President Asterisk
No one can deny that Barack Obama is a highly skilled politician, at least by the measure of election outcomes. His record is undefeated, save for an ill-advised 2000 primary challenge to an entrenched incumbent congressman. His 2008 presidential victory, after a fraction of a term in the U.S. Senate, was especially dazzling. It disproved those who said that Hillary Clinton was invincible, that a left-wing Democrat couldn't win, and that America wasn't ready for a black president.No one can deny that Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were highly skilled athletes. But their accomplishments are forever tainted by their use of banned performance-enhancing drugs. The use of the Internal Revenue Service's coercive power to suppress dissent against Obama is the political equivalent of steroids. The history books should record Obama's re-election with an asterisk to indicate that it was achieved with the help of illicit means.
The Weekly Standard notes that NBC's Lisa Myers "reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election":
The IRS commissioner "has known for at least a year that this was going on," said Myers, "and that this had happened. And did he share any of that information with the White House? But even more importantly, Congress is going to ask him, why did you mislead us for an entire year? Members of Congress were saying conservatives are being targeted. What's going on here? The IRS denied it. Then when--after these officials are briefed by the [inspector general] that this is going on, they don't disclose it. In fact, the commissioner sent a letter to Congress in September on this subject and did not reveal this. Imagine if we--if you can--what would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different."One thing we have learned from the IRS scandal is that sports journalists are morally superior to political journalists. Whereas the former understand that cheating is an assault on the basic integrity of the sport, the latter all too often treat it as if it were just part of the game....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324082604578489171510582616.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Obama's Counsel Was Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks Ago
The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday.That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time.
In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that "a small number of line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain…organizations by using words like 'tea party' and 'patriot,' " the official said.
President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers. The president's statement drew criticism, focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority.
Others, including veterans of previous scandals, said the counsel—whose role is to advise the president on all legal matters concerning his job and the White House—was right to avoid telling Mr. Obama about the audit's early findings. Doing so could have caused a new storm by creating the appearance of meddling in an independent investigation that hadn't yet concluded, former officials said.
The White House, which declined to make Ms. Ruemmler available for comment Sunday, wouldn't say whether she shared the information with anyone else in the senior administration staff.
The new detail doesn't help answer some fundamental questions about the IRS scandal, including how it began and who, if anyone, in the administration was aware of the severity of the inspector general's probe before last November's presidential election.
Instead, it focuses attention on the White House's handling of the matter, which has blown up into the kind of crisis that could persist.
When findings are so potentially damaging, the president should immediately be informed, said Lanny Davis, who served as a special counsel to President Bill Clinton.
Of the controversies dogging Mr. Obama, including the terrorist assault in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department's seizure of phone records of Associated Press journalists, the IRS case "is the most nuclear issue of all," Mr. Davis said. It involves the "misuse of the IRS" and "anyone who knew about this a few weeks ago and didn't tell the president shouldn't be in the White House," Mr. Davis said.
On the Sunday political talk shows, the White House rejected suggestions that the president should have taken action before the inspector general's office released its report May 14, a few days after the probe's findings were disclosed in news accounts.
Dan Pfeiffer, a White House senior adviser, said on NBC that the matter "was handled in the exact appropriate way. As I said, we do not ever do anything to give the appearance of interference in an investigation. What would be an actual scandal would be if we somehow were involved" in such interference.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was notified in a March 2013 meeting with the Treasury inspector general for the IRS that an audit was "forthcoming," according to the Treasury Department. But at that meeting, the inspector general didn't provide details of his findings, the Treasury said.
Jack Quinn, who served as White House counsel under former President Bill Clinton, said Ms. Ruemmler's office acted correctly in not sharing the information directly with the president.
If she had instead gotten "involved and called people over to the White House for a full briefing to know all the details, you know what we'd be talking about now? We'd be talking about whether she had tried to interfere with the IG's investigation," Mr. Quinn said.
John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff under Mr. Clinton, said: "The worst thing is if you do anything that is perceived to be interfering with an independent investigation" especially if it isn't fully complete. "That gets you in such trouble your head spins."
Republicans are expected to zero in on the question of who in the Obama administration's senior ranks knew about the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, especially before the November election last year.
Republican lawmakers on House oversight committees are pressing the investigation, with more hearings set for this week.
"Exactly who in the administration knew what about the IRS targeting is one of the key outstanding questions," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of a House oversight committee that plans to hold a hearing Wednesday on the matter, in an emailed statement.
"In waiting so long to address wrongdoing and inform the public, President Obama and his administration seem more preoccupied with having deniability than quickly addressing serious wrongdoing," Mr. Issa added.
In his comments Sunday, Mr. Pfeiffer suggested that more personnel changes could come at the IRS, after last week's ouster of acting commissioner Steven Miller by the president. Mr. Pfeiffer also went on the offensive, saying that White House cooperation with GOP investigators has its limits and that Mr. Obama won't take part in "partisan fishing expeditions."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323648304578493081906824260.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?
President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.
“For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National
Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley
on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union
and the Obama White House
Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?
Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?
The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts.
March 31, 2010.
According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.
The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:
The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:
The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates.
Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party and conservative groups around the country.
The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White House.
The boast?
“I was just at the White House…”
Which is to say, the election of 2008, in which the union had endorsed Obama, was no sooner over than the head of the IRS union had “worked with the transition team” and “given them suggestions.” Literally ten days after the Obama January 20 inaugural in 2009 — January 30 the article notes — Kelley was boasting that “I was just at the White House while he (the President) was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior administration did.”
And what did Kelley see as the IRS union’s relationship with the White House she had already visited ten days into the President’s first term?
Kelley responded candidly, again with the bold print added for emphasis:
Collaboration. Partnership.
In addition to Kelley’s three visits to see the President — in January of 2009, December of 2009, and March of 2010 — she is listed for three other visits, the contact names those of presidential aides:
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 11/04/2009 10:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 12/01/2009 12:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Nelson, Greg 01/14/2010 13:40”
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking
Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?
Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?
The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts.
March 31, 2010.
According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.
The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:
Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”
The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:
April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.
The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates.
Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party and conservative groups around the country.
The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White House.
In fact, this record in the White House Visitors Log of a 12:30
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 meeting between President Obama and the
IRS union’s Kelley was not unusual.
On yet another occasion, Kelley’s presence at the White House was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party NTEU — the IRS union — a greater role in the day-to-day operation of the IRS than it had already — which was considerable.
