IRS unfairly targeting Conservatives (Tea Party groups)

[American Patriot]

AG Eric Holder to appear before House Judiciary Committee

Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY11:35 a.m. EDT May 15, 2013

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Attorney General Eric Holder will face "pointed'' questions Wednesday when he appears on Capitol Hill to address a range of controversies shadowing the Obama administration, from the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records to the IRS targeting of conservative groups to the continuing probe into the Boston Marathon bombings.

"Any abridgement of the First Amendment is very concerning, especially reports that the IRS targeted conservative groups for unwarranted scrutiny during an election year,'' committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in advance of Wednesday's hearing. "Congress and the American people expect answers and accountability.''


The House hearing comes a day after Holder announced that the Justice Department had launched an investigation into the activities of the Internal Revenue Services practice of singling out conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.


We'll be live-blogging from the hearing. Check back here at 1 p.m. ET when it is scheduled to begin.

[American Patriot]

The Media Are Protesting Eric Holder

More than 50 media companies—Newsweek and The Daily Beast included—have signed a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole urging stronger protection for reporters and their sources. The letter, written by the D.C. journalism nonprofit the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was sent in response to the revelation that the Department of Justice had secretly seized two months’ worth of Associated Press phone records. The committee demands that the



Media letter to DOJ: Stronger laws needed to protect reporters

Michele Richinick, @mrich120110:57 AM on 05/15/2013



(Photo by Jim Davis/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)



Media companies around the country signed a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder a day after learning about the Justice Department’s subpoena of Associated Press phone records. In the letter, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press urged for a strong federal shield law to protect reporters and their news-gathering materials in a court of law.


The DOJ disclosed on Monday afternoon that it had secretly acquired two months’ worth of phone records of AP reporters and editors as part of an investigation into unauthorized leaks to the press. The records include calls by AP reporters in New York, Washington, and Hartford, Conn. The news-gathering organization learned of the seizure from a letter received on Friday from the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Ronald C. Machen Jr.

“The scope of this action calls into question the very integrity of Department of Justice policies toward the press and its ability to balance, on its own, its police powers against the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public’s interest in reporting on all manner of government conduct, including matters touching on national security which lie at the heart of this case,” the committee wrote in the letter.

The protest was addressed to Holder and copied to Machen, and signed by more than 50 media companies, including MSNBC’s parent company NBCUniversal, along with ABC, CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times Company, Time Inc., Dow Jones, the First Amendment Coalition, and the National Press Club.


The committee in the letter reiterated the AP’s request for the DOJ to return the telephone records and destroy all copies, in addition to explaining how the department will mitigate the impact of the actions and announce any other pending news media-related subpoenas not yet disclosed.


The journalists said they could not remember a similar instance in the 30 years since the DOJ issued guidelines governing its subpoena practice as it relates to phone records from reporters. The guidelines enacted in 1980-specifically to cover telephone records-were developed to accommodate “both the interests of the government in prosecuting crime and the First Amendment interests in reporting on issues of public concern,” they wrote.


This week the Obama administration has also come under fire on two other issues. Officials have acknowledged that the IRS’ Cincinnati office wrongly targeted conservative groups, giving disproportionate scrutiny to their applications to become 501(c)(4) organizations. Questions and GOP conspiracy theories over the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, last September also continue to bog down his administration.

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FLASHBACK: Romney donor vilified by Obama campaign, then subjected to 2 audits

12:40 AM 05/13/2013
Jamie Weinstein



Just months after being slimed by President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, Mitt Romney supporter and businessman Frank VanderSloot was informed that he was going to be audited not only by the Internal Revenue Service, but by the Labor Department as well.

VanderSloot’s saga was told by columnist Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal last July.

In April 2012, VanderSloot, who served as the national co-chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential finance committee, was one of eight Romney backers to be defamed as ”wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records” in a post on the Obama campaign’s website. The post, entitled “Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney’s donors,” singled out VanderSloot for being a ”litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement.”

Two months later, the IRS informed VanderSloot he and his wife were going to be audited, Strassel reported. Two weeks after that, VanderSloot was notified by the Labor Department that it was going to “audit workers he employs on his Idaho-based cattle ranch under the federal visa program for temporary agriculture workers,” reported Strassel.

“The H-2A program allows tens of thousands of temporary workers in the U.S.; Mr. VanderSloot employs precisely three,” Strassel wrote. “All are from Mexico and have worked on the VanderSloot ranch—which employs about 20 people—for five years. Two are brothers. Mr. VanderSloot has never been audited for this, though two years ago his workers’ ranch homes were inspected. (The ranch was fined $8,400, mainly for too many ‘flies’ and for ‘grease build-up’ on the stove. God forbid a cattle ranch home has flies.)”

“This letter requests an array of documents to ascertain whether Mr. VanderSloot’s ‘foreign workers are provided the full scope of protections’ under the visa program: information on the hours they’ve worked each day and their rate of pay, an explanation of their deductions, copies of contracts,” she continued.

In her column, Strassel raised the specter that the IRS targeted VanderSloot for his political activism.

VIDEO:

“Did Mr. Obama pick up the phone and order the screws put to Mr. VanderSloot?” she asked. “Or—more likely—did a pro-Obama appointee or political hire or career staffer see that the boss had an issue with this donor, and decide to do the president an unasked-for election favor? Or did he or she simply think this was a duty, given that the president had declared Mr. VanderSloot and fellow donors ‘less than reputable’?”

