New Emails Show Lois Lerner Contacted DOJ About Prosecuting Tax Exempt Groups

By Katie Pavlich
According to new IRS emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner contacted the Department of Justice in May 2013 about whether tax exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for "lying" about political activity.
"I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ ... He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who "lied" on their 1024s --saying they weren't planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS," Lerner wrote in a May 8, 2013 email to former Nikole C. Flax, who was former-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller's chief of staff.
"I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?" Flax responded on May 9, 2013.

After this email exchange, Lerner handed things off to Senior Technical Adviser and Attorney Nancy Marks, who was in charge of setting up a meeting with DOJ.
Just a few short days later on May 10, 2013, Lerner admitted and apologized for the inappropriate targeting of conservative tea party groups during an American Bar Association Conference after answering a planted question. Further according to Judicial Watch, "In an email to an aide responding to a request for information from a Washington Post reporter, Lerner admits that she “can’t confirm that there was anyone on the other side of the political spectrum” who had been targeted by the IRS. She then adds that “The one with the names used were only know [sic] because they have been very loud in the press.”
In other words, only conservative groups were being looked at for criminal prosecution.
Last week news broke that Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings' staff was in contact with Lerner about the conservative group True the Vote, despite denying any contact occurred. In this specific instance of Lerner discussing possible criminal prosecution of tax-exempt groups through DOJ, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse seems to have been the person to get the ball rolling.
On April 9, 2013 during a Senate Judiciary Hearing, just one month before the targeting scandal broke, Whitehouse asked witnesses from DOJ and the IRS why groups that had possibly "made false statements" about their political activities had not been prosecuted. On March 27, 2013, just days before the hearing took place, Lerner described the purpose for the hearing to IRS staff in an email. "As I mentioned yesterday -- there are several groups of folks from the FEC world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are). One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn't feel so comfortable doing the stuff," she wrote. "So, don't be fooled about how this is being articulated – it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity."
Lerner later acknowledged pursuing prosecutions of these groups would not fit well with the law.
“These new emails show that the day before she broke the news of the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner was talking to a top Obama Justice Department official about whether the DOJ could prosecute the very same organizations that the IRS had already improperly targeted,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The IRS emails show Eric Holder’s Department of Justice is now implicated and conflicted in the IRS scandal. No wonder we had to sue in federal court to get these documents.”

Census Bureau: Change that Conceals Obamacare Impact Before Midterms 'Coincidental'

By Tony Lee
The Census Bureau decided to so drastically change the methodology of its annual survey for the first time in over 30 years that it will be nearly impossible to measure Obamacare's impact before the midterm elections.
The New York Times reports that the Census Bureau, which has been "the authoritative source of health insurance data for more than three decades," also knew for years that its survey had inflated the number of Americans who were uninsured. Democrats relied on that data to push for a complete overhaul of the health care system.
The Census Bureau said the change, implemented during the year that Obamacare is being implemented, was "coincidental" and "unfortunate" because the redesign would have ideally "had at least a few years to gather base line and trend data.”
The new methodology will reportedly show a lower number of uninsured Americans, which will inevitably be compared to the number of uninsured Americans that had been inflated in previous reports, a win-win for the Obama administration. In addition, “the percentage of people with private coverage was statistically higher” with the new methodology.
Census officials told the Times that "the new questions are so different that the findings will not be comparable." An internal Census Bureau document the Times obtained said that the new questionnaire included a “total revision to health insurance questions” and, when tested last year, actually "produced lower estimates of the uninsured."
“We are expecting much lower numbers just because of the questions and how they are asked,” Brett J. O’Hara, chief of the health statistics branch at the Census Bureau, told the Times.
The traditional questionnaire that had been used for over 30 years had an “inflated estimate of the uninsured” and was prone to “measurement errors,” according to a document the Times obtained. For instance, "the percentage of people without health insurance was 10.6 percent when interviewers used the new questionnaire, compared with 12.5 percent using the old version."
That did not stop the Obama administration from using the inflated numbers to push for Obamacare. As Breitbart News has reported, just 1.7% of America's supposedly 48.6 million uninsured have been covered by Obamacare to date.
In 2009, Republicans criticized the Obama administration's decision to move the Census into the White House, saying it was nothing more than a partisan power grab that the Obama administration could use to its advantage.
...The Times notes that "health policy experts and politicians had been assuming that the Census Bureau" would help answer how many Americans "gaining coverage were previously uninsured or had policies canceled" since the annual report "shows the number of people with various kinds of health insurance and the number of uninsured for the nation and for each state." But Kathleen Thiede Call, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, said that the Census data that will be released just before the 2014 midterm elections "will not be directly comparable to what was reported last September."
Critics of the move said, at a minimum, the new methodology will give the Obama administration cover to say Obamacare's impact is inconclusive when Republicans criticize the law in the months before the midterm elections.

