Issa Warns Hillary--If she’s called to testify again, she’d better be ready

Issa Warns Hillary
If she’s called to testify again, she’d better be ready.

ByJonathan Strong

 

Since Hillary Clinton last came up to Capitol Hill, we’ve learned senior State Department officials sought to scrub references to terrorism from the infamous Benghazi talking points to insulate Foggy Bottom from political criticism — citing concerns of their “building’s leadership” to justify the demands.

The rising temperature of the scandal means it’s possible that Hillary could be asked to return and testify again. If she comes back, she had better be prepared, says House Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darrell Issa.

“We are interviewing lots of people, most of them under oath,” Issa says, describing the “methodical” approach his committee has been using for months.

“We’re going to go through . . . that so that if we bring Secretary Clinton back, we bring her back when we have a lot of questions, including who told her what, or, more importantly, who didn’t tell her something, and why” Issa says in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building, his foot propped up on a table.

Generally speaking, the chairmanship of the oversight committee is a job that holds a lot more appeal when it’s the other party’s guy in the White House. Issa has held the coveted position for over two years, but it’s only now that Obama-administration scandals have truly consumed Washington.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer was peppered with questions about a trio of scandals on the Sunday shows this week, and his performance actually prompted pity from some members of the media. (“It’s abusive of Obama to send him on Sunday shows with no more to say than he had today,” tweeted Fox News’ Brit Hume.)

“He was spinning truth into lie, wasn’t he? He was like Baghdad Bob!” says Issa, who figured prominently in Pfeiffer’s responses. After it was revealed that senior Treasury Department officials knew about the IRS inspector general’s inquiry prior to the November election, Democrats have suggested that Issa knew, too.

Issa says he knew about the investigation only because he asked for it in the first place. “It was a completely opaque process to us and we had no pre-warning that the IG was nearing” the end of his work, the congressman says, “or that he’d reached conclusions.”

A May 8 hearing on Benghazi was probably Issa’s biggest success yet as chairman. In closed-door meetings with chairmen of other committees, he has attributed the success to careful planning and urged his colleagues to take their time with investigative hearings.

That involves rigorous preparation, including coordinating questions among the GOP’s committee members. “There’s an old expression among lawyers, ‘Don’t ask a question unless you know the answer.’ Going to a hearing and going fishing for five minutes, knowing that a good witness and a bad witness both want to ramble on for a long time, is kind of a waste,” he says. “When [Representative] Trey Gowdy asks questions, to the greatest extent possible, he knows what the truth is, so he can cut off, agree or disagree with, a witness and move on using 30 seconds to a minute at most, and you can get five good questions and answers in” during each congressman’s five minutes, Issa explains.

Issa’s groundwork started a long time ago: Early in this Congress, he struck what he describes as a “truce with skirmishes” with Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings, his ranking-member foil on the oversight panel. Issa agreed to give Cummings a chance to provide input on committee actions, and Cummings said he’d do his best to defend the committee’s prerogatives.

 

While Republican members of the committee have won some success on Benghazi, Issa shies away from suggestion of impeachment — despite the fact that one member of his committee recently told National Review Online it was on the table.

“We’re doing many investigations and most of them are sins of omission — failure to do a job, failure to have a plan, failure to tell the truth. And, for the most part, failure to do things doesn’t rise to impeachment,” he explains.

“But more importantly, that’s not a decision that I expect to ever be the first to reach. I expect to be the person who works with my staff, uncovering — pealing the layers of the onion, so to speak — then presenting the information to the public and to the members of Congress,” Issa says, while still urging his fellow Republicans not to “jump to impeachment.” But don’t think that means he’s going easy on President Obama.

Asked what he knows about how the president spent the night of the Benghazi attack, Issa says Obama generally just twiddled his thumbs.

“From what we can tell he went to the residence. From what we can tell, between 5:00 in the evening and when he got on a plane for fundraisers in Las Vegas, he pretty well ignored his responsibilities as commander-in-chief,” Issa relates.

“And by the way, I’m not accidentally saying ‘ignored his responsibilities as commander-in-chief.’ George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would have required constant, periodic — you know, every hour — reporting,” he explains. “I use George W. Bush because he’s the most recent in people’s memories,” he says. “George W. Bush, if he said ‘use all measures necessary,’ he’d want to make sure we use all measures necessary.” Under the current regime? “Clearly we didn’t use any measures.”

On the Sunday shows, Pfeiffer said the president was being briefed on the situation, and that what he did and where is therefore “irrelevant.” The White House did not respond to Issa’s remarks or a request for more information about Obama’s activities that night.

I ask him, “what difference, at this point, does it make?” echoing Hillary Clinton’s famous non-answer to Senator Ron Johnson at her Benghazi testimony in January.

At the time, much of the media celebrated Clinton’s combativeness, thinking she had put an impertinent opponent in his place. But her words have lingered since as a symbol of an administration trying to get beyond a scandal that has dogged it for more than eight months.

“The difference is, public confidence comes from telling the truth as best you know it,” Issa says. “We didn’t tell the truth as best we knew it in the days and even weeks after” Benghazi, and it seems until Congress does, Darrell Issa won’t rest.

— Jonathan Strong is a political reporter for National Review Online.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348887/issa-warns-hillary-jonathan-strong

