Conservative Blogger
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Lois Lerner, director of IRS division that targeted conservative groups, leaves House hearing after invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refusing to answer questions about agency scandal.
All Government Officials are starting to believe they're above the law. Maybe with all the Obama Crooks now in place, could be true!
IRS a weapon used by the Democrats against Conservatives
Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS
division that singled out conservative groups, is expected to invoke the
Fifth Amendment Wednesday when she appears before the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee, Fox News has learned.
That means Lerner, head of the exempt organizations division, probably won’t answer any questions on what she knew about IRS agents going after Tea Party-related groups. That also means she probably won’t say why she sat on the information for so long before it became public.
Lerner’s attorney William Taylor III asked committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in a letter if she could skip Wednesday’s hearing since she would be pleading the Fifth.
Taylor argued in the letter that forcing Lerner to appear “would have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.”
Late Tuesday, the House oversight committee released a statement saying Lerner was still under subpoena and would be required to appear in the morning.
“Chairman Issa remains hopeful that she will ultimately decide to testify tomorrow about her knowledge of outrageous IRS targeting of Americans for the political beliefs,” committee spokesman Ali Ahmad said in a statement.
Other former or outgoing IRS officials have already testified, and will continue to give their testimony on Wednesday. But Lerner, who is the official who first acknowledged the IRS program, has faced significant scrutiny.
Since the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into the IRS scandal and the House committee indicated it would question Lerner about why she provided incomplete information to the committee at least four times last year, Taylor wrote that his client would be invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The House committee is also scheduled to hear from Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin, among others, as the search for someone who will claim responsibility continues.
On Tuesday, outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, was back in the hot seat as he testified for the second time in two weeks on Capitol Hill.
Miller expressed regret for the agency’s decision to use a planted question to go public with the IRS’s practice of singling out conservative groups.
It was one in a series of missteps that have not only publicly marred the reputation of the IRS but also called into question what the White House knew about the scandal and when they knew it.
“We’re not looking for people to be evasive but we want people forthright and straightforward with us,” Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat from New York, told Fox News.
While Crowley did not go so far as to say Lerner should be let go, he did say, “the bottom line is that you cannot lie to Congress, be evasive or mislead. You must answer the question and not mislead Congress.”
Separately, two Tea Party-related groups filed lawsuits against the IRS this week.
On Tuesday, Texas-based True the Vote claimed it was unfairly targeted by the IRS and demanded in court documents the government admit its mistake, grant the group tax-exempt status and pay for damages totaling more than $85,000.
On Monday, the NorCal Tea Party Patriots filed the first federal suit against the national tax agency. Like True the Vote, the northern California group says the IRS violated its constitutional rights when it held up its applications for tax-exempt status.
The NorCal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Cincinnati, seeks group status for “all conservative and libertarian groups targeted for additional scrutiny” between March 2010 and May 2013. It’s also seeking unspecified monetary damages for the alleged violation of its constitutional rights and the costs associated with trying to comply with IRS demands.
The lawsuit is being backed by Citizens for Self-Governance, a group launched by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler.
Meckler claims that IRS agents also demanded massive amounts of disclosure of information not authorized by the Internal Revenue Code or any other federal law. The suit alleges that the tactic was used to delay or dissuade conservative groups from going through with their applications.
The IRS acknowledged that employees at its Cincinnati office had targeted conservative groups, creating massive amounts of paperwork or rejecting applications altogether.
That means Lerner, head of the exempt organizations division, probably won’t answer any questions on what she knew about IRS agents going after Tea Party-related groups. That also means she probably won’t say why she sat on the information for so long before it became public.
Lerner’s attorney William Taylor III asked committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in a letter if she could skip Wednesday’s hearing since she would be pleading the Fifth.
Taylor argued in the letter that forcing Lerner to appear “would have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.”
Late Tuesday, the House oversight committee released a statement saying Lerner was still under subpoena and would be required to appear in the morning.
“Chairman Issa remains hopeful that she will ultimately decide to testify tomorrow about her knowledge of outrageous IRS targeting of Americans for the political beliefs,” committee spokesman Ali Ahmad said in a statement.
Other former or outgoing IRS officials have already testified, and will continue to give their testimony on Wednesday. But Lerner, who is the official who first acknowledged the IRS program, has faced significant scrutiny.
Since the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into the IRS scandal and the House committee indicated it would question Lerner about why she provided incomplete information to the committee at least four times last year, Taylor wrote that his client would be invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The House committee is also scheduled to hear from Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin, among others, as the search for someone who will claim responsibility continues.
On Tuesday, outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, was back in the hot seat as he testified for the second time in two weeks on Capitol Hill.
Miller expressed regret for the agency’s decision to use a planted question to go public with the IRS’s practice of singling out conservative groups.
