It is amazing how the elite media hid this for so long, but as Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets half way around the world before the truth can get its pants on”.
Lean – it is a street drug popular with the “gangsta rap” scene and one of the more popular recipe’s is Robitussin DM, Watermelon flavored Arizona Tea and Skittles. Guess what kind of tea Trayvon Martin bought at 7-11 along with his Skittles.
It’s more than a drug; it’s a culture. It’s what’s known on the street as “Lean,” a highly addictive cocktail of cough syrup, cold medicine, alcohol and candy — so potent it makes you “lean” over when high. The drug first began to get attention a few years ago, when a popular Houston DJ overdosed on it. At that time, it was easy to make and easy to get, says Ron Peters, a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health. “As far as across Texas, across also the southern part of the United States, estimates have shown that it to be at one time a pretty common drug of choice amongst kids…anywhere from ninth grade all the way up to young adults,” says Peters.
Martin had 1.5 nanograms of THC – the active ingredient in marijuana – and 7.3 nanograms of another THC substance found in his blood. Traces of cannabis – marijuana – were also found in his urine.
The liver damage from Martin’s drug abuse was also apparent in Martin’s autopsy report:
What causes patchy yellow discoloration due to fatty metamorphosis of the liver? Well, morbid obesity, Reye’s Syndrome, alcohol addiction, and drug abuse.
Trayvon Martin’s social networking showed that he was actively involved in “Lean” production:
George Zimmerman said in his call to police that Martin was behaving strangely like he was on drugs. This is the kind of trouble our inner city youth are in today and the elite media, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and President Obama could not seem to care less.
UPDATE …We told ya so: Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers – LINK
This story is not about partisanship. It is about the difference between what Palpatine called, “I will make it legal” and what is truly lawful.
For starters we need legislation making third-party records with phone companies, internet, credit card, etc private. Just because technology has out-stepped the 4th Amendment does not mean that we cannot adjust the trajectory of that Amendment to keep up with technology. The “papers and effects” of today are smart phones and computers. The Constitution doesn’t say “you have the 4th Amendment until the moment your papers are in a digital format”. Shall we poll the American people on that one?
Most Americans would be outraged if they knew that Supreme Court once ruled that you have no expectation of privacy on such personal data.
One of the reasons the Founders petitioned the Crown and then wrote the Declaration of Independence is because of unspecific “General Warrants”. The reason that the 4th Amendment was enumerated is because the British issued these general warrants which were essentially legalized ‘fishing expeditions’ into people’s lives. Eventually the Crown gave the Red Coats the ability to write their own warrants. Today we are doing the same with “national security letters“.
They have made it illegal to tell anyone you are targeted, so you can’t even go to court to fight it.
How are we to know who was hurt or whose private information was leaked, or who’s phone and email was tapped and that information was used against them secretly? Since you can’t check and see if you have been snooped upon ever, you technically have no standing in court…. how convenient. This little maneuver is how the Obama Administration has been getting such cases thrown out of court.
The entire purpose of the courts, and especially the FISA Court, is to ensure that government surveillance is not overly broad and it’s actions not heavy-handed. Yet the FISA Court somehow signed off on this unlimited illegal surveillance and the Obama Administration was able to hop from judge to judge until it found one that would sign off on tracking the life of Fox News Reporter James Rosen, his family, and the entire Washington Bureau of the Associated Press. What we are experiencing is a wholesale breakdown of both the system of checks and balances and separation of powers.
The courts have said that the government needs a warrant to put a GPS tag on someone or their car, but meta data, among other things, tracks GPS off your calls and whereabouts instantly, so each and every log entry of an American without probable cause, each case… and there are millions, is a violation of law and people’s 4th Amendment rights. Where are the prosecutions? “I was just following orders” never has flown before, and doesn’t fly now.
What I don’t like is that Edward Snowden was put in the position of having to do this. The overreaches and abuses in the NSA, IRS, EPA and other agencies should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago. The tools the NSA was given were supposed to be used on foreign targets and only those in the USA where probable cause was clear and/or a specific warrant issued.
It seems to me, who Government was targeting certainly were not two brothers in Boston calling Chechnya to speak to their jihadi mother and trainers.
In every election this president has ever been in he has utilized private and sealed records against his opponents.
I used to favor the Patriot Act, I defended it against everyone in my college class on the Patriot Act in a debate – all of them vs me, and I won those debates (according to the prof), but I always gave my support with the caveat “so far as these tools are not abused, and the men using them respect the limits of their office”. Obviously this is no longer the case. Who is it that says the government is violating the restrictions placed in the Patriot Act? None other than Representative James Sensenbrenner, the author of the Patriot Act.
Snowden is not to blame for damaging our national security.