Community organizing, Obamacare style

by Paul Mirengoff in Obamacare

A subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform held a hearing today on the government’s Obamacare “outreach” program. Obamacare authorizes the government to provide information to the uninsured, and to assist them in obtaining insurance, through the use of “navigators.”
Today’s hearing addressed concerns of Republican committee members about how this process will work in practice. The only witness was Gary Cohen, deputy administrator of the Department of HHS’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) within CMS.
Prior to Cohen’s testimony, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s representative to Congress, provided a moment of comic relief. In her opening statement, Norton denounced Republicans for refusing to get on board with Obamacare — the law of the land. Only in banana republics, she sniffed, are duly enacted laws thwarted by legislators who unsuccessfully tried to prevent their passage.
But Norton has no standing to complain about non-compliance with the law. She failed to file District of Columbia income tax returns between 1982-89, thereby evading roughly $80,000 in taxes owed. Only in a banana republic, I might have thought, would a scofflaw like Norton serve in Congress.
In any event, today’s hearing wasn’t about Republicans thwarting Obamacare; it was about overseeing its implementation. And oversight certainly seems necessary when it comes to Obamacare “outreach.”
The context is this: Obamacare is predicated on inducing young, healthy people, for whom purchasing insurance may not be the best cost-benefit option, to enter the insurance market and subsidize older, not-so-healthy people. Moreover, the Obamacare penalty (I mean, tax) for not purchasing insurance may be insufficient inducement, given that the cost of a policy may well exceed the amount of the “tax.”
In this setting, outreach becomes a tricky proposition. Will those who are conducting it (the “navigators”), for the avowed purpose of maximizing participation, present a fair and balanced picture to the uninsured? Cohen testified that they will answer all questions honestly, but will not volunteer the fact that the cost of purchasing insurance exceeds the Obamacare penalty.
Quite apart from the question of whether buying insurance is in the interest of the individual subject to outreach, it is important that navigators be honest, well-versed in insurance issues, and familiar with the tax implications of Obamacare (a citizen can find himself in big trouble if his relevant status changes in a given year and he fails to report the change to the IRS).
But Cohen admitted that under the regulations his agency is developing, navigators will receive only 20 to 30 hours of training through an online course. Furthermore, CMS apparently (1) will not require that navigators have a high school diploma, (2) will not require background checks of navigators, (3) will not automatically exclude felons, (4) will not automatically exclude individuals with prior involvement in identity theft, and (5) will not require that navigators have insurance to cover giving incorrect information about tax consequences. Nor, as a general matter, will navigators be subject to the standards applicable to census takers.
Yet navigators will have access to sensitive personal information about the citizens they assist. Although they are not charged with collecting information, they will help individuals fill out forms that contain personal information, such as social security numbers. Thus, they can obtain this information and, if they choose, use it or pass it along to others.
Individual navigators will be selected by organizations designated by CMS. Cohen testified that, naturally enough, CMS will look for organizations with experience working in the particular community in question, and for organizations that reflect the demographic characteristics of the community.
To me, that sounds a lot like “community organizers.” Accordingly, congressional Republicans are right to be concerned that some navigators will be use that status for purposes of partisan mischief.
Cohen (notwithstanding his tendency to begin his answers by saying “So” — when did aging bureaucrats decide to try to sound cool and breezy?) wasn’t a bad witness. But I doubt that his answers did much to assuage this concern.
Speaking of mischief, the committee highlighted two rather blatant examples of it. First, Obamacare calls on states to use navigators, but bars the federal government from paying for them. Yet the feds are paying for state navigators and calling them assisters. And, apparently, California tried to assist in this end-run by concealing information about its Obamacare spending.
According to Republican members, including subcommittee chairman James Lankford, HHS officials admitted that there is no statutory authority for their end-run around restrictions on providing money to states. But Cohen testified it was lawful because the states are required to provide assistance. “The function,” he said, “is the authority.”
The view that the government is authorized to do whatever it takes to accomplish its function — even in the face of statutory language barring the contemplated method — lies at the heart of the threat to liberty posed by the modern bureaucratic state as conceived by the left. Cohen provided a real service by articulating that position for all to hear.
Republican House members should take this message to heart. Standing alone, it should be sufficient reason to reject the Schumer-Rubio immigration proposal.
Finally, Republican members expressed concern over reports that HHS Secretary Sebelius has solicited money to use for implementing Obamacare from insurance and pharmaceutical companies — the very companies over which her department has regulatory power.
Cohen was asked whether Sebelius obtained an opinion about the legality of such solicitation before engaging in it. Cohen didn’t know.
It’s a good question, though. Perhaps she, or some government lawyer, concluded that “the function is the authority.”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/community-organizing-obamacare-style.php

It’s Not ‘Universal Coverage’--The law is best understood as a costly entitlement program with Medicaid’s shortcomings

It’s Not ‘Universal Coverage’The law is best understood as a costly entitlement program with Medicaid’s shortcomings.

ByJames C. Capretta

James C. Capretta

In the Democratic imagination, Obamacare is historic because it finally gives the United States a “universal” system of health-insurance enrollment. Ever since Harry Truman pushed for national health insurance in the 1940s, it has been the dream of liberal politicians with presidential ambitions to become the leader who finally brought the United States out of the wilderness of nations whose health systems are supposedly uncivilized. Whoever led the way to a national health-insurance plan would join the other architects of the modern welfare state — FDR and LBJ — in the liberal pantheon of heroes.
That was certainly a primary motivation for Barack Obama. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he opposed the individual mandate — the centerpiece of the “universal coverage” scheme that was eventually enacted in Obamacare — on the grounds that it would be too much of a burden for many low-wage households. This position allowed him to differentiate himself from his main rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton. During the bruising primary campaign, Obama was not at all shy about using this policy difference to suggest, in ads and debates, that Clinton, a longtime staunch advocate of the individual mandate, was insensitive to the practical economic realities of the uninsured.
But once in office, the newly elected president had a swift “change of heart.” By late spring 2009 he not only had dropped his objections to the mandate but had become its fiercest defender, declaring it essential to the kind of health plan he wanted Congress to pass.

What happened? Ron Suskind’s book on the first two years of the Obama presidency details the transformation. In early 2009, the White House staff prepared a memo for the president that suggested that a reform plan without the mandate would reduce the ranks of the uninsured only to 28 million people (from a projected 50 million). A plan with the mandate would reduce the number of uninsured residents in the United States far more, to under 10 million.So a health plan with the individual mandate could more plausibly be described as “universal coverage” than could a health plan without it.
It’s clear now that, notwithstanding the position he took during the campaign, Obama was always aiming for the history books. If nothing else, he has always been a man of great ambition. And once elected, he felt free to abandon his previous position on the mandate to pursue his goal of becoming the liberal leader who delivered the next great entitlement benefit. Of course, that Democrats held once-in-a-generation supermajorities in the House and Senate only further encouraged him to “go big” in early 2009.
This history of Obamacare’s political origins makes it all the more ironic that Obamacare, from what we now know, should not be considered a “universal coverage” plan, even by the benchmark the administration was using in 2009.
Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) point to this conclusion. In its latest assessment of the law, released in conjunction with new budget projections, the CBO indicates that the number of uninsured residents in the United States will never fall below 31 million — three million more uninsured people than was estimated for the non-mandate plan President Obama rejected — and that the insured will never be as much as 90 percent of the population.
And even that estimate is highly optimistic. It assumes that 70 percent of the population eligible for the Medicaid expansion will eventually enroll in the program. As of today, however, only 24 states have governors and legislatures that would likely agree to move ahead with expansion, and that number could easily fall as more state policymakers come to the realization that Medicaid is far too often failing its current enrollees. It makes little sense in that context to dramatically expand a program that credible independent observers believe needs significant reform.


Further, the individual mandate itself isn’t likely to work as the CBO assumes it will. For starters, the taxes imposed on those going uninsured are far below the premiums most households will be required to pay for “qualified” insurance. For instance, in 2014, a family of four with $50,000 in total income will have to pay an uninsured tax of $500. But their premiums in the Obamacare exchange, even with a large federal subsidy, are likely to come in around $3,000.
Obamacare advocates argue that the tax on the uninsured need not be onerous to compel enrollment in health insurance. The mere existence of the tax is supposed to create an “aura of obligation” that magically convinces millions of Americans to sign up with expensive insurance coverage that is not in their self-interest. In other words, the mandate was supposed to create the perception that not buying health insurance was somehow “unlawful.” The CBO bought into this way of looking at the legislation and assumed that eventually large numbers of Americans would sign up for health insurance even though they could reduce their costs substantially by paying the tax instead and waiting to get health insurance until they need it.