VanderSloot’s tale is more relevant in light of the admission Friday by IRS official Lois Lerner that the agency gave extra scrutiny to non-profit tea party groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their name that applied for tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. While Lerner said the agency’s actions were inappropriate, she claimed it was not the result of political bias.

However, a forthcoming report by the IRS inspector general will say that the agency went beyond what Lerner admitted to on Friday by targeting groups which criticized “how the country is being run,” the Washington Post, which got an advanced copy of part of the internal audit, reported Sunday.

Though that practice was soon halted, just months later, in January 2012, groups that applied for tax exempt status which described themselves as “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement” were again subjected to special scrutiny.

On Friday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was among the congressional leaders who called for an investigation into what went on at the IRS.
“The IRS cannot target or intimidate any individual or organization based on their political beliefs,” he said in a statement. “The House will investigate this matter.”

The White House also voiced support for an investigation.

“The president would expect that it would be investigated,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said at the Friday’s press briefing.

While non-profit groups were targeted by the IRS, no hard evidence has yet emerged to show that individuals like VanderSloot were targeted for their political leanings.



IRS timeline shows DC officials in loop on Tea Party targeting

Published May 14, 2013

FoxNews.com
Who is accountable for IRS scandal? http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...rty-targeting/
Thune: Why I questioned the IRS's motives http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...rty-targeting/

Newly obtained documents show the current IRS chief knew about the agency's targeting of Tea Party groups as early as May 2012 and other officials in Washington were clued in more than a year before that, as the scandal continued to spread.

The additional details were provided in a timeline from the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, based on briefings by the inspector general's office investigating the case. Together, they challenged the agency's initial claims that the practice of flagging conservative groups for additional scrutiny was contained to low-level staffers at a Cincinnati office.

The timeline shows that Steven Miller, the acting IRS chief who at the time was a deputy commissioner, was briefed on the practice on May 3, 2012. Despite this briefing, Miller wrote letters to members of Congress at least twice to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status without disclosing that Tea Party groups had been targeted. On July 25, 2012, Miller testified before the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, but again did not mention the additional scrutiny -- despite being asked about it.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., blasted Miller over the revelation.

"It is almost inconceivable to imagine that top officials at the IRS knew conservative groups were being targeted but chose to willfully mislead the Committee's investigation into this practice," he said in a statement.

Further, the timeline shows that managers, after compiling a list of Tea Party and other cases, decided to send their report "up the chain in Washington" in April 2010. The timeline says this report was shared with two executives in Washington, including Lois G. Lerner. Lerner heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations and is the official who first revealed the controversial practice on Friday.

The timeline suggests she knew about the practice even earlier than previously thought. Further, it suggests other Washington officials were aware early on. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that IRS officials at the D.C. headquarters were sending inquiries to conservative groups on their donors, and in at least one case an application came under review in Washington.

Miller's actions are sure to come under increased scrutiny.

At the June hearing, Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, told Miller that some politically active tax-exempt groups in his district had complained about being harassed. Marchant did not explicitly ask if tea party groups were being targeted. But he did ask how applications were handled.

Miller responded, "We did group those organizations together to ensure consistency, to ensure quality. We continue to work those cases," according to a transcript on the committee's website.

Earlier, Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., had raised concerns with the IRS about complaints that tea party groups were being harassed. Boustany specifically mentioned tea party groups in his inquiry.

But in a June 15, 2012, letter to Boustany, Miller said that when the IRS saw an increase in applications from groups that were involved in political activity, the agency "took steps to coordinate the handling of the case to ensure consistency."

He added that agents worked with tax law experts "to develop approaches and materials that could be helpful to the agents working the cases."

Miller did not mention that in 2011, those materials included a list of words to watch for, such as "tea party" and "patriot." He also didn't disclose that in January 2012, the criteria for additional screening was updated to include references to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

The House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Camp, is holding a hearing on the issue Friday and Miller is scheduled to testify.

The Senate Finance Committee announced Monday that it will join a growing list of congressional committees investigating the matter.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see whether they were violating their tax-exempt status. In some cases, the IRS acknowledged, agents inappropriately asked for lists of donors.

The agency blamed low-level employees in a Cincinnati office, saying no high-level officials were aware.

When members of Congress repeatedly raised concerns with the IRS about complaints that tea party groups were being harassed last year, a deputy IRS commissioner took the lead in assuring lawmakers that the additional scrutiny was a legitimate part of the screening process.

That deputy commissioner was Miller, who is now the acting head of the agency.

Camp and other members of the Ways and Means Committee sent at least four inquiries to the IRS, starting in June 2011. Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, sent three inquiries. And Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House oversight committee, sent at least one.

"This was a targeting of the president's political enemies, effectively, and lies about it during the election year so that it wasn't discovered until afterwards," Issa said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning." The fact is this is the kind of investigation that has to be open and transparent to the American people."

None of the responses they received from the IRS acknowledged that conservative groups had ever been targeted, including a response to Hatch dated Sept. 11, 2012 -- four months after Miller had been briefed.

In several letters to members of Congress, Miller went into painstaking detail about how applications for tax-exempt status were screened. But he never mentioned that conservative groups were being targeted, even though people working under him knew as early as June 2011 that tea party groups were being targeted, according to an upcoming report by the agency's inspector general.

The IRS issued a statement Monday saying that Miller had been briefed on May 3, 2012 "that some specific applications were improperly identified by name and sent to the (exempt organizations) centralized processing unit for further review." That was the unit in Cincinnati that handled the tea party applications.

