The 2013 Obama Scandal omnibus thread- Benghazi, IRS, AP, EPA, Congressional cloak room

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The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was auditing the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/us/polit...l-hearings.html

Scandalpalooza keeps on giving... Todays scandal is all about timing... Lies told to Congress last year, when treasury and IRS already were aware of the scandal.... And kept it quiet until after the election.... And the fake Q&A staged last week to release the story prior to the inspector general report....

RDad, are these impeachable offenses?

RDad, are these impeachable offenses?

I dont think there has been anything that directly ties any of it to Obama... Yet.... But yes... If somebody implicates him in this.... You bet.

Nixon Articles of Impeachment passed by the house Judiciary Committee... Article II Passed 28-10, July 29, 1974

Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

(1) He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

(2) He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize, or permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the concealment of certain records made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of electronic surveillance.

My Nose tells me this has Axelrod written ALL over it... This is Text-Book Chicago style, hard-nosed, dirty-tricks, take no prisoners, and its only illegal if you get caught, politics... And that is Axelrod's game. And that puts it squarely in the West Wing.

Today's revelations put the cover-up AT LEAST to the Under-secretary Cabinet level.... And it stands to reason, that if the Under Secretary of the Treasury knew... Then Geitner knew.... And if Geitner knew... Obama knew.

My Nose tells me this has Axelrod written ALL over it... This is Text-Book Chicago style, hard-nosed, dirty-tricks, take no prisoners, and its only illegal if you get caught, politics... And that is Axelrod's game. And that puts it squarely in the West Wing.

 

Don't forget Valerie Jarrett. She is a vile human being.

 

Hell Must Be Freezing Over

Hell Must Be Freezing Over

Wow!!

Hell Must Be Freezing Over

 

Every fourth grader learns it... Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

We all forget that from time to time... Especially when its OUR GUY who has the power.... Hopefully this will be a wake up call for those who need one, that the reason government has to be kept in check is because it WONT always be YOUR GUY who has the power.

 

 

This is NOT an extraordinary turn of events... This is the natural consequence of the completely one sided election in 2008. If you are the winning party, the natural human inclination is to become drunk with power, and abuse it, because there's nobody to stop you..

 

Our founders recognized the dangers in that and created a system where such lopsidedness is rare, and had faith that the American People would not allow it to continue very long if it did.

So is anything going to come of all of this or is it going to gradually just fade away into the background and everyone sort of forget it ever happened? On television, one commentator pointed out that the way the administration seems to like to play these is to say, "We don't have enough information on the issue right now to answer your questions..." then six months later, when there's enough information, "Why are you asking about that? That was six months ago" (which in politics might as well have been ancient Greek times). I am wondering if they will do the same here. They'll investigate, some folks will take the fall, and otherwise not much hand-wringing over it.

So is anything going to come of all of this or is it going to gradually just fade away into the background and everyone sort of forget it ever happened? On television, one commentator pointed out that the way the administration seems to like to play these is to say, "We don't have enough information on the issue right now to answer your questions..." then six months later, when there's enough information, "Why are you asking about that? That was six months ago" (which in politics might as well have been ancient Greek times). I am wondering if they will do the same here. They'll investigate, some folks will take the fall, and otherwise not much hand-wringing over it.

 

 

One problem... Its summer... And DC goes dead during the summer... So the news LOVE summer scandals, it gives them something to talk about... This is not going away.

A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.

 

The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:

 

As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.

 

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. 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.”

 

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office.

 

This pretty plainly contradicts the story coming out of the IRS that rogue agents in Cincinnati were responsible:

 

News of (acting IRS commissioner Steve) Miller’s resignation followed revelations that the IRS has identified two “rogue” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for the “overly aggressive” handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, a congressional source told CNN.

 

Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according to another source familiar with Miller’s discussions with congressional investigators. The second source said Miller emphasized that the problem with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not limited to these two employees.

 

In related news, I also noted how the Post’s story on the Cincinnati office also appears to contradict what Miller told Congress this week about how many auditors the IRS has covering nonprofit groups. Miller said the figure was between 140-200, but the Post story puts the figure at 900. The Post doesn’t source the figure, but presumably that also came from people the reporters talked with in Cincinnati.

 

http://washingtonexaminer.com/anonymous-ci...article/2530001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-rare...31f9_print.html

 

DOJ characterized Fox News's James Rosen's following the North Korea story as part of a "Criminal Conspiracy" in order to obtain a search warrant for his phone and badge records....

 

 

Un

 

fcuking

 

Believable.

 

 

Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.

 

“Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” said First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin, who has represented the Associated Press, but not in the current case. “That’s a very dangerous road to go down.”

Almost sounds like something out of Vladimir Putin's playbook.

Almost sounds like something out of Vladimir Putin's playbook.

 

 

Putin is a amateur compared to these people!

Geez!

 

 

 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/20...s-whistleblower

Geez!

 

 

 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/20...s-whistleblower

 

Is it me, or does this feel like a lot of the gov't officials are saying fcuk this, if I'm going down everyone is coming with me!

Geez!

 

 

 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/20...s-whistleblower

 

 

HOLY CRAP.... The "INjustice Department (which is the department of the Federal Government which I have always held in the HIGHEST regard... Up until NOW) needs to b e fumigated.... Top to bottom.... This is ridiculous....

Is it me, or does this feel like a lot of the gov't officials are saying fcuk this, if I'm going down everyone is coming with me!

 

Isn't that a foundational pillar of politics?

Fast and Furious developments. - Agent ordered to let guns go into Mexico

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/...n20039031.shtml

We are in the oval office now.

 

 

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/o...rs-the-smoking/

 

 

According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.

The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:

Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30

In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”

The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America.

 

 

If you cant get into the site, its because they are getting HAMMERED by requests....

well....

"If you want to make an omlete, you have to scramble some eggs..."

 

fcuking disgusting.

We are in the oval office now.

 

 

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/o...rs-the-smoking/

 

 

 

 

 

If you cant get into the site, its because they are getting HAMMERED by requests....

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5rk-8sT_m4

The stuff with the DOJ and the press scares me...more so even than the IRS. Although much of the press has lost credibility due to the ever increasing drive to "out-editorialize" or create a slant on everything they report, maybe this will be a wake-up call to them, that instead of pandering to the right or left, play that fucker right down the middle and report the news without hiring some talking head to spin it one way or the other. That way they can remain credible to the entire audience so when they get screwed with and start shouting about it, everyone will listen, instead of sort of scoffing and saying, "yea, you have an agenda in saying this, I don't believe you." I know that's what makes money, but I remember growing up believing in the reporting I saw on the news, and now, I wouldn't wipe my ass with any news channel on U.S. airwaves.

 

For those of you old enough to remember, did Walter Cronkite read the news, or did he spin it one way or another to fit his station's political opinion?