IRS’s Lerner Bombshell, Treasury Department Secretly Drafted New Rules To Restrict Activity of Conservative Groups… Yet Pres Obama Says No Smidgen of Corruption

Remember Lois Lerner?

Marion Algier - AskMarion:

The Daily Caller: The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

The Treasury Department and Lerner started devising the new rules “off-plan,” meaning that their plans would not be published on the public schedule. They planned the new rules in 2012, while the IRS targeting of conservative groups was in full swing, and not after the scandal broke in order to clarify regulations as the administration has suggested.

The rules place would place much more stringent controls on what would be considered political activity by the IRS, effectively limiting the standard practices of a wide array of non-profit groups.

“Don’t know who in your organizations is keeping tabs on c4s, but since we mentioned potentially addressing them (off -plan) in 2013, I’ve got my radar up and this seemed interesting…,” Treasury official Ruth Madrigal wrote in a June 14, 2012 email to Lerner and others obtained by Ways and Means and provided to The Daily Caller.

Ways and Means chairman Rep. Dave Camp blasted the off-the-record plan during a hearing Wednesday with IRS commissioner John Koskinen, and called for the administration’s newly proposed 501(c)(4) rules to be halted until criminal investigations into the IRS targeting scandal are complete.

“If Treasury and the IRS fabricated the rationale for a rule change it would tend to raise questions about the integrity of the rule-making process,” Camp said.

“I want to be perfectly clear – this committee will fight any and all efforts to restrict the rights of groups to organize, speak out and educate the public, just as unions are allowed to do so.  We will get to the bottom of this, and I expect the IRS to produce – quickly – the outstanding documents the committee has requested,” Camp said.

“I believe the IRS has a long way to go in restoring its credibility.  But, you can take a first step by complying with this committee’s request and stopping all action against 501(c)(4) groups until the appropriate investigations are completed.”

The new rules define more previously acceptable activities by nonprofit groups as prohibited “candidate-related political activity.” Communications and activities including voter registration drives and publishing voter guides, among others, are now classified as political activity. Grants and donations that 501(c)(4)’s give to other nonprofits are now subject to new record-keeping and increased scrutiny to prevent the money’s use for broadly-defined political activity.

The rules were “drafted in a manner, in my view, to shut down tea party groups” Rep. Camp said earlier this week.

New IRS commissioner Koskinen said that the rules should “put to rest all of the issues surrounding applications for tax-exempt status.”

But Madrigal’s email to Lerner proves that the regulations were being developed long before the IRS needed to publicly put anything “to rest.”

At least 292 conservative groups were subjected to unfair targeting between 2010 and 2012, against six liberal groups that were allegedly given similar treatment.

“They are both over-broad and under-inclusive,” said Foley & Lardner LLP partner Cleta Mitchell on the new rules.

“They’ve taken everything that 501(c)(4) organizations do in the normal course of business and proposed to convert that all to candidate-related activity, even if a candidate is never mentioned.”

Mitchell said that the rules are being “rushed through” for political purposes.

“The objective is to get the rules in place before the 2014 election,” Mitchell said.

Hmmmm… Remember the O’Reilly-Obama pre-Super Bowl interview just last weekend where the President said there was not a smidgen of corruption involved in the IRS situation where conservative groups were targeted?

Video: Bill O’Reilly’s Super Bowl interview with President Obama

Transcript of IRS Portion of the Interview:

O’REILLY:  I’ve got to get to the IRS…
OBAMA:  Yes.
O’REILLY:  — because I don’t know what happened there and I’m hoping maybe you can tell us.  Douglas Shulman, former IRS chief, he was cleared into the White House 157 times, more than any of your cabinet members, more than any other IRS guy in the history, by far.
OK, why was Douglas Shulman here 157 times?
Why?
OBAMA:  Mr. Shulman, as the head of the IRS, is constantly coming in, because at the time, we were trying to set up the, uh, HealthCare.gov and the IRS…
O’REILLY:  What did he have to do with that?
OBAMA:  — and the IRS is involved in making sure that that works as part of the overall health care team.
O’REILLY:  So it was all health care?
OBAMA:  Number two, we’ve also got the IRS involved when it comes to some of the financial reforms to make sure that we don’t have taxpayer funded bailouts in the future.  So you had all these different agendas in which the head of the IRS is naturally involved.
O’REILLY:  Did you speak to him a lot…
OBAMA:  — (INAUDIBLE).
O’REILLY:  — yourself?
OBAMA:  I do not recall meeting with him in any of these meetings that are pretty routine meetings that we had.
O’REILLY:  OK, so you don’t — you don’t recall seeing Shulman, because what some people are saying is that the IRS was used…
OBAMA:  Yes.
O’REILLY:  — at a — at a local level in Cincinnati, and maybe other places to go after…
OBAMA:  Absolutely wrong.
O’REILLY:  — to go after.
OBAMA:  Absolutely wrong.
O’REILLY:  But how do you know that, because we — we still don’t know what happened there?
OBAMA:  Bill, we do — that’s not what happened.  They — folks have, again, had multiple hearings on this.  I mean these kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part because you and your TV station will promote them.
O’REILLY:  But don’t…
OBAMA:  But when (INAUDIBLE)…
O’REILLY:  — think there are unanswered questions?
OBAMA:  Bill, when you actually look at this stuff, there have been multiple hearings on it.  What happened here was it that you’ve got a…
O’REILLY:  But there’s no definition on it.
OBAMA:  — you’ve got a 501(c)(4) law that people think is focusing.  No — that the folks did not know how to implement…
O’REILLY:  OK…
OBAMA:  — because it basically says…
O’REILLY:  — so you’re saying there was no…
OBAMA:  — if you are involved…
O’REILLY:  — no corruption there at all, none?
OBAMA:  That’s not what I’m saying.
O’REILLY:  (INAUDIBLE).
OBAMA:  That’s actually…
O’REILLY:  No, no, but I want to know what…
OBAMA:  — (INAUDIBLE)…
O’REILLY:  — you’re saying.  You’re the leader of the country.
OBAMA:  Absolutely.
O’REILLY:  You’re saying no corruption?
OBAMA:  No.
O’REILLY:  None?
No?
OBAMA:  There were some — there were some bone-headed decisions…
O’REILLY:  Bone-headed decisions…
OBAMA:  — out of — out of a local office…
O’REILLY:  But no mass corruption?
OBAMA:  Not even mass corruption, not even a smidgeon of corruption, I would say.

