act4america·103 videos

Published on May 17, 2013

If you comment we reserve the right to use your comment in/as a post

Follow us, donate and help us stay on-line.

But here’s the rub: About a dozen current and former Republican lawmakers took the same cash.

Among them is Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a GOP establishment favorite running to claim a Democratic-held Senate seat next year in West Virginia. Capito took $2,000 from the union last September, Federal Election Commission records show.

On Facebook and search engine StumbleUpon, House Republicans are running paid ads blasting Democrats for feigning “faux outrage” over the IRS scandal, in which the agency apologized for unfairly targeting tea party groups, while furtively holding on to donations from the agency. They’re calling on Democrats to give the cash back.

“Scandal widens,” the NRCC’s policy director, Jordan Davis, wrote on Facebook.

The argument goes something like this: Not only did the IRS favor Democrats by impeding their opponents through the tax code, they’re also funneling money directly to Democratic candidates. And that makes Democrats complacent in the whole mess.

Not quite. The IRS, as a government agency, can’t donate to candidates. The National Treasury Employees Union, which made the donations, represents employees from more than 30 federal agencies ranging from divisions of the Agriculture Department to the Social Security Administration. The IRS is just one of those agencies.

The rush to cast Democrats as tainted by an issue that also touches a number of Republicans could give Democrats an opening to argue that the GOP is overplaying its hand as the Obama administration defends itself over the IRS scandal, the terrorist attack in Libya, and the government’s seizure of The Associated Press’ telephone records.

Capito’s spokesman said the contribution came at the request of union members in her district, and she plans to keep the money. National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brad Dayspring defended his group’s attack by pointing out that unlike Capito, Democrats like New York Sen. Charles Schumer took the money while also calling for tighter IRS restrictions on tax-exempt groups like the ones the IRS has admitted it targeted.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which promotes House GOP candidates, said it isn’t calling on Republican lawmakers to give back the money — just Democrats — but rejected the suggestion that unidirectional criticism was hypocritical. Spokesman Dan Scarpinato noted that the overwhelming majority of the union’s donations went to Democrats.

“Clearly this agency is not only scandal-ridden but also highly biased, which is reflective in both the cash they’ve pumped into Democrat candidates and the fact that they have targeted conservative groups,” he said.

(© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

From The New York Times…

The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

In case you’ve forgotten, what took Benghazi from “a thing Republicans keep whining about” to “Scandal!!!” was when some emails bouncing around between the White House, the CIA, and the State Department were passed to Jonathan Karl of ABC last Friday. The strange thing about it was that the emails didn’t contain anything particularly shocking—no crimes admitted, no malfeasance revealed. It showed 12 different versions of talking points as everybody edited them, but why this made it a “scandal” no one bothered to say. My best explanation is that just the fact of obtaining previously hidden information, regardless of its content, is so exciting to reporters that they just ran with it. They’re forever trying to get a glimpse behind the curtain, and when they do, they almost inevitably shout “Aha!” no matter what.

But then the problem comes. The White House decided to release a whole batch of emails related to the subject, and when they were examined, it turns out that what was given to Karl had been altered. Altered by whom, you ask? Altered by Karl’s source: Republican staffers on the House Oversight Committee, which had been given the emails by the White House (CBS’s Major Garrett confirmed this yesterday).

Let me just explain quickly in case you haven’t been following this, and then we’ll discuss what it means. Two changes to the emails were made, one in an email from Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, and one from State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland. Rhodes actually wrote, “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.” That was changed to, “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.” In the Nuland email, she actually wrote, “the penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency [CIA] warnings so why do we want to feed that either?,” which was changed to, “The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency about al-Qaeda’s presence and activities of al-Qaeda.”

So the changes have the effect of making it look like 1) the CIA was tying the attack to al Qaeda, but the State Department wanted to play that down publicly, and 2) the White House was taking special pains to protect the State Department. Neither of these things appear to be true, but there’s a logic to the Republican staffers wanting to paint that picture. Their argument, after all, is that the wrongdoing here consists of the White House (Obama!) and State Department (Clinton!) trying to fool everyone in America into thinking Benghazi wasn’t a terrorist attack, because Obama’s re-election hinged on the false belief that he had defeated al Qaeda forever, and if there’s any al Qaeda left then Mitt Romney would have won. And yes, that’s ridiculous, but it’s what many conservatives seem to believe. . .