When Lerner responded to inquiries from the House oversight committee, she also didn't mention the fact that tea party groups had ever been targeted. Her responses included 45-page letters in May 2012 to Issa and to Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chairs a subcommittee.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.




IRS scrutiny went beyond Tea Party, targeting of conservative groups broader than thought

Published May 13, 2013
FoxNews.com

An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.

The additional guidelines created by the agency were part of a timeline, obtained by Fox News, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is looking into the controversial IRS practice. IRS officials apologized Friday for the scrutiny, but new information suggests senior leaders were apprised of the effort as early as 2011 despite public denials from the top.

Republican lawmakers have vowed to investigate and hold hearings, calling the revelations deeply troubling.

"The conclusion that the IRS came to is that they did have agents who were engaged in intimidation of political groups," Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers told "Fox News Sunday." "I don't care if you're a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine. It needs to have a full investigation."

The House Ways and Means Committee plans to hold a hearing Friday, Fox News has learned. A top Democrat -- Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus -- also said Monday that his committee would launch a "full investigation" into the matter.

"These actions by the IRS are an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public's trust. Targeting groups based on their political views is not only inappropriate but it is intolerable," the Montana Democrat said in a statement. "Americans expect the IRS to do its job without passion or prejudice. We need to get to the bottom of what happened here. ... The IRS will now be the ones put under additional scrutiny."

President Obama weighed in as well, saying at a press conference Monday that if the reports are true, "then that's outrageous and there's no place for it -- and they have to be held fully accountable."

Obama said he first found out about the practice on Friday. He said that if agents behaved in a partisan fashion, "I've got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it."

The internal IG timeline shows a unit in the agency was looking at Tea Party and "patriot" groups dating back to early 2010. But it shows that list of criteria drastically expanding by the time a June 2011 briefing was held. It then included groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to "make America a better place to live." It even flagged groups whose file included criticism of "how the country is being run."

By early 2012, the criteria were updated to include organizations involved in "limiting/expanding government," education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and social economic reform.

Taken together, the findings of the IG and the initial admissions by the IRS Friday are fueling complaints from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Evidence that the IRS was flagging such groups in 2011 was included in a draft inspector general's report obtained Saturday by Fox News and other news organizations and expected to be released in full later this week.

That information seemingly contradicts public statements by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who told congressional investigators in March 2011 that specific groups were not being targeted.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins on Sunday also called the IRS activities chilling and said she was disappointed that President Obama had not condemned the actions.

"This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust that the American people have in government," Collins told CNN's "State of the Union." "It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review. And I think that it's very disappointing that the president hasn't personally condemned this."

At about the same time, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney released a statement saying: "If the inspector general finds that there were any rules broken or that conduct of government officials did not meet the standards required of them, the president expects that swift and appropriate steps will be taken to address any misconduct."

Michigan Republican Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Friday his committee will hold a hearing on the issue.

The IRS said Friday that it was sorry for what it called the "inappropriate" targeting of the conservative groups during the 2012 elections.

Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.

But on June 29, 2011, Lerner found out that such groups were being targeted, according to the inspector general's report.

She was told at a meeting that groups with "Tea Party," "Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report states.

The 9/12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck.

Collins also said she does not believe the activity was limited to "a couple of rogue IRS employees."

"After all," she added, "groups with `progressive' in their names were not targeted similarly."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.




Alabama tea party groups targeted by IRS (updated)

By George Talbot | gtalbot@al.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on May 13, 2013 at 1:14 PM, updated May 13, 2013 at 8:52 PM

At least two Alabama tea party groups said they were singled out by the Internal Revenue Service over their applications for tax-exempt status.

Both the Common Sense Campaign, a Mobile-based tea party group, and the Wetumpka Tea Party said they were targeted by the IRS, which apologized Friday for what it called “inappropriate” reviews of conservative political groups.

Pete Riehm, a co-founder of the Common Sense Campaign, said the IRS blocked his group’s application to be recognized as a 501c4 non-profit organization.

“We were never audited, but we were certainly harassed,” Riehm said today.

A House bill introduced today would make it a crime punishable by jail time if IRS agents are found guilty of discriminating against political groups.

Riehm said his tea party group submitted its initial application to the IRS in the summer of 2009, along with an $850 filing fee. He said the campaign spent nearly two years and at least $2,000 in legal costs dealing with the IRS’ questions about the application.

Riehm said the group faced repeated delays and was told on at least two occasions that its application had been lost, forcing Common Sense organizers to restart the application process.

Riehm said his group was asked to provide a list of its donors – a violation of IRS policy. He said the agency additionally asked for information about people who posted comments on the campaign’s web site.

The group’s efforts to comply with the IRS only brought new rounds of requests from the tax agency, he said.

Riehm said his concerns peaked in early 2011, when the IRS asked the campaign to identify the employers of its campaign donors and board members.

"They were definitely trying to scare us." - Pete Riehm, a co-founder of the Common Sense Campaign

“That’s when I knew we were being targeted. It had a chilling effect on our ability to raise money,” he said. “They were definitely trying to scare us.”

Becky Gerritson, president of the Wetumpka Tea Party, said her group faced similar delays after applying for tax exempt status in October 2010. After months without any response from the IRS, she said the group received an 8-page letter in February 2012 requesting extensive details about its activities.

"They wanted copies of any communications with legislators. They wanted the names of our volunteers and anyone who'd spoken at our events. They even wanted actual copies of the speeches," Gerritson said. "It was very disorienting."