When Carter and Clinton reigned in (some say hobbled) the CIA and our intelligence capability it impacted our ability to stop the 9/11 hijackers, it was an over reaction to the abuse of the FBI, CIA, IRS etc under LBJ and Nixon. While Carter and Clinton should have acted more wisely to be sure, it was those who abused those tools in the first place that endangered our national security by causing the backlash.
Snowden is not to blame for the same reason. Those to blame for impairing our national security in the reign in that is sure to come are those who took this too far, abused the tools of government, lied to us repeatedly, forgot the limits of their office and somehow got it in their head that we are their subjects and not the other way around.
They say “trust us” after we have seen abuse after abuse of private information stored by government. They say They say “trust us” after lying to Congress about what they were doing. They say “trust us” after telling the media that “every member of Congress knew about this when clearly this was not the case. They say “trust us” when they say that “they only collected meta-data” as if somehow that is OK, for us only to discover later that they are collecting more content than they admitted after being caught.
They say that we need to trade-off some of our liberty and privacy because security is all important, and at the same time they invite millions to cross the border illegally, and accuse those of wanting to know who are crossing our borders of being racists. The government won’t even go after jihadists who over stay their student visas. In modern times, government has demonstrated time and time again that politics always trumps security.
“A ‘find the target first, then find the crime’ political approach requires access to information of an unprecedented level. Which is exactly what is happening. When everything is a crime, government data mining matters” – Prof. William Jacobsen
President Obama:
This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.
That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are.
What does it tell you when a 29-year-old high school drop-out has a better understanding of the 4th Amendment than the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA)?
I have been warning that academia has become so radical that it has become subversive. I am not alone in this line of thinking as Justice Scalia says that academia is largely responsible for these nonsensical, fast & loose interpretations of the Constitution.
There needs to be a massive effort to educate people on the 4th Amendment and that education needs to start with traditionalists, conservatives and republicans. Why? Because if those who claim to embrace the ideals of the nation’s founding don’t get it how can lay people be expected to?
Bob Woodward: I would not dismiss Benghazi as merely politics; compares it to Watergate:
IJR: You’re Right, Obama is No Nixon: Tricky Dick was an Amateur – LINK.
Senator Ted Cruz: Obama Administration does not respect the Bill of Rights. Eric Holder should resign. Obama should tell the truth. They are telling flat-out falsehoods:
Dr. Walter Williams: Why Americans deserve the IRS – LINK.
FOX News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes will be honored with the $250,000 Bradley Prize for being a “visionary of American journalism” on June 12 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
“Roger Ailes has been a visionary,” declared Michael W. Grebe, President and CEO of the Bradley Foundation, which will award four such prizes this year. “His innovative business-building strategies have revolutionized the uncovering and delivery of news in America.”
Indeed. The Ailes media “revolution” has never been more apparent–or more important–as in the past year, when Fox News has spearheaded the media investigations of two major scandals: the “Fast and Furious” investigation, and the Benghazi debacle and cover-up.
In both cases, Fox and a few other rebel news outfits led the way in uncovering the brutal truth about Obama administration misdeeds, even as the MSM [elite media] mostly chose either to ignore the scandals or else assist the Obama administration in the whitewashing.
Staying true to this speak-truth-to-power philosophy, Fox News covered the Benghazi tragedy and its scandalous cover-up relentlessly, even as other “news” networks did their best to protect–and not even question–the Obama administration’s initial spin that the U.S. consulate had been attacked after spontaneous protests stemming from a random anti-Islam YouTube video.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently highlighted Ailes’s central role in forcing a vigorous inquiry on Benghazi: “Why is it eight months later that finally now it seems that the, quote, mainstream media is taking an interest in what many of us have been — if this thing comes to a full investigation, there will be two people that I think deserve credit. One of them is Senator Lindsey Graham and the other [is] Roger Ailes.”
McCain has it exactly right, and his admiration for Ailes is shared by many millions of Americans.
The Bradley Foundation said the selection for its Prize was “based on nominations solicited from more than 200 prominent individuals across the country and chosen by the Bradley Prizes Selection Committee.”
“Through the Bradley Prizes, we recognize individuals like Roger Ailes whose accomplishments strengthen American institutions, in hopes that others will strive for excellence in their respective fields,” Grebe said. Previous recipients of the award include Ed Meese, Thomas Sowell, Jeb Bush, and the Federalist Society’s founding directors.
In 1996, after making CNBC the most successful business network in history, Ailes convinced News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch to launch an iconoclastic and fearless news channel at a time when the legacy liberal media virtually monopolized the airwaves. The launch of FOX News Channel was accompanied by near-universal mockery and disdain by media elites, but Ailes knew that Americans in the heartland–and even in liberal areas–were fed up not only with biased news coverage, but smug, know-it-all anchors who delivered their slanted coverage with ideological and partisan relish.
