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Barack Obama loves the troops… To hold his umbrella. POTUS deploys Marines for rain in Rose Garden with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. (Major Garrett)

Many were shocked to learn that IRS agents actually targeted conservative advocacy groups for heightened scrutiny when making decisions concerning their tax exempt status. I don't know why so many people were shocked. This is what university administrators have been doing for nearly twenty years. I've been writing about it for over ten years because I know that what you see on the campus today is what you will see in the broader culture tomorrow. It all began in my home state back in 1995. That was when a gay activist and UNC administrator named Jonathan Curtis targeted the Muslim...

For those of you who hate the Tea Party, I have a one word reply to you: Ha! Because they were right, and you were very, very wrong They were right about the IRS, right about Boston, right about Benghazi.   They were right about Eric Holder and the threat that our top law enforcement officer posed to the Bill of Rights; they were right about Obama and his smarmy, made-up, intellectual know-it-all-ism; they were right about the press being active advocates for partisan purposes while ignoring Obama’s smarmy, made-up, intellectual know-it-all-ism; they were right about the GOP being wrong on...

...while some junkies live, Elvis died. And this Elvis syndrome is, oddly enough, happening again right now, politically. And now, this week, the chickens have not only come home to roost, they’re freebasing in the garage. The family is fed up. Our national hive of hacks are really nothing more than the Memphis Mafia, the folks who protected Elvis Presley through his worst excesses, until his particular administration ended on a toilet. But why did the media become so much like this mafia? This behavior is caused by a deep desire to be liked and to be perceived as cool....

As predicted, Wednesday afternoon's testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder focused heavily on revelations that the Department of Justice subpoenaed phone records from the Associated Press following their publishing leaked information about a terror attack. The House Judiciary Committee had the wrong guy at the witness table, though, since Holder, who'd recused himself from the matter couldn't offer much new information. This left the committee members to fill the time by attacking their opponents, and allowed for a dispute that resulted in Holder calling a Congressmember's behavior "unacceptable and shameful." At the start, it seemed as though the focus might...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Cody in Spring, Texas, as we go back to the phones. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi. CALLER: Hey, Rush. I just wanted to remind you that this is not the first time that this type of IRS scandal has surrounded Barack Obama. If you remember all the way back to 2008 with Joe the Plumber, he was simply playing a game in his front yard with his son. He asked Obama a question and made him look bad. Next thing you know, all of his financial information was released to the press. The next day,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, I've had people say, "Rush, how do we handle this? What's the best way to deal with all this?" See if you agree with this. Dr. Krauthammer on Fox News Special Report during the All-Star Panel last night, Bret Baier said, "Charles Krauthammer, when the president says there's no 'there' there, it almost seemed that he was challenging reporters to say, 'No, really, there's no "there" there.'" KRAUTHAMMER: The one advice I'd give to Republicans is stop calling it a huge scandal. Stop saying it's a Watergate. Stop saying it's Iran-Contra. Let the facts speak for...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let me start digging into this IRS Stack that I have here. UK Daily Mail: "When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train. "'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training...

FULL TITLE - "The Media Meme of the Day is BS! Obama Isn't Disengaged -- He Leads a Government Waging War on Its Domestic Enemies" BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Did you hear how David Axelrod attempted to defend Obama on the IRS scandal? I think he was on MSNBC today. David Axelrod said (paraphrasing), "Well, you know, the government's too big. The government's simply too vast for Obama to control it." Bingo! Exactly! That's the whole reason the Tea Party exists. The government is too big. Not only is the government too big, it's growing. It's growing to the point that...

What’s a military museum without firearms of yesteryear? Chicago Alderman Edward Burke introduced an ordinance last week that would allow museums in the Windy City to possess and display unloaded guns classified as “curios or relics” after learning that the Pritzker Military Library and other city museums are currently banned from including them in exhibits. If passed, the museum’s president and CEO told FoxNews.com it would allow its estimated 15,000 annual visitors to see a significant World War II artifact personally returned stateside from a now-deceased U.S. Army officer. “Alderman Burke heard our story about this and really came to...

SodaStream is an Israeli company which makes a really cool and really popular product, essentially a make your own soda at home device. I plan on getting one. Its U.S. division is SodaStreamUSA.This video shows the SodaStream story of building bridges between Jews and Arabs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl85AL1l0H0Nonetheless, SodaStream has been the subject of a vicious boycott by the anti-Israel BDS movement, that grouping of Islamist, anti-Israel leftists and academics and other fringe players like Code Pink, which seeks to delegitimize Israel. The latest iteration, as you know, was the pressure campaign which succeeded in convincing Stephen Hawking to boycott an Israeli conference.SodaStream...

