Thread: IRS Targets Conservatives

The IRS Scandal, Day 70

• House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, IRS Chief Counsel’s Office Demanded Information on 2010 Election Activity of Tea Party Applicants
• House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Letter to IRS Principal Deputy Commissioner Daniel Werfel
• American Center for Law and Justice: The IRS Scandal Escalates
• American Spectator: Obama Appointee’s Office Involved in IRS Targeting of Conservative Groups
• Bloomberg: House Democrats Maintain No Political Bias In IRS Handling of Exempt Applications
• Bloomberg: IRS’s Lerner Slowed Review of Tea Parties, Republicans Say
• CNN: Partisan Slugfest Expected at IRS Hearing
• Common Cents: Rep. Darrell Issa Has Information That Will Link IRS Scandal Up Into the White House
• Daily Caller: Conservative Groups Targeted by the IRS Reject the Agency’s New Expedited Review Process
• Daily Caller: IRS lawyer Says Scandal Was Overseen by D.C., Names Names
• Ed Driscoll: IRS Lawyer Says Scandal Was Overseen by D.C.
• Fox News: How High Did It Go? Republicans to Step Up Pressure on IRS at Scandal Hearing
• The Hill: Dems Set Sights on IRS Watchdog
• The Hill: GOP Links IRS Counsel’s Office to Targeting Bias
• The Hill: House Dems: IRS IG Intervening on Document Release
• Hot Air: Christine O’Donnell a Victim of IRS Abuse?
• Huffington Post: IRS Scandal Hearings Put Inspector General In The Spotlight
• National Review: How the IRS Targeted Tea Partiers
• National Review: IG Under Attack
• National Review: IRS Disclosed Tax Records of Political Donors, Candidates
• National Review: Tea-Party Applications Reviewed by IRS Chief Counsel, According to Testimony
• Politico: Five Questions for Tax Inspector General J. Russell George
• Politico: GOP: Lois Lerner Approach Delayed Applications
• Think Progress: Treasury Inspector General Blocked IRS From Releasing Documents That Show Agency Targeted Progressive Groups
• Town Hall: Democrats: Let's Investigate the IRS Inspector General Whose Facts We Don't Like
• Town Hall: IRS in the Hot Seat Again on Capitol Hill
• Town Hall: Surprise: Obama-Appointed IRS Chief Counsel "Helped Develop" Targeting Methods
• Town Hall: Who Improperly Accessed IRS Records?
• USA Today: Rep. Darrell Issa: IRS Tea Party Trail Leads to DC
• USA Today: Top IRS Lawyers Had Role in Targeting, GOP Says
• Wall Street Journal: The IRS Goes to Washington: New Testimony Links Political Vetting to Orders from D.C.
• Washington Examiner: IRS Scandal: Justice Department May Have Ignored Reports
• Washington Post: House Democrats, GOP Press Competing Views Before Another Hearing on IRS Controversy
• Washington Post: Investigator Who Rebuked IRS to Testify on Capitol Hill
• Washington Post: IRS Chief: Chance of Tax Audit Not Affected by a Company's Industry, Location or Politics
• Washington Post: IRS Chief Counsel’s Office Involved in Targeting Controversy
• Washington Times: IRS Officials in Washington Ordered Special Scrutiny: Congressional Investigation Finds
• Washington Times: Former GOP Senate Candidate Christine O’Donnell Told Her Tax Records Were Breached
• Weekly Standard: Congressional Testimony: IRS Chief Counsel Played Part in Scandal

Looks like it is heating up again. Just won't go away!

^
Heh...appears to be pretty prevalent in a lot of other folks minds!