The CBO’s approach to estimating the effects of the mandate was always suspect, but it is even more so in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare last year. The majority opinion of the Court makes it clear that Congress had no authority under the Constitution to create an obligation to purchase health insurance. All Congress could do was to create a legitimate choice between two perfectly legal options: either sign up for government-sanctioned health insurance or pay a tax. Both are equally legitimate — at least in the eyes of Chief Justice John Roberts. If this becomes the prevailing understanding of the mandate, then many millions of relatively healthy people will quite naturally pay the tax rather than sign up for coverage. The result will be far more uninsured in the future than the CBO currently estimates.
So despite all of the self-congratulatory rhetoric from the law’s advocates, there’s little prospect that Obamacare will actually deliver on “universal coverage.” Instead, it should be viewed for what it will likely become: a very expensive new health-entitlement program that the government will try to control like the other programs already on the books — with regulated prices. In the end, that approach will lead to the same problems with quality that plague Medicaid.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to construct a real universal insurance plan — with everyone in the country protected from the kind of high-cost medical event that insurance is intended for — without the onerous mandates, taxes, and regulations of Obamacare. What’s necessary is a truly functioning marketplace, with consumers, not the government, driving the allocation of resources. As more and more Americans see up close the failures and shortcomings of Obamacare, there will be renewed interest in pursuing such a commonsense plan.
— James C. Capretta is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348849/it’s-not-‘universal-coverage’-james-c-capretta

Clear Immigration Loopholes--The DHS secretary would have the power to waive most requirements for border security

Clear Immigration Loopholes
The DHS secretary would have the power to waive most requirements for border security.

ByHans A. von Spakovsky

Hans A. von Spakovsky             

About those strict new rules and requirements for border security set forth in the Gang of Eight’s immigration proposal: They’re not so tough after all. In fact, the 867-page mega-bill gives the secretary of homeland security pretty much carte blanche to waive the vast majority of the requirements detailed in the bill. And that’s not sitting very well with the folks charged with enforcing immigration law.
On May 9 the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents immigration and customs agents, sent a letter to Congress warning that the bill gives the DHS secretary “virtually unlimited discretion.” Calling this a “dramatic step in the wrong direction,” the union characterized the proposal as a failure “on the subjects of public safety, border security, and interior enforcement.” They were joined on May 20 by the union representing 12,000 adjudications officers and staff for the United States Citizen and Immigration Service Council.
The bill’s sponsors claim that unlawful immigrants would not be given amnesty — i.e., granted “Registered Provisional Immigrant” (RPI) status — until after our borders have been secured. And, indeed, the bill calls for the DHS secretary to put together a “Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy” that will “achieve and maintain an effectiveness rate of 90 percent or higher in all high risk border sectors.” Supporting this strategy is another one, the “Southern Border Fencing Strategy,” which will identify where fences should be built.
Sounds tough, sure. But the secretary has complete authority to choose how much — or how little — fencing is actually built. Moreover, section 3(c) of the bill stipulates that the secretary can start processing applications for RPI status as soon as she notifies Congress of the “commencement of implementation” of the border-security and border-fencing strategies.

What the bill really says, then, is that people living in the country illegally can receive amnesty not when the border is actually secured but when the secretary tells Congress that she is starting to try to secure the border. That’s a loophole big enough to drive a tractor-trailer truck full of illegal immigrants through.Section 3(c) stipulates that the secretary can’t “adjust” the status of RPIs — i.e., grant applicants (except blue-card holders) citizenship or permanent legal residency — until she certifies four conditions: that the border-security and border-fencing strategies have been “substantially” completed and that she has implemented both a mandatory employment-verification system and an electronic exit system at air- and seaports. But since the secretary is the one who determines if these conditions are satisfied, these “requirements” are meaningless.
Even if these requirements had teeth, the bill would suffer from another gaping loophole: If “litigation or a force majeure has prevented 1 or more of the [four] conditions” from being implemented, section 3(c)(2)(B) empowers the secretary to upgrade those granted the RPI amnesty to permanent-resident status.
So you can bet the house that one or more of the pro-amnesty groups pushing this legislation will file suit to block implementation of one or more of the four requirements. If the Justice Department does not vigorously contest the lawsuit, or if just one federal judge tosses out one condition, the secretary can start granting permanent status wholesale.
Want more? Section 2101 authorizes the secretary to waive some of the grounds that would normally make applicants ineligible for RPI status. Indeed, it empowers her to grant RPI status for “humanitarian purposes, to ensure family unity, or if such a waiver is otherwise in the public interest.” This last reason, “otherwise in the public interest,” gives the secretary essentially unlimited latitude to grant amnesty to most anyone, including people who have committed numerous misdemeanors.
The ability to waive misdemeanors may sound like a minor issue. But as the Customs Enforcement Council pointed out in its letter, in many states “misdemeanor crimes include serious offenses such as assault, assault of a law enforcement officer, vehicular homicide, possession of drug manufacturing equipment, unlawful placing or discharging of an explosive device, DUI, and sex offenses.” The secretary is also given discretion to start, or not start, removal proceedings against unlawful immigrants who don’t qualify for RPI status. In essence, the secretary could let anyone stay in the U.S. illegally.
Under section 3701, the secretary can grant amnesty to gang members if they have “renounced all association with the criminal street gang.” The Customs Enforcement Council anticipates that “gang members will falsely claim to renounce their association with criminal street gangs to obtain legal status and continue engaging in unlawful conduct in the United States.” Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) attempted to put the burden of proof on gang members to demonstrate by “clear and convincing” evidence that they didn’t know the street gangs were criminal organizations, but the amendment he introduced was voted down in committee.
To deter new aliens from entering the U.S. illegally in hopes of being amnestied, an updated version of the bill includes a date after which its provisions for aliens resident in the country will not apply. But the secretary is given the “sole and unreviewable discretion” to waive this cutoff date for millions of illegal aliens — for the parents, spouses, and children of citizens and lawful permanent residents; for aliens who were 16 or older on the date on which they entered the U.S. and who have earned a high-school diploma or GED in the U.S.; and for aliens who were 16 or older when they entered the U.S. and were physically present in the U.S. for not less than three of the six years immediately preceding enactment of the new immigration bill.
Would Secretary Janet Napolitano and this administration really exercise the discretionary authority salted throughout the immigration bill? Well, they already have a policy of granting “executive amnesty” to millions and of not enforcing immigration laws currently on the books.
And a lawsuit in Texas, filed against Napolitano by nine DHS agents, suggests that DHS is itching to make the most of its discretionary powers. The agents are contesting an administration directive barring them from starting deportation proceedings against unlawful immigrants who would have been amnestied if Congress had passed the administration-backed DREAM Act.
In a Justice Department brief filed last December in Crane v. Napolitano, the Obama administration made it clear that it believes it “inherently” has almost unbridled discretion in the matter of immigration enforcement. DOJ even argued that the federal court has no jurisdiction to review or question DHS’s decisions.
It is highly likely that if this immigration bill is passed, the administration will take advantage of many, if not all, of the bill’s provisions that give it authority to waive legal restrictions and rules that would require our borders to be secured and amnesty to be denied to many illegal immigrants for cause. As the Customs Enforcement Council concludes, “This legislation fails to meet the needs of the law enforcement community and would, in fact, be a significant barrier to the creation of a safe and lawful system of immigration.”
— Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348880/clear-immigration-loopholes

The President Won — Sort Of--The administration spent the last six months of the campaign in coverup mode

The President Won — Sort Of
The administration spent the last six months of the campaign in coverup mode.

