Can we talk about the Culture of Corruption?

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Emerging Junta
The IRS’s illegal actions — and its efforts at cover-up — undermine the foundations of our government.
Kevin D. Williamson, NRO
MAY 16, 2014

I will confess to a little despair over the relatively mild reception that has greeted the evidence, now conclusive and irrefutable, that the Internal Revenue Service, under the direction of senior leaders affiliated with the Democratic party, was used as a political weapon from at least 2010 through the 2012 election. It may be that the American public simply does not care about the issue; it is always difficult, if not impossible, to predict what issues will seize the electorate’s attention, or to understand why after the fact. It may be that the public does not understand the issue, in which case a brief explanation of the known facts may be of some use.

Here is what happened. In the run-up to the 2012 election, senior IRS executives including Lois Lerner, then the head of the IRS branch that oversees the activities of tax-exempt nonprofit groups, began singling out conservative-leaning organizations for extra attention, invasive investigations, and legal harassment. The IRS did not target groups that they believed might be violating the rules governing tax-exempt organizations; rather, as e-mails from the agency document, the IRS targeted these conservative groups categorically, regardless of whether there was any evidence that they were not in compliance with the relevant regulations. Simply having the words “tea party,” “patriot,” or “9/12” (a reference to one of Glenn Beck’s many channels of activism) in the name was enough. Also targeted were groups dedicated to issues such as taxes, spending, debt, and, perhaps most worrisome, those that were simply “critical of the how the country is being run.” Organizations also were targeted based on the identity of their donors. Their applications were delayed, their managements harassed, and the IRS demanded that they answer wildly inappropriate questions, such as the content of their prayers. When an internal review threatened to expose the fact that, in the words of the IRS’s inspector general, the agency was “using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status,” Ms. Lerner staged an event at a tax-law conference at which she used a planted questioner to preemptively disclose the issue on her own terms, and the agency began claiming that the tea-party targeting, while regrettable, was the work of a few misguided agents at a satellite office in Cincinnati. In fact, the direction came from Washington and was, in the words of the agency’s own e-mails, “coordinated with” a senior manager there, Rob Choi, director of rulings and agreements. This began at the behest of Democratic officeholders, including Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who requested that the IRS disclose to him information about tea-party groups that it would have been illegal for the IRS to disclose. It subsequently emerged that IRS officials had intentionally misled members of Congress and investigators about the matter.

During this period, IRS operatives were, according to the Office of Special Counsel, openly campaigning for the reelection of Barack Obama on IRS time using IRS resources. A few were later disciplined for their actions, but the extent of the political activity of IRS agents remains unknown.

The IRS is not just a revenue agency — it is a law-enforcement agency, a police agency with far greater powers of investigation and coercion that any normal police force. Its actions in this matter are not only inappropriate — they are illegal. Using government resources for political ends is a serious crime, as is conspiring to mislead investigators about those crimes. But so far, other than holding Lois Lerner in contempt for refusing to comply with the demands of congressional investigators, almost nothing has happened. The characteristic feature of a police state is that those who are entrusted with the power to enforce the law are not themselves bound by it.

Context is again here important. The IRS scandal is not a standalone issue but comes at a time when the Democratic party is seeking to radically expand the power of the federal government to regulate political speech; we can safely assume that the same people who were using the IRS’s political-speech regulations for political ends will have precisely the same motives and precisely the same opportunity to use other political-speech regulations for precisely the same political ends: to benefit their allies and persecute their enemies. So committed are the Democrats to keeping their critics under the thumb of federal police powers that they have introduced an amendment in the Senate that would effectively repeal the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment, those having proved inconvenient to Democrats in Supreme Court rulings such as McCutcheon and Citizens United, the latter case involving a federal attempt to make it a crime to show a film critical of a political figure under unapproved circumstances.

The most important question that must be answered in this matter does not involve the misbehavior of IRS officials and Democratic officeholders, though those are important. Nor is it the question of free speech, vital and fundamental as that is. The question here is nothing less than the legitimacy of the United States government.

When law-enforcement agencies and federal regulators with extraordinary coercive powers are subordinated to political interests rather than their official obligations — to the Party rather than to the law — then the law itself becomes meaningless, and the delicate constitutional order we have enjoyed for more than two centuries is reduced to a brutal might-makes-right proposition.

Elected officials and public servants of both parties take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to faithfully discharge the duties of their office. That oath is now being tested. The IRS investigation is no mere partisan scandal, but a moral challenge for the men and women who compose the government of this country. Whether they are sufficient to meet that challenge is far from obvious, but the evidence so far is not encouraging.

