Obama Administration Scandals
June 7, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The initial revelations about NSA’s collection of metadata on telephone calls has triggered an avalanche of stories about previously unknown, or only suspected, surveillance projects. First the Washington Post reported (maybe inaccurately) on the PRISM project; then the Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA also collects “purchase information from credit-card providers;” today it came out that the post office photographs the front and back of every piece of mail,
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June 7, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Eric Holder’s interview with Pete Williams of NBC News is, as John says, a classic. It seems to me that Holder’s statements during the interview nail down the case that he lied to Congress or to a court. According to NBC’s account of the interview [note that NBC's written account does not appear to track word-for-word the video of the interview NBC posted along with its account], Holder said: I
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June 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Barack Obama is the bystander president; nothing that happens in his administration has anything to do with him. Michael Ramirez illustrates the point: Eric Holder is the perfect attorney general for the Obama administration. As his Department of Justice sinks deeper and deeper into scandal, he retains a remarkable objectivity. Nothing that happens in the department that he ostensibly runs is, apparently, his doing. His NBC interview with Pete Williams
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June 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Since the Guardian revealed a court order under which the National Security Agency is collecting telephone call data from Verizon, there have been howls of protest from some observers–Al Gore, Rand Paul and the New York Times editorial board, to name a few. But is there anything scandalous about the NSA data collection, or is it just business as usual? Two preliminary observations: First, as John Nolte notes, the major
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June 5, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Two distinguished law professors and star bloggers — Jonathan Adler and Orin Kerr — have, in separate posts, argued that there is no case for the proposition that Eric Holder lied when he testified to Congress that he has never been “involved in” “potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material.” Many, including me and John, have suggested that Holder’s testimony doesn’t square with statements in an affidavit,
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June 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I wish I could find a video of John Eastman’s entire appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the IRS scandal yesterday. John wears many hats, but yesterday he appeared as chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. The NOM site links to the committee video of yesterday’s hearing at this link. Steve posted the video of John’s statement here. Below John responds to Democratic Reps. Earl
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June 4, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Today’s IRS hearing before the House Ways and Means committee was expected to be explosive, as representatives of six non-profits that were improperly targeted by the agency were slated to testify. You could see that from the spin the establishment put on the hearing. The Washington Post headlined: “Five and counting: Yet another IRS hearing.” Can’t we just put this scandal behind us? Scott and Steve have already written about
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June 4, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Scott directs our attention to the “chairman of an anti-gay marriage group [who] testified Tuesday that his organization has proof that the IRS leaked confidential donor details last year. . .” That’s not just any old chairman of a traditional marriage group. It’s my old graduate school roommate and fellow Claremont prankmeister John Eastman, and you really owe it to yourself to see the beatdown he delivers on the IRS
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June 4, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Our reader with the long-time employment history at the IRS Criminal Investigation Division writes to comment: The chairman of an anti-gay marriage group testified Tuesday that his organization has proof that the IRS leaked confidential donor details last year, calling for prosecution into what he described as a “felony.” ” Read more here. He’s right, it’s a 6103 violation and a five- year felony for whoever made the disclosure. If
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June 4, 2013 — Scott Johnson
It turns out that Richard Windsor — the covert bureaucratic email alter ego of former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson — must have a lot of company in the most transparent administration in history. The Associated Press has been asking for the secret email accounts of political appointees in agencies including the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services. The AP story is “Emails of top Obama
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June 3, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Day by day the IRS story advances and the scandal grows. The former IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) Division employee who has been commenting on the IRS scandal for us writes with observations on today’s testimony in the House: First, with regard to seizing hard drives, etc., that’s fine, but IRS’s IT people handled all of the computer systems for the Service, including CI’s, and everything was backed up periodically to
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June 3, 2013 — Scott Johnson
My daughter Eliana’s column on today’s installment of the Richard Windsor scandal is not to be missed. In the most transparent administration in our history, “Windsor” is of course the covert bureaucratic email alter ego of former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. And that’s not all! Windsor, Eliana reported, was also an employee of significant achievement. Documents released by the agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by
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June 3, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Democrats have made much of the fact that ex-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who presided over the agency as it obstructed and harassed conservative non-profits, was appointed by President Bush. It turns out, however, that in one of many such unholy Washington alliances, Shulman is married to Susan L. Anderson, who is an Occupy Wall Street activist and a senior program adviser for the Washington-based group Public Campaign. Public Campaign is
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June 2, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Earlier today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released partial transcripts of its interviews with several IRS agents. These interviews formed at least part of the basis for Chairman Darrell Issa’s characterization of White House spokesman Jay Carney, who claimed that the IRS scandal was the work of a couple of rogue agents, as a “paid liar” on CNN this morning. You can read the partial transcripts here.
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June 2, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
We have a faithful reader who spent a long career at the Criminal Investigation (CI) Division of the IRS. Our reader prefers to remain nameless but he knows whereof he speaks and he has been supplying us with a steady stream of commentary on the IRS scandal, expanding like the universe. He writes to comment on today’s update to the scandal: An administrative note about today’s news and the 88
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May 31, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So what’s that old Santayana line about those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it? Can we mix that in with Karl Marx’s line about history repeating itself as farce? Either way, this video juxtaposition of Nixon and Obama, from RevealingPolitics.com, is sure to leave a mark:
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May 30, 2013 — John Hinderaker
It wasn’t just the Tea Party: it has been widely reported that the IRS also has harassed and discriminated against pro-Israel charities, in particular those that support settlements in Judea and Samaria. In the Free Beacon, Alana Goodman pursues the story: A Washington Free Beacon investigation has identified at least five pro-Israel organizations that have been audited by the IRS in the wake of a coordinated campaign by White House-allied
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