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Hmm...they have it in writing, too. That’s going to be a problem should the IRS be unable to show its own records in that regard. This is amazing. You can’t cover this stuff up, and they’re trying.

Team Clinton is on the move.

Oh, yeah. There's hell to pay.

Jimmy "The Snake" Carville yesterday, Lanny Davis today. The knives are out bigtime. It will be amusing to see 0bama butt-kissers such as Ezra Klein suddenly find themselves sitting at the kiddie table in the hallway wondering what the hell happened.

Bloodbath coming, and if it's suppressed until the 2014 elections it will only get worse. Hubris will do that.

Sorry, Ezra, you're behind the curve on this one and nobody cares what your desperate spinning is. "There's no 'there' there" isn't going to cut it. And contrary to what you just wrote, the more we learn about these the more serious they look.

I don't think Klein really understands things from any other than a strictly partisan-games perspective, which is too bad because he is bright enough to do better than that. This piece, though, this is simply embarrassing.

Gosh dang those Republicans and their sequester that 0bama thought of. It’s a good thing our ruling class still has access to A-list entertainment. Hey, isn’t it time for another 0bama vacationpalooza?

They not only deliberately chose not to reveal the scandal, the merrily continued the criminal activities that composed it. This wasn’t a case of “we’ll just do it until we need glasses”, it was an ongoing program of deliberate political terrorism.

“This is very chilling for the American people!”

And that was absolutely its intention, not only for those American people targeted, but for the rest as well who must wonder if we might be. This was an act of political terrorism and I use the term precisely. BTT.

Check again, Chuckles. It’s illegal as hell. BTT.

You want to know what this photo is really all about? This is what the photo is really all about:

"I summon my blue-eyed slaves anytime it pleases me. I command the Americans to send me their bravest soldiers to die for me. Anytime I clap my hands a stupid genie called the American ambassador appears to do my bidding. When the Americans die in my service their bodies are frozen in metal boxes by the US Embassy and American airplanes carry them away, as if they never existed." King Fahd Bin Abdul-Aziz, Jeddeh 1993

I couldn’t decide between “Yes” and “Yes”. More choices would have been useful, such as “Certainly”, “Of Course”, and “Are you kidding? The sumbitch ought to be breaking rocks in Sing Sing”.

Because they’re better people than we are, Citizen.

Yes, the Internal Revenue Service was wrong to target dozens of conservative groups for extra scrutiny, even if it was accidental.

Accidental? What planet does this woman live on?

The facts are simple: (1) the IRS was openly and deliberately harassing the administration's political opposition in order to intimidate and to stifle dissent. (2) This isn't simply an accusation or a misunderstanding, but a demonstrated fact. (3) It is a criminal activity. (4) The people doing it belong in prison, and (4) everyone up their chain of command who either knew or condoned or ordered it should be in prison as well.

Nancy, you'd better get a clue because your complacent little world is about to get rocked. I don't feel sorry for criminals who abuse their trust, not one bit, and I absolutely despise their apologists. That, my dear, is you.

That Marine carried off a bad situation with class, which is more than I can say about whatever it is standing to his right. God bless and Semper Fi.

That pic will, I am sure, follow him throughout his career. Because I've never known a Marine to give another Marine a hard time about that sort of thing. Not me, no, not ever. :-)

The solution: flee to Baltimore and talk about something else. Right, yeah, that's going to work.

"There's always going to be bumps in the road. That's just the nature of it. I think they're going to be fine, as long as they stick to the big issues," Devine told Reuters.

Four men dead are not "bumps in the road". Widespread IRS abuse isn't a "bump in the road". And the "big issues" aren't, in fact, whatever is next on the progressive agenda. And pretending that life is about to return to normal is a delusion.

On Wednesday Obama announced that the acting head of the IRS had been asked to resign and on Thursday announced a successor, delivering the swift action that critics had called for after news of the extra scrutiny first came out.

"Extra scrutiny"? You have to be joking. It was deliberate, knowing abuse far beyond the legal, and grandly accepting the resignation of an interim director who was headed out the door anyway isn't going to cut it as "swift action". Reuters is simply disgusting here.

Editing by Philip Barbara

A name to remember, a smirking propagandist with his lips firmly planted on the throne.

No, folks, despite the airy assurance of Reuters this thing isn't going away, in fact, it's just beginning. Buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

It’s. The. Law.

Not. For. Long.

It’s not so bad - they pay them by the pound, and they all weight the same as a duck.

Oh, please, I want to see Carney at a press conference tomorrow! Pleasepleaseplease...

Now wait a minute - when I suggested this a couple of days ago I was kidding.

I know - maybe nobody involved sent anything by email for two days! Yeah...yeah, that's the ticket...

The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position's powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned.

Uh, Peggy? The people doing this have absolutely no intention of cleaning any stables. This is the new business as usual.

