents are looking for anything to stop his momentum. Raising a matter of law shows there is nothing else to attack him on, and that he's gotten into their heads. Let's end these sideshows and get back to talking about who is going to restore peace and prosperity to our nation."
Whether the Canada questions fade or flare from here is an open question.
Trump has claimed he was only posing an “innocent question” when he first discussed Cruz’ eligibility in an interview with The Washington Post. But he’s urged Cruz to get out in front.
“I will say, though, that the Democrats, if they bring a lawsuit on it … you have to get it solved,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday. “I would like to see Ted do something where maybe he goes in a preemptive fashion into court to try and get some kind of an order because I would not like to see that happen.”
Cruz has tried to stay above the fray.
He initially responded to Trump’s questions with a tweet referencing the episode of “Happy Days” where Fonzie jumps over a shark on water skis, equating it to the Trump campaign “jumping the shark.”
But he was peppered with questions at a press conference Tuesday in Iowa. He wouldn’t criticize Trump directly and tried to turn the tables on the media.
“One of the things the media loves to do is gaze at their navels at hours on end by a tweet from Donald Trump or from me or from anybody else—who cares? Let’s focus on the issues.”
He added, “The best way to respond to this kind of attack is to laugh it off.”
In the past, Cruz supporters have pointed to an article last year in the Harvard Law Review by Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, and Paul Clemente, former solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration.
“There is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” they wrote.  
The lawyers wrote that the Supreme Court has long used British common law and enactments of the First Congress for guidance on defining a “natural born citizen.”
“Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase ‘natural born Citizen’ includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent,” they wrote.
For Cruz, the questions might not have gained much steam if not for the fact that Obama and his allies spent years battling allegations from “birthers” that he wasn’t really born in Hawaii.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest invoked that controversy on Wednesday.
“It would be quite ironic if after seven or eight years of drama around the president’s birth certificate, if Republican primary voters were to choose Senator Cruz as their nominee -- somebody who actually wasn’t born in the United States and only 18 months ago renounced his Canadian citizenship,” Earnest said.
GOP candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul also piled on Wednesday, joking on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade & Friends” that, “I think without question he is qualified and would make the cut to be Prime Minister of Canada.”
He later said, “I am not enough of a legal scholar to say the court will decide one way or another.”

Latest batch of Clinton emails contains 66 more classified messages


The latest batch of emails released from Hillary Clinton's personal account from her tenure as secretary of state includes 66 messages deemed classified at some level, the State Department said early Friday. 
All but one of the 66 classified emails have been labeled "confidential", the lowest level of classification. The remaining email has been labeled as "secret." The total number of classified documents found on Clinton's personal server has risen to 1,340 with the latest release. Seven of those emails have been labeled "secret."
In all, the State Department released 1,262 messages in the early morning hours, making up almost 2,900 pages of emails. Unlike in previous releases, none of the messages were searchable in the department's online reading room by subject, sender or recipient.
Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has repeatedly maintained that she did not send or receive classified material on her personal account. The State Department claims none of the emails now marked classified were labled as much at the time they were sent.
However, one email chain from June 2011 appears to include Clinton giving advice to her top adviser Jake Sullivan about how to send secure information through insecure means.
In response to Clinton's request for a set of since-redacted talking points, Sullivan says, "They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They're working on it." Clinton responds "If they can't, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure."
Another message includes a condolence email from the father of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl following the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The note from Bob Bergdahl, which was forwarded to Clinton by  Sullivan, reads in part, "Our Nation is stumbling through a very volatile world. The 'Crusade' paradigm will never be forgotten in this part of the world and we force our Diplomats to carry a lot of baggage around while walking on eggshells."
After seeing the email, Clinton directed her assistant Robert Russo to "pls [sic] prepare [a] response." Bowe Bergdahl was freed from Taliban capitivity in May 2014 as part of a prisoner swap. He faces a court-martial for desertion in August.
The State Department made the emails public after failing to meet a court-ordered goal of releasing 82 percent of the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton turned over to the department last year. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday the latest release would bring the department in line with that goal.
The messages had previously been released in batches at the end of each month. A federal judge has ordered that the email release be completed by Jan. 29.
The latest document drop came one day after the State Department was criticized by its independent inspector general for producing "inaccurate and incomplete" responses to public records requests during Clinton's time as secretary of state.
The report underscored inherent problems for public responses to records requests when government employees use a private email account, as Clinton did.
The federal public records law "neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers" such as Gmail or Yahoo, the report stated. "Furthermore, the [Freedom of Information Act] analyst has no way to independently locate federal records from such accounts unless employees take steps to preserve official emails in department record-keeping systems."

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