Judging from some of the commentary in the news media, many people seemed surprised by the fact that Republican Sen. Rand Paul would visit Howard University, a university with a majority African-American student population. The main thrust of Paul’s speech last month was to try to persuade the African-American community that its interests were best served by the Republican party rather than the Democratic party, and that the GOP was still the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party that produced black congressmen after the Civil War and the first black United States senator in the 20th century.
The audience at Howard was polite but skeptical. Paul’s case may have been strengthened had he made reference not to the 16th president of the United States, but to the 30th president.
The 30th president, Republican Calvin Coolidge, was a major supporter of Howard University and an overlooked figure in advancing the cause of racial equality in the United States. In one of his earliest acts as president, Coolidge proposed and persuaded Congress to pass an appropriation bill that reinforced the unique relationship between Howard and the federal government.
In his First Annual Address to Congress in 1923 he wrote: “About half a million dollars is recommended for medical courses at Howard University to help contribute to the education of 500 colored doctors needed each year.” This appropriation was to grow over the years, leading to the production of health care and other professionals who would stimulate the growth of an African-American middle class and develop leaders in all walks of life, nationally and internationally.
Coolidge made it clear that his interest in Howard specifically and the African-American community generally was not limited to this one gesture. Historians of the civil rights movement of the often note the significance of a speech made at Howard in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson in which he uttered the words, “We shall overcome.” This was seen as a dramatic gesture at that time for a politician from the Southwest to echo the words of an anthem of the civil rights movement.
But forty years before Johnson’s declaration, Coolidge gave the commencement address at Howard and signaled a significant change in progressive race relations. In reading his words it must be recalled that he spoke at a time when separate but equal was the law of the land, when lynchings trumped due process in criminal cases involving black men, and when the most recent Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, had praised a film which glorified the Ku Klux Klan.
Coolidge began his address by referencing the sad history of slavery and the importance of religious leaders in ending that period of American history. Because of his great interest in supporting business, he then described the growth of businesses owned by African-Americans since emancipation from slavery. He emphasized business growth and the spread of literacy among blacks as paralleling developments in the nation at large. To the Howard graduates and to the entire country he then said:
“The nation has need of all that can be contributed to it through the best efforts of all its citizens. The colored people have repeatedly proved their devotion to the high ideals of our country. They gave their services in the war with the same patriotism and readiness that other citizens did …. The propaganda of prejudice and hatred which sought to keep the colored men from supporting the national cause completely failed. The black man showed himself the same kind of citizen, moved by the same kind of patriotism, as the white man. They were tempted, but not one betrayed his country…They came home with many decorations and their conduct repeatedly won high commendation from both American and European commanders.”
[Editor’s Note – It is rare that we copy an entire article from another web site and present it in total. Usually we print a key excerpt of the most important points and have a link to the rest, which is considered “best internet manners”. However, in some rare cases, when the piece is so important, the information so crucial, that presenting the entire piece becomes warranted.
This piece from Michelle Malkin shows that some of the same people who were caught abusing the IRS under Bill Clinton, were re-appointed by Obama and are some of the guilty parties today. This indicates clear premeditation from the White House. What other reason would a President re-appoint a man with a criminal history like IRS Department Head Steven Miller?]
UPDATE – IRS boss of Tea Party probes targeted anti-Clinton group in 1990s – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Official Admits Clinton Enemies Were Audited – LINK.
It’s always the “low-level” peon’s fault, isn’t it? When Democrats get caught red-handed abusing government powers and bullying their political enemies small and large, nobody at the top knows nuttin’. The buck stops … in the janitors closet or something.
Here’s what I know: While they pretend to champion privacy rights, top left-wing operatives have routinely ransacked and plundered through the private documents and personal records of conservative groups, business owners and public figures. Through it all, those on the right standing against government tyranny have refused to stand down.
During the Clinton years, senior IRS official Paul Breslan revealed that the administration’s auditors specifically targeted conservative critics. On the hit list: Judicial Watch, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, the National Rifle Association, The National Review, The American Spectator, Freedom Alliance, National Center for Public Policy Research, Citizens Against Government Waste, Concerned Women for America, and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.
Steven Miller, one of the Clinton IRS agents who helped conduct those witch hunts in the 1990s, is currently the head of the Obama IRS department that has now admitted it discriminated against tea party groups. Jackboot history repeats itself.
In 1997, far-left Congressman Jim McDermott obtained and leaked an illegally taped phone call involving House GOP leaders to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times. Far from a low-level underling, McDermott was the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee at the time. Ohio GOP Rep. John Boehner won a $1 million civil lawsuit against McDermott. McDermott’s leak was condemned by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan as “willful and knowing misconduct (that) rises to the level of malice in this case.”