Gerritson said her group declined to provide the information based on legal advice from the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington-based law firm that represents about 30 tea party organizations.

The IRS informed the group in July 2012 that its application had been approved, Gerritson said.

Riehm said the Common Sense Campaign, frustrated by mounting legal costs, chose to drop its application in 2011.

“We decided to just pay the tax and quit fighting the bureaucracy,” he said. “It was obvious they weren’t going to recognize us” as a tax-exempt organization.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, said Friday that about 75 groups were inappropriately targeted. None had their tax-exempt status revoked, Lerner said.

The agency — led at the time by a Bush administration appointee — blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

That explanation wasn’t good enough for members of the Wetumpka Tea Party.

“Our group was targeted by the IRS,” the group said in a message posted on its Facebook page. “ We have a hard time believing this was an ‘accident’ by low level IRS people.”

Updated at 8 p.m. to include comments from Becky Gerritson


Breaking: IRS admits current Commissioner knew of targeting … a year ago; Update: ProPublica: Same office leaked files to us

posted at 6:11 pm on May 13, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

The Associated Press, via the Washington Post, runs this breaking story about the exploding IRS scandal. It turns out that while outgoing IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress twice in March 2012 that the agency wasn’t targeting conservative groups, just two months later his acting replacement Steve Miller knew all about it:

IRS says current acting commissioner learned in May 2012 that tea party groups were targeted.

The current commissioner knew for a full year that the agency was targeting Tea Party groups and other opposition organization for aggressive auditing?

And in the middle of an election year, no less? And yet, today Barack Obama insists that he knew nothing of this practice until last Friday.

This is either the most incompetent administration ever, or one of the least honest. I don’t think there’s a third option any longer, especially in this scandal.

Guess who gets to be on the hot seat for Friday?

The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a formal hearing Friday to probe the Internal Revenue Service for placing heavier scrutiny on conservative groups that applied for nonprofit status between 2010 and 2012.

IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George are expected to testify Friday morning during the hearing, which committee leaders said would examine the agency’s “practice of targeting applicants for tax-exempt status based on political leanings.”

Expect Miller to get a lot of questions as to why he never mentioned this practice in June 2012:

The Internal Revenue Service says acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller was first informed in May 2012 that tea party groups were inappropriately targeted for scrutiny.

A month later he wrote a member of Congress to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status without mentioning the controversy.

Who told him to keep quiet? That will certainly be one of the questions. At the same time, this poses a fresh set of problems for Shulman, too. It will be very difficult to argue that he didn’t know anything about the practice in March 2012 when his chief counsel knew about it in August 2011, but that Miller came up to speed on it just after his departure. And both men will have to answer whether and when they briefed the White House on this — or whether the White House briefed them to put the practice in place.

Update: Funny how Lois Lerner never mentioned this in her Friday-afternoon dump attempt, huh?

Update: Wow … just wow:

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.

The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.

In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We madesixof those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

It’s amazing that ProPublica is willing to burn its source, at least in a general sense, as the key update that it is. This shows that the aggressive actions from this office were hardly apolitical. All nine of the confidential files involved conservative groups, not just a cross-section of 501(c)4s applying for exemptions. This was a coordinated effort to attack conservative groups, although ProPublica ran their article after the election.

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Tea Party leader calls IRS actions something out of a 'dictatorship'

By Daniel Strauss - 05/14/13 09:14 AM ET



The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups is something that would happen in a “dictatorship,” the co-founder of one of the largest Tea Party organizations in the country said Tuesday.

“This is chilling, and it's scary,” Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, said in an interview Tuesday morning on "The Alice Stewart Show."

“And this is the kind of thing that you expect to hear in third world countries, in dictatorships and tyrannies.” Tea Party Patriots is one of several conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status that were investigated and targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS. The Washington Post reported Monday that officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the probes, showing the scandal extended beyond the IRS’s Cincinnati branch.

“The people in power in the government will use government agencies to intimidate citizens and make them afraid to speak out and to act,” Martin said Tuesday.

“And you do not expect that to happen in the United States of America. We're supposed to be free, and the government is supposed to be accountable to us. We're not supposed to be accountable to the government in this way. Unfortunately that's not how it's happening in this country.”

She said the IRS had not returned calls and inquiries from lawyers representing Tea Party Patriots.

“The IRS has completely abused their power, and we have to hold them accountable,” Martin said. “It can't happen to Tea Party groups. It can't happen to [MoveOn.org]. It can't happen to Organizing for America.

“This is wrong no matter who it's happening to, and we have to make sure those who did this are held accountable so it never happens to another group again,” she said.

President Obama on Monday said the IRS’s conduct, if true, was “outrageous,” and GOP lawmakers have called for resignations or firings. Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the IRS, reportedly learned of the targeting by the IRS in May 2012.

On Tuesday, Miller apologized in an op-ed for USA Today, saying the agency “should have done a better job.”

Martin said her organization wants a full investigation.

“Well, we want to see Congress fully investigate what happened with the IRS, and we want the people who were involved in this, from the lower level all the way up the chain, to determining it and to be disciplined according to the atrocious abuse of power that they have shown,” she said. “We want to make sure there are steps in place to make sure this never happens again, ever. And then we're having our attorneys and accountants quantify the damage to Tea Party Patriots so that our organization can get justice to what's been done to us.”

In a separate interview also on "The Alice Stewart Show" on Tuesday, Amy Kremer, the chairwoman of the Tea Party Express, said that she remains unconvinced that only "low-level employees" are responsible.