Vice President Clinton?

By Lee Cary

Here’s a prediction, albeit a longshot.

After the midterms, Joe Biden resigns citing vague, undefined health reasons. Biden will devote his time to assembling documents from his many years in the Senate and as VP for inclusion in the planned Biden Library (at, say, the University of Delaware), mostly already funded by a large pool of donations from wealthy contributors. (In other words, Joe gets bought out. No chance of him being elected POTUS. So he bargains while he’s got something to bargain with. If he sticks out to ‘16, you could put his library in a Bookmobile.)

Hillary Clinton fulfills his remaining term of 14-16, enabling her to be the first female VP (‘cause, as you know, the GOP has a war on women and that’ll be a key theme in ‘16), plus, travel the country using Air Force 2 to campaign for POTUS. Consequently, assuming her health enables her to run, it will be as an incumbent, of sorts. In the debates she’ll be addressed by the liberal media hacks (that the compliant GOP will yet again approve as unbiased moderators) as “Mrs. Vice President.” No need to use the feminist form of address “Ms.” when there are extra points to be gained by reminding people she is married to Bill Clinton, the Democrats’ senior statesman.

So, the Democrat Candidate in ‘16 is a former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and Vice President – all in one lovable package. Bada-boom, bada-bing.

Crazy, you say? It’s exactly what I’d do if I were they. The liberal media would go organismic over the move.

By Bridget Johnson

The Government Accountability Office found that sketchy data is being collected on lengthy and costly environmental reviews, with one administration critic saying the new report proves that the National Environmental Policy Act “has turned into a tool for delaying projects on federal lands.”

NEPA “generally requires federal agencies to evaluate the potential environmental effects of actions they propose to carry out, fund, or approve,” such as permits, “by preparing analyses of different comprehensiveness depending on the significance of a proposed project’s effects on the environment–from the most detailed Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) to the less comprehensive Environmental Assessments (EA) and Categorical Exclusions (CE),” the GAO said in its audit released Tuesday.
The report found that no reliable data exists for the costs of enforcing NEPA or the number of environmental analyses performed each year, even though the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to be tracking it. Information is scattered among various agencies with different standards of record-keeping; the Energy Department did reveal that the cost paid to contractors for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) can range from $6.6 million to as much as $85 million.
The impact statements take an average of 4.6 years to complete, effectively holding up projects at a rate that increased by 34.2 days per year between 2000 and 2012. Thirty years ago, the estimate of total time needed for such a study was less than a year.
...“This report substantiates concerns that the federal government has no system to track time or costs associated with NEPA, which is one of the most expansive regulatory laws in the country,” Bishop said Tuesday. “The findings of this report are not insignificant and deserve to be given considerable attention and oversight moving forward.”
“The National Environmental Policy Act is important for many reasons, however, I remain concerned about the exorbitant costs and delays associated with the process,” he added. “I am also very troubled by the constant use of NEPA as a litigious weapon to halt or delay projects that wealthy special interest groups don’t like. This report will be instrumental as we work toward finding solutions for some of the biggest problems plaguing this ’70s-era law.”
Hastings said the GAO confirmed “that the federal government can’t even track how many lawsuits are caused by NEPA or how much it costs taxpayers to fund never-ending studies.”