FULL TITLE - "BREAKING: Boehner on IRS Scandal: My Question Isn’t Who’s Going to Resign, My Question Is Who Is Going to Jail? (Video)" The Republican Leadership team held a press conference this morning. Speaker Boehner led off and finished with this: “In addition to this the IRS has admitted to targeting conservatives. Even if the White House happens to be stuck on the word “if.” Well my question isn’t about who’s going to resign. My question is about who’s going to jail.“ Via America’s Newsroom: [video]

Obama added: "Keep in mind by the way these so-called talking points that were prepared for Susan Rice, five, six days after the event occurred, pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing." The careful parsing of Obama's statement indicates the Administration’s sensitivity to the president’s lackluster attendance record on daily intelligence briefings. As Breitbart News exclusively reported the day after the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack, Obama did not attend his intelligence briefings (known officially as the presidential daily brief, or PDB) for the week leading up to the attacks....

Lois Lerner, the IRS official now at the center of a scandal involving tax agents who selectively targeted conservative groups, is scheduled to receive an award and give the commencement address at Western New England University School of Law. A spokesperson for the school said the university was aware of the controversy, but would still honor Lerner, who directs the agency’s exempt organizations division. “Our plans have not changed at this time,” said David Stawasz, a spokesperson for the university, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Ms. Werner has apologized for the actions of certain IRS employees....

The Associated Press is far from satisfied by the Department of Justice's initial response regarding the government grabbing months of phone records from the wire service. Gary Pruitt, president and CEO of The Associated Press, sent a sternly worded follow-up letter to the Department of Justice today, one which said its attempt at explaining what happened hardly proved reassuring and appeared dubious at face value. "The scope of the subpoena was overbroad under the law, given that it involved seizing records from a broad range of telephones across AP’s newsgathering operation. More than 100 journalists work in the locations served...

On Tuesday, White House Spokesperson Jay Carney claimed that President Barack Obama and other White House officials were unaware that an independent inspector general had been investigating the IRS about whether it targeted conservative groups until they read about it in press reports last Friday, even though the White House general council's office was notified "several weeks ago" about the investigation. When pressed by reporters about how he could "categorically" be so sure that nobody in the White House knew about the IRS's actions before Friday, Carney deflected the questions. He became less steadfast in his defense, saying he had...

Assuming they are the ones who leaked to CNN an email written by Ben Rhoades (a Deputy National Security Advisor close to the President), the White House might have been too clever by half Tuesday. An act that was obviously meant to pour water on the Benghazi fire started by an ABC News report, has only ended up being gasoline. Now both CNN and ABC have joined conservative media in calling for the White House to release all the emails surrounding the editing of the CIA talking points. Friday, in a bombshell report that blew the long-simmering Libya scandal wide...

- Federal government demanded a list of everyone a Tennessee organization had ever trained, or planned to train - Linchpins of Liberty mentors high school and college students and teaches them conservative political philosophy, but is not tea-party-linked - 'Can you imagine my responsibility to parents if I disclosed the names of their children to the IRS?' asked the group's founder - IRS Inspector General report listed seven questions the agency should never have asked, but this wasn't one of them When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and...

The first question for White House spokesman Jay Carney at Tuesday's press briefing went right to the heart of the growing crisis facing President Obama: In the matters of the Benghazi terror attack, the IRS targeting conservative groups, the Justice Department going after AP phone records, “…doesn’t responsibility for setting tone, setting direction ultimately rest with the president?” That question of “where the buck stops” harkens back to another Democrat who occupied the Oval Office some 60 years ago, “Give ‘em Hell” Harry Truman but the answer is as relevant today. Benghazi may not be "Obama's Watergate," as Sen. Lindsay...

So the American Civil Liberties Union, concerned about the US government's alleged propensity to surveil the email of American citizens without a warrant, filed a request with the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act for more information. This is what it got: A memorandum entitled “Guidance for the Minimization of Text Messages over Dual-Function Cellular Telephones” that is completely blacked out. All fifteen pages of it. Mr. President, I don't think "transparent" means what you think it means.