 

[Ishmael]

The Emerging Junta
The IRS’s illegal actions — and its efforts at cover-up — undermine the foundations of our government.
Kevin D. Williamson, NRO
MAY 16, 2014

When the IRS was used to bring Capone down every one applauded. Then someone at the agency said, "If we can get Capone, we can get ANYONE!"

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

tee hee


:dances:

 

[miles]

The Fraud is the new poster boy for sleaze.

 

[RobDownSouth]

The Fraud is the new poster boy for sleaze.

Miles cannot abide a Democratic president, let alone a Negro Democratic president.
:nods:

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The only way anyone in the Oligarchy ever gets punished, is when they were on their way out anyway...



http://washingtonexaminer.com/veter...-just-a-suggestion-of-scandal/article/2548546


Shinseki's not going to go anywhere; he was the one who gave the Democrats who voted for the war in Iraq the cover fire in which to turn on Bush and begin aidin' and abettin' the enemy. He's golden...


Meanwhile, the troops are still dying, but we have finally found a body count that the Democrats don't want to climb to the top of and start blasting the President.

 

[RobDownSouth]

The Chief cannot abide a Democratic president, let alone a Negro Democratic president.
:nods:

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Harry’s Dirty Amendment
If he wants to restrict freedom of speech beyond recognition, he’s welcome to try.
Charles C. W. Cooke, NRO
MAY 16, 2014

In the same week as it was posited that a “literal reading” of the First Amendment would likely guarantee the right’s extension to robots and to drones, Senate Democrats moved to remove the protection from a pair of living, breathing human beings. On Thursday, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that he was now on board with a plan to amend the Bill of Rights. “Let’s keep our elections from becoming speculative ventures for the wealthy,” Reid implored of his colleagues, “and put a stop to the hostile takeover of our democratic system by a couple of billionaire oil barons.”

Those “oil barons” have had quite the effect on Reid’s mental health. Of late, he has taken to parading around the Senate floor, incessantly rehearsing the terms of his fatwa as a bookish sixth-grader might run clankingly through his lines in a tuneless middle-school production of Peter Pan. At first, the Kochs were merely a symbol of a wider problem; then they were singled out as being somehow different from others with deep pockets and a keen political interest; finally, as is inevitable with all hunts for the monster at the village gates, they were marked for execution. Death by constitutional amendment — for now, at least.

The move is the final act of a contrived and hamfisted morality play, whose purpose is to cast the Democratic party and its allies as champions of the people and the Kochs as a proxy for all that ails America. Lofty as its broader goal may seek to be, the whole endeavor nevertheless carries with it the ugly smack of the Bill of Attainder — of a change to the nation’s constitutional settlement that serves largely to punish two people that the man with the gavel disdains. Rambling in the general direction of a BuzzFeed reporter earlier this week, Reid inadvertently revealed something about his motivations. His reelection to the Senate in 1998, he griped, “was awful”: “I won it, but just barely. I felt it was corrupting, all this corporate money.” Translation: I almost lost my seat once, so I need the supreme law to protect me. Corruption, schmorruption. This is about power.

It is wholly unsurprising that well-connected and flush incumbents covet the power to determine how their competitors might execute their challenges. Politics, of course, is a dirty game. But, knowing this, we must be most skeptical of those who would accord to the instinct of self-preservation the imprimatur of morality. As we all know too well, government interventions typically attract two types of supporters: the true believers and the cynics. Thus do we see teachers’ unions astutely acting to protect their jobs and their benefits while supporters run around, butter in mouth, shouting about “the children.” Thus do we see an established rent-seeker such as the New York City Taxi Commission safeguarding its market against the cleaning influence of competition with nebulous and disingenuous talk of “public safety.” And thus do we see the ringmasters of our expansive federal circus gluing themselves to their thrones with the potent adhesive of “campaign finance reform.”

Reid’s coadjutors are typically zealous in their accord. Their slogan, “money isn’t speech,” is popular among the sort of people who like slogans and who believe that chanting is a vital part of any serious political movement[boy doesn't that remind me of more than a few people around here], and it is no doubt entrancing to the class of voter whose civic acuity is sufficiently stunted to make casting a ballot for Harry Reid seem like a reasonable way of spending a Tuesday. But, beyond brevity, it has little to recommend it. Money, after all, is merely a tool that permits other activities. In what other circumstance, pray, do we draw such a harsh distinction between the cash itself and the purposes for which it is spent? To borrow a line from Eugene Volokh, were the federal government to ban spending on abortion tomorrow, would the assembled champions of Planned Parenthood shrug their blood-soaked shoulders and lament, “oh well, I suppose that money isn’t abortion”? Likewise, if an Occupier were legally restricted from spending his money on a May Day protest sign, would we expect him to throw up his hands and to concede that it was only his bank account that was being controlled? (“Mic check: Money isn’t paper!”) Hardly. The material point here, as Volokh concludes, is that “restricting the use of money to speak . . . interferes with people’s ability to speak.”