Well, that’ll larn him! Down to a mid-six-figure salary for you, buddy! Five-martini lunches. Privation.

I was never happy with it but when the party line became "We could do nothing about it," the blood pressure started to rise. That's absolute garbage. And when the party line became, "Those Republicans jerked the funding for embassy security" the veins started popping.

This was, taken all together, a fundamental failure of the State department to provide the rudiments of security for its own people and the ridiculous promenade of fools pointing fingers elsewhere that has disgraced the American political stage since can be laid to one individual's feet: Hillary Rodham Clinton, thankfully-ex-Secretary of State. The likelihood of ambassadorial shenanigans with respect to Syria and its own bloody "Arab spring" make the affair just that much worse. Those sort of games are better left to professionals and leaving the operator that vulnerable is not in the least professional. The SEALs knew that and died for it.

Yet in 1968, Humphrey never would have had to confront talk radio.

Humphrey would have been a welcome guest on Limbaugh's show and would have given as good as he got. The Left had brains then. The passion replaced them.

Oderint dum metuant - Lucius Accius, c 100 BC. "Let them hate so long as they fear."

This came home to me when at last a few years ago a fellow FReeper forced me into serious reconsideration. The formation of a political collective around the insensate hatred of its membership toward another group is a well-established mechanism in human psychology. It confers a dehumanization that leads to incredible levels of violence and brutality - the Nazis and the Jews, for instance, Pol Pot toward his own bourgeoisie, the Russian middle classs toward the Kulaks, the Hutu toward the Tutsi; the Roman middle class toward the Christians in the arena with the beasts - all of these were more or less amicable neighbors before the hatred took hold.

What I'm suggesting is that for radicals the hatred is necessary, and that compassion threatens the solidarity that hatred confers. To be unarmed in its face is suicidal.

Isn’t this what they usually say, right before the resignation?

Yep. He's toast.

Why don’t we just have a big liberal-conservative — meet at the Mississippi and have a big paintball game so we can get this figured out?

I wish. If it ever happens it won't be at the Mississippi, and it won't be paintball.

I love these guys. "Down with oil! Down with coal! Down with wood! Down with nuclear! We'll tear the industrial world down and rebuild it with...thingy!"

They're the deep thinkers. The rest is merely engineering.

No, I’M Dave, man. Open the door!

How about an amendment requiring our president to be a natural born...

That's crazy talk.

I'll be looking for a new phone in September, and I'll definitely be considering a Windows phone. I have an Android now and have owned an iPhone, but I'm tired of dealing with big corporations.

;-)

LOL! Yeah, that ought to get the job done all right.

Talk about closing the barn after the horse is out - what else are these guys there for, to see that this young feller Kaiser Wilhelm II doesn’t get frisky in Europe?

BJ Billy with a bloated ego? I am shocked - SHOCKED - at the suggestion.

She'll expect him to help her squirm out of it, though. And she knows where ALL the bodies are buried. ;-)

He can say that with the 2014 elections staring him in the face? Uh...has he looked at any real poll numbers recently?

I'm sort of half hoping 0bama does manage to squirm enough for his toadies to get him out of this. Maybe start an intervention in Libya, push some sort of gun control through Congress, announce loudly that he's drawing down our nuclear arsenal with Putin and Ahmadinejad trying not to scream with laughter in the background. It'll help in '14. Really.

Personally, though, I think Todd is smoking crack and completely out of touch with the voters. We'll see soon enough.

That testimony - 20 hours, really? - was so embarrassing I couldn’t believe it, and a slap in the face of the military who know damn well they’re better than that. Those guys were left hung out to dry and everyone knows it.

Never confuse a political operator with an honest broker. Let me put it this way: if it is to the advantage of Hillary Clinton to make 0bama think that this is going to blow over, then Carville will say so. If Paul Begala chimes in, you know the fix is in.

I don't agree with him, actually. I've been wrong before, but the media have felt a little used and abused by 0bama's staffers for some time now - the paucity of press conferences, the fecklessness of the boy wonder they've had to listen to as his press spokesman, the travel arrangements, the clear delineation between the favored and the rest. If 0bama doesn't lose the Nixon label he's going to have a very rough four years, with You Know Who just waiting for him to screw up so she can take an adversary posture. She isn't a member of his administration anymore, although a lot of people appear not to have noticed. It wasn't accidental. You get an administration this obviously corrupt, you run against it, and if you can be a Dem running against it while the Republicans hold back in a McCainesque pose of idiot bipartisan chumship, you have a winning campaign. "Hope and Change" may make a return wearing the Hillary label.

Heck, I'd contribute. It's a drop in the bucket. And the police are aware it's a drop in the bucket. And I want the police to continue to be very, very aware that it's a drop in the bucket.

