Free Republic

Delaware state officials have told Congress that they likely destroyed the computer records that would show when and how often they accessed Christine O’Donnell’s personal tax records and acknowledged that a newspaper article was used as the sole justification for snooping into the former GOP Senate candidate’s tax history. The revelations to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office came Tuesday as the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, the government’s chief watchdog for the Internal Revenue Service, formally reopened its investigation into the matter by re-interviewing Ms. O’Donnell. “It is an active investigation now,” Ms. O’Donnell told The Washington Times after...

Christine O'Donnell, the former U.S. Senate candidate from Delaware, told the Wilmington News Journal in an interview this weekend that she is considering running again in 2014 to challenge incumbent Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

Obama-appointed IRS Chief Counsel is sued. IRS targeted Christine O’Donnell. So. Buckle in. True the Vote, the Tea Party-style group targeted by Internal Revenue Service officials who are now at the very heart of the IRS scandal, is suing William Wilkins. That would be the William Wilkins who is the IRS Chief Counsel. True the Vote, “the nation’s leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization,” is announcing today that it is adding Wilkins — one of only two Obama political appointees to the IRS — to its federal lawsuit against the IRS. The group is also adding five other ranking...

Christine O’Donnell is considering a new bid for the Senate. The conservative activist who rode a tea party wave to victory in a Delaware special election primary four years ago is interested in challenging Sen. Chris Coons (D) in 2014, the Wilmington News Journal reports. O’Donnell would have difficulty winning over skeptics in the Delaware GOP, many of whom see her as a liability. After beating moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle in the 2010 primary, O’Donnell lost in a landslide to Coons amid a series of missteps and damaging revelations about her past.

The director of Delaware’s tax-collection office said Friday that his agency accessed the federal tax records in 2010 of an unnamed taxpayer, believed to be former GOP Senate candidate Christine O´Donnell. Patrick Carter, director of the state’s division of revenue, would not identify Ms. O´Donnell as the taxpayer but said he approved the inquiry “for routine purposes.” “A state Division of Revenue investigator accessed records on or after March 20, 2010 following information that came to the attention of the division,” Mr. Carter said in a statement. “The record access led the state revenue investigator

More than two years after her upstart Senate campaign rocked the Delaware political world, Christine O'Donnell got an unexpected contact from a U.S. Treasury Department agent warning that her private tax records may have been breached. The phone message earlier this year shocked the battled-scarred candidate, a tea party favorite who knocked off Republican mainstay Michael Castle in the primary before losing in a bid to win Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s former seat. “Ms. O'Donnell, this is Dennis Martel, special agent with the U.S. Department of Treasury in Baltimore, Md. … We received information that your personal federal tax...

It may turn out that within the IRS abuse of Tea Party, conservative, Jewish and other groups was another layer of abuse: women. Catherine Engelbrecht so far has the most harrowing story to tell, of abuse by multiple executive branch agencies after she founded the grassroots election security watchdog True the Vote. Now former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is naming names, saying that her tax information was compromised the very day she announced her Senate candidacy. That same day, the IRS slapped a lien on a house that it believed she owned, only to withdraw that lien when...

More than two years after her upstart Senate campaign rocked the Delaware political world, Christine O'Donnell got an unexpected contact from a U.S. Treasury Department agent warning that her private tax records may have been breached. The phone message earlier this year shocked the battled-scarred candidate, a tea party favorite who knocked off Republican mainstay Michael Castle in the primary before losing in a bid to win Vice President Joseph R. Biden's former seat. "Ms. O'Donnell, this is Dennis Martel, special agent with the U.S. Department of Treasury in Baltimore, Md. ... We received information that your personal federal tax...

State officials can access IRS computer systems through a “back door” intended to allow for better communication in investigations, but with so little accountability that the process can easily be abused for political purposes. That appears to have happened already — and the target was a Tea Party candidate for Senate. According to the Washington Times, an official in state government illegally accessed Christine O’Donnell’s tax records on the day she announced her candidacy — and the same day the IRS slapped an erroneous tax lien on a property O’Donnell no longer owned: On March 9, 2010, the day she...