In 2005, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — headed by New York Sen. Charles Schumer — targeted then Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele as he considered a U.S. Senate bid. Two of Schumer’s staffers illegally obtained Steele’s credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. They set up a fake email account and then impersonated Steele on a website to filch his financial information.
Democrats framed the sleazy move as the work of junior staffers. But the supervising operative involved, Katie Barge, was senior research director of the DSCC, a former researcher at the George Soros-funded attack group Media Matters for America and a researcher for presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards.
Schumer’s other document plumber, Lauren Weiner, was a DSCC researcher who had worked for Dick Gephardt and the Democratic National Committee. She pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a credit report and escaped jail time. After she was fired, she earned a journalism degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
In 2006, longtime Democratic operative Bob Fertik called on his minions to attempt to obtain the private phone records of prominent conservatives through shady online information brokers. “If money is scarce,” Fertik vowed, “Democrats.com will reimburse you if you buy the records for an important phone number and discover gold when you get the records.”
In October 2008, top Ohio Democrats targeted real plumber Joe Wurzelbacher after he challenged then presidential candidate Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth” radicalism. Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, ordered underlings to scour government databases for dirt. In addition to pawing through his child-support papers, her agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes.
Jones-Kelley was not just a high-level state official. She was also an Obama campaign donor who volunteered to arrange an event for Michelle Obama and provided the campaign with nearly 20 names of potential donors ahead of a Dayton campaign stop. Three years after resigning, she found herself back on the taxpayer dole with another government job. Corruptocrats protect their own.
Also in 2008, Obama’s allies at a Soros-tied outfit named Accountable America sent out “warning” letters to 10,000 top GOP givers “hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” Witch hunt leader Tom Matzzie, formerly of Soros-funded MoveOn.org, promised “legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” Matzzie also advertised a $100,000 bounty for dirt on conservative political groups “to create a sense of scandal around the groups” and to dissuade donors from giving money.
The effort was supported by Judd Legum, founder of Think Progress, which is run by former Clinton scandal manager turned Obama confidante John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.
During the 2010 midterms, the Obama bully brigade waged a similar campaign against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its donors as payback for the organization’s ads opposing the federal health care takeover. During the 2012 election season, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina declared war on free-market philanthropists Charles and David Koch and private donors to their nonprofit activist group Americans for Prosperity.
As I warned in my column in March 2012, it seemed “no small coincidence” at the time that Team Obama was threatening conservative activists publicly “just as numerous tea party organizations (were) reporting that the Internal Revenue Service (had) targeted them for audits. According to Colleen Owens of the Richmond (Va.) Tea Party, several fiscally conservative activist groups in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio and Texas (had) received a spate of IRS letters. The missives demand(ed) extensive requests to identity volunteers, board members and … donors.”
The latest confession by Obama IRS officials that they targeted tea party, pro-Constitution and pro-Israel groups isn’t a sign of “rogue” behavior. It’s tyrannical Democratic business as usual.
I think another interesting aspect to this story is this claim that nobody should cover it because it’s being ‘politicized’? Which would then mean nothing in Washington can ever be covered. Right?
The [so called] ‘war on women’ was that not politicized? That was a DNC talking point. The fact that Fox News covers something means you shouldn’t cover it? Really? Because I never noticed that when MSNBC was hysterical over Sandra Fluke that nobody thought that it was a reason to ‘not cover it’.
There is just something just fundamentally really, really wrong with our media. They need to take a look at themselves and do some accounting.
Related: CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi. – LINK.
New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has not made a peep about gun control since news came out that firearms-related deaths were way down. President Obama has ignored it and continued to pursue more gun-control laws. Their reaction shows how this news screws up their agenda to keep the decline in gun-related homicides a secret from Americans so that they can pass restrictions on the Second Amendment.
The Justice Department released a study Tuesday that showed firearm-related homicides in the U.S. annually declined 39 percent from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69 percent from 1.5 million to 467,300 in that time frame.
Emily Miller
Mr. Bloomberg, who is usually very vocal on any gun-related news, fell mute. Neither he, nor his usually very active organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns, has said anything gun related this week. A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg’s group did not respond to a request for comment. If the news had been that a bunch of people were shot, you can be assured that Mr. Bloomberg would have been in front of the microphones.
The president has not celebrated the good news. Quite the opposite. After learning that Americans are safer now than ever from criminals with guns, Mr. Obama launched a campaign for more gun laws. He tweeted from his Barack Obama account: “This is big: @OFA volunteers are about to deliver 1.4 million signatures to Congress demanding expanded background checks for gun sales.” OFA stands for Organizing for America, which is Mr. Obama’s political campaign group.