If there isn’t a smidgen of corruption, why was Obama’s new #IRS Chief apologizing… and perhaps already lying?

Then on Wednesday, 02.05.14, the new chief of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen (74), a lawyer with little tax experience but with a reputation as a troubleshooter, apologized and promised that one of his priorities is to restore public trust in the IRS on the one hand but played down the IRS scandal as a minor issue with a handful of conservative political groups as if the matter was minor and settled (which it isn’t) on the other hand… just as new of the Lerner off-plan has emerged.

Video: IRS Commissioner Apologizes For Tea Party Targeting - Jenny Beth Martin - On The Recorded

It has also come to light that virtually the first thing Koskinen did after taking office as IRS Commissioner was to give out $62 million in bonuses to boost moral among IRS workers… Really?  How about the moral of average Americans and those who have been targeted by the IRS with audits and delays of approval for their 501(c)(4)? Sounds a lot like same old same old to me?!?

Video: But as Carney Said Previously… An IRS Apology Is Not Concrete Evidence Of IRS Scandal

Bombshell Revelation: ‘Smoking Gun’ E-Mail Uncovered at IRS Congressional Hearing (Video)

Is it me… or does something just not ring true here? 

Technorati Tags: IRS,Conservatives,Lies,Obamaland,Corruption,Audits,Scandals,Treasury,501(c)(4),Tea Party,Stealing Elections,O 'Reilly,Koskinen,Lois Lerner,Watch the Other Hand,Targeting Conservatives,Off-Plan

The Persecution of Conservatives in Hollywood

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton -  the NoisyRoom

I have friends in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry on both coasts. These people are good, moral individuals. They have strong conservative principles and I am honored to know each and every one of them. Now, Progressive fascism is stalking them and the TEA Party. How long until they find a way to get to each of us? To shut is up one way or another? They are using what they term “McCarthyism” to hunt us down because we are not Marxists. It is long past time that we turn their collective tables on them.

Hollywood is notoriously Leftist. Those few that are conservative, must meet in secret and keep their opinions to themselves for fear of being blacklisted and not being able to earn a living. Much like being a Jew in Hitler’s Germany, there are some things best not spoken of in public these days. I’m surprised they haven’t given them yellow stars.

There are those who will not be silenced. Gary Sinise formed a group of conservatives and centrists in Hollywood a decade ago who meet and discuss their beliefs in their homes and quietly over dinner. Beliefs such as supporting out troops and conservative values. The Friends of Abe are Hollywood’s Conservative Underground and they are brave patriots who just want to return to our founding principles, see the government shrink and ensure that we adhere to fiscal responsibility. What does it say about America when these individuals have to meet in secret, behind closed doors? When their speech is so squelched, that simply uttering the wrong opinion can end their careers? That isn’t freedom – that is fascism.

It is said that the Friends of Abe numbers about 1500 currently. I have no way of knowing, nor should it be an issue. But I do know that they are growing and fast. I also know that the IRS is now gunning for them. Last year, when it was exposed that the IRS was targeting the TEA Party, people were incensed. But nothing of actual note was done about it. People were dragged in front of Congress, who obviously knew nothing about the Constitution. Invoking the 5th, while blathering and nullifying it… they were allowed to walk and were never forced to account for their actions. Now, the IRS has modified its rules so it can righteously attack the TEA Party and other non-profit conservative groups or loosely aligned affiliations, such as the Friends of Abe. These rules will not apply to the Left — you can all but count on that.

From the New York Times:

Now the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing the group’s activities in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. Last week, federal tax authorities presented the group with a 10-point request for detailed information about its meetings with politicians like Paul D. Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and Herman Cain, among other matters, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the organization’s confidentiality strictures, and to avoid complicating discussions with the I.R.S.

Those people said that the application had been under review for roughly two years, and had at one point included a demand — which was not met — for enhanced access to the group’s security-protected website, which would have revealed member names. Tax experts said that an organization’s membership list is information that would not typically be required. The I.R.S. already had access to the site’s basic levels, a request it considers routine for applications for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.

Friends of Abe — the name refers to Abraham Lincoln — has strongly discouraged the naming of its members. That policy even prohibits the use of cameras at group events, to avoid the unwilling identification of all but a few associates — the actors Gary Sinise, Jon Voight and Kelsey Grammer, or the writer-producer Lionel Chetwynd, for instance — who have spoken openly about their conservative political views.

I don’t blame them for wanting their anonymity and privacy. They are being hunted down and persecuted. Here’s the kicker… the government is trying to dictate who can speak to the group. They claim they only have conservatives and their lineups should be more diverse. I’m sure what they actually mean is Marxist. Friends of Abe is not political in nature. There is a difference between conservative and political. Just because someone running for office speaks at an event, in no way means they are supporting him for said office. They are not doing political fundraisers or pushing candidates. They are like-minded individuals who meet to discuss common principles. You know… like People for the American Way, only with fewer communists. We all know what the real crux is here – the Left hates conservatives and wants to eliminate them from Hollywood.