Obama Admin Makes New Rules on Grains, Breweries Rebel

By Warner Todd Huston
For generations brewers have been selling leftover brewing grains to farmers to feed to their livestock, but now the feds want to interfere and make that transaction harder and more expensive, a move that will drive up the costs of both beer and food.
...Currently brewers make deals with farmers where the farmers cart off the used grains. Often the deal is done without cost to both parties.
"We're trading, giving something of value to each other and working it out. I think that's one of the really great things, and people really hate to see the government get involved in something where they can just as easily stay out of this," Deth said.
But under the new rules, the grains would be regulated like pet foods and would have to meet FDA regulations for food safety. These regulations would cost both farmers and brewers more than a handshake.
Naturally there isn't a single report in the entire history of these grain deals of harm coming to either livestock or humans. Regardless, regulators in Washington have found yet another thing to interfere in and, yet again, the feds want to stop Americans from doing something they've done since the country was young.
....But if these new rules take effect at any level, it will essentially be just a new tax added to beer prices. According to the Tax Foundation, already some 40 percent of what we pay for beer is made up of taxes.
Worse, some sources also claim that these new rules will also drive up food prices beyond the price of beer.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) notes that if farmers have to pay more for feed it will drive up the costs of our food.

'Biggest land grab inthe history of the world'

By Alana Cook

In a move lawmakers and farmers are calling “the biggest land grab in the history of the world,” the Environmental Protection Agency is requesting jurisdiction over all public and private streams in the United States that are “intermittent, seasonal and rain-dependent.”

The EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in late March jointly released a proposed rule, Waters of the United States, in an effort to clarify which streams and wetlands are protected under the Clean Water Act.

A statement issued by the EPA says “the proposed rule will benefit businesses by increasing efficiency in determining coverage of the Clean Water Act.”

But some lawmakers strongly disagree.

According to congressional budget testimony last week, Waters of the United States would give the EPA authority over streams on private property even when the water beds have been dry, in some cases for hundreds of years.

Calling it “the biggest land grab in the history of the world,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said the “economic impact of that would be profound.”

...Rogers said the proposal is “proof in and of itself of the mal-intent of this administration toward the private sector.”

When Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, probed EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy further about how the new Waters of the United States rule would affect Americans’ civil liberties and ability to conduct business, McCarthy was unable to cite specifics.

She said the rule is currently posted on the EPA website for a 90-day commenting period and the scientific basis to support it has not been completed.

The proposed rule tinkers with the definition of “navigable” waters, which was the central point of litigation in a battle between the Supreme Court and the EPA regarding the Clean Water Act.

....But lawmakers and farmers express concern that this kind of regulation would allow the EPA in conjunction with the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Energy and the Army to dictate on a never-before-seen scale everything from grazing rights, food production, animal health and the use of energy on private lands.

....When lawmakers questioned McCarthy on the extent of the regulation’s reach, including who would be fined if the rules are violated and where the money would go, McCarthy could not give a clear answer.

She said only that the scientific study on which the proposed rule is based is still under way.

Obama administration gives Detroit $100 million for 'blight removal'

By Rick Moran

The cash infusion by the federal government is actually going to help the city pay pensions, even though they're playing a kind of shell game with the money.

As for "blight removal," perhaps they could start with city hall.

Reuters:

Michigan officials and President Barack Obama's Administration are discussing a plan to free up $100 million in federal money to aid Detroit's retired city workers, the Detroit Free Press reported on Tuesday.

Citing two people familiar with the talks, the newspaper said the talks were centered around federal money flowing to Michigan for blight removal. Under the plan, $100 million would be earmarked for Detroit, reducing the $500 million the city's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, plans to use to eliminate blight over the next 10 years.

The $100 million saved could then be used by Orr to ease pension cuts for retirees under the city's plan to adjust its $18 billion of debt and exit the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, according to the report.