Kelley is recorded as visiting the White House over a year earlier, listed in this fashion:
Six days following Kelley’s attendance at the White House Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an explanation here). The Executive Order, titled: “Creating Labor-Management Forums To Improve Delivery of Government Services” applied across the federal government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:
It is the same union whose IRS employee-members were being urged in 2012 by Senate Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Al Franken, Max Baucus, and others) to target Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Which, as the IG records, they did.
Both Mr. Obama and the NTEU’s Kelley have been by turns evasive and tight-lipped about their roles in the blossoming IRS scandal.
Kelley refused to open up to the Washington Post. In an article titled ”IRS, union mum on employees held accountable in ‘sin’ of political targeting,” the Post quoted the following:
On yet another occasion, Kelley’s presence at the White House was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party NTEU — the IRS union — a greater role in the day-to-day operation of the IRS than it had already — which was considerable.
Kelley is recorded as visiting the White House over a year earlier, listed in this fashion:
Kelley, Colleen Potus/Flotus 12/03/2009 18:30The inclusion of “FLOTUS” — First Lady Michelle Obama — and the 6:30 pm time of the December event on this entry in the Visitors Log indicates this was the White House Christmas Party held that evening and written up here in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times focused on party guests from the President’s home state of Illinois and did not mention Kelley. Notably, the Illinois guests, who are reported to have attended the same party as Kelley, included what the paper described as four labor “activists”: Dennis Gannon of the Chicago Federation of Labor, Tom Balanoff of the Service Employees International Union, Henry Tamarin of UNITE, and Ron Powell of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Six days following Kelley’s attendance at the White House Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an explanation here). The Executive Order, titled: “Creating Labor-Management Forums To Improve Delivery of Government Services” applied across the federal government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:
Allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters….However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union. A union that by this time already had the clout to determine the rules for IRS employees, right down to who would be allowed a Blackberry or what size office the employee was entitled to. The same union that would shortly be doling out serious 2010 (and later 2012) campaign contributions to anti-Tea Party candidates with money supplied from IRS employees. The union, as noted last week here in this space, already has the authority to decide all manner of IRS matters, right down to who does and does not get a Blackberry.
It is the same union whose IRS employee-members were being urged in 2012 by Senate Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Al Franken, Max Baucus, and others) to target Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Which, as the IG records, they did.
Both Mr. Obama and the NTEU’s Kelley have been by turns evasive and tight-lipped about their roles in the blossoming IRS scandal.
Kelley refused to open up to the Washington Post. In an article titled ”IRS, union mum on employees held accountable in ‘sin’ of political targeting,” the Post quoted the following:
“NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time,” NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said via e-mail.
A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar response: “We’ve been directed by national office. We have no comment.”The President approached things in a more evasive manner.
Last Thursday at the President’s press conference with the
Turkish prime minister, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News
asked the following question, bold print for
emphasis:
In response, the President ducked.
In other words, the IRS union chief went to the White House to meet personally with the president on March 31. The union already had Executive Order 13522 behind it, issued by the President barely three months earlier. An Executive Order directing that the IRS must “allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters….”.
The very next day after that March 31 meeting at the White House, the IRS, with the union involved in its decision-making, was setting up its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party.”
Which raises the famous question from Watergate: What did the President know and when did he know it?
While potentially explosive now, in fact the Obama Administration hadn’t been in office a month before Kelley was boasting of the IRS union’s influence in the White House.
In a February 15, 2009 interview given to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh is Kelley’s home town), there was this question from the PG reporter, with the now Washington-based Kelley boasting as below, key point in bold print:
“Mr. President, I want to ask you about the IRS. Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd? And when they did find out, do you think that you should have learned about it before you learned about it from news reports as you said last Friday? And also, are you opposed to there being a special counsel appointed to lead the Justice Department investigation?”The President’s response? (Again bold print emphasis.)
“But let me make sure that I answer your specific question. I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press.”Take note: Goldman’s question was:
“Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd?”The President evaded by answering:
“I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report…..”The question was not whether he knew about the IG report ahead of time. The question was whether he could “assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions.”
In response, the President ducked.
In other words, the IRS union chief went to the White House to meet personally with the president on March 31. The union already had Executive Order 13522 behind it, issued by the President barely three months earlier. An Executive Order directing that the IRS must “allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters….”.
The very next day after that March 31 meeting at the White House, the IRS, with the union involved in its decision-making, was setting up its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party.”
Which raises the famous question from Watergate: What did the President know and when did he know it?
While potentially explosive now, in fact the Obama Administration hadn’t been in office a month before Kelley was boasting of the IRS union’s influence in the White House.
In a February 15, 2009 interview given to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh is Kelley’s home town), there was this question from the PG reporter, with the now Washington-based Kelley boasting as below, key point in bold print:
Q: Has the Obama staff been receptive?Catch that?
A: Yes. We have worked with the transition team, given them suggestions; and throughout the campaign, President Obama talked about working with the federal employees and unions. He’s recognized the contributions federal employees make. I was just at the White House (Jan. 30) while he was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior administration did.
The boast?
“I was just at the White House…”
Which is to say, the election of 2008, in which the union had endorsed Obama, was no sooner over than the head of the IRS union had “worked with the transition team” and “given them suggestions.” Literally ten days after the Obama January 20 inaugural in 2009 — January 30 the article notes — Kelley was boasting that “I was just at the White House while he (the President) was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior administration did.”
And what did Kelley see as the IRS union’s relationship with the White House she had already visited ten days into the President’s first term?
Kelley responded candidly, again with the bold print added for emphasis:
“We are looking for a return to what we used to call partnership. I don’t really care what it’s called. For me, it’s about collaboration.”Catch those words?
Collaboration. Partnership.
In addition to Kelley’s three visits to see the President — in January of 2009, December of 2009, and March of 2010 — she is listed for three other visits, the contact names those of presidential aides:
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 11/04/2009 10:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 12/01/2009 12:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Nelson, Greg 01/14/2010 13:40”
The obvious question instantly arises with the revelation that
Kelley was meeting with the President personally — the day before
the IRS kicked into high gear with its “Sensitive Case Report on
the Tea Party”.
Were the President of the United States and the President of the NTEU meeting in the White House at 12:30 on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 — and engaged in “collaboration” and “partnership”? A “collaboration” and “partnership” that was all about targeting the Tea Party?
And did that collaboration and partnership result in the IRS letting loose the hounds on the Tea Party and conservative groups — the very next day after the Obama-Kelley meeting?
To add to the administration’s IRS-NTEU woes is the fact that beyond the Inspector General, there is another IRS-connected agency in the Treasury Department: the IRS Oversight Board.