Instead of running and hiding, each of us should come out in public with strong support for these conservatives. Each of our names is on a list and you will feel the bite of prejudice from the Marxists in power. It is only a matter of when, not if.

Our culture is an American culture, not the one that Progressives seek to inflict on us. The Republicans are not the answer. The whole damn party needs a good cleaning out and new, actual conservative leadership needs to take its place. If the Left wants to talk smack about our Founding Fathers, our constitution and our American way of life, I say bring it. We’re sick to death of you and your Marxist manipulations. America elected a Marxist fraud and we invited in a whole slew of his comrades. We need to do whatever it takes at the polls to take our country back, or America will see blood in her streets and the end of freedom in the Western world. We can either be apathetic or run for the next two years like the devil was after us… because he is.

I am not a member of the Friends of Abe, but I would be proud to call any one of them a friend and compatriot. The TEA Party, Friends of Abe and all conservatives are now being hunted in America. They are being actively persecuted and they are trying to force us into silence and compliance. I say, hell no! We will keep fighting and we will not submit to the Progressives in this nation. I think it’s time to take a walk on the conservative Hollywood side, don’t you?

*You can certainly bet that non of these people were invited to the ‘Secret 50th Soiree’ at the White House this past weekend!!  

Video: IRS Scandal - Smoking Out Conservatives - IRS Targets Tea Party, Now Turns To Hollywood  -  Let us all remember that these are people that will be in-charge of enforcing ObamaCare

Video: Hollywood Conservatives: 'IRS Told Us We Had Been Targeted'

Forty-One Conservative Celebs

Lone Survivor Tells True Story of 4 Navy Seals in Afghanistan – A Must See

Hollywood Hypocrites – Producer Vows To Destroy National Rifle Assoc – Senator Ted Cruz On The Record

NEW STUNNING AUDIO: AUTHOR RELEASES INTERVIEWS CAPTURING HOLLYWOOD’S DISDAIN FOR CONSERVATIVES INCLUDING SESAME STREET

DOJ & IRS Internal Cover Up – FBI Claims No Wrong Doing! 

Obama Deceives Again: Quietly passes new regulations giving IRS a ‘License To Kill’ Tea Party Groups

Technorati Tags: Constitution,Financial,History,Politics,Survival,Taxation,IRS,Big Brother Tactics,Hollywood,Hollywood Conservatives,Double Standard,Gary Sinise,Jon Voight,Manipulaton,Facism,Tea Party,Blacklists,Asshats,Lionel Chetwynd,McCarthyism,Lone Survivor,Nonprofits,Freedom,Hypocrites,ObamaCare,Greta Van Susteren,Kelsey Grammer,Friends of Abe

Justice Department and Holder Declining to Prosecute Alleged IRS Abuse… As Questions Continue to Arise

Exterior of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington Photo: AP File

By Marion Algier – Ask Marion

A top Republican senator is pressing Attorney General Eric Holder for answers following allegations by a government watchdog that the IRS may have improperly accessed the tax records of a political donor or candidate -- but the Justice Department declined to prosecute the case.

J. Russell George, the inspector general who audited the IRS has claimed he turned over evidence of criminal behavior that the DOJ refused to press charges on. Among George's claims was that politicians were targeted for audits and that confidential donor and candidate tax information was accessed.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), questioned whether these breeches were politically motivated. 

George pointed out one case where information was willfully accessed against the current US law and in his letter to congress said, "we presented evidence of a willful unauthorized access to the Department of Justice, but the case was declined for prosecution."

The DOJ is refusing to pursue any charges against the IRS for audits or harassment of politicians, Conservative Groups or Donors or related individuals.

This is hardly the first time Eric Holder has refused to prosecute a case against democrats and liberals.

He also refused to prosecute the two New Black Panthers, who committed voter intimidation, even though career attorneys at the DOJ, strongly recommended it. Holder has also refused to prosecute Wall Street big wigs like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jon Corzine, and the board of Solyndra, all large contributors to President Obama's campaigns, and how about all the other Obama administration scandals from Fast and Furious to Benghazi, just to mention a few.

And for anyone out there that thinks these scandals don’t or won’t affect them… There has also never been an answer as to why none of the Tea Party and other Conservative Groups were never granted their non-profit status through the IRS in 2012… or any answers to 2012 Voter Fraud allegations in general. When it affects our votes or the election process, it affects all of us.

Daily Mail Reported:

'Coincidence? You decide': Sarah Palin's father 'horribly harassed' by IRS under probe led by Obama donor, her brother claims

• In a January 11 Facebook post, Chuck Heath Jr. accused the IRS of going after his dad Chuck Heath Sr.
• He said the elderly man said he had been 'horribly harassed' six times since Palin became the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008
• Heath Jr. suggested the new found interest was no coincidence, but part of an IRS's heightened security of conservative groups

Sarah Palin's father has been 'horribly harassed' by the IRS, her brother has claimed.

In a January 11 Facebook post, Chuck Heath Jr. accused the tax man of going after his dad Chuck Heath Sr. six times since Palin became the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008, suggesting the new found interest is no accident.

'Coincidence? You decide,' he wrote on his page.

Harassed? Sarah Palin's father Chuck Heath Sr, pictured above, has been 'horribly harassed' by the IRS, her brother has claimed

'My father, who worked multiple jobs and faithfully and honestly paid his taxes for fifty years, had never heard a word from the IRS.