ByVictor Davis Hanson

 

Victor Davis Hanson

On September 11, 2012, Barack Obama was 1 point ahead of Mitt Romney in the ABC and Washington Post polls. He was scheduled to meet Romney in three weeks for the first debate. The president was increasingly anxious. Unemployment was still at 7.8 percent, and the Solyndra and Fast and Furious scandals had only recently disappeared from the news — and they had done so only thanks to the use of executive privilege.
But the Tea Party seemed to have lost its 2010 momentum, despite its renewed warnings that Obamacare would be a disaster if not repealed in 2013. The president was running on the slogan that GM was alive and bin Laden was dead — the implications being that massive influxes of borrowed federal money had allowed GM’s work force to survive, and that with the death of bin Laden came the unraveling of the “core” of al-Qaeda. Libya, of course, was cited as an overseas success — a sort of implied un-Iraq.
The contours of the campaign, in other words, were well drawn. Obama claimed that he had brought peace overseas and restoration at home, while Romney claimed that we were less secure on President Obama’s watch and that the economy was ossified because of too much debt and government spending.
And the race was neck and neck. In a few days the secretly taped “47 percent” Romney video would emerge and tar with Romney with the charge of social insensitivity. And in the second debate, in mid-October, the moderator, CNN’s Candy Crowley, in utterly unprofessional fashion, would interrupt Romney’s reference to Benghazi and cite a transcript in such a way as to falsely turn Obama’s generic reference to terrorism into an explicit presidential condemnation of the Benghazi attacks as a terrorist action, and swing the momentum of the debate back to a stumbling Barack Obama.

Again, as of September 11, the race was dead even.Beneath Obama’s calm veneer that September there were lots of things the public did not know, and from the administration’s point of view apparently should not know until after the election. Just three months earlier, the Treasury Department’s inspector general had reported to top Treasury officials that the Internal Revenue Service had been inordinately targeting conservative groups that were seeking tax-exempt status. Such political corruption of the IRS was a Nixonian bombshell, with enormous implications for the election, especially given that during the campaign Obama’s economic adviser Austan Goolsbee had claimed that he had knowledge about the Koch brothers’ tax returns, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was lauding himself as a “wrecking crew” as he swore he had the inside dope on Mitt Romney’s taxes. Note that while Nixon talked tough about using the IRS, the agency resisted his efforts; in Obama’s case, the more the administration has denied political pressure, the more the evidence has come out that politics had long ago corrupted the agency — whose reputation has been ruined under this administration for the foreseeable future.
The inspector general of the Treasury recently testified before Congress that he had told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin of the IRS’s shenanigans in June 2012, five months before the election. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who had been grilled during confirmation hearings about his own improper tax deductions, must at some point have been told of the IRS mess, but somehow all these disturbing developments were kept under wraps for the duration of the campaign. Are we to believe that, each time Geithner met with the president between June and November, he did not mention the scandal brewing in his department because his own deputy had never told him?
In other words, in cynical fashion, the Obama team won on two counts: The IRS had intimidated conservative organizations for months and had very possibly helped to prevent them from repeating their successes of 2010, while keeping the illegal activity from the press and the public.
As of September 11, 2012, the American people also did not know that the attorney general’s office had four months earlier been conducting secret monitoring of two months’ worth of records of calls made from private and work phone lines of Associated Press reporters — this surveillance supposedly due to suspicions that administration sources were leaking classified information to these reporters.
But something was awry here too. First, the administration did not start by apprising AP that it wished to talk to their suspect reporters, as is normal protocol. Stranger still, the administration itself apparently had leaked classified information about the Stuxnet cyber-war virus, the drone protocols, and the Seal Team 6 raid that killed bin Laden (remember Defense Secretary Bob Gates’s “Shut the f*** up!”) — all in efforts to persuade the voting public that their president was far more engaged in the War on Terror than his critics had alleged.

These efforts to squelch any mention of the monitoring of journalists worked as well. Reporters were outraged when they eventually learned that some of their brethren had been subjected to stealthy government surveillance — but they learned this a year after the fact and only following the reelection of Barack Obama.
On September 11, 2012, of course, there was the violent attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, and a host of unanswered questions in the heat of the campaign: What was such a large CIA operation doing in Benghazi? Why was our ambassador left so vulnerable both before and during the attack? Why had the much-praised “lead from behind” campaign to remove Qaddafi earned us a dead ambassador and a nation full of anti-American terrorists, some of them perhaps al-Qaeda–related?

We know now from a flurry of e-mails, public talking points, and public statements from staffers that when the president himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted that the attack grew out of a spontaneous demonstration over an Internet video, they knew in reality that the video had nothing to do with the attack.
Yet coming clean before the American people apparently might have involved explaining why no one in Washington was willing to beef up security in answer to Ambassador Stevens’s requests. And during the attack, worry over a Mogadishu-like firefight two months before the election may have been why the administration ordered available units to stand down rather than sending in help by any means necessary. The truth was clear: Libya was not quiet, nor was al-Qaeda leaderless.
Instead, blaming the violence on a petty crook and supposed “Islamophobe” squared the circle: A right-wing bigot had caused the problem; he could be summarily jailed; and the president could both be absolved from blame for the unexpected violence and praised for his multicultural bona fides in condemning such a hateful voice on our soil. Again, the coverup worked perfectly in accordance with the September campaign narrative. The American people did not find out the truth of what happened in Benghazi — the “consulate” was never attacked by “spontaneous” demonstrators enraged by a video emanating from the United States — until eight months after the attack.
In the matters of the Associated Press surveillance, the IRS scandal, and Benghazi, the White House prevailed — keeping from the public embarrassing and possibly illegal behavior until the president was safely reelected. As in the mysteries surrounding David Petraeus’s post-election resignation, and the revelation about the “train wreck” of Obamacare, what the voters knew prior to November about what their government was up to proved far different than what they are just beginning to know now. And so Obama won the election, even as he is insidiously losing half the country.
Because breaking the law and telling untruths eventually surface, we will come to learn that Obama was reelected into oblivion.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His The Savior Generals is just out from Bloomsbury Books.

Fire the BLS’s Unemployment Rate--It should be replaced with a metric that reflects population growth and job creation

Fire the BLS’s Unemployment Rate
It should be replaced with a metric that reflects population growth and job creation.