And on that board sits a presidential appointee named Robert M. Tobias. Tobias, oddly, was a Clinton appointee in 2005, confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term. He is still there. He is the longtime NTEU general counsel and Kelley’s predecessor as the union president. Here’s the statement, from the IRS Oversight Board, on all of this. It is headed:
Obama’s problem here is considerable.
By not forthrightly answering Goldman’s question, he seems to be evading the issue in the manner that brought so much trouble in the form of congressional investigations, special prosecutors, and impeachment threats to Presidents Nixon and Clinton, with Nixon being forced to resign the presidency and Clinton brought to a Senate trial.
The President’s too-clever-by half evasion added to Kelley’s silence leaves open the question of whether the union and the White House, not to mention the IRS Oversight Board, are collaborating — collaborating right now — on a cover-up.
Nixon looked the American people in the television eye and flatly lied about his personal involvement in the Watergate scandal, lies that came from a frantic attempt to conduct a cover-up.
Clinton looked the American people in the eye and famously wagged his finger as he lied that he “did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” In Clinton’s case this extended to lying to a federal grand jury.
For a good long while, the American people in fact believed both Nixon and Clinton. The stories are now legion of Nixon cabinet and staff believing their man, and Clinton’s cabinet and staff believing their man’s protestations of innocence as well.
Finally, in both cases, the truth was out.
As Washington and the country have long since twice-learned the hard way, the parsing of presidential words in cases like this, not to mention looking into the cameras and boldly lying on the prayer of getting away with the lie, always bodes ill for presidents. It leads inevitably to that simple question famously uttered by then-Tennessee GOP Senator Howard Baker and posed of Nixon at the Senate Watergate hearings: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
Were the President of the United States and the President of the NTEU meeting in the White House at 12:30 on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 — and engaged in “collaboration” and “partnership”? A “collaboration” and “partnership” that was all about targeting the Tea Party?
And did that collaboration and partnership result in the IRS letting loose the hounds on the Tea Party and conservative groups — the very next day after the Obama-Kelley meeting?
To add to the administration’s IRS-NTEU woes is the fact that beyond the Inspector General, there is another IRS-connected agency in the Treasury Department: the IRS Oversight Board.
And on that board sits a presidential appointee named Robert M. Tobias. Tobias, oddly, was a Clinton appointee in 2005, confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term. He is still there. He is the longtime NTEU general counsel and Kelley’s predecessor as the union president. Here’s the statement, from the IRS Oversight Board, on all of this. It is headed:
IRS Oversight Board Deeply Troubled by Breakdown in IRS Process in Reviewing Tax-Exempt Applications.There was no reference to the influence of the anti-Tea Party NTEU in the statement. Why would there be when the union’s ex-president sits on the Oversight Board itself?
Obama’s problem here is considerable.
By not forthrightly answering Goldman’s question, he seems to be evading the issue in the manner that brought so much trouble in the form of congressional investigations, special prosecutors, and impeachment threats to Presidents Nixon and Clinton, with Nixon being forced to resign the presidency and Clinton brought to a Senate trial.
The President’s too-clever-by half evasion added to Kelley’s silence leaves open the question of whether the union and the White House, not to mention the IRS Oversight Board, are collaborating — collaborating right now — on a cover-up.
Nixon looked the American people in the television eye and flatly lied about his personal involvement in the Watergate scandal, lies that came from a frantic attempt to conduct a cover-up.
Clinton looked the American people in the eye and famously wagged his finger as he lied that he “did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” In Clinton’s case this extended to lying to a federal grand jury.
For a good long while, the American people in fact believed both Nixon and Clinton. The stories are now legion of Nixon cabinet and staff believing their man, and Clinton’s cabinet and staff believing their man’s protestations of innocence as well.
Finally, in both cases, the truth was out.
As Washington and the country have long since twice-learned the hard way, the parsing of presidential words in cases like this, not to mention looking into the cameras and boldly lying on the prayer of getting away with the lie, always bodes ill for presidents. It leads inevitably to that simple question famously uttered by then-Tennessee GOP Senator Howard Baker and posed of Nixon at the Senate Watergate hearings: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
Twice in recent American history the answer to this question,
once for Nixon and once for Clinton, has landed popular, powerful
presidents in impeachment hot water. Ending Republican Nixon’s
presidency altogether and coming close to doing the same with
Democrat Clinton. Leaving the legacy of each permanently
scarred.
The notion that the players in the IRS scandal did what they did to get past the 2012 election will only add to an Obama presidential reputation as borrowing the Nixon playbook on skirting scandal in a presidential election year.
Ironically re-casting the image of America’s first black president as the black Nixon.
With the examples of how Nixon and Clinton dodged, evaded, and lied, Obama’s non-answer to Juliana Goldman’s question at last week’s press conference comes in for much more scrutiny. Matched to the silence of Kelley it begins raising obvious questions. Such as:
• Did the President himself ever discuss the Tea Party with Kelley?
• Did the President ever communicate his thoughts on the Tea Party to Kelley — in any fashion other than a face-to-face conversation such as e-mail, text, or by phone?
• What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010 meeting?
• Who was present at the Obama-Kelley March 31 meeting?
• Was the Tea Party or any other group opposing the President’s agenda discussed at the March 31 meeting, or before or after that meeting?
• Is the White House going to release any e-mails, text, or phone records that detail Kelley’s contacts with not only Mr. Obama but his staff?
• Will the IRS release all e-mail, text, or phone records between Kelley or any other leader of the NTEU with IRS employees?
• What role did Executive Order 13522 play in the IRS investigations of the Tea Party and all these other conservative groups?
Doubtless there are others, considerable others and the list of questions will grow.
Not to be lost sight of here is the role of the NTEU in raising money for Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles — the exact period when the IRS was busy going after the Tea Party and the others to curb any possible influence the groups could have in the elections of 2010 and 2012.
The NTEU, through its political action committee, raised $613,633 in the 2010 cycle, giving 98% of its contributions to anti-Tea Party Democrats. In 2012 the figure was $729,708, with 94% going to anti-Tea Party candidates. One NTEU candidate after another, as discussed last week in this space, campaigned vigorously against the Tea Party.
The notion that the players in the IRS scandal did what they did to get past the 2012 election will only add to an Obama presidential reputation as borrowing the Nixon playbook on skirting scandal in a presidential election year.
Ironically re-casting the image of America’s first black president as the black Nixon.
With the examples of how Nixon and Clinton dodged, evaded, and lied, Obama’s non-answer to Juliana Goldman’s question at last week’s press conference comes in for much more scrutiny. Matched to the silence of Kelley it begins raising obvious questions. Such as:
• Did the President himself ever discuss the Tea Party with Kelley?