'In 2008, his daughter was tapped to run for vice president of the United States. Since that time, he has been, in his words "horribly harassed" six times by the agency.'

He added: 'They've tried to dig up something on him but he's always operated above board. Government and politics are ugly. Kudos to the few that are trying to clean it up.'

Attack: In a January 11 Facebook post, Chuck Heath Jr., pictured working his sister's campaign, accused the tax man of going after his dad Chuck Heath Sr six times since Palin became the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008, suggesting the new found interest is no accident.

Support: After streams of anti-Obama comments to his post, Heath Jr responded, 'Thank you guys for the support. I know Dad appreciates it'

Heath Jr. was suggesting the attention allegedly directed towards his father was part of the IRS's heightened scrutiny of conservative groups.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI doesn't plan to file criminal charges in the probe, after it failed to find enough evidence of political bias to prove a violation of criminal law had occurred.

The news will likely intensify debate over the politically charged scandal.

After streams of anti-Obama comments to this post, Heath Jr. responded.

'Thank you guys for the support. I know Dad appreciates it,' he wrote.

'I wasn't going to say anything about the IRS targeting him when he told me about it a few months ago. I guess I feared some kind of retaliation from them.

'But when I heard the person heading up the IRS investigation for their targeting of Tea Party groups was a major Obama donor, I felt compelled to say something.

'We are all so sick of cronyism and backdoor tactics that bring good people down.'

Barbara Bosserman, a trial attorney within the IRS's Civil Rights Commission, is leading the internal investigation. According to reports she is a frequent donor to the Democratic National Committee and President Obama.

Chuck Heath and Chuck Heath Jr., Sarah Palin’s father and brother, like her children, are private citizens who are being harassed at every turn by the media and now the IRS because they are related to her.  Sarah’s great sin… she stood up to the corruptocrats in Alaska and won and gave life to the McCain ticket after her rousing VP nomination acceptance speech and scared the Hell out of the establishments in both parties and the ruling elite everywhere.  Why? Because she is and would represent the American people and continue to call out the beltway politicians and power elite.  So they had their minions in the media destroy her with lies, frivolous law suits… all of which she won, and continuous attacks on her and her family.

In a recent interview Roger Ailes said, “The only two people I knew who got worse press than Sarah Palin were Richard Nixon and George W. Bush — much of it unfairly, most of it unfair to her family.”, and she is still standing strong and Undefeated.  CNN Said Palin Influence Far from Diminishing and Jim DeMint at the Heritage Foundation said there was no more valuable endorsement in conservative circles than that of Sarah Palin… as Ted Cruz and others have said, Palin is the Kingmaker.  Ailes also knows that Palin just might take another shot at the big job herself… after all who better to go head to head with Hillary Clinton. The DNC’s carrot would be electing the first female president.  It truly would be the battle of the Century! And Ailes as well as the powers that be know it!

Election 2016 is a make or break it election for America’s future direction and definitely for Conservatives the Republican Party! Conservatives have lost their credibility because the don’t stand up for their own! And Progressives, Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Holder will do anything and everything to steal that election (2014 and 2016).

Time for all of us to get involved!!

Read more:

Criminal charges not expected in IRS probe The Wall Street Journal

Chuck Heath Jr 

Issa, Republicans Blast Decision Not to Pursue Criminal Charges in IRS Scandal 

Holder implicated in IRS Cover Up

Book by Chuck Heath Sr. and Chuck Heath Jr. - Our Sarah: Made in Alaska (Kindle)

Technorati Tags: IRS,Big Brother Tactics,Holder,Cronyism,Chuck Heath,Palin 2016,Scandals,Sarah Palin,DOJ,Undefeated,CNN,Eric Holder,Wake-Up,Watch the Other Hand,Tea Party,Stealing Elections,Conservatives,Progressives

Watcher’s Council Nominations: Screwing The Military Edition – 01.15.14

Video: HughHewitt Paul Ryan 1-14-14

Watcher’s Council Nominations: I suppose it all comes down to what your priorities are….Hawaiian vacays, dysfunctional websites and the like versus veteran’s benefits. But when you break a promise to people who are putting their lives on the line, they simply tend to not want to do that anymore.And as Hugh Hewitt points out, the word spreads, and others make the same decision. Whether Paul Ryan realizes it or not, he’s simply playing along with what President Obama has wanted all along, even going back to 2009 when he tried to take VA benefits away from our wounded warriors to make them buy private healthcare. He wants to hollow out the military, perhaps replacing much of it with that domestic security force he’s always talked about…and has made some decent strides towards creating. The Republican establishment, who were terrified of shutting down the government in order to persuade this president to exercise some fiscal sanity and okayed the sequester instead did the same thing.

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

This week, Ask Marion, Right Truth, David Gerstman and The Pirate’s Cove earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

So, let’s see what we have this week….