ByAndrew Puzder , Michael Talent

 

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its latest news on the job market. The agency breaks down the jobs data six different ways and calculates six different unemployment rates. But all this data does little to answer clearly the one key question: Is it easier to get a job now than it was before?
If you just looked at April’s official unemployment rate of 7.5 percent, you could easily conclude that the employment situation is at least better than it was when unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009. Yet, as millions of Americans know, jobs are still hard to find, and the labor market feels stagnant at best. These Americans are not mistaken: The official unemployment rate is such a misleading statistic that anyone seeking a true picture of the American economy should stop using it. At the very least, they should consider it in context.
As most people know, the unemployment rate is simply the percentage of workers in the labor force who don’t have a job. But few people know how the BLS defines these terms, particularly “labor force.”
If a worker has not looked for a job in the last 30 days, that person is not considered part of the labor force, even if he or she still wants a job. Perversely, if the economy gets so bad that large numbers of people stop looking for work, these dropouts actually decrease the unemployment rate. Clearly, the unemployment rate gives an incomplete picture unless one also considers the percentage of Americans the BLS counts as the “labor force” — the labor-force-participation rate.

For example, when the unemployment rate peaked in October 2009 at 10.0 percent, the participation rate was 65 percent. It has since dropped to 63.3 percent. If the participation rate had not declined since 2009, we’d have an unemployment rate today of 9.9 percent, nearly identical to the official unemployment peak. In other words, nearly the entire improvement in the unemployment rate since October of 2009 is due to a drop in the percentage of people the BLS considers labor-force participants.The participation rate last hit 63.3 percent during the Carter administration, in May of 1979. Over the ensuing 21 years, under Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, the participation rate rose steadily, reaching 67.3 percent by April 2000. All of that growth is now gone, and we’re back to the lackluster level of the Carter presidency. But we’re actually worse off today: When we had a 63.3 percent participation rate in 1979, the official unemployment rate was 5.6 percent, 1.9 points lower than the current 7.5 percent.
Not everyone who leaves the work force has given up — others retire, and the Baby Boomer generation is reaching retirement age. But the Boston Federal Reserve published a study recently finding that the bulk of the decline in labor-force participation is due to economic factors rather than demographic ones. The BLS reported that in April there were 6,413,000 people out of work who “want a job now” but were excluded from the ranks of the officially unemployed. Adding them back into the labor force produces an unemployment rate of 11.2 percent.
The BLS also reports an unemployment rate that includes all persons who have searched for work during the prior twelve months (as opposed to the past 30 days), plus all people who want a full-time job but are employed part-time for “economic reasons,” such as reduced hours or an inability to find a full-time job. That unemployment rate, the widest measure the government calculates, is 13.9 percent.
The BLS is not trying to mislead the public; it has used the same basic formula for decades. But some things have changed: The participation rate’s volatility has historically been very limited. In the 21 years from January 1988 through January 2009 (the month President Obama assumed office), the participation rate increased from 65.8 percent to 66.2 percent, only 0.4 percentage points. The peak was 67.3 percent, only 1.5 points above the trough of 65.8 percent.
During the last four years, the participation rate has declined from 66.2 percent to 63.3 percent, nearly double the change we experienced over the prior 20 years. This volatility has rendered the official unemployment rate unreliable and misleading.


So what measurements should we use to determine the health of the labor market?
A more realistic and informative metric would be what we call the “growth ratio” — the year-over-year growth in the number of jobs (measured through the BLS’s household survey) divided by the year-over-year growth in the civilian non-institutional population (the number of people who could be in the labor force). This fraction tells us whether job creation is keeping pace with, running ahead of, or falling behind population growth.

A growth ratio equal to one indicates that employment grew as fast as the population, indicating that the labor market, and the real unemployment rate, remain unchanged. A growth ratio above one indicates job growth in excess of population growth, which should reduce the number of unemployed people and result in a lower unemployment rate. A ratio between zero and one indicates that, while employment grew, it did not keep up with population growth. A negative ratio indicates that employment fell.
In April, the growth ratio clocked in at 1.18, indicating that employment growth over the previous twelve months was slightly greater than population growth. The average for the recovery to date is a dismal 0.96 — indicating that employment growth has, on average, failed to beat population growth, supporting the conclusion that the real unemployment rate has not declined. Over the last year or so, the growth ratio has clocked in around 1.20 — better, but still only slightly ahead of population growth.

Compare these ratios with the negative ratios during the Great Recession, when the growth ratio averaged -2.34. April’s growth ratio of 1.18 is about half that rate. Considering the growth ratio’s massive decline during the recession, the ratio now should be consistently hitting 1.5 or higher, as it has in prior recoveries.
It isn’t. This reveals a stagnant jobs market and a weak economy ill-prepared for any future economic distress.
In a real recovery, the economy creates enough jobs to repair the damage done and keep up with population growth; it does not just shed workers. In this respect, the current recovery has been an unequivocal failure. The numbers should reflect that.
— Andrew Puzder is CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., which employs about 21,000 people at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants. He is co-author of Job Creation: How It Really Works and Why the Government Doesn’t Understand It. Michael Talent is a recent economics graduate from the University of Chicago and was an economic-policy analyst for the Mitt Romney campaign.

In search of an honest liberal journalist

by Scott Johnson in Liberals, Media, Obama Administration Scandals

Having lived through the Watergate scandal and the impeachment of President Nixon, I recall that one conservative journalist stood out from the pack. As the Washington columnist for National Review, George Will regularly exposed the Nixon administration’s lines of defense as the lies that they were. He distinguished himself both for his merciless analytical rigor and his skills as an anatomist.
Will was in the infancy of his now long and distinguished journalistic career. He had joined National Review in 1972, just in time take a front row seat from the beginning of the scandal. By 1973 he was devoting every one of his biweekly NR Washington columns to a dissection of the administration’s evolving “hangouts,” limited, modified or otherwise.
Readers of National Review did not take kindly to Will’s treachery, as they saw it. In one of his books (I think, but which one?), William Buckley writes about the torrent of criticism that Will’s work aroused among National Review’s subscribers. It can’t have been a pleasant experience, either for Buckley the editor or Will the columnist. Yet Buckley stood behind him and Will went from strength to strength, beginning his syndicated column and, within a few years, winning a Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
George Will’s intellect made him one of a kind in the profession, but is there a liberal columnist who can serve Will’s role in the current crisis of the Obama administration? Asking the question suggests that events support a parallel between Nixon and Obama, and I don’t exactly mean to do that. Something, however, is rotten in the Obama administration. The problem is that the political rot overlaps with leftist goals. I doubt that a liberal critic can rise to the challenge presented by Obama and his, if not the journalist’s, friends.
I’ve had the thought that Kirsten Powers might be the liberal counterpart to the conservative George Will of 1973. Powers would have it easier than Will did. In mid-career, she is already a star, and calling out the Obama administration might even serve to enhance her career.
I have the feeling she will let me down before long, but in the meantime, here is to Kirsten Powers and “How hope and change gave way to spying on the press.” Ms. Powers, you might even want to follow up with a look at the administration’s incredibly destructive national security leaks — leaks regarding the Stuxnet virus and the Seal Team 6 raid that killed bin Laden, to take two examples offered by Victor Davis Hanson — in the service of its transient political goals.
UPDATE: As I think about it, I am almost certain that I was recalling Jeffrey Hart’s account of Will’s tenure at NR in his terrific personal history of the magazine, The Making of the American Conservative Mind. I will have to return to this subject when I have my copy of Professor Hart’s book in hand.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/in-search-of-an-honest-liberal-journalist.php

A Partisan Union at the IRS--Nearly two-thirds of campaign contributions from IRS employees go to Democrats

A Partisan Union at the IRS
Nearly two-thirds of campaign contributions from IRS employees go to Democrats.