• Did the President ever communicate his thoughts on the Tea Party to Kelley — in any fashion other than a face-to-face conversation such as e-mail, text, or by phone?
• What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010 meeting?
• Who was present at the Obama-Kelley March 31 meeting?
• Was the Tea Party or any other group opposing the President’s agenda discussed at the March 31 meeting, or before or after that meeting?
• Is the White House going to release any e-mails, text, or phone records that detail Kelley’s contacts with not only Mr. Obama but his staff?
• Will the IRS release all e-mail, text, or phone records between Kelley or any other leader of the NTEU with IRS employees?
• What role did Executive Order 13522 play in the IRS investigations of the Tea Party and all these other conservative groups?
Doubtless there are others, considerable others and the list of questions will grow.
Not to be lost sight of here is the role of the NTEU in raising money for Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles — the exact period when the IRS was busy going after the Tea Party and the others to curb any possible influence the groups could have in the elections of 2010 and 2012.
The NTEU, through its political action committee, raised $613,633 in the 2010 cycle, giving 98% of its contributions to anti-Tea Party Democrats. In 2012 the figure was $729,708, with 94% going to anti-Tea Party candidates. One NTEU candidate after another, as discussed last week in this space, campaigned vigorously against the Tea Party.
So the motivations here — defeating the Tea Party in 2010, and
failing at that, making sure that the news of the metastasizing
cancer in the IRS was kept quiet until after the 2012 presidential
election was over — are clear.
What is particularly interesting here are the automatic assumptions of the mainstream media in all of this.
Like this “given” from the Washington Post’s Dan Balz, bold print added for emphasis.
Here’s the Washington Post’s “Journolist” Ezra Klein:
Which is why it will be a curious sight indeed to see the efforts the media will go to ignore/dismiss the tight, on-the-record connection between the President personally and a vociferously anti-Tea Party union. A union that has the literal run of the IRS — and whose union chief is recorded as having met with the President in the White House the day before the IRS launched “a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases.” A decision with which, according to the IG report: “The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.”
Check those words from Mr. Klein again:
In 1974, “the smoking gun” was a tape recording that ended the Nixon presidency.
In 1998, the smoking gun was a blue dress — and it almost undid Bill Clinton’s White House.
Now the all-too-familiar pattern of scandal and its day-by-day drip-drip-drip nature has begun to set in. Newsmax is now quoting Washington attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell as saying:
President Obama is coming perilously closer to becoming the new Nixon. The next Bill Clinton.
And once again, as news of exactly what a president was doing in the Oval Office on a particular day and time goes public, yet again the old question becomes new.
What did the President know? And when did he know it?
What is particularly interesting here are the automatic assumptions of the mainstream media in all of this.
Like this “given” from the Washington Post’s Dan Balz, bold print added for emphasis.
The most corrosive of the controversies is what happened at the IRS, which singled out tea party and other conservative groups for special scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status. That Obama knew nothing about it does little to quell concerns that one of the most-feared units in government was operating out of control.But if in fact the President did know about it?
Here’s the Washington Post’s “Journolist” Ezra Klein:
The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of high-level White House involvement and wide political repercussions.…
If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.Exactly.
Which is why it will be a curious sight indeed to see the efforts the media will go to ignore/dismiss the tight, on-the-record connection between the President personally and a vociferously anti-Tea Party union. A union that has the literal run of the IRS — and whose union chief is recorded as having met with the President in the White House the day before the IRS launched “a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases.” A decision with which, according to the IG report: “The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.”
Check those words from Mr. Klein again:
If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal.The question now is a simple one.
In 1974, “the smoking gun” was a tape recording that ended the Nixon presidency.
In 1998, the smoking gun was a blue dress — and it almost undid Bill Clinton’s White House.
Now the all-too-familiar pattern of scandal and its day-by-day drip-drip-drip nature has begun to set in. Newsmax is now quoting Washington attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell as saying:
“There were nearly 100 groups across the country that got the very egregious set of letters from the IRS that were almost identical and they came from offices all over the country, so I know of at least 85 to 90, maybe more, organizations.”Regular American all over the country are coming forward with their stories. Understanding the relationship between the Obama White House and the IRS union will be a must for congressional investigators.
President Obama is coming perilously closer to becoming the new Nixon. The next Bill Clinton.
And once again, as news of exactly what a president was doing in the Oval Office on a particular day and time goes public, yet again the old question becomes new.
What did the President know? And when did he know it?
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking
How Obama Told the IRS to Target Conservatives
Imagine if secret tapes surfaced of conversations within his Administration in which President Obama told them:
-that conservative non-profits working in the political arena were illegitimate, because the Supreme Court ruling "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests."
-spoke of Tea Party supporters using an obscene term referring to a homosexual act, as 'tea baggers.'
- implied his conservative opponents were being funded by foreign interests with these words, "All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."
-showed them his campaign's Truth Team website, posting the names of eight private citizens who donated money to Romney, with these words:
"A closer look at...donors reveals a group of wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law, others have made profits at the expense of so many Americans..."
-referred to Republicans as 'enemies' and suggested his followers bring a gun to the fight
-remained silent while V.P. Biden called Tea Party supporters terrorists.
-remained silent while black Congressmen falsely claimed Tea Partiers had spit on them.
-told his Administration: 'We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.'
-told them they'd gotten away with the IRS punishing a citizen called Joe the Plumber who had embarrassed Obama on the campaign trail.
Oh, wait. Obama didn't have to do all that in secret. He did it in plain sight. And the IRS followed his call.
Obama puts all his cards on the table amid multiple scandals
President
Obama has been hammered for the past several weeks as no less than
three major scandals continue to erupt in his administration. As the
facts emerge and low-information voters have started to take notice, the
liberal media has had no alternative than to put down the White House
talking points and actually do a little reporting.
As
more and more evidence is uncovered by congress, it doesn't look good
for President Obama. But he does have a couple of cards left up his
sleeve - the race card and the victim card. And on Sunday during his commencement speech at the graduation of predominantly black Morehouse College, President Obama decided to go all-in and play both cards at once.
Masked in his personal responsibility speech to the Morehouse College graduates,
President Obama clearly identifies himself as being down with the
struggle and no less a victim of racist America than any other black
man. He told the crowd, "As Morehouse men, many of you know what it's
like to be an outsider, to be marginalized, to feel the sting of
discrimination. That's an experience that a lot of Americans share."
Obama also spoke of his personal mistakes saying, "Sometimes I wrote off
my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a
black man down. I had a tendency to make excuses for me not doing the
right thing." But it's important to understand that the underlying
message President Obama is trying to convey to his supporters has
nothing to do with responsibility, but everything to do with excuses.