Continue reading.

Quick, somebody tell CIA Director John Brennan about the handwriting on the inside wall of the boat in which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding before Boston-area police riddled it and him with bullets. Tell Brennan that Tsarnaev’s note is in plain English and that it needs neither translation nor interpretation in solving the mystery: “why do they hate us?”

And, if Brennan will listen, remind him of when his high school teachers, the Irish Christian Brothers, taught him the meaning of “handwriting on the wall” in the Book of Daniel and why it became an idiom for predetermined, imminent doom.

CBS senior correspondent John Miller, who before joining CBS served in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, broke the handwritten-note story Thursday onCBS This Morning. He described what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scribbled on the side of the boat as he lay bleeding “from multiple gunshot wounds” in the boat. Here, according to Miller’s sources, is what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s note said:“The [Boston] bombings were in retribution for the U.S. crimes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan [and] that the victims of the Boston bombing were collateral damage, in the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in U.S. wars around the world.  Summing up, that when you attack one Muslim you attack all Muslims.”

My experience with now-CBS-This-Morning’s Charlie Rose is that he does listen closely. Thus, I believe it is to his credit that he seemed determined, with his follow-up question, to drive home what I think is by far the most important point:

Co-anchor Charlie Rose: “Does it [the note] answer questions about motives?”

Miller: “Well it does … there it is in black and white – literally.”

Co-anchor Norah O’Donnell: “But they still believe he was self-radicalized and not part of a larger group, right?”

Miller: “That’s right. …”

Note to CIA Director Brennan

If you didn’t understand much about such motives three years ago, after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to down an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, here’s a chance to learn. I actually felt embarrassed for you when you – then-White House counter-terrorism adviser – were asked on Jan. 7, 2010, two weeks after the almost-catastrophe over Detroit, to explain why people want to kill Americans. I’m sure you remember; it turned out to be Helen Thomas’s swan song.

It took the questioning of the then-89-year old veteran correspondent Thomas to show how little you were willing to share (or how little you knew) about what leads terrorists to do what they do. As her catatonic White House press colleagues took their customary dictation, Thomas posed an adult query that spotlighted the futility of government plans to counter terrorism with more high-tech gizmos and intrusions on the liberties and privacy of the traveling public.

She asked why Abdulmutallab did what he did: “And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.” It was a highly revealing dialogue; this is how it went. Remember?

You: “Al-Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents. … They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al-Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.”

Thomas: “And you’re saying it’s because of religion?”

You: “I’m saying it’s because of an al-Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.”

Thomas: “Why?”

You: “I think this is a — long issue, but al-Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.”

Thomas: “But you haven’t explained why.”

Actually, there is a ton of information explaining why people try, for example, to explode bombs in Times Square, in airliners over Detroit, in remote CIA outposts in Afghanistan just to kill Americans, even when it means killing themselves. [See, for example, Consortiumnews.com’s “Answering Helen Thomas on Why.”]

It was painful to watch you suggest on Jan. 7, 2010, that, apparently in some mysterious way, some folks are hard-wired at birth for the “wanton slaughter of innocents,” and your contention that – in the case of Abdulmutallab – al-Qaeda/Persian Gulf was able to jump-start that privileged 23-year old Nigerian, inculcate in him the acquired characteristics of a terrorist, and persuade him to do the bidding of al-Qaeda/Persian Gulf.

Your words were a real stretch as to how the well-heeled Abdulmutallab, without apparent prior terrorist affiliations, was suddenly transformed into an international terrorist ready to die while killing innocents.

Perhaps no one told you that . . .

Continue reading.

The FBI is pushing for expanded power to eavesdrop on private Internet communications. The law enforcement agency wants to force online service providers to build wiretapping capabilities into their products. But a group of prominent computer security experts argues that mandating “back doors” in online communications products is likely to compromise the security of Americans’ computers and could even pose a threat to national security.