Mr. Obama followed up to tell followers to watch OFA’s account for “more coverage of the gun violence petition delivery to Congress.” He used the hashtag #NotBackingDown. By that he means to keep pushing more restrictions on the Second Amendment. On Wednesday, he took House Democrats to dinner to plot how to pass gun-control laws.
The reason they are hiding now is because they don’t want the public know that crime has gone down at the same time that gun ownership and carry permits have increased. The have — until now — been effective in hiding these facts.
On the same day that Justice released its report, Pew Research Center released a new poll that found that 56 percent of Americans believe gun crimes is higher now than 20 years ago and 26 percent thought it was the same. Only 12 percent knew that it was lower. The most dramatic decline was in the mid-1999s, but has steadily decreased since. The survey showed the public wasn’t that much more knowledgeable on recent crime data. Asked about trends in firearms crimes “in recent years,” 45 percent thought the number had gone up, 39 percent thought it was the same. Just 10 percent were correct that it has gone down 13 percent in the most recent five years.
Editor’s Note – The fact that the IRS scandal is portrayed as being centered in Cincinnati, Ohio sets up a false narrative; as if “oh it didn’t happen in DC so perhaps it wasn’t as political as some feared”. That is the misnomer of misnomers. The political fact is this: he who wins Ohio wins the presidency. The importance of of Ohio in electoral politics cannot be overstated. UPDATE – IRS officials in DC and California involved in targeting conservative groups – LINK.
Editor’s Note II – The same IRS department head, Steven Miller, who politicized the IRS under Clinton at center of current scandal – LINK. Why reappoint a man with his history? This indicates premeditation on the part of the administration.
UPDATE – IRS boss of Tea Party probes targeted anti-Clinton group in 1990s – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Official Admits Clinton Enemies Were Audited – LINK.
This post is being constantly updated so please check back from time to time.
UPDATE – IRS chiefs knew about politically motivated audits in 2011 – LINK.
UPDATE – The crazy things the IRS asked TEA Party groups during the illegal inquiries – LINK. No one can say this was not politically motivated after reading this.
UPDATE – ABC News’ George Will “How stupid do they (IRS and Obama Admin) think we are?”
“He has through his subordinates and agents endeavored to cause in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” Section 1, Article 2, the Impeachment Articles of Richard Nixon.
UPDATE – Dennis Kucinich Slams IRS’ Political Targeting:
UPDATE – ABC News: IRS IG Report shows that IRS started targeting conservative groups in 2010 (video). Groups targeted included those who watch government spending, educating on the Bill of Rights, those who focus on tax policy and Jewish groups.
UPDATE – IRS Leaking private information for political reasons – LINK.
UPDATE – Koch Industries Lawyer to White House: How Did You Get Our Tax Information? – LINK.
UPDATE – Coulter: Obama’s signature campaign move was opening sealed records – LINK.
UPDATE – Jon Stewart Skewers Obama over scandals – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS intimidation used to shut down TEA Party groups – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Execs knew political targeting was happening and lied to Congress about it:
Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, charged top IRS officials, including former commissioner Doug Shulman, of lying to Congress over the targeting of tea-party groups.
“They knew this was going on and responded in writing to the committee that it was not,” said Camp in an interview at the Capitol. He also said “yes” when I asked him whether he felt that Shulman and others had lied.
UPDATE – An IRS Exec at center of the illegal political targeting was promoted and given $42,531 in bonuses:
Lois Lerner, the senior executive in charge of the IRS tax exemption department and the federal employee at the center of the exploding scandal over the IRS targeting of conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel non-profits, was given $42,531 in bonuses between 2009 and 2011.That figure was included in data provided by the IRS in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Washington Examiner. Lerner is director of the IRS exempt organizations division, which processes and approves or denies applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status.
UPDATE – Over $100 million in IRS bonuses since 2009 – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Gave liberal groups a pass, put conservatives on hold for 27 months – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS targeted over 500 conservative organizations, religious organizations, educational organizations that teach American civic history, Jewish and other pro-Israeli organizations – LINK.
UPDATE – Franklin Graham also targeted by IRS – LINK.
UPDATE – Fox News host Eric Bolling was targeted by the IRS – LINK.
UPDATE – Another IRS Official at the center of the illegal targeting promoted, now in charge of IRS Obamacare office – LINK.
Sarah Hall Ingram
UPDATE – Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.
More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency’s Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS’ regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.
UPDATE – IRS illegally gave records on conservatives to a leftist George Soros sponsored group. Soros is the number one contributor to various Democrat Party organizations – LINK.