Larry Koler recently wrote an excellent post asking whether or not we are having an intellectual debate with the Left. Of course, they don't want one. I keep thinking that the problem with politics in America is that those who listen to NPR nod their heads to the received knowledge of the cognitive elite. Meanwhile, on the street level, I have found that arguing politics with people is like trying to talk to the Obamaphone woman. I cringe at the idea of making a multi-pointed argument for free markets to Obamaphone woman. But, really, that's what we are up against....

In the first months after the Benghazi attack, the most urgent question, and one only rarely asked, was "What were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton doing during the seven and a half hours between the initial emergency communications from Benghazi and the final American deaths?" A negative answer was provided in February by Leon Panetta: they were not engaging with their subordinates; they were not contacting anyone to discuss options; they were giving no orders for action; they remained entirely uninvolved. We are left to speculate about the positive answer to that question. Were they sleeping? Curled up by the...

The Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury has released its 54-page report on the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The Treasury report does not conclude that the review of certain organizations' tax-exempt status was inappropriate, but rather that the selection criteria used to identify these organizations were wrong. Other important findings include: 70% of applications for tax-exempt status by all organizations of any kind were approved in fiscal year 2010 Over an 18-month period, all applicants with the words "Tea Party" in their names were reviewed; later, "Patriots" and "9/12" were added;...

Barack Hussein Nixon (M.Ryan) ABC News’ Trey Hardin: West Wing Of White House Authorized IRS-Gate Targeting Gee, it wasn’t a local IRS office scandal after all. ABC’s Trey Hardin suggested “with a very strong sense of certainty” that the West Wing of the White House authorized the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Via ORYR: [Video] From the video: Trey Hardin: “I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are...

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Friend of Newt Gingrich? Yes, the Obama IRS actually demanded a California Tea Party group to provide details of a rally with Newt Gingrich. The group was seeking non-profit status. This question was asked of one to a Tea Party groups by the IRS: 29.) Provide details regarding the townhall(sp) planned on February –, 2012 with Newt Gingrich.Unreal. Here’s a copy of the questionnaire: For the record: I have more information on this group. But am holding back since they are afraid to come out with all of the details right...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, there is at this very moment an impromptu press conference going on at the White House with the president and our microphones are there. (BEGIN PARODY) REPORTER: Mr. President, you say the Republicans simply will not cooperate with you. You thought they might after you won your second term. Why exactly won't they help you? OBAMA IMPERSONATOR: It's Rush Limbaugh's fault. Uhhh, Chris? REPORTER: It has been learned that the IRS did indeed target Tea Party and other conservative groups for tax audits and harassment during applications for tax-exempt status. Did you know about...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, it was just yesterday at the fundraiser in Harvey Weinstein's fashionable West Village home in Manhattan. Again, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were in the audience. This morning on Good Morning America, here is portion of Jonathan Karl, the White House correspondent's report about the IRS scandal -- and, lo and behold, I end up being in this report. KARL: That's not good enough for some conservatives, who point to past references the president has made to Tea Party groups. OBAMA: I've been a little amused over the past couple of days where people are having...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Associated Press: The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.” The Obama administration is spying on state-controlled reporters from the Associated Press. Don't they know that the AP would have given him this information if he just asked for it? “The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Wow. I just checked a little bit of the White House press briefing. The spokeskid, Jay Carney, is kind of under the gun. Jessica Yellin of CNN is really having at him on this IRS business. One of the reasons why is that Jay Carney is sitting here talking about the IRS scandal, and he said, "Well, if the IRS reports are true, then the president would be outraged." What do you mean, "if" the IRS reports are true? The IRS has admitted all of this! They've already apologized for it! The IRS has confessed to a...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We're gonna start in Santa Monica, California. This is Nancy. Thank you for calling. Great to have you here. Hi. CALLER: Thank you. Well, I was listening every day, and today I just can't take it anymore. If Obama is complaining that you, Rush, are stopping everything in Washington -- or everything happening that he wants to have happen -- then Obama is not the most powerful man in the Free World. You are. RUSH: Well, I see your point. I actually understand what you're saying. Here's the president of the United States who finds his agenda...

Rush Limbaugh is fast becoming a "relic," "as dated as Jazzercise or 'Macarena'" – or so says CNN regular Dean Obeidallah in a new CNN.com op-ed. Ironically, a CNN contributor is calling someone else irrelevant. But in all seriousness, Obeidallah gloats over Limbaugh's lost ad revenue in the past year and points to his inevitable decline: "Has Limbaugh become as dated as Jazzercise or 'Macarena?' All you need to do is look at the bottom line to see that Limbaugh is in trouble." "Regardless where he turns up, Limbaugh will likely not be as relevant to the national media as...