ByAndrew Stiles

NTEU president Colleen Kelley

 

Andrew Stiles

The IRS may be “an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees,” in the words of White House press secretary Jay Carney, but its employees are represented by a powerful, deeply partisan union whose boss has publicly disparaged the Tea Party and criticized the Republican party for having ties to it.
The White House continues to insist that profound incompetence, not partisan malice, led the IRS to single out conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. If the testimony of acting commissioner Steven Miller is true, incompetence was certainly a factor. But given all that has come to light about the agency and its employees in recent days, it would be hard to believe that its targeting of conservative groups wasn’t also politically motivated.

As the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney and others have pointed out, the agency’s employees are heavily engaged in politics and lean considerably to the left. Records show that IRS employees in 2012 donated more than twice as much to the Obama as to the Romney campaign. Nearly two-thirds of all employee contributions over the last three elections cycles have gone to Democrats.This individual activity is tame compared with that of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents 150,000 federal employees across 31 agencies, including the IRS. The union endorsed Obama in both of his presidential runs and operates a political-action committee (PAC) that has donated $1.63 million to federal candidates and committees since 2008, more than 96 percent of it to help elect Democrats. During that period, IRS employees have contributed more than $67,000 to the PAC.
This past cycle, the union spent heavily on competitive House and Senate races. (In light of the recent scandal, the National Republican Campaign Committee is calling on Democrats to return NTEU contributions.) The union’s members participated in other ways as well, by “educating and organizing various types of activities around the country including candidate nights and volunteering for campaigns.”
Colleen Kelley, the union’s president since 1999, worked as a revenue agent for the IRS for 14 years, and her political leanings are clear. She has given nearly $5,000 to the NTEU PAC since 2007, and she donated $500 to John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. If her public statements are any indication, Kelley thinks none too highly of the Republican party, especially its more conservative elements such as the Tea Party.
In March 2011, when Congress was in talks over a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown, Kelley slammed the “extreme elements” of the GOP for insisting on meaningful reductions in federal spending. “For months, budget negotiations have stalled in Congress as House Republicans have succumbed to extreme Tea Party elements rather than coming to common sense compromises,” Kelley said in a statement. “You have to be from Wonderland to believe that you can make severe cuts in government spending without sending the economy into a tailspin and cutting critical services Americans depend upon.”
Kelley was highly critical of Paul Ryan’s (R., Wis.) most recent budget proposal, which called for a reduction in the federal work force as well as reforms to benefits and pension programs for federal employees. “The Ryan budget proposal would worsen our nation in so many ways,” she said in March 2013.
Kelley appears to wield considerable influence in Democratic circles and the Obama administration. Under her leadership, the NTEU has spent nearly $7.5 million lobbying the federal government. Since Obama took office, she has been to the White House at least eleven times to meet with high-ranking officials such as Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to visitor logs. She has also met directly with the president and the first lady.
In November 2010, President Obama nominated Kelley to serve on the Federal Salary Council, an “obscure” panel that nonetheless “performs a vital role in recommending raises for most federal employees,” as described by the Washington Post.
The Hill in a May 2012 profile observed that Kelly “has had a hand in every major deficit negotiation” since Republicans retook the House in 2010; she “has tangled with the Tea Party and gone up against GOP standard-bearers Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Paul Ryan (Wis.).”
“There is no doubt that when we look at the implications of various budget proposals, we seek her input,” Representative Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the leading Democratic on the House Budget Committee, said of Kelley.
As lawmakers continue to investigate the IRS scandal — House and Senate committees will hold additional hearings this week — Republicans will be eager to learn more about Kelley’s knowledge of the IRS targeting of conservative groups and about the extent to which union members may have been involved. In a letter to IRS employees, Kelley said she believes “no one intentionally did anything wrong,” and promised to “work to ensure that front-line employees are not treated unfairly.”
She has already cast doubt on the Obama administration’s claims that the IRS targeting of conservative groups was carried out by a handful of “front-line” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati field office. “No processes or procedures or anything like that would ever be done just by front-line employees without any management involvement,” Kelley told the Associated Press last week. “That’s just not how it operates.”
— Andrew Stiles is a political reporter for National Review Online.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348811/partisan-union-irs

Money tangle: The IRS and its tea party tempest (DP: this is the AP's compilation, revealing all we suspected)

Money tangle: The IRS and its tea party tempest

By CALVIN WOODWARD | Associated Press

• 
  View PhotoAssociated Press/J. Scott Applewhite - Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Friday, May 17, 2013, prior to testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing …more  on the extra scrutiny the IRS gave Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)  less 
•  
• WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service is feeling the sort of heat that targeted taxpayers feel from the tax agency. It's the sense that a powerful someone is breathing down your neck.

Republicans in Congress are livid with the IRS over its systematic scrutiny of conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections. Democrats agree that something must be done. President Barack Obama also isn't at all happy with the tax collectors.

That kind of commonality in Washington is about as rare as a budget surplus. So expect a bumpy ride for the IRS, unloved in the best of times, as a Justice Department criminal investigation and multiple congressional inquiries try to get to the bottom of it all.
A look at the matter:
IN BRIEF

The central issue is whether IRS agents who determine whether nonprofit organizations have to pay federal income taxes played political favorites or even broke the law when they subjected tea party groups and other conservative organizations to special scrutiny.

Also foremost in the concerns of Congress: Why senior IRS officials, for many months, did not disclose what they had learned about the actions of lower-level employees despite persistent questions from Republican lawmakers and howls from aggrieved organizations.
___
WHY IT MATTERS
The IRS is expected to be pesky, even intimidating, to miscreants, but at all times politically neutral. Nonpartisanship is the coin of its realm, perhaps more so than in any other part of government.
"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives," Obama said in ousting the agency's acting chief, Steven T. Miller.
On Thursday, on the eve of House hearings at which Miller has been called to testify, the president named Daniel Werfel, a senior White House budget official, to take charge of the agency temporarily.

IRS actions in the period covering the 2010 congressional elections and the early going of the 2012 presidential campaign have tattered the perception that the agency is clean of political leanings. Whether that was also the reality remains to be discovered.

A report by the Treasury Department's top investigator for tax matters found no evidence that sheer partisanship drove the targeting. But the watchdog disclosed Friday that he is still investigating. His report faulted lax management for not stopping it sooner.
It's a sensitive time for the agency's professionalism to be in doubt because the IRS soon will loom even larger in people's lives. It's to be the enforcer of the individual mandate to carry insurance under Obama's health care law, itself an object of suspicion for many conservatives. To the right, that's insult upon injury from the left.
___
WHAT WOULD MAKE IT MATTER EVEN MORE
Any effort from top levels of the administration or political operatives to manipulate the IRS for campaign purposes would put the scandal in the realm of Nixonian skullduggery.
The public record as it is known does not show interference.
No ties to anyone outside the IRS have been discovered. At the same time, early IRS assurances that high-level people inside the agency did not know what was going on have been contradicted by evidence that the head of the agency's tax-exemption operation and later its deputy commissioner were briefed about it and did not tell Congress.
___
RED-FLAG WORDS

To qualify for exemption from federal income taxes, organizations must show they are not too political in nature to meet the standard. In the cases in question, applications that raised eyebrows were referred to a team of specialists who took a much closer look at a group's operations. That's normal.