The fundamental problem is that eavesdropping facilities are a double-edged sword. They make it easier for the U.S. government to spy on the bad guys. But they also make it easier for the bad guys to hack our computers and spy on us. And, the researchers say, the Internet’s decentralized architecture makes it particularly hard to build effective and secure wiretapping capabilities online.

Since the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), telephone companies have been legally obligated to build wiretapping capabilities into their telecommunications equipment. But CALEA didn’t apply to Internet-based communications technologies. The result, the FBI says, is that its surveillance capabilities are “going dark,” as criminal suspects increasingly shift to digital communications platforms that don’t offer real-time interception capabilities.

In response, the government is reportedly seeking to impose CALEA-type requirements on Internet services. But rather than mandating the implementation of specific surveillance standards, as the original CALEA did, the government’s proposal would fine online service providers who failed to comply with a wiretapping request from the government — leaving it to each individual firm to decide the best way to comply.

Crucially, according to reporting by The Washington Post, the FBI proposal would apply even to “Internet phone calls conducted between two computer users without going through a central company server.” In a paper published Friday by the Center for Democracy and Technology, more than a dozen prominent computer security experts warn that such a requirement would be a disaster for the security of online communications.

If information isn’t flowing through a central server, then the only way to intercept it is to add surveillance software to the user’s PC. But popular software is constantly being probed by hackers seeking vulnerabilities they can exploit. The more complex a system, the more likely programmers are to make mistakes that could provide hackers with an opening. And surveillance features are particularly dangerous, the researchers argue.

“The cleverest and most dangerous cyber-attackers are those who are able to not only compromise a system but also to evade detection,” they write. “That is also precisely the objective of a government surveillance solution.”

Even worse, a huge number of companies could be forced to comply with the government’s proposed regulations. Ed Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton and one of the paper’s authors (and, full disclosure, my graduate adviser) points out that a growing number of companies are adding peer-to-peer communications capabilities to their products. For example, many multi-player video games include built-in facilities for players to communicate with each other in real time. . .

Continue reading. Later in the article:

Worst of all, the researchers say, the proposed mandate is unlikely to even be effective. People who want to evade surveillance will inevitably find ways to modify the software on their computers to deactivate the eavesdropping feature, just as many people today “jailbreak” their smartphones to activate forbidden features. Indeed, some popular communications software is open source, making it trivial to build a version of the software with the wiretapping feature removed. So an Internet wiretapping mandate will do little to help the government spy on the bad guys, while reducing security for everyone else.

The Federal government is starting to become a serious threat—no news to villagers in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and so on.

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — The ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service apologized to Congress on Friday for his agency’s tougher treatment of Tea Party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. He said they resulted from a misguided effort to handle a flood of applications, not political bias.

“I want to apologize on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service for the mistakes that we made and the poor service we provided,” Steven Miller, who has been acting IRS commissioner, told the House Ways and Means Committee as the panel held Congress’ first hearing on the episode. “The affected organizations and the American public deserve better. Partisanship and even the perception of partisanship have no place at the Internal Revenue Service.”

At a hearing that saw lawmakers from both parties harshly criticize his agency, Miller conceded that “foolish mistakes were made” by IRS officials trying to handle a flood of groups seeking tax-exempt status. He said the process that resulted in conservatives being targeted, “while intolerable, was a mistake and not an act of partisanship.”

Though Miller and another top IRS official are stepping down, the chairman of the committee said that would not be enough.

“The reality is this is not a personnel problem. This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful, too intrusive and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich.

At one point, anti-IRS sentiment was voiced by spectators, who included members of grass-roots conservative groups. They broke into cheers after Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., said, “This is absolutely an overreach, and this is an outrage for all Americans.”

Camp also said the tougher examinations that conservative groups encountered seemed to be part of a “culture of cover-ups and intimidation in this administration.” He offered no other examples.

Camp’s remark about cover-ups drew a sharp retort from the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan. Levin said if the hearing became a preview of the 2014 political campaigns, “we’ll be making a very, very serious mistake.”

