Monday, May 13, 2013

Obama Lied About Libya and Political Enemies List

The lies get worse with the next day updates. 

Nixon faced impeachment for such things.

"In IRS abuses, GOP sees chance to regain stage; Details surface on targeting of Tea Party groups" by Jonathan Weisman  |  New York Times, May 13, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service’s special scrutiny of small-government groups applying for tax-exempt status went beyond keyword hunts for organizations with ‘‘Tea Party’’ or ‘‘patriot’’ in their names to a more overtly ideological search for applicants seeking to ‘‘make America a better place to live’’ or ‘‘criticize how the country is being run,’’ according to a part of an inspector general’s report given to Capitol Hill.

The head of the division on tax-exempt organizations, Lois Lerner, was briefed on the effort in June 2011, seemingly contradicting her assertion on Friday that she learned of the effort from the press.

Then she LIED!

But she seemed to work hard to rein in the focus on conservatives and change it to a look at political advocacy groups of any stripe seeking tax exemptions.

Then she engaged in spinning and distortions.

The new information will only add to the criticism that has emerged since Lerner apologized to Tea Party and other conservative groups on Friday for unwarranted scrutiny. A lengthy audit from the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration is set to be released this week.

See: Slow Saturday Special: Obama's Overzealous IRS

House Republicans have vowed to begin their own investigations. And Republicans fanned out on the political talk shows to express outrage that is expected to grow....

The fact is ANY AMERICAN should be expressing OUTRAGE!

Since last year’s elections, Republicans in Congress have struggled for traction on their legislative efforts, torn between conservatives who drove the agenda after their 2010 landslide and new voices counseling a shift in course to reflect President Obama’s reelection and the loss of Republican seats in the House and the Senate.

For the first time since 2011, Democrats have been dictating Washington’s political agenda, including tax increases on the rich, gun control, and an overhaul of immigration laws.

Then they have been failing because the tax increase was a cut, gun control went down, and immigration is looking increasingly less likely in light of Boston.

But the accusations of IRS abuse are sure to fuel an effort that appears to be uniting dispirited Republicans and their conservative political base: investigating Obama and his administration. Republicans are pushing a portrayal of an administration overreaching its authority and punishing its enemies....

Republicans got little political traction last year when they highlighted the ‘‘Fast and Furious’’ operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, in which guns that were supposedly being tracked by the agency were instead lost to drug cartels in Mexico.

Related: Alphabet Agency: Putting Holder on ICE

But the Republican focus on attacks on US officials in Benghazi, Libya, resurfaced last week when Gregory Hicks, a State Department critic of the US initial assessment of the episode, told a House committee that he had been effectively demoted after lodging his criticism.

Related: Slow Saturday Special: State Department Scrubbed Libyan E-Mails

More on that below.

The IRS disclosures present Republican critics a golden opportunity. Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee in 1998 mounted a series of hearings on IRS abuse, featuring taxpayers who portrayed the agency’s tax collectors as overzealous thugs with no respect for due process.

In this case, House Republicans will take the lead. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, has promised a broad investigation, and Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said on Friday he would hold hearings soon.

The IRS has been under pressure from Democrats and campaign-finance watchdogs for some time to crack down on abuse of the 501(c)4 tax exemption, which is supposed to go to organizations primarily promoting ‘‘social welfare’’ but which is routinely granted to overt political groups.

But the inspector general’s timeline showed the effort to single out Tea Party groups goes back to March 2010, when a special Determinations Unit in the Cincinnati office of the IRS began searching tax-exemption applications from groups using the names ‘‘Tea Party,’’ “patriots,’’ or ‘‘9/12,’’ a movement begun by Glenn Beck.

The unit was also looking for ‘‘applications involving political sounding names’’ like ‘‘We the People’’ or ‘‘Take Back the Country,’’ according to the document.

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Related: Obama Claims He Knew Nothing about IRS Targeting of Conservatives 

Yeah, and Iraq had WMD.

Also see: 

Top IRS official was first told of targeting in 2012

Obama slams IRS targeting, defends Libya response

Capuano says IRS flap reminiscent of Nixon administration

US obtained AP phone records in secret probe

Oh, NOW the SPYING is SERIOUS! 

NEXT DAY UPDATES:

"The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a ‘‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’’ into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. The government would not say why it sought the records. None of the information provided by the government to the AP suggested the actual phone conversations were monitored."

Yeah, right, now this story can disappear. 

And why back in the business section? 

So now, in addition to Holder giving guns to drug cartels; validating and absolving torture, and telling us banks are too big to jail, now we have him using Obama's spying power to scoop up pre$$ phone calls from the House? 

And he has the gall to dismiss all this as sideshow? 

UPDATE: Attorney general orders probe into IRS targeting

Related: 

Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper? 

It's fake outrage and s***-show fooley!

"IRS left Congress in dark on tax checks; Did not detail federal targeting of Tea Party outfits" by Stephen Ohlemacher  |  Associated Press, May 14, 2013

WASHINGTON — Steven T. Miller, the acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, failed to tell Congress that Tea Party groups were being inappropriately targeted, even after he had been briefed on the matter.

The IRS said Monday that Miller was first informed on May 3, 2012, that applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party groups were inappropriately singled out for extra, sometimes burdensome scrutiny....