But in early 2010, IRS agents in the Determinations Unit began paying special attention to tax-exempt applications from groups associated with the tea party or with certain words or phrases in their materials, according to the IRS inspector general's report. That's not normal.
The red-flag keywords came to include "Patriots," ''Take Back the Country" and "We the People."
That August, agents were given an explicit "be on the lookout" directive for "various local organizations in the Tea Party movement" that are seeking tax-exempt status. Such organizations saw their applications languish except when they were hit with lots of questions, some of which the IRS was not entitled to ask, such as the names of donors.
In June 2011, after the congressional elections, Lois G. Lerner, in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations, learned of the flagging and ordered the criteria to be changed right away, the inspector general said. The new guidance was more generic and stripped of any explicit partisan freight. But it did not last.
In January 2012, the screening was modified again, this time to watch for references to the Constitution or Bill of Rights, and for "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government."
The Constitution and Bill of Rights are touchstones for liberals, too. But in modern politics, they've been appropriated as rallying cries of conservatives and libertarians. Finally, that May, such flagging ended.
Altogether, specialists reviewed a variety of potentially too-political applications, presumably covering the liberal-conservative spectrum. But fully one-third of the cases were of the tea party-patriot variety. During the height of the flagging, the inspector general says, all applications fitting the conservative-focused criteria went to the specialists while others that should have stirred concern did not.
In short, if you were with the tea party, you were guaranteed a close second look and almost certainly months more of delay. If you were leading a liberal activist group, maybe yes, maybe no.
___
ON THE RECEIVING END
"Dealing with this was like dealing with tax day every day for 2½ years," says Laurence Nordvig, executive director of the Richmond Tea Party in Virginia. "Like your worst audit nightmare."
His group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and finally got it in July 2012.
Tom Zawistowski applied for the tax exemption for his group, the Ohio Liberty Coalition, in June 2010 when the flagging was gathering steam. He got it in December 2012, after the presidential election.
The IRS asked him for the identity of the group's members, times and location of group activities, printouts of its website and Facebook pages, contents of speeches and the names and credentials of speakers at forums. He said the IRS also audited his personal finances and his wife's.
"The intent of this was to hurt the ability of tea party groups to function in an election year," he said.
An Associated Press analysis of 93 "tea party" or "patriot" groups found that most were shoestring operations, with only two dozen raising more than $20,000 a year.
___
FIVE-OH WHAT?
If the IRS merely rolled over and played dead when it got an application for a tax exemption, the government would be even more broke than it is and big money would have an even more pernicious grip on campaigns.
The IRS knows better than most that politically driven organizations, out to elect and defeat candidates, can masquerade as "social welfare" or other charitable entities under the tax-exempting articles of Section 501 (c) of the tax code.
Or they can align themselves with one, allowing unlimited donations to be raised and the identities of the contributors to stay secret as long as the nonprofit entities don't go too far in overt politicking.
In recent years, advocacy groups have paired their nonprofit arms with "super" political action committees, moves that took hold after a series of court rulings — including the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision — loosened the rules on money in politics.
The rulings gave rise to such pairings as the American Crossroads super PAC with its Crossroads GPS nonprofit on behalf of Republicans in the 2012 campaign, and the Priorities USA Action super PAC with its own nonprofit arm, for Obama's benefit.
Section 501 (c) (3) can be the most lucrative financially for organizations because in addition to conferring tax-exempt status, it allows donations to qualifying groups to be tax deductible.
Section 501 (c) (4) doesn't permit tax-deductible donations but gives groups more latitude to lobby and to dabble more directly in political campaigns as long as "social welfare" remains their primary mission. They can also keep their donors secret, a big benefit over more blatantly political super PACs.
It's all complex, squishy and in some ways subjective, so it might not come as a shock that the IRS would look for shortcuts such as political buzzwords and slogans when deciding what a group is really up to. But the record as yet known does not show that the scrutiny cut both ways.
In congressional testimony about the discredited IRS actions, Attorney General Eric Holder said there is good reason to take a skeptical look at some Section 501 applications but "it has to be done in a way that does not depend on the political persuasion of the group."
___
BY THE NUMBERS
The inspector general's office reviewed 296 tax-exempt applications that had been flagged as potentially too political. Of them, 108 were ultimately approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been rejected and 160 were still open in December 2012, some languishing for more than three years.
___
STONEWALLING?
Hearing complaints of IRS harassment from constituents, lawmakers began asking a lot of questions of the agency starting in mid-2011. They got a lot of answers — just not answers revealing what was going on.
In multiple letters, some as long as 45 pages, as well as in meetings and congressional hearings, senior IRS officials laid out in painstaking detail the process of checking tax-exempt applications but did not disclose what they had come to learn of the flagging.
Miller, for example, was told by staff in May 2012 about the inappropriate screening but did not pass that on in communications with inquiring members of Congress or in his appearance two months later with the House panel most concerned about the reports.
Lois G. Lerner, in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations at the IRS, was briefed about the screening a year earlier and ordered an end to explicit tea party-type flagging. But she did not tell lawmakers about that when asked about the constituent complaints.
___
ABOUT THAT SKULLDUGGERY
A number of presidents or their operatives have tried to twist the IRS against "dissidents" or political opponents. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy are among them.

President Richard Nixon, though, surely takes the cake here.

The Senate Judiciary Committee cited his IRS manipulations, including his pursuit of those on his "enemies list," in the articles of impeachment accusing the president of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Watergate scandal and of actions "subversive of constitutional government."
Article 2, Abuse of Power, said: "He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."
Nixon resigned after it became clear that a Senate impeachment trial would drive him from office.
___
Associated Press writers Stephen Braun and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/money-tangle-irs-tea-party-tempest-144831224.html

P.S. on the AP

by Scott Johnson in First Amendment, Intelligence, Media, Obama Administration Scandals

According to Eric Holder, Eric Holder is no more responsible for the investigation of the Associated Press than Barack Obama is for events in Benghazi according to Barack Obama. That was Holder’s theme in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which I first read about yesterday in a post by Allahpundit at Hot Air.
Looking around for a narrative account of Holder’s testimony this morning, I find the liberal hack Eleanor Clift writing at the Daily Beast about Holder’s response to questions involving “the secret subpoena of the AP’s phone records” in the leak investigation:

He couldn’t remember when he recused himself, or even exactly how he did it, only that it was before the subpoena was issued, and that a staff search revealed nothing in writing. Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus nailed it when he said, “Do you think it would be a best practice to memorialize that recusal in writing?” By then, the subject had come up several times, and Holder said that just thinking about it through the hearing, his critics were right.

