May 23, 2013
BRYAN PRESTON: Was the IRS Obama’s Electoral Performance-Enhancing Agency?
BRYAN PRESTON: Was the IRS Obama’s Electoral Performance-Enhancing Agency?
JAY LENO: “The Obama White House is still denying he knew anything about the IRS scandal in advance. They say that would have been inappropriate because Obama was too busy not knowing about the Benghazi scandal.”
THE ONION, DEMONSTRATING THAT TRUTH AND SATIRE ARE CLOSER AND CLOSER: Obama Fed Grapes While Urging Press Conference To Enjoy Orgy.
WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY: Dying Baby Saved By 3D Printer.
THE THEME OF 2014? “When it comes to the I.R.S., we’re all Tea Partyers.”
JOHN HINDERAKER: Learning From Europe’s Mistakes.
AT AMAZON, 60% off on Men’s Shoes. Also on Women’s Shoes.
ORIN KERR: Can A Congressional Witness Deny Guilt and Then Plead the Fifth? “I don’t think the answer is clear, as there are no cases quite like it. The general rule is that a witness can’t testify about her version of the facts and then invoke the Fifth Amendment when facing cross examination.”
Alan Dershowitz says she waived.
Also: WaPo: Did Lois Lerner waive her right to invoke the Fifth Amendment?
WORDS YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO SAY IN WISCONSIN: “Raw Milk.”
PERSONALLY, I’D BE DELIGHTED TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY WHERE HAPPILY MARRIED GAY COUPLES HAD CLOSETS FULL OF ASSAULT WEAPONS. Gay Rights and Gun Rights Linked in Seattle Posters, Causing Control Freaks’ Heads To Explode.
I’ve written on this theme before. The squares in Seattle need to catch up.
“INCIVILITY” DEFINED: IT MEANS CRITICIZING OBAMA. Going after those racist, terroristic TeaBaggers who should all be hunted down and killed? That’s just good government.
POST-WOOLWICH: The Front Pages Of Tomorrow’s UK Newspapers.
DEREK LOWE: Promoting STEM Education, Foolishly.
21ST CENTURY BUSINESS MODELS: At ‘Breastaurants,’ Business Is Booming.
THE INSTA-WIFE’S BOOK, Men On Strike, is now shipping from Amazon, even though it doesn’t officially come out until next month. And yes, it will also be available soon on Kindle and Nook.
WHERE SCIENCE MEETS FASHION: Who invented clothes? A Palaeolithic archaeologist answers.
THEY FOOLISHLY THOUGHT THEY WERE EXEMPT: Peter Wehner: Liberals Are Now Shocked, Shocked at Obama’s Culture of Intimidation.
MAYBE LOIS LERNER NEEDS TO TARGET A NEW LAWYER? Darrell Issa: Lois Lerner lost her rights. “House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said embattled IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights and will be hauled back to appear before his panel again. The California Republican said Lerner’s Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination was voided when she gave an opening statement this morning denying any wrongdoing and professing pride in her government service.”
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Much Will A Legal Marijuana Habit Cost You?
MORE ON THAT TERRORIST ATTACK IN BRITAIN.
JOURN-O-LIST UPDATE: Ezra Klein and Josh Marshall, Who Got a VIP Briefing at the White House Yesterday, Are Curiously on the Same Page Today. “What I glean from this is that the previous White House position — nothing more needs be done, this is all a ‘partisan fishing expedition’ — is now inoperative, and a new defense — fire Lois Lerner and then claim that nothing more needs be done, this is all now just a partisan fishing expedition, again — is now in effect.”
“BUREAUCRACIED:” A Veteran’s Tale.
HIGHER EDUCATION’S DIVERSITY PROBLEM: SURVEY: Zero conservatives selected to deliver 2013 commencement speeches at Ivy Leagues.
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Sporting Goods.
COL. ALLEN WEST: Oklahoma Tornado: A Sobering Moment for the Nation.
WELL, CHRIS CHRISTIE CERTAINLY MAKES A BIG BIG BROTHER: A Mileage Tax Monitored By Big Brother For All N.J. Drivers? It Could Happen: Proposal Call For GPS Tracking Of Certain Vehicles, $50 Yearly Fee For Others.