“I think it's an absolute complete abuse of power, and I think we need to get to the bottom of it, and those that were responsible for it need to have consequences,” Kremer said. “You cannot convince me, ladies, that this was low-level employees doing it by themselves.”

[American Patriot]

I think Congress needs to be investigated, and the President, and Holder and Sebilius, and Jarret, and every other asshole in Washington.

The President should be IMPEACHED over all this, and every, single IRS person who had a hand in investigating or instigating this whole thing should be fired or impeached. Every one involved in Benghazi needs to go from Hillary down to the last guy who refused to send help. Every last rat bastard involved in the AP scandal should go to JAIL.

As a simple example, if I modify my scanner to pick up cell phone conversations I can go to JAIL for that (and probably WOULD).

You know why? Because someone monitored what some asshole Congressman said on HIS phone once a long time ago and they BANNED radios that could pick up 900 mhz stuff.

And yet the fucking government, an Agency of the Government, the IRS who has MORE power than ANY OTHER AGENCY (including the BATFE and FBI) is able to stop groups who are against big government and too much spending, and the Justice Department is allowed to is allowed to steal phone records or wiretap news people; everyone, up to and including the President should be FIRED for this.

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Obama says some IRS employees 'failed,' orders accountability

By Dana Bash and Chelsea J. Carter, CNN
updated 9:00 AM EDT, Wed May 15, 2013

(CNN) -- Lax oversight at the Internal Revenue Service allowed for the singling out of some conservative groups, resulting in lengthy delays in the processing of their applications for federal tax-exempt status, according to a report by the agency's inspector general released Tuesday.

The report found that for more than 18 months beginning in early 2010 the IRS developed and followed a faulty policy to determine whether the applicants were engaged in political activities, which would disqualify the groups from receiving tax-exempt status.

"The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention," according to the report.

President Barack Obama called the report findings "intolerable and inexcusable."

"The federal government must conduct itself in a way that's worthy of the public's trust, and that's especially true for the IRS. The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity. This report shows that some of its employees failed that test," the president said in a statement released late Tuesday.

Obama said he has directed U.S. Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew "to hold those responsible for these failures accountable."

IRS officials, according to the report, did not consult anyone beyond the agency about the development of the additional screening criteria. They believed that the criteria they came up with was a screening shortcut meant to help with the influx of applications, the report said.

The agency's top watchdog found that the criteria used to flag potential political applications resulted in substantial delays and the request of unnecessary information from the groups.

Among the criteria used by IRS officials to flag applications was a "Be On the Look Out" list, or a BOLO, which was discontinued in 2012, according to the report. The criteria on the BOLO included:

-- Whether "Tea Party," "Patriots" or "9/12 Project" was referenced in the case file.
-- Whether the issues outlined in the application included government spending, government debt or taxes.
-- Whether there was advocating or lobbying to "make America a better place to live."
-- Whether a statement in the case file criticized how the country is being run.
-- Whether it advocated education about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The investigation by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration was initiated after congressional complaints began to surface in the media in 2012 that the IRS was targeting conservative groups and holding up applications.

"Whether the inappropriate criterion was shorthand for all potential political cases or not, developing and using criteria that focuses on organization names and policy positions instead of the activities permitted under the Treasury regulations does not promote public confidence that tax-exempt laws are being adhered to impartially," the report said.

The IRS welcomed the Treasury inspector general's report, saying that it agreed that aspects of its original approach in handling the influx of tax-exempt applications was inappropriate.

"The IRS is required by law to determine if organizations are engaging in a legally permissible level of political activity. Centralizing these cases was necessary to achieve consistent treatment," it said in a statement.

The developments came hours after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into whether the IRS politically targeted some conservative groups.

"The FBI is coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken in connection with those matters related to the IRS," Holder said at a briefing.

In a written response included in the report, the IRS commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division said there was no criminal behavior behind the actions of the agents, but rather inefficient management.

"We believe the front-line career employees that made the decisions acted out of a desire for efficiency and not out of any political and partisan viewpoint," the commissioner wrote.

The report found that all of the applications that were sent to the Determinations Unit "experienced substantial delays in processing."

"Although the processing of some applications with potential significant political campaign intervention was started soon after receipt, no work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months," it said.

The report's findings indicate that of the 298 cases reviewed by the IRS inspector general as potential political cases not eligible for tax exempt status:

72 contained the name "tea party," 11 contained "9/12" and 13 contained the word "patriots," according to the report. There were 202 cases that did not contain any such reference.

Of those applications still open for review, 160 cases were open from 206 days to more than three years -- through two election cycles.

Among the recommendations made by the Treasury inspector general: The IRS better document reasons why applications are chosen for review, develop a process to track requests for assistance, develop and provide training to employees before each election cycle and immediately resolve outstanding cases.

The report also called on the Department of Treasury to develop guidelines to explain social welfare activity -- the primary factor in obtaining tax-exempt status.

"Although the IRS has taken some action, it will need to do more so that the public has reasonable assurance that applications are processed without unreasonable delay in a fair and impartial manner in the future," the report said.

Lois Lerner, director of tax-exempt organizations for the IRS, acknowledged Friday that the IRS had targeted some groups for further review because they had those words in their names.

She said the activity took place at the IRS office in Cincinnati, which handles applications for 501(c)(4) status.

But documents suggest at least three other IRS offices did the same.