More specifically, that he is a victim of racism, and that attacks on
his administration in any form are just another attempt to "keep a black
man down."
It's
obvious from Obama's move that there are more revelations to come from
the scandals in the coming weeks and months. So Obama's playing both the
race and victim card is clearly a desperate move on his part. That's
because he knows he needs to win over the low-information voters and win
back the liberal media as soon as possible so they can begin to do his bidding
in the arena of public opinion. The talking point will be that
America's first black president is under attack. And you can bet that
their voices will be heard loud and clear as the liberal media will
cover each and every one of their demonstrations, rallies and marches
wall-to-wall in conjunction with any possible damaging revelations that
come out the Obama administration.
Watch
closely the next few weeks as the liberal media begins to latch on to
Obama's victim and racist narrative as more and more damning facts
emerge on Benghazi, the IRS and the Justice Department.
A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe
When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.
Associated Press CEO Gary Pruitt called the
Justice Department's seizure of some AP telephone records
"unconstitutional," saying "I really don't know what their motive was, I
know what the message they are sending was — if you talk to the press
we are going to go after you."
At a time when President Obama’s administration is under renewed scrutiny for an unprecedented number of leak investigations, the Kim case provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of one such probe.
Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.
“Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” said First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin, who has represented the Associated Press, but not in the current case. “That’s a very dangerous road to go down.”
Obama last week defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation involving the AP, which is focused on who leaked information to the news organization about a foiled plot involving the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. AP executives and First Amendment watchdogs have criticized the Justice Department in part for the broad scope of the phone records it secretly subpoenaed from AP offices in Washington, Hartford, Conn., and New York.
“The latest events show an expansion of this law enforcement technique,” said attorney Abbe Lowell, who is defending Kim on federal charges filed in 2010 that he disclosed national defense information. A trial is possible as soon as 2014. “Individual reporters or small time periods have turned into 20 [telephone] lines and months of records with no obvious attempt to be targeted or narrow.”
The president said press freedoms must be balanced against the protection of U.S. personnel overseas.
According to the office of Ronald Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney for the District, its prosecutors followed federal regulations by first seeking the information through other means before subpoenaing media phone records. Machen’s office is investigating both the Kim and AP cases. The Justice Department said in a statement that in both cases it had abided by “all applicable laws, regulations, and longstanding Department of Justice policies intended to safeguard the First Amendment interests of the press in reporting the news and the public in receiving it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-rare-peek-into-a-justice-department-leak-probe/2013/05/19/0bc473de-be5e-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html
Pfeiffer Stretches the Truth on Benghazi E-mails
On the Sunday shows today, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer sought to discredit criticism over how the infamous Benghazi talking points were scrubbed of references to terrorism by focusing on the differences between how ABC News described a single White House e-mail and its actual text:
Here’s the evidence that proves the Republicans are playing politics with this: They received these emails months ago, didn’t say a word about it, didn’t complain, confirmed the CIA director . . . right after that. And then last week, a Republican source provided to Jon Karl of ABC News a doctored version of the White House email that started this entire fury. After 25,000 pieces of paper that were provided to Congress, they have to doctor an email to make political hay, you know they’re getting desperate here.This is wrong in four ways.
Point one: Republicans never “received” the e-mails. Here’s what really happened: On March 19, the White House briefed the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, along with staff for Speaker John Boehner and minority leader Nancy Pelosi, on the e-mails in question. Those at the briefing were permitted to take notes but not copy the contents of the e-mails. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, was not represented at this session.
Point two: Republicans raised strenuous objections based on the information they were given at that briefing. In their interim report on Benghazi, released April 23, House Republicans alleged that “White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department.” The report described and, in one case, quoted from the e-mails in question.
Point three: Nothing was “doctored.” Following the House report, Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard revealed a significant amount of new detail, followed by Jon Karl at ABC News. Both Hayes and Karl refer to summaries of the e-mails, meaning they presumably relied a great deal on the notes of those at the March 19 White House briefing. Karl inaccurately quotes from one e-mail, which may have been based on faulty note-taking or some other error. While this is significant, the e-mail in question exists and has the same core content as the e-mail quoted by Karl — there was no wholesale fabrication.
Point four: The differences between the two versions of the e-mail have been overstated. At issue is the involvement of Ben Rhodes, a senior White House aide, in directing the various members of the inter-agency discussion to resolve their dispute.
Here’s the relevant part of the e-mail as quoted by Karl:
We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.Here’s the relevant sentence from the real e-mail:
We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.The e-mail is important because in the preceding e-mail back-and-forth, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had urged that references to terrorism be removed because they could be a political liability to State. Whether Rhodes said Nuland’s objections should be accommodated explicitly or by implication is a difference, but it’s a pretty small one.
Furthermore, there is ample evidence beyond this e-mail that the White House and State Department were deeply involved in editing the talking points to scrub references to terrorism. The evidence blows Jay Carney’s repeated assurances that the White House and State Department only made one “stylistic” edit out of the water — with or without this e-mail.
True Scandal
A tea-party group targeted by Democrats gets attention from the IRS—and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF.
Catherine Engelbrecht’s tale has all the markings of a classic conspiracy theory: She says she thinks that because of her peaceful political activity, she and her family was targeted for scrutiny by hostile federal agencies.Yet as news emerges that the Internal Revenue Service wielded its power to obstruct conservative groups, Catherine’s story becomes credible — and chilling. It also raises questions about whether other federal agencies have used their executive powers to target those deemed political enemies.
Before the Engelbrecht family’s three-year ordeal began, Catherine says, “I had no real expectation or preparation for the blood sport that American politics is.” Sounding weary on the phone, she continues: “It’s all been a through-the-looking-glass experience.”
Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who specializes in representing conservative organizations, says that the Engelbrecht family’s experience is “just the tip of the iceberg. . . . I think there’s definitely a Chicago-politics-style enemies list in this administration, and I think it permeates this branch of the federal government.”
* * *
The
Engelbrechts were not, until recently, particularly political. They had
been busy running a tiny manufacturing plant in Rosenberg, Texas. After
years of working for others, Bryan, a trained machinist, wanted to open
his own shop, so he saved his earnings, bought a computerized
numerical-control machine, which does precision metal-cutting, and began
operating out of his garage. “That was about 20 years ago,” he says.
“Now, we’re up to about 30 employees.”For two decades, Bryan and Catherine drove to work in their big truck. Engelbrecht Manufacturing Inc. now operates out of a 20,000-square-foot metal building on the prairie just outside of Houston, where a “semi-pet coyote lives in the field just behind us,” Bryan says. They went back to their country home each night. Stress was rare, and life was good.