The administration has been forced on the defensive about last September’s terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, and the government’s seizure of The Associated Press’ telephone records as part of a leaks investigation.

Republicans are hoping to link the issues in an effort to raise questions about President Barack Obama’s credibility and make it harder for him to press a second-term agenda.

Friday’s hearing is the first of what are expected to be many on the subject by congressional panels. Underscoring the seriousness of the episode, Miller was sworn in as a witness, an unusual step for the Ways and Means panel and one that could put Miller in jeopardy if he is later shown to have misled lawmakers with his testimony.

When the hearing ended after nearly four hours, Camp said, “I promise the American people, this investigation has just begun.”

Levin said that the IRS’s mistreatment of conservative groups meant the agency “completely failed the American people.” He said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that makes decisions about tax-exempt groups, should be “relieved of her duties.”

Miller said the IRS struggled to efficiently handle growing numbers of applications for tax-exempt status.

The agency has said between 2008 and 2012, the number of groups applying for tax-exempt status as so-called social welfare groups more than doubled. Along with that was an increase in complaints that such groups were largely engaging in electoral politics, which is not supposed to be their primary activity.

“I do not believe partisanship motivated the people” at the IRS who engaged in the harsher screening for conservative groups, Miller said, adding that the agency “learned its lesson.”

In recent months, Republicans on the Ways and Means panel had repeatedly asked the IRS about complaints from conservative groups that their applications were being treated unfairly.

On Friday, numerous Republicans wanted to know why Miller and others never told them the groups were being targeted, even after May 2012, when the IRS has said Miller was briefed on the practice. Miller was previously a deputy commissioner whose portfolio included the unit that made decisions about tax-exempt status.

“I did not mislead Congress or the American people,” Miller told Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-La., one of several Republicans who challenged him about why he hadn’t mentioned the targeting in the past.

Also testifying Friday was J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration.

In a report he issued this week, George said IRS officials reported they were not politically pressured to target conservative groups. Asked about that conclusion, George said Friday, “We have no evidence at this time to contradict that assertion,” but in prepared testimony to the committee he said he is continuing to investigate that question.

George’s report concluded that the IRS office in Cincinnati, which screened applications for the tax exemptions, improperly singled out tea party and other conservative groups for tougher treatment. The report says the practice began in March 2010 and lasted more than 18 months.

The report blamed “ineffective management” for letting IRS officials craft “inappropriate criteria” to review applications from Tea Party and other conservative groups, based on their names or political views. It found that the IRS took no action on many of the conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status for long periods of time, hindering their fundraising for the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Republicans have spent the past few days trying to link the IRS’ improper scrutiny of conservatives to Obama. The president has said he didn’t know about the targeting until last Friday, when Lerner acknowledged at a legal conference that conservative groups had been singled out.

Many of the groups were applying for tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations, which are allowed to participate in campaign activity if that is not their primary activity. The IRS judges whether that imprecise standard is met.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said the FBI was investigating whether the IRS may have violated applicants’ civil rights.

Obama has rejected the idea of naming a special prosecutor to investigate the episode, saying the investigations by Congress and the Justice Department were sufficient.

Obama has named Daniel Werfel, a top White House budget officer, to replace Miller.

Also Thursday, Joseph Grant, one of Miller’s top deputies, announced plans to retire June 3, according to an internal IRS memo. Grant is commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities division, which includes the agents that targeted Tea Party groups for additional scrutiny.

Grant joined the IRS in 2005 and took over as acting commissioner of the tax exempt and government entities division in December 2010. He was just named the permanent commissioner May 8.

When asked whether Grant was pressured to leave, IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Grant had more than 31 years of federal service and it was his personal decision to leave.

(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Key issues can be simply ignored or, better yet, printed where they are less likely to be seen.  In that way, it can be said that the story was reported – even though it was essentially invisible.

A recent case occurred in the Kentucky Enquirer (sister to the Cincinnati Enquirer).  The Benghazi hearings began on May 8th with the expected party line split regarding its anticipation.  Those in favor of the Administration were trying to minimize any expectation that serious wrong-doing would be exposed.  Meanwhile, their opponents were convinced that evidence of willful, or at least negligent, fatal decisions would finally come out.