The IRS Scandal, Day 71

• Bloomberg: IRS Inspector General Says He’s Disturbed by Documents He Lacked
• Citizens for Tax Justice: The Wrongheaded Quest to Shrink the IRS
• Forbes: IRS Inspector Shellacs Oversight Committee About Tea Party Scandal
• Heritage Foundation: Can We Trust the Justice Department in the New IRS Scandal?
• The Hill: Issa Vows IRS Hearing Will Show DC Involvement in Tea Party Targeting
• Huffington Post: Darrell Issa Compares Elijah Cummings To 'Little Boy' In IRS Hearing
• Human Events: Will the IRS Scandal Finally Lead to the White House?
• Investor's Business Daily: IRS Lawyer Admits Tea Party Targeting Run By D.C.
• National Review: Applications of Liberal Groups Not Scrutinized, IRS Agent Says
• National Review: Gowdy Dismantles IRS’s Excuses Behind Targeting
• National Review: Inspector General Defends Integrity in IRS Audit
• National Review: IRS Lawyer: Treatment of Tea-Parties Unlike Anything I’ve Ever Seen
• National Review: Krauthammer’s Take: IRS Scandal ‘Left Cincinnati And Is Now In DC’
• National Review: Targeting from the Top of the IRS
• Politico: IRS Inspector General J. Russell George Does Damage Control
• Salon: Now Issa’s on the Hot Seat
• Salon: Tables Turn on IRS Scandal
• Talking Points Memo: Cummings Blasts Issa For Suggesting White House Link to IRS Targeting
• Tax Analysts Blog: IRS: Victim, Football, Both?, by Christopher Bergin
• Town Hall: GOP Senate Candidate's IRS Records Misused
• Town Hall: Round Two: 'Shoot the Messenger' Flops at IRS Hearings
• U.S. News & World Report: House Panel Scrutinizes IRS Inspector General Report
• USA Today: Inspector Says IRS Withheld Info on Targeting Liberals
• USA Today: IRS Employees Say Approval Process Micromanaged
• Wall Street Journal op-ed: A Bombshell in the IRS Scandal, by Peggy Noonan
• Wall Street Journal: IRS Workers Say Lack of Guidance Hindered Tea-Party Cases
• Washington Examiner: IRS Testimony Points to Obama's Appointee in IRS Chief Counsel's Office
• Washington Post: Did Rachel Maddow Race-Bait Darrell Issa?
• Washington Post: Treasury Official Defends IRS Audit
• Washington Times: IRS IG: Audit Never Labeled Groups ‘Conservative’ or ‘Liberal’
• Washington Times: IRS Officials in Washington Ordered Special Scrutiny: Congressional Investigation Finds

The IRS 'Scandal' Isn't Worth The Ink It's Getting
Fri, May 17, 2013
by Steve Almond 23

Let me be perhaps the first human being in America to declare that the controversy over the IRS’s alleged persecution of conservative groups is, to use a technical term, a steaming pile of cow poop.

As it happens, cow poop is one of our nation’s most precious resources, and in the days and weeks to come you can rest assured that this cow poop will be used to fertilize both the political fortunes of the Republican Party and the precarious balance sheet of our sanctimonious free press.

Yes, Virginia, nothing sells papers like a good old-fashioned fake scandal, and this one — which conveniently affirms the perpetual persecution complex that has become the default setting of the conservative movement — will be flogged to death.

Nothing sells papers like a good old-fashioned fake scandal…

But let’s look at the actual events and the larger context in which they occurred, by which I mean “the facts,” those stupid things Ronald Reagan was always complaining about.

In 2010, the conservative members of the Supreme Court voted, at the behest of a group called Citizens United, to eliminate many of the campaign finance laws enacted after Watergate.

The one that gets most of the ink involves allowing corporations (who are really just giant people whose consciences happen to function like cash registers) to make unlimited and anonymous political contributions.

But Citizens United also decreed that organizations devoted to issues of “social welfare” could apply for tax-exempt status as 501(c)(4)s.

Immediately, thousands of groups sought the exemption. Almost all of them were and are blatantly political operations . This includes the corporate slush funds run by Karl Rove and his Democratic counterparts.