The White House wants the story to go away because even among Democrats on Capitol Hill, there is little enthusiasm for any kind of bailout for the Motor City. That goes double for Governor Snyder who is locked in a close re-election campaign.

It seems inevitable that some kind of federal bailout package for Detroit will be proposed. City manager Orr is keeping things together with bailing wire and bee's wax, with little margin for error. To truly get out from under, the city is going to need billions.

PK'S NOTE: Tell me these aren't racist comments, I dare you.

University Wants Fewer Whites: Fears 'Mediocrity'

By Selwyn Duke

If you thought the “educator” who saw “racist” intent behind offering someone a peanut-butter sandwich was a loon, consider Western Washington University (WWU) president Bruce Shepard. Always on the lookout for ways to improve his institution’s academic integrity, he recently circulated a school-wide questionnaire and asked, “How do we make sure that in future years ‘we are not as white as we are today?’”

Apparently, Shepard has been gnashing his teeth over this problem for quite a while. As Kaitlyn Schallhorn at Campus Reform reports, el presidente said in a 2012 speech, “Every year, from this stage and at this time, you have heard me say that, if in decades ahead, we are as white as we are today, we will have failed as university.”

Hey, forget the old measures of academic success, such as if students know what’s in the Constitution, have a grasp of basic history and civics, can perform rudimentary mathematical calculations and properly use the language (for Shep’s benefit, I refer to English). It’s now all about melanin content.

...But Shep is just looking to the future. He also warned on his blog, “In the decades ahead, should we be as white as we are today, we will be relentlessly driven toward mediocrity; or, become a sad shadow of our current self.” Would that be a White Shadow?

But I’m hip. We certainly wouldn’t want to be mediocre like the white guys who forged Western civilization, founded the US, created the modern world and gave us most of what makes our lives better.

Now, given that WWU was founded in 1886 and originally called the Northwest Normal School, I have a feeling it’s already a shadow of its former self. But, question: if WWU became what it is today while being intolerably white, how could remaining so make it a shadow of its current self? I know, I know, our strength lies in our diversity, our smartness lies in our stupidity, and academics lie constantly.

But I have a couple more questions. Does Shep still want the mediocre white alumni’s money? And since WWU has printed information on how to more effectively “recruit and retain faculty and staff of color,” will the colorless Shepard lead by example and give his presidency to a member of the color replete? Or is this where, as with Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren, we suddenly learn that Shep is really a Cherokee named Peddling Bull.

Anyway, it’s not hard to figure out how to reduce the number of whites at WWU: just eliminate the affirmative action for whites.

Oh, wait….

Alas, mediocrity may not remain restricted to WWU’s presidency after all.

What the Left Did Last Week

By Dennis Prager

In his column last week, Charles Krauthammer crossed a line. He declared the American Left totalitarian.
He is correct. Totalitarianism is written into the Left’s DNA. Krauthammer wrote about a left-wing petition “bearing more than 110,000 signatures delivered to the [Washington] Post demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming.”
He concluded:

I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the Left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian.

America is engaged in a civil war — thank God, a nonviolent one, but a civil war nonetheless. We are as divided now as we were during the Civil War. The issue then was slavery — a huge moral divide, of course. But today, the country is divided by opposite views on morality, politics, society, religion, the individual, and the very nature of America.
The Left seeks to, as candidate Barack Obama promised five days before his first election, “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” That is what the Left is doing. There is almost no area of American life in which the Left’s influence is not transformative, and ultimately destructive.
Beginning today, I will periodically devote the space of this column to exposing that transformation and destruction. This is necessary, I believe, because most Americans, including more than a few Republicans and more than a few Democrats, simply do not know what the Left is doing to their country.
So, here is some of what the Left has done in the last week or two.