The ramifications of this issue are important enough to warrant everyone’s attention.  The nation must know definitively whether or not those in positions of authority were doing the right things both on 9/11/2012 and the months leading up to it.  Accountability is the key to preventing future tragedies.

So what was the headline on the front page of the May 9^th edition of the Kentucky Enquirer?  — none other than “Feeling Stressed Today?” with colorful red and white emphasis.¹  The sub-heading mentioned that “Kentucky has all the ingredients that can lead up to a nice raging case of stress,” but that the area “makes for a really, really, really, good place to retire. [Page A6]”  That’s nice.

Where was the article on the Benghazi hearings?² … On the bottom of Page A3 — and next to two small ads, one about used cars and the other on replacement windows.  Everyone knows that topics of great importance are to be placed next to cosmetic surgery and male enhancement ads.

1 – The Enquirer changed its format two months ago to include “more bold graphics.”  (in order to distract readers of its reduced emphasis on covering issues of substance?)
² – “Ex-diplomat tells of Benghazi attack,” by Donna Cassata of the Associated Press, Kentucky Enquirer, 5/9/2013

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
May 16, 2013

In the wake of huge shortages of ammunition across the entire nation, police departments are turning to ever more desperate measures to keep their officers armed.

In Proctor, Minnesota, the police chief has become so exasperated with trying to find a supplier that he issued a request to members of the public for help meeting the department’s ammo needs.

Chief Walter Woberg made the public announcement after bullet suppliers notified him that he would have to wait “months” for an order of just 1,000 rounds.

“I go, ‘Do you have 40–caliber qualification rounds?’ And they go, ‘Well, no. It’s going to take six to eight months [to get them],’” Woberg told reporters with NNCNOW.com.

The police chief says that as soon as he issued the call, a Proctor resident immediately offered to loan the police department 1,500 rounds from personal supplies.

“The citizens were like, ‘If you need something, we got plenty here,’” Woberg said, adding that many others also offered to provide bullets to the police department.

“I had several other calls from other citizens that said, ‘Hey, if you need more ammunition we have plenty,’” said Woberg, “I know that if I need ammunition I have citizens out there that will gladly come forward.”

The police department says it will reimburse the resident when it has the supplies to do so.

Chief Woberg also noted that he has written to Mn. Senators to ask for action to counter the ammo shortage.

The nationwide shortage, which comes following massive ammo buys by the Federal government, has seen other police departments having to barter between themselves to meet demand.

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. said last week that he believes that the Obama administration is attempting to “dry up the market” and deprive gun owners of bullets.

As we recently reported, the Department of Homeland Security has announced plans to purchase another 360,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition to add to the roughly 2 billion bullets already bought over the past year.

Inhofe has introduced legislation into the Senate that would limit such stockpiling of bullets by federal agencies.

.

top of page ^

Joseph Wouk·191 videos

Published on May 17, 2013

If you comment we reserve the right to use your comment in/as a post

Follow us, donate and help us stay on-line.

GALLUP: 74% of Americans Think IRS Scandal Deserves More Investigation. 69% think that about Benghazi.

MOE LANE ON THE IRS SCANDALS: Remember, this is not a failure of the system. This is the system.

Flat tax puts all this out of it’s misery, including the IRS…

Please leave your comments either here or there

Click link for video in entirety.

Video triggers calls for investigation of abortionist via WND

If you comment we reserve the right to use your comment in/as a post

Follow us, donate and help us stay on-line.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted a lengthy message to her Facebook wall Thursday criticizing the Obama administration for its handling the Benghazi, IRS, and Associated Press phone records scandals:

Scandalous Hat Trick

Mr. President, when it rains it pours, but most Americans hold their own umbrellas. Today in the Rose Garden you dismissed the idea of a Special Counsel to investigate the IRS scandal. With that, your galling political hubris shined bright in the midst of today’s dark clouds.