The IRS, meanwhile, is required by Congress to review every application for tax-exempt status, and has been since 1913. That means it’s the job of auditors to determine if a group is primarily engaged in politics or seeks to promote “the common good and social welfare of a community.”


That’s a pretty complicated judgment to make, especially when the number of applications for these so-called 501(c)(4)s has skyrocketed, while the IRS budget has been slashed by 17 percent per capita over the past decade.

Those of you who have worked at a job in which there were sudden increases in the demand for work output, combined with sharp cuts in staffing, may now be a position to guess what happened next.

It’s called triage. IRS auditors, in an effort to flag applications that were primarily political organizations, set aside 300 for a closer look. Of these, a third had “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their name or explanatory papers.

Now, if anyone wants to argue that “Tea Party” groups are primarily interested in promoting social welfare, versus pursuing a partisan agenda, I would ask that you identify a single democratic candidate or issue supported by such groups.

I’ll wait.

So here’s what we’ve got: a bunch of IRS workers guilty of using a short cut to finish a task Congress charged them with performing.

For all the whining we’ll hear about how Tea Party groups had their rights trampled, not a single one has yet to claim its tax-exempt status was denied. They just had to fill out long questionnaires and wait a long time. Wah wah!

The big cover-up here isn’t being perpetrated by the president, but a Fourth Estate too craven and hysterical even to identify the true moral folly lurking in its own frantic news cycles.

Ironically, the application of at least one progressive group was actually denied, and others had to answer the same questions as Tea Party groups.

But of course, with a few notable exceptions , you won’t hear any of this silly context from your friends in the media. Why undermine such a juicy narrative?

Instead, we’ll get endless investigations and congressional hearings and the paranoid ranting of our professionally aggrieved right-wing media. We’ll hear that Obama is somehow behind all this, despite the fact that the IRS commissioner at the time of the alleged witch-hunt, Doug Shulman, was appointed by President George W. Bush. Pundits will pontificate. GOPers will hyperventilate. A bunch of people will get fired, starting with acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, Shulman’s successor, who resigned Wednesday, at the request of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, though he had nothing to do with any of this nonsense.

The larger outrage — that political groups of all persuasions are lying about their ambitions to avoid paying taxes, that corporations have been given license to pollute our political discourse with propaganda — will be lost in a din of grandstanding.

This isn’t Watergate, folks.

The big cover-up here isn’t being perpetrated by the president, but a Fourth Estate too craven and hysterical even to identify the true moral folly lurking in its own frantic news cycles.

^
The IRS Scandal(s) are heating up if you haven't been paying attention there, harry. BTW, you gotta give us a link to this author of that piece when you get a chance. There's a good fellow!

A Bombshell In The IRS Scandal.

"The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.
That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn’t say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan.
Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency."


Recall how Obama 'joked' about putting the IRS on his enemies back in 2009?

You learn something new every day!

I didn’t know the IRS Chief Counsel worked out of Cincinnati.

“The ‘nothing to see here’ apologists for the IRS harassment of right-wing exempt organizations have always said that nothing wrong happened, and it was the work of rogue employees in the Cincinnati hinterlands anyway. Perhaps not.”

Getting closer to the Oval Office or what?

Doesn't seem to be withering on the vine or going away - why do you suppose that is?

The IRS Scandal, Day 75

• American Thinker: The IRS Intervened in Tea Party Elections
• The Blaze: Report: IRS Official at Center of Scandal Allegedly Met With President Two Days Before Drafting New Targeting Criteria
• Conservative HQ: IRS Targeting Investigation Creeps Toward Obama White House
• Daily Caller: Embattled IRS Chief Counsel Met With Obama 2 Days Before Agency Changed Targeting Criteria
• National Review: Democrats Train Their Fire on the IG
• National Review: O’Donnell: IRS ‘Set Up a Back Door’ for Political Opponents to Access Tax Records
• National Review: The Smearing of J. Russell George
• News With Views: The IRS Scandal Beats a Path to the White House
• Politico: IRS Scrutinized Some Liberal Groups
• Powerline: The Assault on Russell George
• Reason: IRS Pressed in Court to Disclose Policy for Dealing With Pro-Israel Groups
• Reason: IRS Watchdog Investigates Charge that Christine O'Donnell Was Targeted Over Senate Bid
• Sunshine State News: Are the DOJ and IRS in Cahoots?
• Town Hall: Top IRS Officials Met at White House One Day Before New Targeting Guidelines Were Issued