Fear not that anything untoward has occurred. Holder promised: “I pledge to the American people an after-action analysis.” Well, alright.
John and Paul comment on the AP leak investigation here. I urged the Bush administration to investigate the worst national security leaks mostly involving the New York Times in “Exposure” for the Weekly Standard and many times on Power Line. Indeed, I urged prosecution of the reporters involved, who seemed to me to have violated our espionage laws. Yesterday former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that the Bush administration once considered issuing the type of subpoena that the Justice Department issued against the AP, but ultimately opted against it. Did any Bush administration leak investigation expose the wrongdoers (other than those whose names appeared in the bylines of the Times articles)? I don’t think so.
The notorious national-security leaks that were featured on page one of the Times during the Bush administration seem to me to have done vastly greater harm than the leaks involved in the AP story. Here is the original AP story of May 2012 that appears to have triggered the leak investigation in which the AP phone records were subpoenaed. (I found the AP story via Max Fisher’s comments on the investigation.) Here are the key paragraphs about the AP’s communications with the White House:

The AP learned about the thwarted plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish it immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way.
Once those concerns were allayed, the AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.
The White House confirmed the story after the AP published it on Monday afternoon. Caitlin Hayden, the deputy national security council spokeswoman, said in a statement that Obama was first informed about the plot in April by his homeland security adviser John Brennan, and was advised that it did not pose a threat to the public.

Conor Fridersdorf takes a look at the subpoena of the AP phone records in the context of Holder’s characterization of the leak investigation. It seems to me that Friedersdorf raises a good question about the alleged harm caused by the AP story. I think it’s fair to say that skepticism is warranted and, as to Holder’s testimony yesterday, a laugh track would be appropriate.
NOTE: In the original version of this post, I said exactly the opposite of what I meant about the apparent seriousness of the leaks leading to the AP article versus the leaks leading to the notorious Times articles. I have revised the post accordingly.
STEVE adds: The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank also thinks Holder’s appearance was pathetic, calling it an “abdication”:

Holder seemed to regard this ignorance as a shield protecting him and the Justice Department from all criticism of the Obama administration’s assault on press freedoms. But his claim that his “recusal” from the case exempted him from all discussion of the matter didn’t fly with Republicans or Democrats on the committee, who justifiably saw his recusal as more of an abdication. . . when the Justice Department undermines the Constitution, recusal is no excuse.

The cracks in the dam are starting to leak.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/p-s-on-the-ap.php

Don's Tuesday column

            THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/21/2013

The stench of lies, corruption, tyranny

Plan to come to tonight’s Tea Party Patriots meeting and hear from our new Supervisor, Sandy Bruce, at 6 PM at the Westside Grange. I believe the format will allow for questions; it’ll be a great way to hear what she has to say and see where she stands on local issues.

We are now witnessing not one, not two, but at least three separate scandals: the Benghazi fiasco—failure to protect our personnel from terrorist attacks, doing nothing to respond in real time to the attacks, and lying to the American people about the attacks; the possibly illegal seizure of reporters’ phone records; and political assault on conservative organizations seeking 501 (c) (4) tax-exempt status by using the IRS to delay, harass, hamstring and intimidate citizens exercising their constitutional rights.

These have in common the official abuse of power, the crass, political pursuit of keeping that power by any means necessary and at hand—the electoral ends justifying the corrupt means. The truth about the attacks on our consulate by radical Islamic fighters, together with the needless (warnings unheeded, measures not taken, security unimproved) deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three other brave Americans—had to be manipulated and hidden before last November’s election. Why? For the morally corrupt reason that President Obama’s narrative—Al-Qaeda was a spent force harmless to America after Osama bin Laden’s death—was proven wrong. Also that, after helping remove Gaddafi from power, an America-loving normalcy prevailed.

With the seizure of reporters’ phone records, we can also ascribe a politically corrupt motive in that another of Obama’s cherished phony narratives came undone: that we were no longer threatened by attempted terrorist attacks. Maybe you weren’t told but the White House didn’t want the public to know how close a Yemeni Al-Qaeda terrorist came to blowing up an airplane bound for America, prevented by a CIA operation. By seizing via subpoena those phone call records in pursuit of the leaker, Obama’s people could proceed to intimidate or harass reporters’ contacts, chilling the vital process of independent and aggressive news investigation. Eric Holder does not appear to have signed the warrant and his Department of Justice appears to have engaged in bad faith non-negotiation with the Associated Press. Reporting on Obama might get more hard-hitting, the administrations’ cover-ups, lies and hypocrisies get more scrutiny.

I gave the short hand version of those because the main event, for me and many other conservatives, is the still-emerging scandal of how high up the IRS/White House food chain goes the trail of those who orchestrated the abuse of IRS regulatory power. Recall that one of the articles of impeachment against President Nixon had to do with his and his subordinates’ use of the IRS to attack his political opponents. We’ve already seen lying to Congress last spring by an official who flat-out denied in writing that conservative groups were targeted when he positively knew that the Inspector General’s report, then already circulating in IRS circles, had found just that.

We’ve already seen the story that the abusive political scrutiny was limited to low-level employees in Cincinnati fall apart when some Tea Party groups reported receiving inquiring letters from Washington. We’ve also come to find out that the IG report detailing the abusive practices was finalized well before the election but conveniently kept under wraps until just recently in a staged disclosure at a lawyers’ gathering with a planted question. Then we’ve heard Obama and his mouthpieces disingenuously, and unbelievably, claim to have had no knowledge of the abuse until the rest of America found out at that staged disclosure. I was born but not, as they say, yesterday.

Conservative and Tea Party groups have been reporting for years that they were being subjected to improper, unjustified and discriminatory written anal exams and inquiries on the most irrelevant topics imaginable; we’re to believe none of that ever came to the attention of Obama’s people and they never raised an eyebrow in alarm. No hint of concern that such reprehensible treatment might be abusive of citizens’ right “to peaceably assemble” and “petition the government for redress of grievances” (Yeah, that’s in the Constitution). Really?!

Readers might understandably wonder if cries of “tyranny” overstate things. Obama certainly dismissed such alarms as he warned graduating students at Ohio State University against “voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems (and) do their best to gum up the works … They’ll warn that tyranny always (sic) lurking just around the corner. You should reject those voices.”

What happened after the shamefully manipulated, popular-opinion-defying jam down of Obamacare in early 2010 was the massive rise of Tea Party and other patriotic, constitution-defending groups; they figured out a legal way to pool the fruits of their labor and pursue their political happiness. They peacefully assembled, organized and began petitioning to redress their collective grievances, while protecting themselves from the retaliation of the vindictive and unhinged left by donating anonymously. For the “separate, sinister entity,” the IRS, to attack, intimidate and “gum up” the efforts of these citizens and their groups, such that fundraising was diminished, donors scared off, potential leaders demoralized and their efforts stymied—for all that to have been done by Obama’s government to help get him reelected sure smacks of tyranny to me.