Mr. President, how can we trust your Justice Department to conduct an independent investigation when there is a systemic violation of the Hatch Act throughout your administration?

Surely you are aware that the Hatch Act prevents certain federal employees from engaging in political activity. Specifically, it’s illegal for these federal employees to engage in action in support of or in opposition to a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or a partisan political group.

Yet that is exactly what’s happened within the IRS, the Justice Department, and in the Benghazi cover-up. This scandalous hat trick is on your watch. It is not believable that you knew nothing about Obama administration actions in dealing with these scandals. And in regards to Benghazi, when you should have taken appropriate action to save American lives – for instance by calling in the Marines – you were AWOL. Just weeks before the election your team scrubbed the Benghazi talking points in 12 different versions, lied to the American people about some YouTube video being to blame for the deaths of brave Americans who put our country first, and you prove Michael Barone right when he writes, “What actually happened in Benghazi was out of sync with the Obama campaign line.” That’s why you all did what you did. Pure raw politics were at play during a horrific time of loss.

For more evidence of Hatch Act violations right under your nose, simply consider DOJ’s “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into the free press. Do you think they picked up some political talk when tapping the phones in the House press gallery?

Your team is out of control. Those who cannot remember the past and learn from it are doomed to repeat it, and that is exactly what is happening. Look back exactly 40 years ago this week and apply that disheartening chapter of American history to the team you’ve chosen and lead today.

Some of us warned America; we cautioned voters in 2008 that a community organizer with no executive experience and no sense of accountability would be a very poor choice for the nation’s top management position.

Mr. President, you said today that you have “complete confidence” in the Attorney General. America doesn’t. Eric Holder needs to appoint an unbiased Special Counsel to investigate the illegal political action of this administration. And then Eric Holder needs to resign.

Most Americans see ominous dark clouds looming beyond the White House Rose Garden, Mr. President. They’ll roll away only when light is shined on the Obama administration’s antics, and America will only recover when you cease avoiding responsibility in this mission of yours to fundamentally transform America. For that to happen, the press had better learn from their experiences of being duped and provide a deserving public fairer, more intelligent coverage.

Speaking of coverage, glad you finally called in the Marines… shame it was just to hold your umbrella.

- Sarah Palin

Well then. Tell us how you really feel.

Mediaite

Rachel Maddow tonight highlighted another potential problem in the growing IRS targeting scandal plaguing the Obama administration this week. The tax-collecting agency provided private tax information about several conservative groups, including ones whose applications had not been fully processed yet, to the website ProPublica. Maddow said that strictly speaking, this was illegal, and will only make things worse for the IRS.

Maddow claimed that the Tea Party now suddenly “wants to be back on the wings of the IRS scandal,” and said that things are awkward politically because essentially everyone else agrees with them on this scandal. She acknowledged the “improper scrutiny” being given to conservatives groups that seemingly eluded their liberal counterparts.

Maddow highlighted how the same IRS Cincinnati office involved in the targeting scandal released documents to ProPublica for the site’s series of posts on groups misleading the IRS about their political activities. Documents were provided for a number of conservative groups, even from nine that were not approved yet by the IRS, which is technically illegal because “it’s supposed to be secret” if an application has not been approved.

When ProPublica attempted to find out why exactly they were given the documents, Maddow said the IRS’s response was basically “We shouldn’t have done that!” She admitted that the agency “screwed up here” and could end up making its level of scrutiny worse after this week.

Watch the video below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Related articles

• Maddow Warns Tea Party Is Coming Back (breitbart.com)
• Rachel Maddow: Will IRS Targeting Scandal Forever ‘Neuter’ Agency From Being Able To Do Its Job? (mediaite.com)
• Nothing To See Here! O’Donnell Says IRS And Benghazi Are NOT Scandals: ‘IRS Agents Did Nothing Wrong’ (mediaite.com)
• George Soros funded ProPublica ties to IRS attacks on tea party and patriot groups (theglobaldispatch.com)
• Rachel Maddow: People Have ‘Reasonable Fear’ That Gov’t Will Use IRS To Go After Political Enemies | Mediaite (tribalgirl64.newsvine.com)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the Bush administration, I was critical of the misdeeds of government. Being consistent, I apply the same standards to the Obama administration.