Letters provided to CNN show IRS officials in Washington and California contacted conservative groups to demand more information before approving the groups' requests for tax-exempt status.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group representing numerous conservative organizations, provided CNN with four such letters: one each from IRS offices in Washington; Cincinnati; El Monte, California, and Laguna Niguel, California.

The IRS did not respond to CNN's request for comment regarding the letters.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday that he's "confident" no one at the White House was involved in the practice.

Asked about complaints by some Republican lawmakers for the past couple of years that conservative groups were being unfairly targeted, Carney said he is "sure some people knew about the stories. But we were not aware of any activity or any review by the inspector general."

Some Republicans criticized the president for not speaking out on the issue immediately. He said he learned about it through news reports Friday.

The Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS, announced it will hold a hearing Friday. Slated to testify are Steve Miller, the acting IRS commissioner; and the Treasury inspector general investigating the complaints, J. Russell George.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, said the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations -- which he chairs -- now needs to expand an investigation already under way.

That one has focused on the IRS's "failure to enforce the law requiring that tax-exempt 501(c)4s be engaged exclusively in social welfare activities, not partisan politics," Levin said in a statement. The IRS' announcement about targeting of some conservative groups raises questions over its impartiality in doing so, he added.

[vector7]

• IRS flagged conservative political groups
  

Report: IRS acting commissioner says 2 low level employees in Cincinnati went 'rogue' - @PoliticalTicker

• 10 mins ago from politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com by editor

[American Patriot]

Fire him.

Yesterday Hannity had a lady call in. She was upset because her friend was going to Jamaica again (bear with me, this is going somewhere). She'd personally visited Jamaica 8 times and loved it. When she was coming back home she was stopped not once, but five times to be checked for "security". She finally got mad and asked why she and not her female partner had been checked so many times.

She was told "because your government has targeted you, you are on a list".

After further checking why SHE would be on a list she finally figured it out.

She had started a missionary group with the word "Patriot" in the name of the group.

This has been going on for some time now.

[American Patriot]

• IRS flagged conservative political groups
  

Report: IRS acting commissioner says 2 low level employees in Cincinnati went 'rogue' - @PoliticalTicker

• 10 mins ago from politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com by editor

Omg this is absolute bullshit, they are trying to blame lower level guys now?



25 minutes ago Breaking: IRS acting commissioner says two employees 'off reservation'

Posted by
CNN's Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick and Ted Barrett (CNN) – Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steven Miller has said his agency has pinpointed two "rogue" employees in the agency's Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for "overly aggressive" handling of Tea Party requests for tax-exempt status over the past two years, a congressional source told CNN on Wednesday.

[American Patriot]

Someone opened the bottom of the ice cream cone. Everything is gonna drip out before it can be made to disappear now.

New IRS scandal revives past allegations against agency

By Barnini Chakraborty
Published May 14, 2013
FoxNews.com

• 
  

WASHINGTON – The IRS’s admission it targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny has drawn political condemnation but it isn’t the first, second or third time the agency has been accused of playing fast and loose with the law.


The latest scandal has revived past allegations of partisan behavior at the IRS, with some lawmakers as well as the alleged victims calling for those complaints to now get a second look. The unresolved cases include claims of media leaks on private donor information during last year’s presidential race and other instances of political profiling.


"This whole episode reinforces and confirms the American people’s worst fears about big government run amok,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News.


"The startling revelations give real credibility to numerous reports over the last year that the IRS 'inadvertently' released donor information from conservative groups -- and that information ended up in the hands of political opponents," Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who is pressing the Treasury Department and IRS for more details on those past cases, said in a statement.


The newest allegations of the IRS overstepping its authority only feed into claims that those within the powerful agency routinely disregard the law and use their authority to intimidate and target at will.


The latest startling claim came Tuesday from an unexpected source -- ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning progressive journalism group -- which said the same Cincinnati IRS branch accused of targeting conservative groups released nine confidential applications of conservative groups to them last year.


Critics had long questioned how ProPublica got that information. ProPublica put the speculation to rest on Tuesday. The media outlet said it had requested 67 applications for nonprofits in 2012. They were given 31. Of those, nine had not been approved and therefore should not have been made public.


ProPublica ultimately published six of them, despite late-breaking objections from the IRS -- the agency apparently told the organization that it should not have received the confidential applications.


Considering this and other cases, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney took some heat Tuesday after he told reporters that nobody in the Obama administration had targeted conservative groups in the past.


Many questioned the statement and pointed to a 2010 incident involving Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Goolsbee told reporters on Aug. 27, 2010 that Koch Industries, a billion-dollar energy company run by the politically influential Koch brothers, paid no income taxes.


The tax records of Koch Industries -- a private company – would not have been public information and therefore should not have been known to Goolsbee. At the time, the Obama team backpedaled and said the information was made public in two places – which turned out to be untrue. Then the Obama administration said Goolsbee had misspoken and that he had guessed the company’s confidential tax information.


At the time, the IRS had promised to look into the Goolsbee gaffe but a report was never publicly released.


A source familiar with the situation suggested to FoxNews.com Tuesday that Goolsbee’s comments were a “calculated” attempt by the administration to insert Koch’s name into his discussion about companies that don’t pay taxes.


Accusations of improper IRS behavior surfaced again in 2012 when a prominent anti-gay marriage group accused the agency of leaking private tax files that listed then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney's group as a contributor. The National Organization for Marriage documents were later published by a group whose president was tied to the Obama re-election campaign.