When members of Congress repeatedly raised concerns with the IRS about complaints that Tea Party groups were being harassed last year, a deputy IRS commissioner took the lead in assuring lawmakers the additional scrutiny was a legitimate part of the screening process.

That deputy commissioner was Miller, who is now the acting head of the agency.

Then HE NEEDS to RESIGN or BE FIRED! He WITHHELD INFORMATION from CONGRESS!!!

In several letters to members of Congress, Miller went into painstaking detail about how applications for tax-exempt status were screened. But he never mentioned that conservative groups were being targeted....

Many people working under him knew as early as June 2011 that Tea Party groups were being targeted, according to the upcoming report by the agency’s inspector general.

It was even earlier from what I saw, like over a year earlier when all this started -- just after Republicans took over the House and just as the 2012 campaign was getting under way.  

But Obama is such a cool guy on TV and stuff.

In one 10-page response to Congress in April 2012, Miller said a revenue agent uses ‘‘sound reasoning based on tax law training’’ to determine which applications for tax-exempt status need additional scrutiny.

Representative Dave Camp, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, and other members of the Ways and Means Committee sent at least four inquiries to the IRS, starting in June 2011. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, sent three inquiries. And Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House oversight committee, sent at least one.

None of the responses they received from the IRS acknowledged that conservative groups had ever been targeted.

‘‘They really failed to disclose to us what they were up to, even though we obviously had a concern that they were targeting taxpayers for their political beliefs,’’ Camp said. ‘‘Given all of that attention, they had an obligation and duty to come forward with this information.’’

Somehow, that seems like a crime to me. 

After all, it is the EXECUTIVE BRANCH for a REASON! 

It is supposed to EXECUTE the WILL of CONGRESS, not COVER UP and HIDE THINGS from them! 

And I stupidly thought we got rid of all that when Bush left town.

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Okay, on to Libya:

"McCain accuses administration of Benghazi coverup; Wants a deeper investigation on attacks in Libya" by Peter Baker  |  New York Times, May 13, 2013

WASHINGTON — The dispute over last September’s assault in Benghazi that killed four Americans dominated the network talk shows on Sunday....

coverup....

coverup....

coverup....

falsely blame an anti-Muslim video....

‘‘The American people were effectively lied to for a period of about a month.’’

It's been a lot longer than that on a lot more things.

******************************

Democratic lawmakers and a former Pentagon chief came to the defense of the administration on Sunday.

Former defense secretary Robert M. Gates, who served several Republican presidents in various capacities, before staying on under President Obama for 2½ years, rebutted the suggestion that the Pentagon could have scrambled jets or special forces during the attack a ‘‘cartoonish impression of military capabilities.’’

‘‘Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were,’’ he said on CBS’s ‘‘Face the Nation.’’ ‘‘Frankly, I’ve heard, ‘Well, why didn’t you just fly a fighter jet over and try and scare ’em with the noise or something?’ Well, given the number of surface-to-air missiles that have disappeared from Khadafy’s arsenals, I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft over Benghazi under those circumstances.’’

Senator Richard J. Durbin, of Illinois, the Democratic whip, accused the Republicans of partisan persecution.

‘‘Unfortunately, this has been caught up in the 2016 presidential campaign,’’ he said. 

It's is about hamstringing Hitlery, and I'm fine with that. I don't want to see that woman as president. 

It's also about a whole lot more.

--more--"

UPDATE: White House Holds Secret Meeting with Reporters 

And the COVER-UP CONTINUES! 

See: Was The IRS Bombshell Last Week Just A Smoke Screen For Benghazi?

NEXT DAY UPDATE:

"Obama calls GOP’s focus on Benghazi ‘a sideshow’; Republicans move forward with inquiry" by Anne Gearan  |  Washington Post, May 14, 2013

WASHINGTON — A frustrated President Obama said Monday that the Republican focus on the administration’s response to last year’s fatal attacks in Benghazi, Libya, is a ‘‘sideshow’’ with obvious partisan motives.

‘‘There’s no ‘there’ there,’’ Obama said in response to the ongoing criticism of the administration’s initial public response to the assault....

No there is a lot of 'there' there. Cover-ups and lies, sir, and we (and I mean Americans, not just Republicans) have had enough. 

coverup.

Yeap.

Obama scoffed at the idea the administration was hiding anything and said continuing to politicize Benghazi is disrespectful to the Americans who died there....

When they start waving the dead bodies around you know they are the defensive.

Republicans say the e-mail chain shows that the administration sought to avoid pinning the assault on Al Qaeda-linked militants because a successful terrorist attack could have damaged Obama’s reelection chances.

The administration did not squarely call the assault terrorism in public for several days, but Obama said US officials presented that conclusion so soon that it ‘‘defies logic’’ to accuse the White House of a conspiracy....

Does it? 

Surprising how they minimized it over there but augmented it over here during Boston, huh?

The e-mails detailing the interagency discussion on how to best describe the events were shared with Congress as a condition for allowing the nomination of John Brennan for CIA director to advance....

Oh, so this is a little by-product of the drone secrecy scandal?

misled the public....

--more--"

Yeah, they do it, too.