UPDATE – Soros gave $6.1 million to groups that pressured the IRS to target conservatives – LINK.
UPDATE – Romney donor Frank Vandersloot smeared by Obama campaign audited twice:
UPDATE – WOW! IRS Asked Tea Party Leader for Back-Door Password to Group’s Website:
UPDATE – Report: IRS Deliberately Chose Not to Fess Up to Scandal Before Election. IRS Commissioner knew this was going on for over a year – lied to Congress – LINK:
UPDATE – IRS Denied tax exempt status to pro-life groups on behalf of Planed Parenthood – LINK – LINK.
UPDATE – Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted In IRS Scandal – LINK.
UPDATE – Mark Levin – It’s Time to Kill the IRS:
UPDATE – CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The testimony from [Steven] Miller comes under the category of ‘how stupid do you think we are?’ Here’s a guy who said that the IRS openly discriminated against groups on the basis of their politics, but the action was not a political action. It was instead an attempt at efficiency. You’ve got to be a knave or a fool to say that and you have to be an idiot to believe it. It’s simply a contradiction in terms. – LINK.
UPDATE – Texas TEA Party leader was subject to IRS, FBI, ATF and OSHA audits after applying to IRS for tax exempt status. Texas Congressman Kevin Brady asks, “Is this America anymore?”:
UPDATE – Five IRS employees to testify next week to answer for wrongdoing – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS: ‘Please Detail the Content of Your Members’ Prayers.’ – LINK:
UPDATE – Chris Matthews: Miller was full of it and there was clearly targeting going on – LINK.
UPDATE – Piers Morgan: I guess government can become tyrannical after all:
UPDATE – Paul Ryan grills IRS Commissioner. Can there be any doubt that Commissioner Miller mislead Congress in his previous July 2012 testimony?
UPDATE – IRS Chief Steven Miller: “I Can’t Remember” Who Is Responsible for Targeting Conservatives:
UPDATE – Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough & Lisa Myers: IRS is lying, lied to Congress. Timeline:
UPDATE – IRS lied in FOIA requests to conceal documents – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS agents classified applications from conservatives and churches as “obnoxious” – LINK.
UPDATE – Rep. Mike Kelly receives standing ovation after epic grilling of IRS Commissioner:
BUSTED – Top Obama Administration officials were briefed on IRS political targeting in June of 2012 – NY Times – AP – WSJ – Breitbart:
The inspector general gave Republicans some fodder Friday when he divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the I.R.S.’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly after,” he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.
OUTRAGE – Suit Alleges IRS Improperly Seized 60 Million Personal Medical Records – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS asked churches for membership lists:
ILLEGAL – IRS ignored Congressional demand for documents relating to the illegal targeting of citizens – LINK.
UPDATE – Trey Goudy questions former IRS Commissioner Schulman. “Can’t remember”. Schulman admits that he did nothing to stop the illegal practices at the IRS [Note – Some are saying that Schulman was a Bush appointee. Schulman gave $250.00 a month to the Democratic National Committee]:
UPDATE – IRS official Lois Lerner pleads the Fifth Amendment after waiving that right by her opening statement. You do not get to tell your side of the story and refuse cross examination by pleading the Fifth. Pleading the Fifth means that you are not testifying in fear that doing so will reveal criminal activity that can be used against you:
SHOCK – IRS official Lois Lerner asked targets of investigations about their prayers when she was at the Federal Election Commission (FEC); sued Christian Coalition in a politically motivated lawsuit and lost:
UPDATE – Ranking Democrat at the Government Oversight Committee blasts IRS:
UPDATE – Senior White House staff, including Obama’s lawyer, White House Council Kathy Ruemmler, knew about illegal IRS targeting and claim they didn’t tell Obama – LINK:
Does anyone believe this story?
UPDATE – Krauthammer: Obama still dodging questions and lying about IRS
Washington Post (2)- Key Obama Administration claims about IRS scandal untrue:
1 – Illegal targeting happened months before the Citizens United court ruling.
2 – Claims about “inadvertent targeting” due to “massive increase of 501c4 applications” also untrue, as there was no appreciable increase in the first year of the illegal targeting.
3 – IRS Council Lois Lerner’s claim that she found out about the illegal targeting in the press also false as the IG report shows that she knew about it at least as far back as June 2011.
4 – Lerner misled Congress.
UPDATE – How did a White House economics advisory Austin Goolsbee get private tax information on Obama Administration political enemies – LINK.
UPDATE – Senator Mitch McConnell: Obama Administration used IRS as “Speech Police”:
UPDATE – More “I don’t know – I don’t recall” video from Obama Administration officials:
UPDATE – NBC News: Senior Washington IRS officials requested information of conservative groups:
Cleta Mitchell, another attorney representing conservative groups that allege they were targeted, said an IRS agent in Cincinnati told her a “task force” IRS office in Washington, D.C., was making the decisions about the processing of applications, and that she subsequently dealt with IRS representatives there.