I’ve written about this sort of thing before.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Do Women Expect Too Much From Men?
BAD LUCK: Timing made Oklahoma tornado toll worse.
PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: Metastasis Of The IRS Scandal. Notice his new blog URL, too.
INTEL FUELS A REBELLION AROUND YOUR DATA.
Intel is a $53-billion-a-year company that enjoys a near monopoly on the computer chips that go into PCs. But when it comes to the data underlying big companies like Facebook and Google, it says it wants to “return power to the people.”
Intel Labs, the company’s R&D arm, is launching an initiative around what it calls the “data economy”—how consumers might capture more of the value of their personal information, like digital records of their their location or work history. To make this possible, Intel is funding hackathons to urge developers to explore novel uses of personal data. It has also paid for a rebellious-sounding website called We the Data, featuring raised fists and stories comparing Facebook to Exxon Mobil.
Intel’s effort to stir a debate around “your data” is just one example of how some companies—and society more broadly—are grappling with a basic economic asymmetry of the big data age: they’ve got the data, and we don’t.
It is that way.
MICHAEL TOTTEN ON THE RICOCHET PODCAST, talking about his new book, Taken, among other things.
START ‘EM YOUNG: 10 Tools Every Kid Should Learn To Use.
ANDREW KLAVAN likes Elizabeth Scalia’s new book, Strange Gods.
I DID NOTHING WRONG, BUT I REFUSE TO ANSWER ON THE GROUNDS THAT IT MAY INCRIMINATE ME: Lerner Says ‘I Have Not Done Anything Wrong,’ Refuses to Take Questions.
UPDATE: JournoList’s IRS Angle Begins To Gel. Well, the leaders of Journolist did meet at the White House yesterday.
HENRY MILLER: Activism vs. The Rule of Law.
NICK GILLESPIE: Obama’s War on Journalism: ‘An Unconstitutional Act.’ “The press-punishing, speech-chilling, and unabashedly overreaching actions by the Obama administration against the Associated Press and Fox News Channel’s James Rosen lay bare the essential dynamic between any president and a press that is always more prone to being lapdogs than watchdogs . . . . Because they tend to share his broad outlook on politics, too many journalists for too long have been in the tank for Obama, explaining away or minimizing his policy failures and reversals. Remember Obama’s heartfelt insistence that he would run the most transparent administration ever? Take a look at this document about warrantless searches of text messages that his administration finally coughed up to the ACLU and get back to me. It’s 15 pages of completely redacted prose. Such a document would be funny if it wasn’t coming from a secrecy-obsessed administration that has put the brakes on fulfilling FOIA requests and has charged a record number of people under The Espionage Act.”
Flashback: White House “War” On Fox in 2009. Hey, some of us were onto this phenomenon early.
SADLY, HORSEWHIPPING IS NOT INVOLVED: Marco Rubio files amendment to punish IRS agents who leak taxpayer docs.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Obama and Elizabeth Warren Feed the College Beast.
The proposals put forward by Obama, House Republicans, and Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) would tie student loans to the market rate (either the 10-year or the 91-day Treasury rate), though each with its own variation. The boldest plan, from new Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), would reduce student loan rates to .75 percent (the rate at which banks borrow from the Federal Reserve) for one year.
These proposals would offer students some relief, but none of them address the core problem that rising college tuition rates are closely linked to the increased availability of government loans. Stafford loans have been around for just over forty years, and over the past thirty, college tuition and fees surged 1,120 percent—four times faster than the consumer price index, more than medical or food prices. And this isn’t all due to a rising cost of teaching: Colleges have used their newfound wealth to bloat their administrative ranks and spend lavishly on construction projects.
These new student loan proposals, particularly Warren’s, will only feed the higher education beast. Perhaps lawmakers should give more thought to policies that would increase price competition among universities and drive down costs.
I think making them bear some of the loss in defaulted student loans would help.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: 50 Percent Approve of President Obama, but 57 Percent Disapprove of Country’s Direction. “The latest Reason-Rupe poll finds President Obama enjoys a 50 percent approval rating, 7 points higher than his 43 percent disapproval. However, this isn’t much different from a similar time period in President George W. Bush’s presidency. In May 2005, the year after his re-election, Bush’s approval rating hovered around 48 percent. Also in May 2005, the NBC/WSJ poll found 52 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction. Today, slightly more, 57 percent say America is headed in the wrong direction, 34 percent say the country is headed in the right direction. Slightly more Americans approve of the president’s handling of the economy, 47 disapprove and 45 percent approve.”