While Obama failed to close the infamous prison and has run a drone assassination campaign of dubious legality and morality, his administration  has largely avoided the volume of scandals that have hit previous administrations. While the same Republicans who said very little about 54 attacks on American consulates/embassies under the Bush administration worked tirelessly with the Fox News allies to make Benghazi into a scandal, it would seem that Fox News’ dream has come true: two true scandals on Obama’s watch.

The first involves the IRS which apparently flagged conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for special review. While it has yet to be proven that Obama was directly connected to this, I do hold that leaders are accountable for the actions of those who fall under their authority. This is, of course, can be mitigated by various factors such as reasonable knowledge and the extent to which the leader directly oversees those in question. For example, the CEO of GE is obviously not accountable for a low-level employee stealing office supplies in some office overseas.

While some claim that this scandal has been deflated, this matter probably needs more sorting out.

The second involves the Justice Department obtaining two months of the Associated Press’ telephone records.  As happened so often in the Bush Administration, this apparent violation of rights was  defended by concerns of national security. In this case, the concern was in regards to a criminal investigation of leaked information in a May 7, 2012 AP story about the CIA stopping an al Qaida bomb plot in Yemen.

During the Bush years, I was critical of using appeals to national security to warrant violations of rights and liberties. Being consistent, I must be critical of the same approach when it is used under Obama.

As I have argued before, such apparent violations can sometimes be properly justified by appeals to national security. In the AP case, there do seem to be legitimate grounds for an investigation. However, the handling of the phone records by the DOJ certainly seems to be excessive and unwarranted and it seems to have grotesquely violated the rights of the reporters and editors, not to mention assaulting the foundation of the free press.  This is clearly an unjust act on the part of the department of justice.

Naturally, I cannot help but compare the views expressed on Fox News and by some Republicans when a Republican administration was engaged in violating rights (such as illegal wire tapping, illegal detention and torture) as well as other wrongful and/or incompetent behavior (such as the invasion of Iraq on the basis of lies). This time around, Fox News and I are sort of on the same side in that we are critical of the IRS and DOJ. However, I am acting on the basis of a consistent application of moral principle and the folks at Fox News are presumably following their usual approach of attacking Obama.

As global powers squirm in indecision over Syria, Bashar Assad’s hand improves

As global powers squirm in indecision over Syria, Bashar Assad’s hand improves – Middle East – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

( While “intervention” may be less likely, an Israeli attack will probably happen by tomorrow morning.  Assuming Assad lives up to his promise to Iran, there will be a Syrian retaliation and a full blown war.  Say a prayer for our IDF soldiers and people on the home front. – JW )

Competing interests undermine attempts to convene a global summit on Syria and make military intervention increasingly unlikely.

By Zvi Bar’el | May.16, 2013 | 7:48 PM | 6

Confusion, controversy, helplessness, frustration and despair now describe not only the rebel forces but also the superpowers that are searching for an easy solution to the Syrian crisis. A solution that will not require them to intervene militarily; a solution that will ensure that Syria is ruled by a legitimate, agreed-upon regime, that no superpower takes too big a bite at the expense of its partners, that Iran stops being a regional player and that the crisis does not shake Jordan, set off a domino effect in Lebanon or unleash the hunting hounds of Israel and Turkey.

No American, Russian or Chinese magician has yet managed to pull off such a convoluted trick. It’s doubtful that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, currently in the region, can meet the challenge.

The old-new solution that Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov have found is an international summit, like the one in June 2012, which fell apart shortly after it convened. The idea is to bring together opposition and regime representatives to work out a resolution all parties can live with. Theoretically, in the absence of a military victory for either side, talking could offer a solution. But the preliminary problems, starting with the guest list, could signal the fate of the entire undertaking. Russia is demanding that Iran take part. While the United States is considered likely to acquiesce, certain opposition groups object, on the grounds that a state that abets the murder of Syrian civilians does not belong at the conference.