“(The IRS agent in Cincinnati) told me that in fact the case would be transferred to a special task force out of Washington, and that he was told – he was the originally assigned agent – that he wasn’t allowed to make decisions, the decisions were all going to be made in Washington,” Mitchell said. “I know that this process was going on in Washington because I’ve dealt with those people.”
UPDATE – Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official says ‘Everything comes from the top.’ – LINK:
Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.
UPDATE – Fox 19 Ben Swann: Individual IRS Agents/Supervisors named and they all are supervised by Agent Supervisor Cindy Thomas. Thomas visited with IRS Chief Council Lois Lerner regularly:
UPDATE – The Blaze/NBC News: IRS Chief Council Lois Lerner personally signed at least some illegal questionnaires to targeted groups – LINK.
UPDATE – Pro-Israel organizations audited by IRS say government targeting coordinated – LINK.
UPDATE – Illegal IRS targeting started the day after President Obama met with the Treasury Department/IRS employees union chief – LINK.
WOW – Lois Lerner to Republican Senate Candidate “promise me you will never run for office again and this investigation will go away”. How Lois Lerner tried to strong-arm Dick Durbin’s opponent out of 1996 Illinois Senate race – LINK – LINK.
Orwellian – Obama Administration sends armed DHS Agents to peaceful protests against IRS – LINK.
BUSTED – IRS’s Doug Shulman had more public White House visits (157) than any Cabinet member. Bush met with his IRS chief once – LINK: UPDATE – Bill O’Reilly not happy that former IRS chief visited the White House 157 times, could be a smoking gun:
Conservative radio talker Mark Levin appears to have touched off the investigation into Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative political groups back in March 2012.
In a letter last year on behalf of the Landmark Legal Foundation, an organization he heads, Levin requested an investigation into what he called “misconduct.”
On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service revealed that it had improperly targeted conservative groups for audits during the 2012 election. During a conference call, Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of exempt organizations, explained that IRS staffers selected groups that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax exempt status.
Levin told The Daily Caller Friday afternoon his organization had litigated similar complaints of political audits during the Clinton administration and specifically referenced the Heritage Foundation as one of the tax collector’s targets at the time.
More recently, Levin said, conservative and Tea Party groups approached him complaining of harassment by the IRS, which prompted his organization to petition Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George.
The House oversight committee will look into the IRS’s admission Friday that it targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during last year’s elections — a move that committee Chairmen Darrell E. Issa and Jim Jordan said smacks of “political retaliation.”
The two lawmakers said they will hold those IRS officials who were involved “responsible … for this political retaliation.”
The IRS admitted that it unfairly sent conservative and tea party groups questionnaires last year asking them to justify their tax-exempt status. Republicans at the time accused the agency of trying to intimidate conservatives into silence ahead of the elections.
Friday’s admission appears designed to deflate an upcoming audit by the IRS’s inspector general looking into the matter.
“The fact that Americans were targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs is unconscionable,” Mr. Issa and Mr. Jordan said in a statement. “The committee will aggressively follow up on the IG report and hold responsible officials accountable for this political retaliation.”
Harry Reid not only violated Senate rules in his tirade. What Harry Reid tried to do that generated the floor objection of Ted Cruz is also very worthy of noting. What Reid tried to do was have the right to add language in the bill that was not voted on in the Senate in secret.
That is correct, the Senate leadership since 2006 has been legislating behind closed doors in secret during the conference process. The House under Nancy Pelosi was doing that until the Republicans took back the House. Please see our editor’s note below.
When called out by Senator Cruz on trying to use such a dirty trick against the American people, Harry Reid went on a name calling tirade.
Senator Ted Cruz:
Senator Mike Lee:
Editor’s Note: The videos below are from 2009. The Democrats inserted language in a bill (during conference in secret) to make it legal to give bonuses to the AIG execs who we were bailing out. Those execs were big donors to Democrat Senator Chris Dodd. After lying about it, Dodd and the Democrats finally confessed at what they had done:
Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.
Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.
In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.
The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found.
The bureau also looked into non-fatal violent crimes. Few victims of such crimes — less than 1% — reported using a firearm to defend themselves.
Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.
It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news.
“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” – Adolf Hitler
There may be a seemingly good reason to give the government more power and intrusion in our lives, but in case after case we find the tools given with those powers to be irresistible for those so entrusted to abuse.
The Founders were wise to chain the government as best they could, but even they well understood that eventually it would unravel if the people were not vigilant.
President Reagan, Audrey Hepburn and Robert Wolders at a private dinner at the White House.