HERE’S VIDEO FROM YESTERDAY’S KANSAS CITY TEA PARTY PROTEST, courtesy of David Vickers:
REMEMBER WHEN THEY WERE TELLING US IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF TEENAGE ANGST? Breaking: FBI shoots, kills person of interest in Boston bombing after man attacks agent. This whole story seems kind of . . . off, though.
SAL RUSSO: IRS scandal symptom of intrusive government: Controversy indicative of a federal bureaucracy that has expanded beyond control. “When the IRS story broke, it seemed immediately plausible to us. As the Tea Party Express conducted its national bus tours, we heard local Tea Party groups from all over the country complaining about IRS delays with inappropriate and intrusive questions. This unfairness was so pronounced that it was obvious that there was a deliberate attempt to suppress these groups. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media ignored and dismissed these legitimate grievances as false conspiracy theories.”
UPDATE: Cincinnati Fox19: The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling apart.
The six Cincinnati workers we have identified, who sent scrutinizing letters to conservative groups with words including “patriot, liberty, tea party or 9-12” in their names are Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr, Stephen Seok, Liz Hofacre and a woman identified only as Ms. Richards.
But was all of this done at the hands of a small group of Cincinnati employees working together? During Friday’s congressional hearing, that appeared to be the theme. Now, that explanation just became less likely.
Thanks to two FOX19 sources connected to the IRS, we now understand the chain of command for these workers.
Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr and Liz Hofacre are IRS agents. Stephen Seok is a supervisor IRS agent.
But according to the IRS employee directory that FOX19 has obtained exclusively, each of these agents has a different manager and then above them a different territory manager.
That is important because while it may sound reasonable to the average person that these workers began targeting groups on their own, the IRS structure is designed to prevent that.
Read the whole thing. And watch out guys — you keep committing acts of journalism, you may get your phones tapped.
COLUMBUS DISPATCH: Wake Up, Watchdog: White House probes of reporters should shake complacency. “After treating President Barack Obama with uncommon deference throughout his first term, many members of the press finally may be realizing that this is a one-way street.”
ACCOUNTABILITY: Politico: Heads Won’t Roll At IRS. Slash their travel & entertainment budget. . . .
AL HUNT’S DEFENSE OF OBAMA IN THE ONGOING SCANDALS: It raises questions about the “competency of the attorney general to hold office.” Is Eric Holder too big to fit under that bus? We’ll find out.
WHILE BLOOMBERG’S BEEN FOCUSING ON GUNS AND BIG GULPS: New York City seeing spike in anti-gay crime, officials say.
PHILIP KLEIN: Five reasons why focus on scandals is unlikely to backfire on GOP as in 1998.
Just a couple of days ago the Journolist crowd was trying to maintain that there was no there there in the IRS scandal. That whole taking-the-Fifth thing kind of undercut that line. I wonder what they’ll come up with next?
ROLL CALL ON LOIS LERNER’S DECISION TO TAKE THE FIFTH: “The IRS official in charge of the division accused of improperly targeting conservative groups will invoke her Fifth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination at a committee hearing Wednesday, a sign of concern that the political controversy is heading into the criminal arena. . . . The announcement signaled a potentially dramatic turn in a controversy that has embroiled Capitol Hill and the IRS since the release last week of an inspector general’s reporting describing actions by IRS workers over several years to single out conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status and subject them to intrusive questioning.”
BILL KELLER: Bring Back Ken Starr To Investigate IRS.
TAXPROF: Roundup: The IRS Scandal, Day 13.
THE COMMON THREAD in the Obama Administration scandals.
JAMES TARANTO: The Dog Whistler: An Obama supporter’s Pavlovian reaction to one of her own pet phrases. “Noonan’s use of ‘dog whistle’ is especially neuralgic for Walsh because it is a pet phrase of many on the left, including Walsh herself.” Plus, what Nate Silver got wrong.
PAULA BOLYARD: 5 Signs That We Haven’t Lost America Yet.