But the 2008 elections left Catherine feeling frustrated about the debates, which seemed to be a string of superficial talking points. So she began attending tea-party meetings, enjoying the political discussion. A spunky woman known for her drive, Catherine soon wanted to do more than just talk. She joined other tea partiers and decided to volunteer at the ballot box. Working as an alternate judge at the polls in 2009 in Fort Bend County, Texas, Catherine says, she was appalled and dismayed to witness everything from administrative snafus to outright voter fraud.
These formative experiences prompted her to found two organizations: King Street Patriots, a local community group that hosts weekly discussions on personal and economic freedoms; and True the Vote, which seeks to prevent voter fraud and trains volunteers to work as election monitors. It also registers voters, attempts to validate voter-registration lists, and pursues fraud reports to push for prosecution if illegal activity has occurred.
Bryan says that when his wife began focusing on politics, working less often at the manufacturing shop, “I told her, ‘You have my undying support.’” He pauses, then adds in his thick Texan drawl: “Little did I know she’d take it this far!”
In July 2010, Catherine filed with the IRS seeking tax-exempt status for her organizations. Shortly after, the troubles began.
That winter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation came knocking with questions about a person who had attended a King Street Patriots event once. Based on sign-in sheets, the organization discovered that the individual in question had attended an event, but “it was a come-and-go thing,” and they had no further information on hand about him. Nevertheless, the FBI also made inquiries about the person to the office manager, who was a volunteer.
The King Street Patriots weren’t the only ones under scrutiny. On January 11, the IRS visited the Engelbrechts’ shop and conducted an on-site audit of both their business and their personal returns, Catherine says.
“What struck us as odd about that,” she adds,“is the lengths to which the auditor went to try to — it seemed like — to try to find some error. . . . She wanted to go out and see [our] farm, she wanted to count the cattle, she wanted to look at the fence line. It was a very curious three days. She was as kind as she could be, and she was doing her job . . . [but] it was strange.”
Bryan adds: “It was kind of funny to us. I mean, we weren’t laughing that much, but we knew we were squeaky clean. Our CPA’s a good guy. And who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor: I got a little bit of a refund.”
Two months later, the IRS initiated the first round of questions for True the Vote. Catherine painstakingly answered them, knowing that nonprofit status would help with the organization’s credibility, donors, and grant applications. In October, the IRS requested additional information. And whenever Catherine followed up with IRS agents about the status of True the Vote’s application, “there was always a delay that our application was going to be up next, and it was just around the corner,” she says.
As this was occurring, the FBI continued to phone King Street Patriots. In May 2011, agents phoned wondering “how they were doing.” The FBI made further inquiries in June, November, and December asking whether there was anything to report.
The situation escalated in 2012. That February, True the Vote received a third request for information from the IRS, which also sent its first questionnaire to King Street Patriots. Catherine says the IRS had “hundreds of questions — hundreds and hundreds of questions.” The IRS requested every Facebook post and Tweet she had ever written. She received questions about her family, whether she’d ever run for political office, and which organizations she had spoken to.
“It’s no great secret that the IRS is considered to be one of the more serious [federal agencies],” Catherine says. “When you get a call from the IRS, you don’t take it lightly. So when you’re asked questions that seem to imply a sense of disapproval, it has a very chilling effect.”
On the same day they received the questions from the IRS, Catherine says, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) launched an unscheduled audit of their machine shop, forcing the Engelbrechts to drop everything planned for that day. Though the Engelbrechts have a Class 7 license, which allows them to make component parts for guns, they do not manufacture firearms. Catherine said that while the ATF had a right to conduct the audit, “it was odd that they did it completely unannounced, and they took five, six hours. . . . It was so extensive. It just felt kind of weird.”
That was in February. In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid a visit to Engelbrecht Manufacturing while Bryan, Catherine, and their children were out of town. The OSHA inspector talked with the managerial staff and employees, inspecting the premises minutely. But Bryan says the agent found only “little Mickey Mouse stuff, like, ‘You have safety glasses on, but not the right kind; the forklift has a seatbelt, but not the right kind.’” Yet Catherine and Bryan said the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it.
Not long after, the tab arrived. OSHA was imposing $25,000 in fines on Engelbrecht Manufacturing. They eventually worked it down to $17,500, and Bryan says they may have tried to contest the fines to drive them even lower, but “we didn’t want to make any more waves, because we don’t know [how much further] OSHA could reach.”
“Bottom line is, it hurt,” he says. Fifteen thousand dollars is “not an insignificant amount to this company. It might be to other companies, but we’re still considered small, and it came at a time when business was slow, so instead of giving an employee a raise or potentially hiring another employee, I’m writing a check to our government.”
A few months later, True the Vote became the subject of congressional scrutiny. In September, Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) wrote to Thomas Perez, then the assistant attorney general of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice (who has now been nominated for labor secretary). “As you know, an organization called ‘True the Vote,’ which is an offshoot of the Tea Party, is leading a voter suppression campaign in many states,” Boxer wrote, adding that “this type of intimidation must stop. I don’t believe this is ‘True the Vote.’ I believe it’s ‘Stop the Vote.’”
And in October, Representative Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, attacked True the Vote in a letter. He wrote that “some have suggested that your true goal is not voter integrity, but voter suppression against thousands of legitimate voters who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates.” He added that: “If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated, and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.” He also decried True the Vote on MSNBC and CNN.
Catherine now says that she “absolutely” thinks that because she worked against voter fraud, the Left was irked and decided to target her.
The next month, in November 2012, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, showed up for an unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing. Catherine says the inspector told her the agency had received a complaint but couldn’t provide any more details. After the inspection, the agency notified the Engelbrechts that they needed to pay for an additional mechanical permit, which cost about $2,000 per year.
Since then, the IRS has sent two further rounds of questions to Catherine for her organizations. And last month, the ATF conducted a second unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing.
Catherine says she still hasn’t received IRS approval for her nonprofits, though she filed nearly three years ago. And “the way all of these personal instances interweave with what was going on on the nonprofit side . . . it amounts to something. You can’t help but think that statistically, this has to be coordinated on some level.”
On behalf of the True the Vote and King Street Patriots, Representative Ted Poe (R., Texas) sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF, inquiring whether the organizations were under criminal investigation. A statement on Poe’s website states that “the reply from these agencies was that none of these individuals were under criminal investigation. Well, if they’re not, why are they being treated like criminals? Just because they question government.”
Catherine says she knows of at least one other group that received government inquiries about its relationship with True the Vote, and she suspects more did, too. And other Tea Party groups decided not to form nonprofits at all after learning about her experience, she says. “They were scared,” she explains, “and you shouldn’t be scared of your government.”