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO2wZTwrH-Q

The IRS Scandal, Day 77

• Accounting Today: Congress Probes Status of IRS Officials and Documents in Tea Party Scandal
• Daily Caller: Watch Joe Scarborough Smack Jay Carney Around Over the IRS Scandal
• The Hill: Camp, Levin Press IRS for More Documents
• The Hill: House GOP seeks answers on status of IRS's Lerner
• The Hill: Lew: IRS Targeting Not Politically Motivated
• Huffington Post: Joe Scarborough to Jay Carney on IRS: 'Stop Your Games With Me'
• Investor's Business Daily: Plenty of Investigation to Go in Growing IRS Scandal
• National Review: Lew: IRS Targeting Not Driven by ‘Political Decision Making’
• Politico: Jonah Goldberg Apologizes for IRS Charge
• Town Hall: IRS Investigation: Not So "Phony"
• Town Hall: Jay Carney on Investigation Into IRS Targeting Conservatives: This Whole Thing is "Phony"
• Town Hall: Senate Dems: We Need to Increase Funding For the IRS
• USA Today: IRS Scandal Bungling or Wrongdoing? Your Say
• Washington Times: House Republicans May Widen IRS Inquiry: Lawmakers to Focus on Audits of Conservative Nonprofits
• Washington Times: White House Won’t Confirm Visit by IRS Counsel at Suspicious Time

Heh...even Joe Scarborough of MSNBC is fed up with the stonewalling. But, guess what? This Scandal ain't going away anytime soon!

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

The IRS 'Scandal' Isn't Worth The Ink It's Getting
Fri, May 17, 2013
by Steve Almond 23

Let me be perhaps the first human being in America to declare that the controversy over the IRS’s alleged persecution of conservative groups is, to use a technical term, a steaming pile of cow poop.

As it happens, cow poop is one of our nation’s most precious resources, and in the days and weeks to come you can rest assured that this cow poop will be used to fertilize both the political fortunes of the Republican Party and the precarious balance sheet of our sanctimonious free press.

Yes, Virginia, nothing sells papers like a good old-fashioned fake scandal, and this one — which conveniently affirms the perpetual persecution complex that has become the default setting of the conservative movement — will be flogged to death.

Nothing sells papers like a good old-fashioned fake scandal…

But let’s look at the actual events and the larger context in which they occurred, by which I mean “the facts,” those stupid things Ronald Reagan was always complaining about.

In 2010, the conservative members of the Supreme Court voted, at the behest of a group called Citizens United, to eliminate many of the campaign finance laws enacted after Watergate.

The one that gets most of the ink involves allowing corporations (who are really just giant people whose consciences happen to function like cash registers) to make unlimited and anonymous political contributions.

But Citizens United also decreed that organizations devoted to issues of “social welfare” could apply for tax-exempt status as 501(c)(4)s.

Immediately, thousands of groups sought the exemption. Almost all of them were and are blatantly political operations . This includes the corporate slush funds run by Karl Rove and his Democratic counterparts.

The IRS, meanwhile, is required by Congress to review every application for tax-exempt status, and has been since 1913. That means it’s the job of auditors to determine if a group is primarily engaged in politics or seeks to promote “the common good and social welfare of a community.”


That’s a pretty complicated judgment to make, especially when the number of applications for these so-called 501(c)(4)s has skyrocketed, while the IRS budget has been slashed by 17 percent per capita over the past decade.