PUSHBACK: Top Republican: IRS shouldn’t implement Obamacare until scandal is resolved.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., asked two members of President Obama’s cabinet to suspend IRS implementation of Obamacare, citing the fact that the head of the health reform section of the agency used to lead the IRS section that improperly targeted conservatives.
Thune wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew about Sarah Hall Ingram, who led the office that subjected Tea Party groups to inappropriate audits.
I think we’ll see more of this.
SHOCKER: Liberal Nonprofit Groups Actually Love Corporate Cash, Wall Street Simoleons. “During the 2012 election, the Democratic PAC American Bridge attacked Mitt Romney and other prominent Republicans every time one of them attended a ‘high-dollar fundraiser’ or revealed close ties to Wall Street. Yet there was one group that American Bridge never attacked: Bain Capital. Why? Because, as Ben Smith and Evan McMorris-Santoro revealed today, Bain Capital executives were bankrolling American Bridge.”
THE HILL: Senate Judiciary Committee advances immigration reform bill. “The Senate Judiciary Committee voted with a strong bipartisan majority Tuesday evening to advance comprehensive immigration legislation that would put 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. The legislation also lifts caps on high-skilled workers and creates a new visa program for low-skilled workers.”
Related: Leahy withdraws LGBT measure from Senate immigration bill. Sorry, gays. Obama prefers Latinos to you. But thanks for all the contributions!
Also: Unions rip Schumer’s deal on H-1B visas. “The deal was a coup for the tech industry, which had been lobbying aggressively behind the scenes to build support for Hatch’s proposals on H-1B visas. It was also a step forward for members of the Gang of Eight, who see Hatch’s support as key to securing votes from other on-the-fence Republican senators. . . . But the effort has angered the nation’s largest labor federation, which was deeply involved in the negotiations over the original bill and is a key supporter. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a blistering statement on Hatch’s amendments Tuesday afternoon, calling them ‘unambiguous attacks on American workers,’ as the federation vowed to fight them on the Senate floor.”
THE OBSOLESCENCE OF FEMA: Oklahoma Tornado: Glenn Beck and Twitter to the Rescue. “Shortly after the destructive twister tore through the town of Moore outside Oklahoma City , conservative radio personality and talking head Glenn Beck used Twitter to organize a ‘convoy of hope’ to travel to Oklahoma to provide early disaster relief. Within hours, Beck’s team had used Twitter to locate trucks and supplies, and they were on their way, arriving in the Moore area bearing food, water, and diapers.” Way ahead of FEMA.
IOWAHAWK TO JOSH MARSHALL: “You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks.”
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMING AMERICA: How Hope and Change Gave Way to Spying on the Press.
REMEMBERING THE WARSAW GHETTO REVOLT:
“We didn’t have enough weapons, we didn’t have enough bullets,” Mr. Spiegel once told an interviewer. “It was like fighting a well-equipped army with firecrackers.”
Shoulda loaded up on guns and ammo sooner.
HOW THE NEW YORK TIMES rewrote an IRS story to change the political impact. “Thankfully, as the following screenshots will show, you can learn for yourself how a breaking news story containing REAL new information gets ‘massaged’ by a media professional to ensure that readers come away with the ‘correct’ impression.”
UPDATE: “No wonder they’re scared.”
BLOG REPORT: Tea Party rally Norfolk, VA in front of the IRS. More pictures here.
Also, ‘Stop #IRS Abuse of Power’: Tea Party Swarms Santa Ana on National Day of Protest.
And via reader Susan Dixon, a picture from the rally in Downer’s Grove, Illinois. It looks like half the town turned out.
PHILIP KLEIN: How Much News Has The Obama Administration Successfully Suppressed?
On the heels of news that the Obama administration Department of Justice was spying on reporters at the Associated Press, Monday brought the startling disclosure by the Washington Post that the DOJ had also targeted Fox reporter James Rosen for surveillance in an effort to plug up leaks.
Additionally, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza obtained the full application for a search warrant of Rosen’s personal email account, in which the DOJ accused him of being “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator.” As Lizza put it, “Rosen was not charged with any crime, but it is unprecedented for the government, in an official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for conducting the routine business of reporting on government secrets.”