It was one in a series of missteps that have not only publicly marred the reputation of the IRS but also called into question what the White House knew about the scandal and when they knew it.
“We’re not looking for people to be evasive but we want people forthright and straightforward with us,” Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat from New York, told Fox News.
While Crowley did not go so far as to say Lerner should be let go, he did say, “the bottom line is that you cannot lie to Congress, be evasive or mislead. You must answer the question and not mislead Congress.”
Separately, two Tea Party-related groups filed lawsuits against the IRS this week.
On Tuesday, Texas-based True the Vote claimed it was unfairly targeted by the IRS and demanded in court documents the government admit its mistake, grant the group tax-exempt status and pay for damages totaling more than $85,000.
On Monday, the NorCal Tea Party Patriots filed the first federal suit against the national tax agency. Like True the Vote, the northern California group says the IRS violated its constitutional rights when it held up its applications for tax-exempt status.
The NorCal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Cincinnati, seeks group status for “all conservative and libertarian groups targeted for additional scrutiny” between March 2010 and May 2013. It’s also seeking unspecified monetary damages for the alleged violation of its constitutional rights and the costs associated with trying to comply with IRS demands.
The lawsuit is being backed by Citizens for Self-Governance, a group launched by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler.
Meckler claims that IRS agents also demanded massive amounts of disclosure of information not authorized by the Internal Revenue Code or any other federal law. The suit alleges that the tactic was used to delay or dissuade conservative groups from going through with their applications.
The IRS acknowledged that employees at its Cincinnati office had targeted conservative groups, creating massive amounts of paperwork or rejecting applications altogether.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Jumping The Shark
May 21, 2013 by Ben Crystal
PHOTOS.COM
Even those few men who have inhabited the highest office in the land have leaped over the proverbial predator. President Richard Nixon did so the day he claimed: “When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.” President Jimmy Carter jumped his shark the day he fought and lost the Battle of the Chattahoochee Bunny. President Bill Clinton met his in the form of a chubby intern in a blue dress. President George W. Bush stood in front of his and declared “Mission Accomplished.” And President Barack Hussein Obama sent his on a press tour this past weekend.
With multiple scandals dominating the headlines (each borne of either gross incompetence or the sort of insidious corruption that hasn’t been seen in the White House since President Warren Harding jumped his own shark near the Teapot Dome), Obama gambled like a sitcom character on water skis. While he sent a junior varsity mouthpiece named Dan Pfeiffer to make an absolute fool of himself on the Sunday talk show rounds, his Administration leaked the almost dumbfounding news: Disgraced U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is not only not headed for a teaching position at one of those sad places where old liberals are put out to pasture, but she’s a sure bet to become the next National Security Adviser.
Pfeiffer’s performance puts the Obama Administration’s usual sideshow antics to shame. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Pfeiffer said Obama’s whereabouts during the Benghazi, Libya, massacre were an “irrelevant fact.” In an appearance of ABC News’ “This Week,” Pfeiffer jumped over Jaws on the topic of the Internal Revenue Service attacks on Obama’s perceived enemies, claiming, “The law is irrelevant.” There were more stunts on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” where Pfeiffer said the identity of those who altered Benghazi talking points was (of course) “largely irrelevant.” And then, the showstopper: Pfeiffer said, “And, frankly, I think that many of the Republicans… owe Ambassador Rice an apology for the things they said about her.” And he didn’t even don the leather for that one.
Even while their attempts to bury Benghazi under a mountain of mendacity fail like Congressman Hank Johnson taking an oceanography exam, Obama and his coterie of thugs continue to amaze. The woman who falsely blamed the deaths of four Americans on some crappy YouTube video is slated to take up the mantle of the senior adviser to the President on matters of people who kill Americans. Rice’s shocking disregard for basic honesty cost her the big office at the Department of State. So instead of shuffling her off to the wacky world of the speakers’ circuit, Obama has decided to put her in charge of telling him which amateur auteurs to imprison.
Obama and his accomplices have told tall tales about so many of their various assaults on life, liberty and even common sense that they’re struggling to keep their stories straight. From Newtown, Conn., to Benghazi, from an IRS outpost in Cincinnati to the White House itself, and from Obamacare (the implementation of which will be overseen by Sarah Hall Ingram, the same pencil-pusher responsible for turning the IRS into Obama’s personal political goon squad) to the transcripts of illegal wiretaps, the web of lies that will define Obama’s disastrous tenure has grown more tangled than Hillary Clinton’s Congressional testimony.
At this point, Obama and his henchmen have given up even a pretense of honesty. I suppose they think the low-information types upon whom their authority rests will give them the same get-out-of-disgrace-free card they’ve abused since 2009. Someone ought to remind them: Fonzie may have successfully jumped the shark, but he still got canceled.
–Ben Crystal
Monday, May 20, 2013
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