Those of you who have worked at a job in which there were sudden increases in the demand for work output, combined with sharp cuts in staffing, may now be a position to guess what happened next.

It’s called triage. IRS auditors, in an effort to flag applications that were primarily political organizations, set aside 300 for a closer look. Of these, a third had “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their name or explanatory papers.

Now, if anyone wants to argue that “Tea Party” groups are primarily interested in promoting social welfare, versus pursuing a partisan agenda, I would ask that you identify a single democratic candidate or issue supported by such groups.

I’ll wait.

So here’s what we’ve got: a bunch of IRS workers guilty of using a short cut to finish a task Congress charged them with performing.

For all the whining we’ll hear about how Tea Party groups had their rights trampled, not a single one has yet to claim its tax-exempt status was denied. They just had to fill out long questionnaires and wait a long time. Wah wah!

The big cover-up here isn’t being perpetrated by the president, but a Fourth Estate too craven and hysterical even to identify the true moral folly lurking in its own frantic news cycles.

Ironically, the application of at least one progressive group was actually denied, and others had to answer the same questions as Tea Party groups.

But of course, with a few notable exceptions , you won’t hear any of this silly context from your friends in the media. Why undermine such a juicy narrative?

Instead, we’ll get endless investigations and congressional hearings and the paranoid ranting of our professionally aggrieved right-wing media. We’ll hear that Obama is somehow behind all this, despite the fact that the IRS commissioner at the time of the alleged witch-hunt, Doug Shulman, was appointed by President George W. Bush. Pundits will pontificate. GOPers will hyperventilate. A bunch of people will get fired, starting with acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, Shulman’s successor, who resigned Wednesday, at the request of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, though he had nothing to do with any of this nonsense.

The larger outrage — that political groups of all persuasions are lying about their ambitions to avoid paying taxes, that corporations have been given license to pollute our political discourse with propaganda — will be lost in a din of grandstanding.

This isn’t Watergate, folks.

The big cover-up here isn’t being perpetrated by the president, but a Fourth Estate too craven and hysterical even to identify the true moral folly lurking in its own frantic news cycles.

I agree with you, they're not my favorite people in the World to deal with, but they have always been professional, reasonable and polite when I've needed to call them.

The far right radical movement contains a disproportional number of so called tax protesters, those wackos who claim the 16th Amendment is somehow defective or unconstitutional so they do not need to pay taxes. Targeting tax protesters is a very reasonable and appropriate use of IRS resources.

The IRS Scandal, Day 78

• Cincinnati Enquirer: IRS Targeting Witnesses Speak Out
• The Hill: Senate Moves Bill Increasing IRS, Dodd-Frank Funding
• Houston Chronicle: Texas Republicans Furious After White House Discounts IRS Targeting as ‘Phony Scandal’
• Huffington Post: IRS Budget Cuts Sought by GOP Refused by Senate Panel
• Huffington Post: New IRS Scandal Twist Disputed by Jack Lew
• IRS Oversight Board, Press Release
• IRS Oversight Board, Letter to IRS Deputy Commissioner Daniel Werfel
• Powerline: Lois Lerner's Ace in the Hole
• Rare: Is the IRS Obstructing Justice?:

• Tax Analysts: Photo Op With President Turns Wilkins Into Latest EO Scandal Target
• Wall Street Journal op-ed: Fortress IRS, by Peggy Noonan
• Wall Street Journal editorial: Lois Lerner's Summer Vacation
• Washington Examiner: IRS Watchdog Reviewing Claims of Improper Audit of Tea Party Farmer
• Washington Times: Obama’s ‘Phony’ Scandals Line Draws GOP Retort

Pretty stunning graphic I'd say...