These investigations are shocking when taken alone, but as as Reason’s J.D. Tuccille notes, it’s important to consider these events in their broader context of the Obama administration’s long-running war against the free press. Last year, Bloomberg reported that Attorney General Eric Holder “has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined, including law-and-order Republicans John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft.” The administration has also received a failing grade for its ignoring of Freedom of Information Act requests.
Taken together, all such actions have a toll. They mean that federal officials are less likely to blow the whistle on government wrongdoing and that journalists are less likely to obtain damning information that they can pass along to the public. The suggestion by the DOJ that Rosen broke the law, if followed to its logical conclusion, would mean the end of investigative journalism in America.
Obama seems more afraid of investigative journalism than any previous president. That suggests to me that his administration has more to hide. . . .
JOURNALISM: Oops! CNN’s Cuomo Scolds ‘Congressman’ Over D.C. Disaster Politics, Finds Out He’s Not Congressman. There’s no IQ test for those jobs.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Benghazi Suspects ID’d, But Administration Won’t Nab Them Because It Doesn’t Want to Send Them to Gitmo.
JONATHAN TOBIN: A New Front In The War On Journalists?
A NEW SCREENWRITING GIG for PJ’s Roger L. Simon.
AP: Protesters Rally Over IRS’ Tea Party Scrutiny.
Tea party activists waving flags and signs, singing patriotic songs and chanting anti-IRS slogans held rallies outside federal buildings across the country Tuesday to protest the agency’s extra scrutiny of conservative groups.
A crowd packed the sidewalks in front of and across the street from a Cincinnati federal building housing the Internal Revenue Service offices that handled tax-exempt status applications.
“It’s going to be up to the grass-roots movement to do something,” said Paul Wheeler, dressed in Colonial-era attire with tri-cornered hat and holding a sign saying: “Internal ‘Revenge’ Service Stop.” He said he came from Indianapolis, some 100 miles way, because Cincinnati is “the epicenter of some of the complaints.”
IRS officials have acknowledged that some conservative groups received inappropriate attention.
There were also rallies outside IRS offices in Atlanta; Louisville; Chicago; Cherry Hill, N.J.; Denver; Kansas City, Mo.; Helena, Mont.; Philadelphia; Phoenix, and Providence, R.I., among others.
Related: Tea Party Protests IRS Harassment.
Also: NBC News: Ex-Cincy IRS official doubts agency’s explanation for Tea Party scandal.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestselling point-and-shoot digital cameras. You may want one for this summer’s Tea Party protests.
REASON TV: 3 MORE REASONS TO FEAR THE IRS.
NEWS FROM THE PROFESSIONAL CAREER CIVIL SERVICE: IRS Worker Used Federal Plastic For Amazon Buys: Government credit card paid for years-long shopping spree. “Entrusted with a government credit card, an Internal Revenue Service worker allegedly used the plastic for a years-long Amazon.com shopping spree that netted her hundreds of items, including a chocolate fondue fountain; Bollywood movies; Pampers; Harlequin romance novels; Omaha Steaks; Apple Bottoms skinny jeans; mango body wash; and a Ginsu knife set. Yetunde Oseni, 37, was named this month in a U.S. District Court felony complaint charging her with embezzling government funds. Oseni has worked since 2000 as a secretary in an IRS office in Lanham, Maryland.”
DAVID BERNSTEIN: The New Deal Goes South: FDR vs. Civil Rights.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Should A Man Handle A “Silencing Tool?”
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION FINALLY FINDS A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT IT CAN GET BEHIND: Top IRS official will invoke 5th Amendment. “A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups. Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening — or why she didn’t disclose it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III. Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.” She’s lawyered-up, and not just with any lawyer, either.
UPDATE: “Look forward to reading tomorrow’s pieces explaining how GOP is overplaying hand by pointing out that Lerner is pleading 5th.” No scandal here — she just doesn’t want to talk because telling the truth might incriminate her!
JOURN-O-LIST CAVALRY TO THE RESCUE! Spotted: @joshtpm @CapehartJ @ezraklein & other lefty columnists headed into the West Wing as a group. POTUS coffee? Carney meeting? Anyone?
Watch for even-more-unified weaponized Administration-excusing talking points, coming soon to a publication near you!
ISN’T THIS KINDA SEXIST? Women should be among lead lawyers in IUD case, federal judge says.