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey – Schooling vs. chaos
• The Political Commentator – Barack Obama’s insidious master plan for the United States?
• The Noisy Room – The Lynchpins Have Been Pulled
• The Right Planet – I’ve Had It With The GOP
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Panzer Arik
• Joshuapundit - Rohani On New Iran Nuclear Deal: “World Powers Surrendered to Iran”
• Liberty’s Spirit – Texas and California: Different Sides, Same Coin
• Simply Jews – Chomsky the Mastermind: where only the eagles dare
• VA Right! - Eric ‘Crazy Ivan’ Cantor Does About Face on Conservatives – Embraces Liberalism, Amnesty, Obamacare
• Bookworm Room – Upworthy and Good Men Project: Progressive sites for people seeking to save their souls through politics
• The Glittering Eye - The Tip of the Iceberg
• The Razor – Cliff’s Notes for Debunking Conspiracy Theories
• Rhymes With Right – Anti-Catholic Rhetoric At USNews.Com
• Nice Deb – The IRS Is Poised To Silence Conservatives Again – What You Can Do (Video)
• The Mellow Jihadi – Drive em hard-drive em dirty

Honorable Mentions

• Ask Marion – Two Marriages, Two Political Power Deals, One Big Question
• Right Truth – ‘Lone Survivor’ – The Movie
• David Gerstman/Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – Believing in make-believe peace
• The Pirate’s Cove – Weather Channel: Warming Pause Isn’t Really What You Think

Non-Council Submissions

• The First Street Journal – John Kerry and the Middle East peace process submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Sultan Knish - Why People Fail submitted by The Political Commentator
• Mark Steyn – Global warming’s glorious ship of fools submitted by The Noisy Room
• The Weekly Standard – What Catastrophe? submitted by The Right Planet
• Commentary – A Tale Of Two Surges submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Amil Imani – An Open Letter To The God Of Islam submitted by Joshuapundit
• Fred Kagan/Weekly Standard – Gates at War submitted by Liberty’s Spirit
• Nick Nipclose – Counterpunch Defends Neo-Nazism submitted by Simply Jews
• Reason.Com – They Lied submitted by VA Right!
• To Put It Bluntly - A Preferred Standard For Lawyers submitted by Bookworm Room
• The Dignified Rant – Kerry Responds to Nigerian Email Business Opportunities, Too submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Edward Luce/FT.com – The Tide is Rising For America’s Libertarians submitted by The Razor
• Ed Hubbard/Big Jolly Politics – Judge Denise Pratt, Please Resign; Fellow Republicans, Please Defeat Judge Pratt if She Does Not Resign submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Byron York/Washington Examiner - What if Americans rebel against the Obamacare mandate? submitted by Nice Deb
• Gates Of Vienna – Passion submitted by The Watcher
• Michelle Malkin – Beware the left-wing-funded “Main Street” Republicans submitted by Watcher

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!

Technorati Tags: Watcher's Council,Obamaland,News,News Nuggets,Hillary,BHO,Bloggers,Blogosphere,Military,Paul Ryan,Budgets,Wake-Up,Stand-Up,Get-Involved,Power Grab,The Clintons,Knowledge,Passion,Chaos,Manipulation,Kerry,IRS,The Obamas,Progressives,Iran,Liberalism,ObamaCare,Amnesty,Cantor,Global Warming,Movies,Republican Establishment,Hugh Hewitt,Collection of Articles,Alterantive Media,Middle East

Watcher’s Council Nominations – Under Surveillance Edition - 06.12.13

JoshuaPundit on Jun 12 2013 | Nominations

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere’, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

Council News:

Ch-ch-ch-Changes: Council Members Gay Patriot and The Independent Sentinel have departed the Council due to the need to concentrate on other pursuits, although they will still remain members of the WoW community. We’ve greatly enjoyed having them as part of our group and wish them well in their future endeavors.

But hey, just looky what we have here!

This week marks the stellar debut of Liberty’s Spirit and Nice Deb, two awesome writers we’ve been fans of for some time. They’re definitely going to add something special to the Council mix… check out their submissions this week and see if you don’t agree.

This week, Ask Marion, Right Truth, and The Pirate’s Cove earned honorable mention status with some great pieces.

Council Submissions

• The Political Commentator – Connecting the radical dots in Boston!
• Simply Jews – More fun and games with Alice Walker
• The Noisy Room – Samantha Power: The Hand That Rocks A Nation
• Liberty’s Spirit – Autism-Meme as Political Insult
• The Razor – The Power of Islamic Propaganda
• Joshuapundit - The Anniversary Of A Miracle – Israel’s Victory In The Six Day War
• The Colossus of Rhodey – Poll Shows Support for Affirmative Action Dwindling
• Nice Deb – National Organization for Marriage’s John Eastman RIPS Democrats At IRS Hearing + Proof IRS Leaked Confidential Donor List to Political Rival
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Beirut Is The Next Benghazi
• The Right Planet – What Are Some Good ‘Liberal’ Books?
• Bookworm Room – Game of Thrones and how the things that we watch reveal something about who we are and what we’ve become
• VA Right! - NSA Leaker Snowden: Hero or Traitor?
• The Glittering Eye - Weasels
• Rhymes With Right – A Long Distance Dedication To Obama Voters
• The Mellow Jihadi – My First Fist-Fight in the Navy

Honorable Mentions

• Ask Marion – NSA Whistleblower Snowden in Exile as the Obama Scandals List Grows
• Right Truth – Soldier Who Read Conservative Books Faces Charges…
• The Pirate’s Cove – Bummer: NY Times Admits To 15 Year Pause In Global Warming