The left-wing directors of Mozilla, the parent company of the browser Firefox, compelled their CEO, Brendan Eich, to resign after he refused to recant his support for maintaining the man-woman definition of marriage. Even though his gay employees acknowledged that he had treated them fairly individually and as couples, the mere fact that he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman rendered him unacceptable as an employee of Mozilla/Firefox. (For more details, see my column of last week, “Uninstall Firefox.”)
The Wall Street Journal condemned Mozilla. The New York Times has not taken a position.

Brandeis University rescinded its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, perhaps the world’s foremost activist in behalf of women in the Islamic world. Hirsi Ali, an African woman born into a Muslim family and raised Muslim, now teaches at Harvard; she was scheduled to receive an honorary degree at the forthcoming Brandeis graduation ceremony. Brandeis rescinded its invitation after protests led by a Muslim student and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist organization. Hirsi Ali’s detractors were outraged about comments she has made criticizing the appalling treatment of women in many parts of the Muslim world.
The Wall Street Journal condemned Brandeis. The New York Times has not taken a position.

The University of Michigan canceled a showing of the documentary Honor Diaries. The film features nine women who are Muslim or who come from a Muslim country. They speak about honor killings, female genital mutilation, forced marriages at young ages, and the denial of education to women in Muslim communities. They praise moderate Muslims. But the University of Michigan canceled the film lest a non-moderate Muslim organization, CAIR again, label the university “Islamophobic.”

Six weeks ago, a University of Wisconsin student released a video he had made of a guest lecturer in the freshman general-education course “Education 130: Individual and Society.” The lecturer, the political and organizing director for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 150, delivered a diatribe, with obscenities, against conservatives, whites, and Republicans. Last week, when confronted with the evidence that classrooms at their university were being politicized, the faculty of the University of Wisconsin reacted with indignation — at the student who made the video. And then the faculty passed a resolution demanding that the university ban recording any of its classes.
It’s hard to blame the faculty. Given the intellectual shallowness and the left-wing politics that pervade so many liberal-arts classes, the University of Wisconsin faculty has every reason to fear how the public might respond if it knows what professors say in class.

Today is the cutoff date for public reactions to the proposal by the California Supreme Court’s ethics-advisory committee to forbid California judges from affiliating with the Boy Scouts, which the Left deems anti-gay. Given the Left’s animosity to traditional value-based institutions, it is not surprising that it loathes the Boy Scouts. What is remarkable — actually, frightening — is how easy it has been for the Left to make it illegal for a judge to be a leader in the Boy Scouts. This is the now case in 22 states. It will soon be the case in California as well.
This was just one week — and only selected examples — in the Left’s ongoing transformation of America.

Al Qaeda holds big rally in Yemen

By Thomas Lifson

Not exactly “on the run,” as candidate Obama claimed in 2012, Al Qaeda brazenly held an open rally with over 100 people and posted video of it online. CNN reports (video below):

A new video shows what looks like the largest and most dangerous gathering of al Qaeda in years. And the CIA and the Pentagon either didn't know about it or couldn't get a drone there in time to strike.

U.S. officials won't comment on that, but every frame of the video is now being analyzed by the United States.

In the middle of the clip, the man known as al Qaeda's crown prince, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, appears brazenly out in the open, greeting followers in Yemen. Al-Wuhayshi, the No. 2 leader of al Qaeda globally and the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has said he wants to attack the United States. But in the video, he looks unconcerned that he could be hit by an American drone.

Note to Mayor de Blasio: these guys all worship at mosques, where their imams tell them AQ is a great way to win a ticket to paradise and all those waiting virgins.

In a speech to the group, al-Wuhayshi makes it clear that he's going after the United States, saying "We must eliminate the cross. ... The bearer of the cross is America!"

There is every reason to believe that more attacks are on their way:

The main problem about this group is that it has a bomb maker who can put bombs on to planes that can't be detected," Bergen said.

That bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, is believed to be responsible for several attack attempts against the United States, including the failed 2009 Christmas Day underwear bomber attack in Detroit. (snip)

"His message to the United States," [CNN terror analyst Peter] Cruickshank said, "was very much the same as (former al Qaeda leader Osama) bin Laden's: 'We're coming after you.' "