I'll dissent a little - this, I think, is absolutely the proper relationship between law officers and citizens. I want them aware that I'd back them in a gunfight, that I'm on their side, and that they'd better by God be on mine.

one percent is noise.

Yep. Take out the emotive references to "The Wealthy" and you find this claim to be simply that if 1% of the current beneficiaries gave up their benefits, we'd see savings. Sure we would. If 1% of the population is left-handed, brown-eyed people with six toes and they gave up their benefits, it would amount to exactly the same thing.

In practice one finds, however, that this sort of program changes behavior, and that "1% wealthiest" group tends to change when it is penalized for being so. This is, recall, based on "household income". Find a way to reduce household income and you're out of the group. And that, in practice, is precisely what happens.

That is not to say that some sort of means testing will not be instituted - it's inevitable. The system is inherently redistributive and so inherently unfair. This sort of tweaking will prolong its survival - one definition of "sustainable" - but sooner or later it will crash. And more to the point, in the meantime it will change the behavior of the people who currently support it. That is always a risky and unpredictable thing to do.

Yeh, that’s one hell of a nomination.

Should be just before the first Iranian test. Putin must be struggling to contain himself from laughing when he meets this idiot.

That's not just a little shading of the truth, Carney was lying blatantly and stupidly, stupidly because it was so easily caught. That's beginning to become a pattern - the story that the IRS abuses were the work of two "rogue" operators fell under that category as soon as the abusive questionnaires started to pop up all over the country.

Mendacity this open and broad is a function of pure arrogance. Once again the shredders will be running overnight in DC and the bureaucracies looking for how far down they can push the inevitable fall guy. These are our "leaders".

Why sure it was. It was just a third-rate burglary, right? A cancer on the Presidency? Some low-level staffers committing multiple felonies with the best of intentions? An Attorney General in crime up to his ears? IRS abuse? Couldn't reach the President's office, could it?

I'll enjoy hearing what Woodward and Bernstein have to say about this one. Just like old times.

I'll wait to see it corroborated. This could actually be several things:

1. Phone records of AP reporters (and who knows what other reporters; we have no evidence that the AP was singled out) that happen to include conversations with Congressmen and -women. That's already 4 on a scale of five in terms of political impact and it's the least of the possibilities.

2. Phone records of Congresspeople. 5 of five, that one will get somebody prison time.

3. Actual taps of AP reporters' conversations. 6 of five, and national security won't save the perpetrators.

4. Actual taps of AP reporters' conversations with Congresspeople. 7 of five - that one will be a resignation or an impeachment. I note, however, that Democrats have already tapped Gingrich's phone and got away with it. They could be stupid enough to try it again.

5. There is another level but I don't think even 0bama, Holder, and Jarrett would go there and if they did God help them - actual taps specifically aimed at Congress. That's 10 of five, nuclear assault level. We'd have a new government out of that one.

It is probable that we are *only* talking phone records here, but if it goes up from there it's going to go up fantastically quickly. We'll see.

Well, this was a Double Secret Recusal. You won’t find those in writing.

Oh, well, that's finished then. We should all Move On.

Two "rogue" agents, hmm? Must have been really, really busy folks given the stories that are coming out. We can't fire them, they're the most productive people in the entire administration.

So let me get this straight - I’m driving a bus filled with forty people and we crash, killing four of them, but it’s not really my fault because I was bored and disinterested. Think that one will fly?

“My fellow Kenyans, I come to you today to announce...wait, what? Oh, I meant “Americans” - jeeze, Valerie, don’t have a spaz, the mikes aren’t hot...what? Cut the mikes! CUT THE MIKES! Now who’s been playing games with that stinkin’ teleprompter? Joe, is that your idea of a joke?”

At last we’re going to find out how Bush managed to precipitate this whole thing.

Sure am glad 0bamacare came along! A little donation to the Democratic party and they'll send me a list of potential blood donors. I wouldn't need much, a pint from you and a pint from you, and a couple pints from you...

Why, yes, I do work for the IRS. Why do you ask?

Well, heck, it looks like Bush is off the hook then, right, Dave?

You can compare any two things. And most people I know who were around for Watergate are busy picking their jaws up from the ground. Let's see, we have a crime, a coverup, press intimidation, IRS abuse, stonewalling by senior officials, delay, denial, obfuscation, counter-charges, evidence declared unavailable due to national security considerations, unelected officials making policy decisions their elected boss claims to know nothing about...no, no similarity there.

That said, nobody died at Watergate.

World War Z - Max Brooks

The Golden Ass - Apuleius

Reamde - Neal Stephenson

The Immense Majesty - A History of Rome and the Roman Empire - Thomas Africa

And one I can't talk about yet because my co-author keeps sending me pages of FReepin' errata!

I am in awe at just how transparent this Administration really is.

The Mob got nuttin' on these palookas...