There is as yet no agreement on which representatives of the regime will attend. According to unconfirmed reports Syrian President Bashar Assad has given a list to Russia, but the United States and the opposition have not agreed on the names. Several agenda-setting meetings are scheduled for this week and next week. These include among Russia, the United States and Britain, among the five powers and among the foreign ministers of the so-called Friends of Syria group of nations, including Turkey and the Arab states. The multiplicity of meetings indicates that there is little agreement.

But even if the parties could agree on the participants and the opposition accepts the representatives of the regime that still leaves one small matter unresolved: the agenda of the summit and the program to be implemented. Assad insists on staying in power until the 2014 presidential election. The United States insists that Assad has no role in any transitional government that may be established. Russia, by insisting “The Syrian people will decide,” supports Assad’s position.

Iran views the continuation of Assad’s rule as the basis for its hold in the Middle East and has defined his survival as an Iranian national interest. Turkey demands Assad’s removal from power, but will not oppose any solution reached among Russia, the United States and the rebels. This will be the position Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presents when he meets with U.S President Barack Obama Thursday. There are disagreements among the Arab states, too, particularly between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the opposition’s main financial backers. Qatar is promoting Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, which comprises the majority of the political opposition and is an important component of the rebel military forces. Saudi Arabia fears that Syria, like Egypt and Tunisia, will become “Brotherhood states” and ally with Iran.

With such a mosaic of disagreements and conflicting interests, it’s hard to find even the tiniest common denominator that could bode well for the summit. But at the same time the option of military intervention seems to be fading into the distance. Obama has not yet decided whether to accept the pro-military intervention position of the CIA or the anti-interventionist stance of the U.S. Department of Defense. In addition Obama must decide whether to join Britain and France in arming the rebels from June 1 or to continue the tango with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Turkey will not intervene militarily without international agreement, and neither the powers nor the rebels want Israeli military intervention.

The more the military option wanes, the stronger Assad’s cards become. He already seems to be in control of the thermostat, not only in Syria but throughout the region. He can, as he has presumably already done, carry out terror attacks in Turkey and Lebanon, and Jordan could be the next target. Such “anonymous” attacks will not serve as a pretext for attacking him, but they could give rise to deadly infighting in each of these states. At the moment, that is Assad’s strength.

If you comment we reserve the right to use your comment in/as a post

Follow us, donate and help us stay on-line.

             The American Crossroads ad matters because it is a preemptive strike against Hillary Clinton and her possible 2016 presidential campaign run. The days of Clinton being Obama’s favorite cabinet member with Republicans are apparently over. According to polls Hillary Clinton easily bears Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan. Chris Christie is closest in the polls.

                The Rove ad never mentions President Obama by name and only shows him briefly standing beside Clinton. They were standing together at Andrews Airforce Base when Ambassador Stevens and his aides bodies arrived back in the U.S. Tie clip of Clinton speaking is important because it uses the most credible criticism of the Obama administration in the wake of the Benghazi attack. It shows her incorrectly blaming the awful internet video that the we had nothing to do with.

                  Roves video portrays Clinton as the problem, showing a shift in no longer going after the Obama administration. The demotion of whistleblower Gregory Hicks after the attack us used as evidence, whether true or not. The ad goes on to ask ” Was she part of the cover-up?” The ad then answers in the affirmative, after airing her saying “What difference does it make?” Never mind that Republicans always omit the next sentence, which was “It is our job to find out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from happening again.” But that isn’t good material for an attack ad.

            The fact that American Crossroad is trying so hard to connect Benghazi to Clinton shows us the large role hyperpartisan shadow money groups okay in our politics. The IRS targeting Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status is completely wrong. But investigating the many shadow money groups playing politics while doling out tax breaks to donors is overdue. This is mist likely the earliest presidential attack ad in history.

             This shows the fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans turned Benghazi into a political stunt to attack a “potential” Democrat candidate for president. Republicans say that Democrats used Sandy Hook that way. But there was a difference, it wasnt used as an attack ad, the parents of those children created their own lobbying group to confront the NRA. Benghazi was a tragedy, but the way Republicans are politicizing it is a travesty.

Posted from WordPress for Android