Meanwhile, Catherine says the harassment has forced her to seriously reconsider whether her political activity is worth the government harassment she’s faced.
“I left a thriving family business with my husband that I loved, to do something I didn’t necessarily love, but [which] I thought had to be done,” she says. “But I really think if we don’t do this, if we don’t stand up and speak now, there might not [always] be that chance.”
Her husband offers an additional observation: “If you knew my wife, you’d know she doesn’t back down from anybody. They picked on the wrong person when they started picking on her.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348756/true-scandal-jillian-kay-melchior
What Hurts the Most about Benghazi
I can't look my old liberal friends in the eye after Benghazi. Most partisan disagreements are forgivable, and I try hard not to lose dear friends over politics. Benghazi is different. Benghazi isn't political for me. Benghazi is about Americans fighting jihadis for their lives and being abandoned to die by politicians. It is about Obama and Clinton calculating what the headlines would look like if they tried to save them or if they did nothing. They chose nothing, and they almost got away with it.David Gelernter points out on Powerlineblog.com that,
It was the radically partisan Edward Kennedy who proposed that a senate select committee investigate Watergate-but in February 1973, the Senate voted unanimously to create that committee. Republican Senator Howard Baker was vice chairman, and asked the key question: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Which Democratic senator will ask that question today...?So how do I look my friends in the eye?
This is the question that haunts me. Do Democrats - not the party leaders, not mainstream journalists whose job depends on Democratic Party loyalty - would ordinary, real people, all those regular Democrat voters - would they care if they did pay attention? That is the heart of my curiosity. Because I care so viscerally about Americans serving our country being betrayed for political gain. There's something truly awful about Obama and Hillary sacrificing men's lives because attempting to protect them would be inconvenient to his election campaign, to her political ambition.
Surely ordinary Democrats understand that underlings don't decide to withhold military or emergency assistance to 34 Americans under attack from jihadis on 9/11?
I'd like to understand. Do Democrat voters truly think these actions by a President and Secretary of State are not important? I know we are different on many questions of war and peace and diplomacy. But this is a small, human story. A handful of men, attacked by Islamists, fighting for their lives, abandoned for election politics. We don't do that in America and pretend it's okay, do we?
This isn't about differences of opinion on the war on terror. It's about pure, raw, election politics, and calculus about headlines, and counting votes, and the fear it will look bad if Osama bin Laden's death didn't solve very much at all.
There is no politician in America who has the right to sacrifice another man's life to avoid a difficult headline.
There is nothing confusing about what happened that night and in the following weeks. We don't need all the gritty and ugly details, easily available on the internet. It is obvious that Obama and Hillary had to issue the directives. The CIA or the military would not ignore a terrorist attack on a U.S. embassy on 9/11. Both CIA chief, General Petraeus, and AFRICOM'S commander, General Ham, said they did not issue orders to not intervene. The directive could only come from our Commander in Chief. Can you imagine if no one asked President George Bush how to respond to 9/11 because he was busy talking to elementary school children? President Obama was not even busy. He just retired for the night, we are told. He was told about what was happening and he did...nothing.
There was no meeting of the national security team in the situation room, so familiar to us all from the President's Bin Laden photo op. Obama did not talk again with his Secretary of Defense. American military forces stationed 600 miles away in Sicily - one hour and fourteen minutes away by a commercial airliner - were not sent. We didn't send medical personnel. After the first attack, we didn't send men to secure the annex. Pleas for help were ignored. Special operating forces in Libya were ordered twice to not go to the rescue. The men in Benghazi were left on their own to fight and die.
Obvious lies were issued by Obama and Hillary in the days that followed. They were stupid lies, already belied by the events - blaming a video, denying it had anything to do with 9/11. Asked by a campaign reporter if requests for help were denied, Obama said he ordered "Number one, make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to." But far from 'whatever we need to' Obama's administration and military did nothing at all.
Asked why the U.S. military did not do more, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday the first rule in such a situation is not to deploy troops into harm's way ...Clearly no orders reached Panetta to "do whatever we need to" to secure personnel. Obama's and Clinton's lies were offensively transparent the moment they uttered them.
Those men in Benghazi, beloved by their families, brave, patriotic men serving their country, were abandoned to die because the attack on an embassy didn't match the campaign talking points about the brilliance of the Obama/Clinton foreign policy. There wasn't supposed to be a 9/11 attack after killing bin Laden and Clinton's signature policy, the Arab Spring.
Apparently it was deemed less politically damaging for Obama to withhold rescuers, go to bed, go to Las Vegas the next day, and then lie about what happened. Obama's calculus was right. He understood our media's unbridled and corrupt support for him. He understood how Romney could be bullied by the press into silence. He understood how willing and motivated Democrat voters were to accept his lies about Benghazi.
Obama calculated he could get away with it before the election, and he did. Clinton calculated her supporters would care less, and she is still right. She knew that the interviews of the family members, their pleas for justice, would not touch the hearts of her followers - and she was right. The abandonment of those men was condoned and covered up and excused with alacrity by the entire Democrat political apparatus, including the Democrat media.
They got away with it because Democrat followers don't care.
That is as immoral as it comes for me.
Four possible Obamacare futures
On Thursday, House Republicans once again voted to repeal President Obama’s health care law. I don’t think it’ll be a major spoiler to predict that the repeal bill won’t go any further. But I do think the vote is a good opportunity to reflect on the future of Obamacare, which I divide into four possible scenarios.1. Obamacare is a success, and liberals build on it
Under this outcome, the law works as well as or better than its supporters predicted. After some initial hiccups, it expands insurance coverage to those in need without disrupting the health care experience for those who are already satisfied. The cost-control measures work, and providers are able to deliver better care at a lower price by taking advantage of government incentives to be more efficient. As a result, the government saves hundreds of billions of dollars on Medicare without seniors noticing any cuts to their benefits and access. Young and healthy Americans flood into the insurance market to offset the cost of providing insurance to older and sicker Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions. The new insurance exchanges are vibrant marketplaces offering beneficiaries a wide range of options, promoting competition that drives down the cost of premiums. Over time, more individuals and businesses demand access to the exchanges, and America evolves into an exchange-driven single-payer system.