Non-Council Submissions

• Zero Hedge - Are Central Bankers Losing Control? submitted by The Political Commentator
• The Texas Scribbler – Our Creepy President submitted by Simply Jews
• Sultan Knish – We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here submitted by The Noisy Room
• This Ongoing War: A Blog – Will Appeasing Hezbollah Work Better Now Than it Did With Nazi Germany? submitted by Liberty’s Spirit
• Victor Davis Hanson – Obama is Just Obama submitted by The Razor
• Mark Steyn – The All Seeing State submitted by Joshuapundit
• Reason.com – Obama’’s Last Gasp at a Legacy submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Doug Ross @ Journal – The Complete IRS Scandal Timeline in Spreadsheet Format [Updated] submitted by Nice Deb
• The Long War Journal – Iran’s Latin American Terror Network submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• The National Journal – NSA Spying Scandal: 2006 or 2013? submitted by The Right Planet
• Israel Thrives - The Nakba Stratagem submitted by Bookworm Room
• Michelle Malkin – Assimilation, Not Amnesty submitted by VA Right!
• Alexis Simendinger/RealClearPolitics – Privacy, Security and Obama’s Uphill Quest for Trust submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Red State – IRS lectures pro-life group on acceptable speech, practice of religion. submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Chicago Boyz – Peggy Noonan is figuring it out … submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Gatestone Institute/Raheel Raza – On Israel’s President’s Conference submitted by The Watcher
• Ann Coulter – Tips For Right-Wingers On The IRS Scandal submitted by Watcher 

Forum: Given The Scandals Surrounding His Administration, Will Obama Finish His Second Term?

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NSA Whistleblower Snowden in Exile as the Obama Scandals List Grows

By Marion Algier - AskMarion

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker and historian who is most famous for his work Democracy in America (paperback), said, “People get the government they deserve.” and there is a similar and well-documented quotation by Joseph de Maistre: "Every country has the government it deserves.” 

They are both quotes usually used to explain why our governments (worldwide) are generally pretty awful. The inference is that if people were more careful who they voted for, if they took the time to inform themselves and if more people took the trouble to vote (and get involved in the system) in the first place, we would not have such mediocre or corrupt people in government, and indeed politicians would have to clean up their act and work a lot harder than they do or they would be replaced. 

When I was a young student of history, government and politics, I used to think those comments were pretty cynical, but as I have watched and chronicled America’s decline since the Reagan era I have sadly found them to be more true than I ever wanted to believe or admit.

The Great American Experiment, as America is often called, was supposed to prove that the common man could rule himself and America’s Founding Fathers gave us every tool we needed to survive as long as we stayed engaged.  But even with those tools the average American is lost, uninformed and disinterested, even now as they watch the one-time greatest country in the world crashing down around them!

The American people as a whole have given the politicians in Washington D.C., and even locally, carte blanche with little oversight or interest for decades.  A trend that really began as the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ returned home from war and the inattention and apathy has grown with each generation thereafter, except by those focused on destroying America.   We have allowed ourselves and our children to methodically be dumbed-down, indoctrinated, and manipulated to the point that Pravda, the former propaganda newspaper for the USSR dubbed us Sheeple. We elected and re-elected a president that we still don’t really know and who has ‘always’ surrounded himself with radicals that didn’t like the American system, American ideals or the values of the average American.  And we now find ourselves with a president, his administration and a government in general embroiled in scandal, cover-ups, and over-reach.  Yet half the people still don’t know about or understand the scandals, that the 2012 election probably was stolen and when asked they just say, “Our president, ‘Obama’, is cool.” The other half are losing or have already lost faith in the government, as well as in their low-informed counterparts.

How many scandals are there now?  Benghazi-gate, IRS-gate, NSA-gate, Press-gate… Sebelius-gate (or ObamaCare-gate), EPA-gate, Fast and Furious, voter/election fraud and the list goes on… now State Dept-gate and maybe Islamist-gate.  They are spying on us and collecting our data without cause or warrants; using czars and Executive Orders to circumvent the Constitution; they arrogantly promote and defend those involved in the corruption and they investigated and suppressed the activities of anyone or group that opposed them to steal an election.  And now courageous whistleblowers and witnesses, who are finally stepping up but are afraid enough that they won’t get a fair trial (or worse), are fleeing the country.  Where is the outrage?

FoxNews:  NSA whistle-blower who sought to 'inform the public' in surveillance risks decades in jail. 

The source of the bombshell leaks about the U.S. government gathering information on billions of phone calls and Internet activities risks decades in jail for the disclosures if the U.S. can extradite him from Hong Kong, where he says he has taken refuge after saying his sole motive was to “inform the public.”

“We have the elements of a Police State here”- Mark Levin

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, fully approves of Edward Snowden's leak about a top-secret National Security Agency surveillance program.

"I'm very impressed by what I've heard in the last couple of hours, including Snowden's own video here. I think he's done an enormous service, incalculable service," Ellsberg said Sunday night on CNN.

As for the surveillance program, Ellsberg said, "I have no doubt that this violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and probably other parts of the Bill of Rights and should have been exposed."

"Can it really be a crime to expose crime?" Ellsberg asked.

 Photo: AP Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, on Sunday, June 9, 2013, in Hong Kong. The Guardian identified Snowden as a source for its reports on intelligence

HONG KONG (AP) — The American intelligence contractor who disclosed the U.S. government surveillance programs fled to Hong Kong because he believed he wouldn't get a fair trial in his home country. 

Snowden says he worked as a contractor at the National Security Agency and the CIA. He allowed both the Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers to reveal his identity on Sunday (06.09.13) as the source of a series of top-secret documents outlining two NSA surveillance programs.  He told the papers if the DOJ indicts him, which seems almost inevitable, that he doesn't really trust the judicial system in the United States to give him a fair trial".  Most would agree that he is right.

One can only ask… wow, has America really fallen that far?  It wasn’t so long ago that those would have headlines expected out of the USSR, not the USA.

Video: Neil Cavuto Erupts Over Democratic Operative's Defense of Government NSA Scandal

Infowars.com:  Fox News host Neil Cavuto and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein erupted at each other on Saturday morning, when Cavuto demanded Epstein see the NSA subpoena as part of a larger pattern of oppressive behavior on the part of the Obama administration. “You see one incident after another that comes up,” Cavuto said. “It all comes back to the same basic issue: privacy invaded or potentially invaded. Institutions of all sorts doing the same thing. There is a pattern.”