Rather damning:

"The scandals that have so damaged the (IRS) agency took place in just the past few years, since the current administration began. And it is not Republicans on the Hill or conservatives in the press who have revealed the agency as badly managed, political in its actions, and really quite crazily run. That information, or at least the early outlines of it, came from the agency’s own inspector general."

Fortress IRS: Agency stonewalling could permanently harm Americans’ faith in government.

That faith in government is only held by a rapidly diminishing number of folks I'd reckon...

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Pretty stunning graphic I'd say..

Isn't the IRS bound by law to keep tax records confidential?

Originally Posted by quimbian corholla

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Pretty stunning graphic I'd say..

Isn't the IRS bound by law to keep tax records confidential?

Yes they are but that graphic is on about the docs congressional investigators are subpoena-ing.

Remember the Obama Scandals? That Used to Be a Thing
By Jonathan Chait

U.S. President Barack Obama approaches the podium to make a statement on the situation regarding the Internal Revenue Service May 15, 2013 at the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. Obama had a meeting with Senior Treasury Officials, including Treasury Secretary Jack Lew via telephone, on the situation regarding the Internal Revenue Service.

Sifting through the Republican responses to President Obama’s climate speech Tuesday, an odd omission could be found — or, at least, it would have seemed odd as recently as a week or two ago. The various Republican statements churned out for the media dutifully denounced the president as a job-killing, coal-hating, stealth-taxing liberal. See Mitch McConnell , John Boehner , Rand Paul , Orrin Hatch , the National Republican Senatorial Committee via spokesblogger Jennifer Rubin , and any others you care to Google on your own. The word that never appears in any of them is scandal. Not a one of them claimed Obama was attempting to distract America from his scandals.

It is not that Republicans have previously shied away from bringing “scandal” in to putatively unrelated Obama doings. The existence of a presidential “scandal” can be inferred when the opposition party — and both parties do this — attempts to tie the scandal to anything the president does or does not do. Republicans have previously defined as attempts to distract from the scandal such disparate Obama actions as nominating judges , proposing to reduce student loans , visiting the Jersey Shore , and defending the use of drones . That is to say, basically everything Obama has done since the dawn of the Obama scandal era about seven weeks ago. If the president can give a major speech without either the opposition or the new media accusing him of attempting to distract from the scandal, then the scandal is over.

Do you remember how all-consuming the “Obama scandals” once were? This was a turn of events so dramatic it defined Obama’s entire second term — he was “waylaid by controversies ,” or at least “seriously off track ,” “beset by scandals ,” enduring a “second-term curse ,” the prospect of “endless scandals ,” Republicans “beginning to write his legislative obituary ,” and Washington had “turned on Obama .” A ritualistic media grilling of Jay Carney, featuring the ritualistic comparisons of him to Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler, sanctified the impression of guilt.

It has come and gone, having left barely a trace. To be sure, the Obama scandals live on in the conservative world, where the evidence of deep corruption and venality grows stronger and stronger. But that is merely the confirmation of suspicions of “Chicago politics,” ACORN and so on, that predate recent events and don’t require any particular facts to survive.

The IRS scandal is instructive. The most damning moment of the episode was the first day, when the IRS disclosed that it applied one-sided scrutiny to conservative political organizations seeking tax-exempt status. “Obama Supporter Has Perfectly Improbable Explanation Absolving President From Blame For Scandals,” mocked The Onion . Jon Stewart lost his shit.

But then the IRS inspector general, a Republican, reported that the entire program came from within the agency, with no direction at all from Obama or any members of his team. It was just an agency scandal. Subsequent revelations have made the matter look even more benign. Apparently, the agency also targeted liberal groups for possible violations, using terms like progressive to flag political groups. In other words, there may be no scandal here at all. The IRS was looking to make sure political groups weren’t abusing the tax code by pretending to be nonpolitical, and it tried to search for such abuses by using terms like tea party and progressive that would signal partisanship.