...

Gloomy as I often am about the prospects of the free world, I should say now that I can think of nothing more delicious for the forces of liberty to run against in 2014 and beyond than a Democratic party that is openly attempting not merely to repeal the First Amendment but to replace it with an ersatz substitution that has been authored by a reedy-voiced Napoleon like Reid. Presently, the Senate majority leader is banking on being able to turn a couple of American citizens into modern day Emmanuel Goldsteins and to ride the wave of two-minute-hates straight through Article 5 and into the heart of the Bill of Rights. The big joke? “Polling,” Bloomberg informs us, “indicates that Reid is better-known than the Koch Brothers — and more disliked.” Just wait till you see what people think of him when he’s done trying to take his Ritz-Carlton matchbook to James Madison’s masterpiece.

 

[RobDownSouth]

That's right, Chief....keep pushing that "one dollar, one vote" mantra. I'm sure you'll get a lot of converts.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

For a year, the administration and IRS headquarters in Gomorrah by the Potomac have attempted to run an implausible con-job: The harassment of organizations opposed to Obama’s policies by an executive-branch agency had nothing to do with the Obama administration — it was just a rogue operation by an IRS office in Cincinnati which, though regrettably overzealous, was apolitical, non-ideological, and without “even a smidgen of corruption.”

The story had about as much credibility as the administration’s “blame the video” script that Susan Rice dutifully performed on the post-Benghazi Sunday shows, or the Justice Department’s 2011 assurance to Congress that its agents would never knowingly allow the transfer of a couple of thousand guns to criminal gangs in Mexico. The “Cincinnati did it” yarn has been unraveling since it was first spun by IRS honcho Lois Lerner and, soon afterwards, by President Obama himself. The lie has now been exploded by e-mails clawed from the IRS by Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act suit.

These include one from a top IRS lawyer in Washington succinctly explaining that “EOT [i.e., the revenue agency’s “Exempt Organization Technical unit” in Washington] is working Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy.” This was in July 2012, which is to say, in the key final months of Obama’s reelection campaign. “Tea party applications” were requests by conservative groups to be granted tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. By selectively setting aside their applications, delaying the conferral of tax-exempt status to which the law entitled them, and putting them through inquisitions that violated their constitutional rights to political speech and association, IRS headquarters prevented them from raising funds and organizing as an effective opposition.

The e-mails elucidate that Cincinnati’s strings were being pulled in Washington: “We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent [in Cincinnati] to use as examples in the development of their cases.” “Tea party applications,” IRS headquarters elaborates, have been isolated as “the subject of an SCR” — meaning “sensitive case report.” To “resolve” such cases would require “coordination with Rob” — a reference, Judicial Watch contends, to Rob Choi, who was then a high-ranking IRS official in Washington.

It is no more conceivable that IRS headquarters was off on its own anti–Tea Party witch-hunt than that the subordinate Cincinnati office was. The fuse, it must be recalled, was lit by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, affirming the First Amendment’s prohibition against government restrictions of political speech by corporations. The ruling enraged the Left and prompted the president’s tongue-lashing of the stunned justices during the 2010 State of the Union address.

At this point, it remains unclear which, if any, administration officials were — to borrow the delicate term — “coordinating” with the IRS. It is manifest, though, that in the atmosphere charged by Obama’s impertinence, congressional Democrats felt empowered to push the IRS to undermine free political speech through administrative intimidation. Judicial Watch’s FOIA suit reveals correspondence in which Senator Carl Levin, the powerful Michigan Democrat, agitates for IRS action against several conservative groups. In accommodating responses, then-IRS deputy commissioner Steven Miller takes pains to assure him that flexible regulations enable the revenue agency to design “individualized questions and requests” for targeted Section 501(c)(4) applicants.

After a damning Treasury inspector-general report last year, even the IRS concedes that its singling out of conservative groups and obnoxiously intrusive demands for information were “inappropriate.” In truth, they were blatantly unconstitutional. As is always the case in Washington scandals, the question of whether crimes were committed arises — and now, the companion question of whether lawmakers who encouraged executive lawlessness are guilty of crimes.