Video: Judge Jeanine Slams IRS, NSA and Obama for Expanding Surveillance Program - Opening Statement

Video:  “We have the elements of a Police State here”- A fired up Mark Levin talks to Neil Cavuto

Where are men (and women… the Margaret Thatchers of our day) like Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, presidents/public servants who knew the buck stopped with them, who would have made the tough decisions and taken responsibility? In Obamaland it is everyone’s fault but his.  And when they (present day leaders) do surface… why don’t we recognize them?  What has happened to Americans who expected their elected leaders to represent their interests and values and who would have called for the resignations or impeachments of those in power today?

Yet when we look for responsibility and blame we must also add ourselves plus everyone in Congress, government workers and the mainstream media to the list.  How many people voted without knowing who or what they were voting for?  How many parents and grandparents even have knowledge of the anti-American rhetoric being taught in our schools… about the Common C.O.R.E. educational program? How many informed public servants and media have remained silent?  How many have misled or lied under oath?  How many are uninformed themselves?  Did Congress tell us about the PRISM Project… the data centers (Utah) being built and is Congress asking the right questions now?

We, and globally, have already been so programmed that too many Americans actually believe that spying on and droning American citizens is okay. After all most people voluntarily post all their information on social media for the powers that be, and everyone else, to access.   We are being led like sheep(le) to the slaughter.  See: Timeline of revelations about surveillance that sweeps up Americans' phone calls, data  Founding Father Benjamin Franklin said, “He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither”, yet in an America who no longer knew (knows) her (or world) history, Americans could not wait for “W” and Congress to ram through the Patriot Act after 9/11, which 12-years later has only become ever more intrusive.  People… if the government is watching and monitoring you, it is never good!!  We are living in George Orwell’s 1984… Hear Beck’s emotional 1984 monologue HERE.

America… it is the responsibility of each of us to be informed, to vote for integrity and demand it.  If the America our Founding Fathers left us is to survive, it is up to all of us to take a stand and get involved… today!  Or there won’t be an American tomorrow that you will be comfortable leaving to your children!!  Remember the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, “People get the government they deserve.”  If you don’t inform yourself and get involved, what will you tell you children and grandchildren you were doing when America and freedom was being stolen?

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The Obama IRS Targeting Scandal in Five Minutes – Unbelievable Abuse of Power

Kudos to Greta Van Susteren for putting together this powerful video exposing the Obama Administration’s attack on conservative Americans:

Video:  The Obama IRS Targeting Scandal in Five Minutes – Unbelievable Abuse of Power

Gateway Pundit: The IRS targeted hundreds of conservative groups since 2010. 500 conservative and Christian groups were illegally targeted by the Obama IRS starting in 2010.   For twenty-seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status. At the same time the Obama IRS approved dozens of progressive applications within weeks.

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The Lois Lerner Defense

File it the next time the IRS calls you up…

Lois Lerner

By Mark Steyn

We have the president of the United States’ word as a gentleman that he knew nothing about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of his enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.”

Furthermore, although the commissioner of the IRS, Douglas Shulman, visited Obama’s White House no fewer than 157 times, which is 156 times more than his predecessor Mark Everson ever visited the White House, we know that this was for legitimate Easter-egg rolls, as he testified to Congress, and meetings to discuss Obamacare. The Easter Bunny, one should note, visits the White House two to four times as often as the average IRS commissioner did before Mr. Shulman came along. But you can’t make a health-care omelet without breaking Easter eggs: It is one of the many distinctive features of Obama-style “health” “care” “reform” that, while it has not led to the hiring of a single additional doctor, nurse, or hospital janitor, it did require the biggest expansion of the IRS since the Second World War. So, when he wasn’t rolling Easter eggs and advising the moppets on whether they needed to declare the luxury Belgian white chocolate balls with praline filling, he was participating in vital meetings on how many extra SWAT teams he was going to need to enforce the new colonoscopy non-compliance penalty.

Let us also overlook the excellent treatment received from the IRS by members of the president’s family. Although acting commissioner Steven Miller apologized for the “horrible customer service” conservative taxpayers had gotten, a gentleman by the name of Malik Obama received impeccable, express service when he took the precaution of mailing in his non-profit application from N’giya, Kenya, rather than notoriously slower mail processing centers such as Phoenix and Dallas. Malik, the brother of President Obama, runs the Barack H. Obama Foundation, named for the president’s father. On May 30, 2011, they applied for tax-exempt status, and had their approval signed less than a month later by Lois Lerner herself, and conveniently backdated by Lois to cover the two-and-a-half years the enterprising Malik had already been raking in “tax-deductible” donations from Americans. The Washington address of the Barack H. Obama Foundation appears to be bogus, and it’s not clear whether the funds are being used back in Kenya for anything other than supporting the famously lavish lifestyle of Malik and his twelve wives. Given that the IRS is not shy about asking American conservatives for Facebook posts and lists of who attends their meetings, Ms. Lerner surely would have been within her rights to ask Malik Obama about the “exclusive” photographs currently displayed on the Barack H. Obama Foundation website of a recent meeting in Sudan, one of only four countries the U.S. government designates as a “terrorist state,” and the Foundation’s apparently extensive association with the Sudanese president and blood-soaked genocidal war criminal Omar al-Bashir. Given that the IRS likes to ask conservative taxpayers whether their friends and relatives are planning on running for office, Ms. Lerner might like to ask Malik Obama when his friend President Bashir is planning on leaving office. After another quarter million corpses?