NOM claimed that someone from the IRS fed the liberal Human Rights Campaign documents listing its 2008 contributors. On that list was a $10,000 donation from Romney’s political action committee. The Human Rights Campaign then published the documents online, saying it had uncovered one of the group’s “top secret donors,” and accused Romney of attacking lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.


The donation came as NOM and other conservative groups were fighting for the Proposition 8 measure banning gay marriage in California.


Group President Brian Brown this week renewed his call for the IRS to reveal any employee who might have leaked the material.


"There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law," Brown said in a statement. "The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign."


Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation said they, too, were targets of the IRS years ago.


“We endured politically-motivated audits under both the Carter and the Clinton administrations,” Heritage senior media associate Kim McIntyre told Fox News. “Back then, Washington’s ‘enemy lists’ were restricted to well-established groups. But targeting fledging Tea Party groups is different.”


McIntyre questioned whether smaller groups targeted by the IRS can even afford to fight back and says that “expensive audits could very well strangle them in a cradle.
Bringing the weight and resources of the federal government to bear against small organizations threatens not just punishment, but extinction.”


Some say the allegations against the IRS are not a surprise given the agency’s storied past of mean-spirited power plays that stretch back to President Franklin Roosevelt -- accused of using his political sway to get the independent agency to lean on his critics.


President Kennedy’s administration authorized the “Ideological Organizations Project” that went after conservative organizations, while President Johnson was accused of promising tax favors in exchange for votes.


Claims of shady moves made by IRS saw a sharp rise in the 1960s and 1970s. Some say the agency has not been able to shake off the bad rap.


The IRS now says that its latest program of flagging conservative groups for additional scrutiny was inappropriate, but not partisan. An inspector general report unveiled Tuesday urged the IRS to clean up its operation, and Attorney General Eric Holder also announced he had “ordered an investigation” into the IRS controversy and that his office was “examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...#ixzz2TO7WTsVh

[Malsua]

Why wouldn't they blame low level people? They are expendable.

[American Patriot]

Holder: Potential civil rights violations at IRS

Posted: May 15, 2013 12:40 PM MDT Updated: May 15, 2013 12:40 PM MDT

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster). Attorney General Eric Holder gestures as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, before the House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the Justice Department.



WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder says the FBI's criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service could include potential civil rights violations, false statements and potential violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in some partisan political activities.


Holder, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, was asked what criminal charges could be pursued against IRS employees. Holder announced on Tuesday that the Justice Department was the investigating the IRS after the agency acknowledged that agents had singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.


Holder also says it will take time to determine if there was criminal wrongdoing.


Read more: http://www.myfoxla.com/story/2226096...#ixzz2TOG37tou

[American Patriot]

Holder defends subpoenas for AP telephone records
Posted: May 15, 2013 3:01 AM MDT Updated: May 15, 2013 1:10 PM MDT

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
By PETE YOST
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress Wednesday that a serious national security leak required the secret gathering of telephone records at The Associated Press as he stood by an investigation in which he insisted he had no involvement.

Pestered by Republicans and some Democrats, Holder testified that he has faith in the individuals conducting the broad investigation, driven in large part by GOP outrage last year over the possibility that administration officials leaked information to enhance President Barack Obama's national security reputation in an election year.

Holder said he had recused himself from the case because "I am a possessor of information eventually leaked." He said he was unable to answer questions on the subpoenas and why the Justice Department failed to negotiate with the AP prior to the subpoenas, a standard practice.

That elicited frustration from some committee members with the Obama administration and the attorney general.

"There doesn't appear to be any acceptance of responsibility for things that have gone wrong," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told Holder. He suggested that administration officials travel to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and take a photo of the famous sign, "the buck stops here."

It was the Justice Department's No. 2 official, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who made the decision to seek news media phone records, Holder said.

Last year, Holder appointed two U.S. attorneys to lead a Justice inquiry into who leaked information about U.S. involvement in cyber-attacks on Iran and an al-Qaida plot to place an explosive device aboard a U.S.-bound flight. Holder had resisted calls for a special counsel, telling lawmakers that the two attorneys, Ron Machen and Rod Rosenstein, are experienced, independent and thorough.

Holder was grilled on several scandals rocking the administration, including the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service and any missteps in sharing intelligence information prior to the bombings in Boston.

Responding to news of the gathering of AP records, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., planned to revive a 2009 media shield bill that protects journalists and their employers from having to reveal information, including the identity of sources who had been promised confidentiality.

The law does contain some exceptions in instances of national security.

"This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public's right to the free flow of information," Schumer said in a statement. "At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case."

The White House threw its support behind the legislation, said a White House official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the topic and demanded anonymity. Ed Pagano, President Barack Obama's liaison to the Senate, placed a call Wednesday morning to Schumer's office to ask him to revive the bill, a move the senator had planned to make.

Obama's support for the bill signaled an effort by the White House to show action in the face of heated criticism from lawmakers from both parties and news organizations about his commitment to protecting civil liberties and freedom of the press.

White House officials have said they are unable to comment publicly on the incident at the heart of the controversy because the Justice Department's leak probe essentially amounts to a criminal investigation of administration officials.

Holder on Tuesday defended the move to collect AP phone records in an effort to hunt down the sources of information for a May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bombing plot around the anniversary of the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The attorney general called the story the result of "a very serious leak, a very grave leak."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee, said Wednesday that the leak was "within the most serious leaks because it definitely endangered some lives."

Feinstein said it was her understanding that the information gathering did not focus on the "content of phone calls," but rather "to see who reporters have spoken to, that somebody did provide this information with respect to this bomb."