An AP reporter asked, “The president did use the word 'if these activities had taken place,' but there has been an acknowledgement on the part of the IRS leadership that these things did indeed occur. I wondered why the president used that phrasing in claiming that it was outrageous?" Carney’s response: “Those from the IRS that have spoken about this obviously have much greater insight into what took place than we do. We have not seen the report. We have not independently collected information about what transpired. We need the independent inspector general's report to be released before we can...

Eric Holder just ended a press conference. As previously reported by Fox News: Attorney General Eric Holder is recusing himself from the investigation into leaks made to The Associated Press, Fox News has learned. Also, as CNN reported, Holder previously had recused himself from consideration of issuance of the subpoenas: Attorney General Eric Holder recused himself from the decision to subpoena the phone records of Associated Press reporters, a source told CNN’s Jessica Yellin on Tuesday. The approval fell to Deputy Attorney General James Cole, the source said. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that the White House had...

Full Title - "Carney: White House notified of IRS targeting tea party ‘several weeks ago;’ Obama: I found out Friday [VIDEO]" White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a press conference Tuesday that the White House was notified about the IRS targeting tea party groups “several weeks ago.” This comes a day after President Obama said he found out about it from news reports on Friday of last week. During a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday, President Obama was asked about the IRS scandal. He responded, ”I first learned about it from the same...

The Liberty Township Tea Party was one of several Tea Party groups in Ohio who were harassed by the IRS in the lead-up to the 2012 elections. The group recently released the extensive list of the questions sent to them by the IRS. Ohio patriot Carol Greenberg sent in this information. As many of you know, the IRS issued an apology for targeting “tea party� and “patriot� groups. We within the Liberty Township Tea Party are painfully aware of these intrusive actions. Click this link and download a PDF to see the type of questions that were demanded of us...

Hey, liberals! Obama thinks you are stupid. Yeah, he really does. He knew Benghazi was terrorism before he didn't know it was terrorism. Addressing a question about Benghazi in his press conference Monday, May 13, 2013, Obama's "logic" really made an impression: "The Day after it happened I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism." "What we have been very clear about throughout, was that immediately after this event had happened we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were. It happened at the same time we had seen attacks...

On top of everything else, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced on Monday that it will probe Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' efforts to shake insurance companies down for cash, to help "educate" the public about the ObamaCare disaster it hates. That would be the same ObamaCare that will employ the corrupt Internal Revenue Service as enforcers. What else does anyone need to know about it?

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) told Breitbart News he thinks Attorney General Eric Holder needs a refresher course on the U.S. Constitution in the wake of reports that the Department of Justice secretly obtained two months of the Associated Press's phone records. Gosar expressed concerns that President Barack Obama’s “enemies list” continues to grow, especially in light of revelations that the IRS targeted conservative and Tea Party organizations. “On one hand, I am encouraged to hear that the Attorney General obtained warrants first. Score one for the Fourth Amendment,” Gosar said in an email. “But I remain concerned about the First...

How long ago is seems now.Bob Woodward complained in February about heavy handed administration treatment after Woodward reported that Obama was untruthful about who came up with the idea of the Sequester:http://www.youtube.com/embed/FdfHEdeCC0QThe reaction from the left media in particular was savagery, belittling Woodward, making is seem as if the words used by the White House “you will regret� were blown out of proportion by a self-aggrandizing Woodward: Wow, looks like Woodward is going the full David Mamet/Judy Miller combo.This is gonna be fun to watch— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 28, 2013 Kevin Drum at Mother Jones exclaimed, Seriously, WTF Is...

President Barack Obama says he wants to “see if we can institutionalize” in Washington the community spirit that sometimes emerges after a terror attack or an industrial explosion. The president made the comments during a fund-raising trip to New York, shortly after leaving Washington, D.C. in an uproar over an explosion of scandals, including last week’s revelations of politically motivated IRS investigations and the White House’s editing of reports on the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Shortly after Obama flew north, D.C. was rocked by another political explosion when the Associated Press said the Justice Department obtained two months...

Let’s talk. Let’s talk talk radio. Specifically, let’s talk Cumulus Media and all those stories like this one about Cumulus being unhappy with Rush Limbaugh. You know what the Big Story is here? For once, this is a Big Story in talk radio that really isn’t about Rush Limbaugh at all. And the same Big Story isn’t about Sean Hannity either, although Hannity’s name has been thrown into the mix. The Big Story here is this: What in the world is going on at Cumulus Media? What’s with this very, very discernible pattern that should be obvious as the sun...