For those of you who are too young to have experienced Audrey Hepburn she is considered to be among the kindest and most beautiful women the world has ever known.
Of course, President Reagan was a force of nature himself:
This is how far the Obama Administration will go to keep the truth from coming out.
UPDATE I – Attorney for a whistle-blower speaks out:
UPDATE II – As we told Political Arena readers previously, there were indeed forces in range of the Benghazi attack. Some forces that were not even the closest are speaking out:
In high security cases the government must clear the lawyers who can pass a background check so they may speak with their clients legally. The Obama administration in refusing to grant the clearance is preventing the whistle-blowers from having legal representation, which of course is illegal. This will go to court and the Obama Administration will lose as legally the Administration does not have a legal leg to stand on.
According to former US Attorney Joe DiGenova, the State Department is standing in the way of lawyers trying to represent whistleblowers in the ongoing investigation into the events at the US Consolate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
DiGenova appeared with me and co-host Brian Wilson this morning on “Mornings on the Mall” on WMAL-FM in Washington DC.
“The Department of State is refusing to grant clearances to Victoria (Toensing) and other people who want to represent the whistleblowers in an attempt to prevent the testimony,” DiGenova said, referring to the upcoming hearing before Rep. Darrel Issa’s House Oversight Committee.
DiGenova called the stand-off a “constitutional showdown” and added, “Congress is going to win. The administration’s effort to cover up what happened in Benghazi is going to fail.”
Listen to the entire interview below. The part about the Benghazi whistle-blowers begins at 3:09:
A 2012 speech by Masha Gessen, an author and outspoken activist for the LGBT community, is just now going viral and it includes a theory that many supporters of traditional marriage have speculated about for years: The push for gay marriage has less to do with the right to marry – it is about diminishing and eventually destroying the institution of marriage and redefining the “traditional family.”
The subject of gay marriage stirs powerful reactions on both sides of the argument. There are those who argue that legalizing it would diminish traditional marriage. And those advocating for gay marriage have long stated that the issue will not harm traditional marriage. Ms. Gessen’s comments on the subject seem to contradict the pro-gay-marriage party lines.
Gessen shared her views on the subject and very specifically stated;
“Gay marriage is a lie.”
“Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there.”
“It’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.” (This statement is met with very loud applause.)
As mentioned above, Gessen also talked about redefining the traditional family. This may have something to do with the fact that she has “three children with five parents”:
“I don’t see why they (her children) shouldn’t have five parents legally. I don’t see why we should choose two of those parents and make them a sanctioned couple.”
Editor: There are only a few in Washington that we respect because they are men of integrity, good sense, and good character. Ted Cruz is among them and this short video reveals why.
In this video ICE union Chief Chris Cane dresses down the US Senate Judiciary Committee. This is simply a must see. Stand With Arizona:
Last week, ICE union chief Chris Crane won a stunning initial court victory in his lawsuit against the Obama Administration. As we reported, Federal Judge Federal Judge Reed O’Connor told the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that they hadno power to refuse to deport illegal aliens, and that he was likely to strike down Obama’s virtual “DACA” amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. The ruling stunned Washington, and Crane’s lawsuit could derail Obama’sfour-year effort to undermine immigration enforcement nationwide.
In Senate testimony (video below), President of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council Crane slammed the Obama administration and the Senate’s Gang of Eight for including advocates for illegal aliens, but excluding law enforcement from providing input on the new ‘immigration reform’ legislation.
Crane testified before the Senate expressing his disgust that law enforcement was shut out of the negotiations on immigration reform. Crane was sitting right next to National Council of La Raza (“The Race”) president Janet Murguia when he made his comments. La Raza – a racist intimidation group originally funded by the Mexican Government – was outrageously welcomed to help write the immigration bill, while law enforcement agents were shunned.
Crane recounted to the Judiciary Committee how he was physically escorted out of a Gang of Eight press conference last week and “spoken to with anger and disrespect.”
“Never before have I seen such contempt for law enforcement officers as what I’ve seen from the Gang of Eight,” he said.
Crane told the Judiciary Committee:
Lawmaking in our nation has indeed taken a strange twist. Senators invite illegal aliens to testify before Congress…but American citizens working as law enforcement officers within our nation’s broken immigration system are purposely excluded from the process and prohibited from providing input.
Suffice it to say, following the Boston terrorist attack, I was appalled to hear the Gang of Eight telling America that its legislation was what American law enforcement needs.
Since this following is not safe for work due to the language I am going to give you the link HERE.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
What causes patchy yellow discoloration due to fatty metamorphosis of the liver? Well, morbid obesity, Reye’s Syndrome, alcohol addiction, and drug abuse.
Political Arena 