2. Obamacare is an epic disaster and it gets fully repealed
Under this scenario, the law unravels. The cost controls do not work, proving especially troublesome for smaller regional hospitals. They either start closing, stop accepting Medicare or cut services. This effectively reduces the benefits seniors can get out of Medicare, and they, along with industry lobbyists, pressure Congress into undoing the cuts that are one of the primary offsets to the law’s trillions in new spending. On top of this, new taxes kick in – mandate penalties, the insurance premium tax, the medical device tax, pharmaceutical tax, etc. – and businesses struggle to adjust to a raft of new regulations. The exchanges are swamped with technical problems and poorly administered, making it difficult for individuals to sign up. Not many insurers participate in the exchanges, meaning they don’t offer sufficient choices to promote competition. New regulatory requirements drive up the price of premiums, so young and healthy Americans decide they’d rather pay a penalty than invest in costly insurance. Without the younger and healthier people in the risk pool to offset the cost of sicker Americans, insurers raise premiums even further, prompting yet more individuals to exit the insurance market. And so, the dreaded insurance “death spiral” ensues. In the meantime, newly insured individuals start taking advantage of their free or heavily subsidized care, but the capacity of the health care sector does not grow quickly enough to meet demand, translating into long waits at doctors’ offices and difficulty getting appointments in the first place. The ensuing backlash from all fronts leads to a Republican takeover of the Senate in 2014 and helps elect a Republican president in 2016. At some point in 2017, a new Republican president signs a law wiping Obamacare off the books.
3. Obamacare is largely a disaster, but it survives, and possibly expands
Though I’ve written a lot over the past several years about the likely negative consequences of the law, no matter how chaotic the implementation, at some point at least some constituency of voters will be deriving some benefits from the law. It’s one thing to support repeal when it means voting against theoretical subsidies for theoretical beneficiaries. But once the law goes into place, repealing the law would mean stripping away benefits from people actively receiving government aid. Let’s say, in 2017, there’s an incoming Republican president with – at best – control of the House and a narrow Republican Senate majority. Would he or she be willing to use reconciliation to push through a repeal bill when confronted with Democratic attacks that it would take millions off the Medicaid rolls and make millions more lose their subsidized private insurance? Republicans have not traditionally shown themselves to have the political fortitude to roll back entitlements once they are in place. At the same time, if Republicans do not respond with an alternative to clean up the mess, then liberals will begin to blame problems in the health care sector on the idea that Obamacare left too much control in the hands of private industry. This will prepare the groundwork for a further move toward a socialized single-payer health care system, perhaps by, say, re-introducing a “public option.” There have been many times in American history when failures of government policy led to further expansions of government. Limited government advocates should be wary of this happening with Obamacare.
4. Obamacare is largely a disaster, and it gets reformed
Under this scenario, a combination of public backlash and adverse court decisions forces Congress to re-open Obamacare. It doesn’t get fully repealed, but it gets reformed. Perhaps, for instance, exchanges remain, but there are far fewer restrictions on what type of insurance can be offered, broadening the range of options and providing more affordable choices for those who don’t have as many medical needs. States may be given actual flexibility on the operation of the exchanges, and Medicaid funds become block granted. Insurance is made accessible to those with pre-existing conditions without the “guaranteed issue” and “community rating” policies that force insurers to cover everybody who applies at a price effectively set by government. This allows Congress to get rid of the federal individual mandate.
At this writing, I view the third and fourth scenarios as the most likely outcomes. All the signs point to a rocky implementation of the law, meaning there will likely be some window to revisit it. The big question is whether the next major health care reform legislation reins in Obamacare or moves the nation closer to single-payer. The outcome will largely depend on the party affiliation of the next several presidents as well as how serious Republicans get about rallying around a health care reform policy.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/four-possible-obamacare-futures/article/2529919?custom_click=rss
PAUL: A staggering abuse of power
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
By Rand PaulWhen I filibustered over domestic drone use, critics said that I was being ridiculous. They said that no American had been killed by a drone on American soil and that no one was likely to be anytime soon. President Obama responded that he hadn’t killed anyone yet and didn’t intend to — but he might.
That wasn’t the point. The filibuster was about the limits of power. It was about how much authority the president imagined he had. Lincoln wrote that nearly any man can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man, give him power.
I think Mr. Obama has failed that test of power. From the cover-up in Benghazi to letting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) target the Tea Party to First and Fourth Amendment violations in obtaining records from the press, Mr. Obama has shown disregard for the Bill of Rights and his responsibilities as commander in chief.
The handling of the tragedy in Benghazi continues to raise more questions than it produces answers. The White House’s original story, that no one was told to “stand down” on the night of the attack, was contradicted last week by Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens‘ deputy, Gregory Hicks. Mr. Hicks testified that he spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on the night of the attack and that a special-forces unit was stopped from deploying.
In January, we learned that Mrs. Clinton had not read the cables from Libya, in which Stevens, who feared for his safety, made multiple requests for additional security. The review board tries to shield Mrs. Clinton from blame by saying the decisions to deny security the ambassador requested occurred below her level.
That is precisely her culpability. It is inexcusable that she left decisions concerning the security of our Libyan ambassador to underlings. This issue is far from over, but so far, this administration seems more worried about protecting its own than being honest about what really happened.
Not to mention, who’s to blame for it.
Last week, the Internal Revenue Service admitted it intentionally targeted various Tea Party, conservative and libertarian groups, submitting them to audits or making them wait exceptionally long for tax-exempt status. If Benghazi represents abuse or misuse of power, the IRS stands in direct violation of the First Amendment — targeting American citizens for their political beliefs. The more we learn about this controversy, the clearer it becomes that anyone who dared to talk about spending, debt or anything related to our current state of government affairs from a conservative perspective was a target.
One of the paramount freedoms Americans have is the ability to criticize their government without fear of retribution. This has been especially true when it comes to freedom of the press.
When the news broke that the Justice Department had seized two months’ worth of Associated Press reporters’ phone records, it was just the latest in a growing line of abuses of power by this White House. AP head Gary Pruitt called this government seizure a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how journalists research and gather news.
It was, and the lengths to which Mr. Obama has gone to circumvent the Constitution are staggering. It’s as though the president thinks we no longer have a First Amendment protecting freedom of the press and free speech. It’s as though he thinks we no longer have a Fourth Amendment that prevents illegal search and seizure. It’s as though he and Mrs. Clinton think the State Department is no longer responsible for protecting our diplomats.
It’s as though we no longer have a Bill of Rights that guarantees American citizens the right to due process and a jury trial — and it took me 13 hours of standing and speaking to get the White House to finally, and begrudgingly, say we did. My filibuster was about drone use, but more importantly, it was about never giving government the benefit of the doubt. We cannot afford it, and the government never deserves it, as this administration continues to remind us in so many surprising and disturbing ways.
With great power comes great responsibility. The greater Mr. Obama’s power, the less responsible he becomes.
Power corrupts. Absolutely.
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