Why did we think the agency was targeting only conservatives? Because apparently Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, ordered the agency to audit its treatment of tea-party groups, and only tea-party groups. The IRS dutifully reported it was indeed targeting tea-party groups; everybody assumed it was doing no such thing to liberal groups. The IRS inspector general is defending its probe, but the IRS's flagging of conservative groups seems, at worst, to be marginally stricter than its flagging of liberal groups, not the one-sided political witch hunt portrayed by early reports.

What about the rest of the scandals? Well, there aren’t any, and there never were. Benghazi is a case of a bunch of confused agencies caught up in a fast-moving story trying to coordinate talking points. The ever-shifting third leg of the Obama scandal trifecta — Obama’s prosecution of leaks, or use of the National Security Agency — is not a scandal at all. It’s a policy controversy. One can argue that Obama’s policy stance is wrong, or dangerous, or a threat to democracy. But when the president is carrying out duly passed laws and acting at every stage with judicial approval, then the issue is the laws themselves, not misconduct.

The whole Obama scandal episode is a classic creation of a “narrative” — the stitching together of unrelated data points into a story. What actually happened is this: House Republicans passed a twisted account of a hearing to ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who misleadingly claimed to have seen it, creating the impression that the administration was caught in a major lie. Then the IRS story broke, which we now see was Republicans demanding a one-sided audit and thus producing the impression of one-sided treatment. In that context, legitimate controversies over Obama’s civil-rights policies became the “three Obama scandals,” exposing a government panopticon, if not a Nixonian administration bent on revenge.

The collapse of the Benghazi story happened very quickly, when Jake Tapper’s reporting found that Karl had peddled a bogus story. (It’s notable that the only misconduct in both the Benghazi and the IRS stories was committed by House Republicans.) But the scandal cloud lingered through the still-extant IRS scandal, which in turn lent the scandal odor to the civil-liberties dispute.

Now that the IRS scandal has turned into a Darrell Issa scandal, we’re left with … an important dispute over domestic surveillance, which has nothing to do with scandal at all. The entire scandal narrative was an illusion.

The Obama Scandals Used to Be a Thing -- Daily Intelligencer

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Why are we not surprised that the Lamestream Media is rolling out a propaganda offensive to attempt to discredit the Obama Scandals and the IRS one in particular!

Mebe it's because the tentacles have reached into Big White?


The Daily Intelligencer?

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Why are we not surprised that the Lamestream Media is rolling out a propaganda offensive to attempt to discredit the Obama Scandals and the IRS one in particular!

Mebe it's because the tentacles have reached into Big White?

So the absence of a scandal is proof that the scandal reaches to the White House? As soon as you can provide evidence of that then all who believe it is simply republican shennanigans will have to eat a slice of crow pie won't they.

Hop to it!

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

^
Why are we not surprised that the Lamestream Media is rolling out a propaganda offensive to attempt to discredit the Obama Scandals and the IRS one in particular!

Mebe it's because the tentacles have reached into Big White?


The Daily Intelligencer?

One paragraph sums it up:

The whole Obama scandal episode is a classic creation of a “narrative” — the stitching together of unrelated data points into a story. What actually happened is this: House Republicans passed a twisted account of a hearing to ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who misleadingly claimed to have seen it, creating the impression that the administration was caught in a major lie. Then the IRS story broke, which we now see was Republicans demanding a one-sided audit and thus producing the impression of one-sided treatment. In that context, legitimate controversies over Obama’s civil-rights policies became the “three Obama scandals,” exposing a government panopticon, if not a Nixonian administration bent on revenge.

Republicans' shameful lies are being exposed time and time again. And the more they do it, the more people will realise they are the ones obstructing the political process with vindictive and pointless witchhunts backed by the sort of lies you post with monotonous regularity,

Next?