At a news conference Tuesday, Holder defended the subpoenas to the AP and disclosed that the department was investigating the IRS for giving tea party groups extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status.

Documents obtained by the AP suggest the targeting of conservative groups could be more widespread than the IRS has acknowledged. The agency has said it was limited to low-level workers in a Cincinnati office.

At Tuesday's news conference, Holder said the U.S. has gotten good cooperation from the Russians on the Boston bombings investigation. U.S. law enforcement officials are trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was indoctrinated or trained by militants during his visit to Dagestan, a Caspian Sea province of Russia that has become the center of a simmering Islamic insurgency.

[American Patriot]

Well..... ok, we'll let it go THIS time.....

Eric Holder can’t remember when he recused himself from AP records case
May 15, 2013 | 3:05 pm

Attorney General Eric Holder explained during a hearing with the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon that he couldn’t remember the exact date he decided to recuse himself from the investigation regarding the phone records obtained by the Associated Press.

“I’m not sure, I think it was toward the beginning of the matter, I don’t know exactly when but it was toward the beginning of the matter,” Holder explained when questioned about the date.

[American Patriot]

Probably time to merge AP and IRS scandals into one thread and just called it "Scandals in the White House"

[American Patriot]

Why wouldn't they blame low level people? They are expendable.

because it's untrue. lol

http://documents.latimes.com/inspect...al-report-irs/

[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• Obama's big idea: Digital health records January 12th, 2009
  
• Mandating health Insurance... now

IRS faces class action lawsuit over theft of 60 million medical records

California HIPAA-covered entity sues big time

SAN DIEGO | March 15, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.

According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents.

The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.

"This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents," the complaint reads.

"No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records," it continued.

According to the case, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company, however, "it did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter," the complaint read.

The class action lawsuit against the IRS seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages "per violation per individual" in addition to punitive damages for constitutional violations. Thus, compensatory damages could start at a minimum of $250 billion.

[American Patriot]

Funny, I think I heard Megyn Kelly say "I wonder when the two lines will cross" this morning, referring to Obamacare and the doctors having to put medical records up, etc.

[American Patriot]

Here's more on that one:

The IRS Raids 60 Million Personal Medical Records

Comment Now Follow Comments




The Internal Revenue Service is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that more than 60 million personal medical records were improperly accessed, and stolen, by agents from the embattled agency. It’s just one more reason, as I wrote yesterday, to re-think the agency’s role under Obamacare.


Inevitably, Obamacare confers the IRS with broad access to information about our health insurance, as well as direct electronic linkages into a new government super computer that will also store a lot of bottom line information about our individual healthcare choices.


It’s a recipe for mischief by an agency that’s proving that it can’t be fully trusted.

This isn’t a fictional, Orwellian vision. It’s a reality of how Obamacare was structured. And how much the law depends on enforcement meted out by the IRS.
The Obama Administration probably didn’t set out to design the system this way. But a myriad of concessions made to accommodate the law’s vast scope and intrusive provisions has placed many of its applications in the lap of the IRS.


In a story reported by Erin McCann of Healthcare IT News, (You can follow her on Twitter @EMcCannHITN), the IRS is alleged to have improperly accessed some 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.


According to a story by Courthousenews.com, whose correspondent Rebekah Kearn first reported on the legal skirmish, an unnamed healthcare provider in California is bringing the lawsuit against the IRS and 15 of its agents. The personal health information was allegedly seized by the IRS on March 11, 2011.
The medical records included information on psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual and drug treatment, and other sensitive medical treatment data. A copy of the legal complaint can be purchased HERE for $35.


“This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents,” the complaint reads.


“No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,” it continued.


The claim asserts that the IRS agents’ seizure of medical records violated the 4th Amendment.


“These medical records contained intimate and private information of more than 10,000,000 Americans, information that by its nature includes information about treatment for any kind of medical concern, including psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual or drug treatment, and a wide range of medical matters covering the most intimate and private of concerns,” the complaint states.


“Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over,” the complaint reads.


“Moreover, even though defendants knew that the records they were seizing were not included within the scope of the search warrant, the defendants nonetheless searched and seized the records without making any attempt to segregate the files from those that could possibly be related to the search warrant. In fact, no effort was made at all to even try maintaining the illusion of legitimacy and legality.”


According to the complaint, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company, however, “it did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter.”
The IRS has not returned requests for comment.


Recent mischief over the political targeting of conservative groups should give us pause about turning over to the IRS a greater role in regulating healthcare.
Truth is, every indication suggests that the agency doesn’t even want the obligations it’s being given under Obamcare. It rightly recognizes that it has enough on its plate already.


There is no reason these bureaucratic burdens can’t be discharged elsewhere inside the government. The IRS was pulled into Obamacare not out of necessity, but expediency. It was judged that handing over certain obligations to the IRS would be the fastest way to get the law implemented.
The Obama Administration shouldn’t settle for this. Neither should we.


Americans should demand that the Obama team work a little harder to get its signature legislation off the ground without pulling the IRS so deeply into our healthcare choices — and bringing the agency so close to the private information about our medical care.

[Ryan Ruck]

Some food for thought on this...

• There has been a waning of the Tea Party since 2011, was this a result of IRS stifling groups from better organizing?
• 333,000 Votes in 4 Swing States Would Have Given Romney the Presidency. Did hampering the Tea Party movement cost those 333k votes?
• Cincinnati is in a swing state. Coincidence?

Just some thoughts that have been kicking around in my head on this.