For the time being, the lawsuits brought by conservative organizations victimized by the IRS have alleged only civil wrongs: principally, the deprivation of their constitutional rights to free speech and association, and of their statutory right to tax-exempt status. Nevertheless, these claims could trigger criminal jeopardy. For example, federal law (specifically, Section 242 of the penal code) makes it a crime for a government official to “willfully subject[] any person . . . to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

Without a competent, impartial investigation, it will be tough to amass sufficient evidence to prove a willful violation of law. The officials implicated would surely claim — however dubiously — that they were just trying to enforce ambiguous regulations. Moreover, even if executive-branch officials could be proved criminally culpable, any prosecution of members of Congress would face a severe roadblock: the broad constitutional immunity lawmakers enjoy whenever arguably engaged in “legislative acts.” Remember Representative William Jefferson, whose crass acceptance of bribes did not stop a federal appeals court from invalidating an FBI search of his Capitol Hill office.

In any event, as I argued here last weekend, to focus on criminal or civil liability is to miss the point. The importance of government officials lies in the public trust reposed in them and the awesome power it entails. When they demonstrate themselves to be unworthy of that trust, the imperative is to take the power away.

The IRS has become a vehicle of repression — one that Democrats have further empowered through Obamacare. Its budget should be slashed, and we should figure out better ways to raise revenue. In addition, government officials have engaged in conduct that, at a minimum, grossly disregarded the constitutional rights our government exists to safeguard. Whether such serious misbehavior is attributable to incompetence or corruption, the officials who engaged in it should be defrocked. Most of us couldn’t care less whether they are sent to jail or successfully sued, but we should all insist that they no longer wield power.

The most ominous development in the IRS scandal is the confederation of executive and congressional authority in opposition to our fundamental rights. The accumulation of all government powers in the same hands, Madison warned, “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” In a free society, powers must be separated. The Framers thus gave us a Constitution that heeded the wisdom of Montesquieu:

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

The IRS scandal presents a textbook case of tyrannical execution. It is fraught with peril. We are dealing not merely with a single president, who presumes to rule by decree; nor just with his congressional partisans, who presume to pull the executive bureaucracy’s coercive levers. Enormous power is cumulating in an ideological movement that is hostile to free expression, one that views its political opposition not as fellow citizens with a different point of view but as enemies to be silenced and destroyed.

Frightening times.

Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO

There used to be a time, when I was much younger, that this issue would have Democrats howling mad, but now that they have adopted the morals of Socialism and Social Justice, as long as it is aimed at their opposition, they are content to remain silent, because this is their fellow party members following the same dog-whistles that they follow and punishing those that they have learned to hate viscerally.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

In most cases, I have come to realize that the Obama administration is easier to understand if you dispense with the notion that there is some sort of plan other than getting through each day by minimizing immediate political damage to the highest degree possible without regard to long-term goals.

But while I’m not always confident there’s a plan for actual policy, there’s always a plan for avoiding questions and blame on scandals.

On the VA scandal, that plan has been enacted.

Step 1: “We’re just finding out about this ourselves and are as appalled as anyone over these allegations. We vow to get to the bottom of this and, if true, right this wrong swiftly and thoroughly. Nothing less than the honor of our nation and our people is at stake, and that will not come to harm on my watch.”

Step 2: “We are investigating ourselves right now to make sure we get to the bottom of this. It’s important that we get all the facts from ourselves, and in the meantime it would be inappropriate for ourselves to answer questions about the investigation we’re conducting on ourselves.”

Step 3: “Didn’t I just tell you we started an investigation of ourselves? Also, we noted our outrage. I cannot possibly make any statements about the very obvious wrongdoing that occurred on our watch until the investigation we’re conducting of ourselves is completed, printed on paper and in my hands. Anything else would jeopardize the integrity of our investigation of ourselves. Is that what you want?”

Step 3 is where ABC’s Jon Karl found himself today, on the receiving end of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s indignation at the mere asking of questions after the administration has expressed grave concern and started an investigation.

Up next, Step 4: “Only crazy wingers even ask questions about stuff like this. Are you a crazy winger? Do you think it’s a grand conspiracy in which the President of the United States conspired to personally hurt veterans? Do you think that’s an appropriate question to ask?”

Step 5: Wait six months, refer to formerly outrageous scandal as phony.