Whatever. Let’s take it as read that, when U.S. taxpayers wind up giving tax breaks to an entity linked to the butchers of Darfur, it’s pure coincidence that the racket turns out to be run by the president’s brother. Let’s accept that Malik Obama just got lucky that his letter landed on the desk of Lois Lerner, and that, when she backdated his application for two-and-a-half years, she’d momentarily forgotten that it’s illegal for her to backdate it more than two-and-a-quarter years. Indeed, let’s take the president at his word that the existence of this shadowy IRS entity working deep within the even shadowier U.S. Treasury planted in deep cover within the shadowiest conspiracy of them all, this murky hitherto unknown organization called “the Executive Branch,” that all this was news to him. What that means then is not that this or that elected politician is corrupt but that the government of the United States is corrupt.

There seems to be ever more evidence for that. Every day brings revelations that the IRS conservative crackdown went way beyond the Tea Party. McClatchy Newspapers reports that a woman known only as “Ms. Richards” in the Cincinnati office of the IRS told Coalition for Life of Iowa that their application for nonprofit status could only be approved if they signed a letter promising not to picket in front of Planned Parenthood. Mark Drabik, a military veteran, became politically active and started giving to conservative groups only to have the IRS challenge his church donations. Catherine Engelbrecht founded True the Vote to protect ballot integrity, and within a few months her family’s business, farm, and personal taxes had all attracted IRS audits. Hundreds and hundreds of groups were consigned to the purgatory of “pending” — a term for IRS customers not as favored as Malik Obama can stretch leisurely from six months to ten to twenty to thirty, and beyond. When the most lavishly funded government on the planet comes after you, eventual guilt or innocence is irrelevant: The process is the punishment.

I am an immigrant to this great land, and I love it, but I will make a small observation from my years in the United States which I hope won’t be taken the wrong way: Like citizens of almost all Western democracies in the 21st century, Americans are overly deferential to bureaucracy, but, in my observation, they are uniquely fearful of the state’s tax collectors to a degree I have never seen with Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs in London or equivalent agencies in Paris, Ottawa, Rome, Canberra. The IRS has, in American terms, extraordinary powers. It was, for example, amusing to see Lois Lerner plead the Fifth Amendment and exercise her constitutional right not to put herself at risk of self-incrimination. As the great Walter Williams pointed out the other day, every single American waives his Fifth Amendment rights every time he signs that tax return on April 15. Americans are fearless if some guy pulls some stunt in a shopping mall, but an IRS assault is brutal and unending. Many activists faded away, and the media began writing stories about how the Tea Party had peaked; they were over; they wouldn’t be a factor in 2012. And so it proved. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out the other day, the plan worked.

But, of course, there was no plan, was there? So let’s take Obama at his word that he had no idea all this was going on. In that case, he might like to take the lead in calling for the abolition of a corrupt agency and its grotesque tax code, and their replacement by a bureaucracy with more limited powers commensurate with a free society and a simplified tax regime with lower rates and thus fewer bewildering, mercurial “exemptions” that make the citizenry dependent on the caprices of Ms. Lerner and her colleagues. That’s a prize worth fighting for. In the meantime, the next time the IRS call you up with demands for this and demands for that, simply tell them, “I am filing the Lois Lerner defense,” and then say as she did to Congress “I have not done anything wrong. And I will not answer any questions.” Every man his own Lois Lerner!

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn

IRS in Defense Over Dance Video:

(CNN) – A newly obtained video has the IRS running damage control on a new front, as the embattled agency prepares for the release next week of an inspector general report that will be critical of how money was spent on staff conferences.

In the video, an apparent team-building exercise, employees are taught the Cupid Shuffle dance move as they prepare to present the dance as a group at a 2010 conference.

The IRS said Friday night the video “was unacceptable and an inappropriate use of government funds.”

The video’s narrator describes the group of individuals as executives from the Small Business/Self Employed (SBSE) department. They say they’re competing “to become the next great dance sensation.”

The IRS said the video cost $1,600 to produce, and it played at the end of a 2010 leadership and education meeting in Anaheim for 2,600 managers in the SBSE division.

“The meeting took place at a time where the IRS needed to ensure that managers had proper training to address significant new programs, major staff turnover and a substantial increase in security threats following the suicide attack on an IRS facility in Austin earlier in the year,” the IRS said in a statement.

Throughout the nearly-three minute video, the employees poke fun at each other as they try to learn the dance moves.

The new video comes as the IRS takes heat over its admitted targeting of conservative groups who sought tax exempt status.

Next week, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) will release an audit showing excess spending at the IRS conference.

The IRS has already come under scrutiny for Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island-themed training videos it produced that costs tens of thousands of dollars. The Star Trek video, reported earlier this year, played at the same conference as the dance video.

“And I thought doing the Star Trek video was humiliating,” one woman says in the new video.

In fact, one of the employees in the Star Trek video was also in the new dancing spot.

Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel, appointed in recent weeks, said in a statement that the report will focus on an IRS conference that took place in 2010 and labeled it an “unfortunate vestige from a prior era.”

Really????

Keep reading…

Obama Is In Charge; This Is on Him - David Limbaugh

Time to Kill the IRS Says Mark Levin

Incredible: The Official in Charge of the IRS Office Responsible for Targeting Conservative Groups Now Heads the Agency’s Obamacare Office

Obama Fires IRS Commissioner as Scandal Grows

Chief IRS council William Wilkins helped Rev. Wright’s church get out of probe

Why the IRS Scandal Should Lead to Obama’s Impeachment

Incompetent-gate, Corruption-gate and Progressive-gate – Part 1

IRS apologizes for targeting tea party groups

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