The IRS Scandal, Day 79

• Fox News: Are Media Buying Into ‘Phony Scandal’ Claim?
• National Law Journal: Why Should the Internal Revenue Service Be Beyond Reproach?
• National Review: Lawmakers Ask: What Happened to Employees Implicated in IRS Scandal?
• NewsBusters: Not News: IRS Has Only Provided 0.02% of Documents Requested by House
• NewsBusters: Politico Goes to Pot While Ignoring IRS Scandal Developments
• NewsMax: Rove: Obama Didn't Think Scandals Were Phony Earlier
• Wall Street Journal: Fire Power
• Washington Examiner: Obama Calling Scandals 'Phony' Creates Political Firestorm
• Washington Times: David Axelrod: Bigger Issues to Face Than IRS Scandal
• Brownsville Herald: Charred Chickens Left at IRS a Possible Curse: "IRS agents found an unwelcome surprise — and a possible witchcraft curse — on Friday when unknown individuals left a trio of charred, headless chickens outside the agency’s McAllen offices. ... The three chickens were each without a head and appeared to have been set on fire, their feathers not plucked from their bodies. ...The motive behind the animal abuse was unknown Friday — but it shares traits with a witch’s curse, a local expert said. The use of charred chickens points to a person using Santeria or Voodoo — types of witchcraft — to harm someone who works in that building, said Ana Davila, a self-described “medium” in the Mission area who says she performs white magic, having removed curses and spells for more than 11 years — though she was not called to the federal building on Friday. More than likely a person that was unhappy with an investigation or an audit sought to place a curse on an agent, Davila said."

Well, maybe a little Voo Doo will get the Scandal(s) moving!

Those who keep saying there’s no scandal here need to acknowledge that the IRS admitted targeting conservative groups months ago...

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Those who keep saying there’s no scandal here need to acknowledge that the IRS admitted targeting conservative groups months ago...

Reading isn't one of your strong points, is it?

Why did we think the agency was targeting only conservatives? Because apparently Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, ordered the agency to audit its treatment of tea-party groups, and only tea-party groups. The IRS dutifully reported it was indeed targeting tea-party groups; everybody assumed it was doing no such thing to liberal groups. The IRS inspector general is defending its probe, but the IRS's flagging of conservative groups seems, at worst, to be marginally stricter than its flagging of liberal groups, not the one-sided political witch hunt portrayed by early reports.

There is no scandal here. Your masters are deceiving you.

^Small beer.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE:

“The IRS subjected conservative groups already granted tax-exempt status to additional scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged on Monday. Issa called on a Treasury watchdog already looking into the IRS to investigate the matter, and signaled he would expand his committee’s probe into improper targeting of political groups given the new revelations. . . . Issa specifically questioned whether the IRS had a “systematic” plan in place to automatically review conservative groups several years after granting an exemption. He said that interviews with 18 IRS employees indicated that at least some Tea Party groups were referred to the unit that conducted follow-up scrutiny.”

This Scandal is far from concluded as we've noted. It's tentacles now reach into Big White as previously mentioned and the stonewlling/deflecting is in overdrive.

You live in dreamland mate, this "scandal" only exists in the minds of foaming-at-the-mouth Fox News viewers and the airheads that preach to them.

And all you've done in that last post is confirm what was said in the one before it!

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged on Monday

Issa seems extremely fond of charging things. Too bad for him that so far they aren't sticking.

Originally Posted by quimbian corholla

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged on Monday

Issa seems extremely fond of charging things. Too bad for him that so far they aren't sticking.

first of all, it should read, "issa (r-CA) whined on monday". he's a bumbling incompetent that is obsessed with whether or not he's getting the respect he thinks he deserves.

it's really difficult to determine who's more incompetent...boehner or issa.

all boehner needs to do is count votes and pass legislation....and he's proven time and again that he can't do either.

(from a purely partisan perspective) all issa needs to do find evidence of wrong doing in the WH and not overplay his hand...and he can't do either.

this breed of republican (2002- present) is just not fit to govern.

if these dopes allow a govt. shutdown this fall pelosi's got a great shot at getting back the gavel.