For starters, to set back human progress. You would think the Left would love a country that has universal health care, prosperous trade unions, and same sex marriage. All of these things can be found in Israel. Yet where Israel is concerned, none of these count with the Left. -------------------------- Well, if not for Israeli science and technology, Stephen Hawking could not communicate with the world. As Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli attorney, stated, “His whole computer-based communications system runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should...

Earlier this month, the Church of Scotland issued a report titled "The Inheritance of Abraham? A Report on the 'Promised Land.'" The essence of the report is that according to the Bible, Jews have no more attachment to the land of Israel than anyone else. Hence "promised land" is in quotation marks in the report's title -- because there is no promised land. In the report's words: "The New Testament contains a radical re-interpretation of the concepts of 'Israel,' 'temple,' 'Jerusalem' and 'land.' When the Bible mentions 'Israel,' it does not mean Israel; when it says 'temple,' the Bible does...

Make no mistake: Benghazi is a major scandal. Benghazi is a scandal before, during and after the terrorist attack that left four Americas dead, including an ambassador. For months before, there were warnings about weak security at the U.S. Consulate in Libya; no one paid attention. During the attack, when Americans were begging for help, the White House ignored their pleas, sent no help. And after? That's when the Obama scandal falls into the predictable second-term pattern his predecessors all learned the very hard way. Faced with a crisis, the Obama White House panicked. "We can't have a terrorist strike...

Despite suffering the most humiliating rejection of his presidency, President Obama and the liberal establishment are determined to revive their failed gun control scheme. That’s a good thing. The Republicans should remember Napoleon’s warning that you should never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. This mistake will cost the Democrats dearly in 2014. We need to understand that the motivation behind the gun grabbing campaign has always been more than just naked political calculation. Certainly, liberals think it will help motivate their base and maybe shore up the squishy suburban mom demographic for 2014, but this is...

My name is Nicholas Buford. I'm a 19-year-old black Republican from Georgia. I currently attend Valdosta State University, where I have just wrapped up my freshman year, attempting to major in political science. I serve as the senator of the freshman class of Valdosta. I am the first black Republican in my family of very religious, conservative Democrats. No one in my family had ever been politically active before, but I have loved politics since I was 13 years old. After the election in 2008, I decided to find out the values of the two political parties. I came to...

The Foundation for Individual Rights In Higher Education (FIRE) is the premier non-partisan organization fighting to protect free speech and other constitutional rights on campus.  The FIRE defends everyone’s rights, regardless of political affiliation.We have cited The FIRE numerous times here and at College Insurrection, and they have submitted a few guests posts on campus issues.The FIRE is not an organization prone to hyperbole.So when I received this email late this afternoon from FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley, it got my attention: THIS. IS. OUTRAGEOUS. The government has mandated speech codes on all campuses. I hoped I would never see this day, but...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Earlier this week... Is this Thursday already? It is. We had news earlier this week -- in fact, it might have been yesterday; if not yesterday, the day before -- about the falling numbers of gun deaths and gun crimes. I think it was yesterday. It's striking. The amount of murders with guns since the mid-1990s is plummeting. I think they're down 39%, and overall crimes with guns are down 69%. This is the LA Times, by the way. The story was the American people don't know this. The American people think that crime with guns is...

Driving along at 35 MPH on a 2-lane avenue around 10 PM, a single headlight appeared in my car's path. I swerved onto a side street, shaken and uncomprehending. Leering down at me, astride a high tech bike, I could see in the light of the street lamp the person responsible for the near-miss. I rolled down the window and said -- remaining surprisingly noncombative -- "Hey man, I barely missed hitting you. You could have been killed." Expecting a thank you or an apology, instead I was the victim of an insane tirade, to the effect: "Hey buddy, you...

In last night’s Athletics-Indians game, the A’s trailed by one run with two outs in the ninth inning. Up came shortstop Adam Rosales to face Indians closer Chris Perez. On a 1-1 pitch, Rosales blasted a 93 mile per hour fastball to left center field for a game tying home run. Only the umps didn’t see it that way. They ruled the ball had hit the outfield wall, giving Rosales a double. After a brief protest from A’s manager Bob Melvin, the umpire crew headed for the replay room to make sure of their call. Replays definitively showed the ball...