Step 6: Slow walk investigation and especially the release of requested and possibly incriminating documents for a year or more.

Step 7: “Oh, that ‘scandal’? Dude, that was a year ago. Who’s still talking about that?”

Mary Katherine Ham, HotAir.com

 

[RobDownSouth]

Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO

There used to be a time, when I was much younger, that this issue would have Democrats howling mad, but now that they have adopted the morals of Socialism and Social Justice, as long as it is aimed at their opposition, they are content to remain silent, because this is their fellow party members following the same dog-whistles that they follow and punishing those that they have learned to hate viscerally.

I'm sure you and your kind connsider this nontroversy to be "worse than Watergate".

Your kind usually does.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Having received no instruction about ethics, honor, integrity, morality, or virtue in the public domain, it's no surprise.

Shut your glory hole socket bitch.....you don't have ANY fucking room to so much as discuss ethics and SURE as fuck not honor you fucking worm of a coward. You can't even own your own fuck ups Mr.Personal ReponsaBULLSHITTER!!! you just hide like a fucking BITCH.

I'll stop right there b/c you don't even know what the fuck integrity, morality or virtue even fucking mean you lying, hypocritical, cowardly mother fuckin' sack of shit.

 

[Que]

I'm sure you and your kind connsider this nontroversy to be "worse than Watergate".

Your kind usually does.

No, you are right...they did not do a worse job. This was far more organized than Nixon's "Enemies List."

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[garbage can]

I doubt his amendment will survive the process. Hopefully after November he'll be in the minority in the Senate. The man dishonors the Senate and his country, typical of today's Democrat Party.

Apparently the Dems think Harry is doing a great job.

 

[unregistered]

 

[BotanyBoy]

He's responsible for thwarting the will of the people

Oh here you are again...the will of the people.

Like you give a fuck Mr.Impeach POTUS for not respecting the will of the voter in favor of your police state agenda. Only freedom you give a fuck about is your brand of it...otherwise you fucking HATE freedumb. Freedom of religion, speech and individual liberty...you have spoken out against and supported policy that shit on all of these. Go fuck yourself.

God damn sad excuse for a Marine...fucking bitch too.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Fucking insane.


It has to be the pot talking...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Obama Administration Announces Sports Concussion Symposium in Wake of Hillary Brain Injury Controversy

Barack Obama earlier this year said he wouldn't let a son play in the NFL because of head-injury fears. This week his administration downplayed concerns over mild traumatic brain injuries by ridiculing Karl Rove's call for health records involving Hillary Clinton's concussion. Which White House will show up for the president's sports-concussion conference later this month?



A variant on, it was a movie! NO! NO! NO! we called it terrorism on day one! The best intel was that it was a movie! So why did we say it was a terrorist attacK? We didn't, we called it a tragedy, just read our remarks, we said consistently that it was a movie, until we were in the debates because Romney might have won that point...

 

[Ishmael]

Obama Administration Announces Sports Concussion Symposium in Wake of Hillary Brain Injury Controversy

Barack Obama earlier this year said he wouldn't let a son play in the NFL because of head-injury fears. This week his administration downplayed concerns over mild traumatic brain injuries by ridiculing Karl Rove's call for health records involving Hillary Clinton's concussion. Which White House will show up for the president's sports-concussion conference later this month?



A variant on, it was a movie! NO! NO! NO! we called it terrorism on day one! The best intel was that it was a movie! So why did we say it was a terrorist attacK? We didn't, we called it a tragedy, just read our remarks, we said consistently that it was a movie, until we were in the debates because Romney might have won that point...

"I can't remember my minds in a blender it's Jello!"

It takes on a whole new meaning.

Ishmael

 

[Ishmael]

"I can't remember my minds in a blender it's Jello!"

It takes on a whole new meaning.

Ishmael

"Try to remember"

Ishmael

 

[BotanyBoy]

Fucking insane.


It has to be the pot talking...

No I'm pretty sure vette has openly supported DOMA, SOPA and the drug war diehard lock step republican style.

I'm open to any challenges against those claims.....but we all have seen him actively support all that shit.

From wanting to impeach POTUS for not arresting 1/3 the nation for voting Cannabis legal.....you know because he respects the will of the people and loves freedom so much. Prison for everyone!!

To supporting DOMA because gay people are subhuman and legal marriage is clearly the realm of evangelical Christians only....they and they alone get to define marriage for ALL people. Because himz love freedumb so much!!!

Corporate ownership of the interwebs.....it should all be privately owned and operated right? Because sooooooooooo much freedumb!!