More than two years after her upstart Senate campaign rocked the Delaware political world, Christine O’Donnell got an unexpected contact from a U.S. Treasury Department agent warning that her private tax records may have been breached. The phone message earlier this year shocked the battled-scarred candidate, a tea party favorite who knocked off Republican mainstay Michael Castle in the primary before losing in a bid to win Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s former seat. “Ms. O’Donnell, this is Dennis Martel, special agent with the U.S. Department of Treasury in Baltimore, Md. … We received information that your personal federal tax...

Americans love to watch public figures eviscerated publicly. Progressives love to bash conservatives. And the media will go out of their way to cripple conservative candidates (even if it means missing wildly and making an ass out of themselves, i.e., Wolf Blitzer and Marco Rubio’s water bottle). But progressives, the media and the American public will eventually cease their assault, if for no other reason than the story gets old and the appetite for schadenfreude eventually wanes. For over two years now, center-right political professionals — from Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove down to local GOP pols — have trashed...

            Karl Rove should aim his artillery out there at liberals, not point his guns inside the fort.  Karl Rove’s “American Crossroads” Super-PAC announced plans to attack challengers to establishment GOP incumbents.   Yet Karl Rove’s strategies in the Bush Administration cost Republicans Congress in 2006 and probably the Presidency in 2008.                 Ironically, American Crossroads also just released a brilliant pre-emptive campaign adagainst Ashley Judd.  Judd is considering using her celebrity to run as a Democrat challenger to Mitch McConnell.  GOP insiders do know how to fight the good fight against Democrats.  The contrast reveals the missed opportunities of...

Republican insiders want to force Republican voters to choose more “electable” nominees than examples like Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, so Karl Rove launched the American Crossroads super PAC to counteract the tea party. Undeniably, better candidates are better and worse candidates are worse. Unfortunately, that meaningless platitude illustrates the problem. GOP elites have no idea who is going to win an election, and there are several reasons I say that. First, the establishment wants fiscal conservatives who downplay social issues. But drunken sailors are more restrained with money than establishment Republicans, the tea party complains. The trouble...

Delaware election results just dropped a nuclear bomb on political theories among Republican moderates and liberals. In 2010, Christine O’Donnell got 40% of Delaware’s heavily-skewed Democrat electorate for US Senate, despite nasty civil war within the Republican party nationwide and in Delaware. No, this is not about her. This is about YOUR understanding of how elections work and what is going on politically in Delaware. In 2012, even Republican Mitt Romney only equaled in Delaware Christine O’Donnell’s vote — both at 40%. How do all the “haters explain how Mitt Romney did no better in Delaware than Christine O’Donnell did...

Much of what is happening in the Delaware Republican Party is driven by two sharply-conflicting strategies for how to win elections. In a Democrat-dominated State with 297,112 registered Democrats (47.4%), 180,542 registered Republicans (28.8%) and 148,695 registered “Other” (23.7%), how can a Republican win? STRATEGY # 1 (the Echo Strategy): For a Republican to win (other than in a GOP dominated R.D. or if no serious Democrat is running) the Republican nominee must be similar to a Democrat. If the voters like Democrats, then the Republican must also be just like a Democrat. STRATEGY #2 (the Difference Strategy): To attract...

Over the last few days, since Romney clinched the GOP nomination for President by going over the 1,144 committed delegates needed with his win in the Texas Primary on Tuesday, May 29, 2012, a number of new endorsements have come in for Romney's bid for the Presidency. These include George Shultz, former Secretary of State; Condoliza Rice, former Secretrary of State and National Security Advisor; Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate; and Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan. Here's what each of them had to say on the date they endorsed Romney: NANCY REAGAN endorses Mitt...

In March of 2011, former Rep. John Leboutiller predicted in a News Max article that, “the tea party will select the 2012 GOP nominee.” At the time, it was a safe prediction given the strength of the tea-party movement in the 2010 elections and the influence it was expected to have on the GOP presidential primaries just over a year later. But something went terribly wrong in the meantime. Many politicians heavily supported by the tea-party movement seem to have switched sides, pursuing their own agenda at the expense of the conservative movement and the tea party. Take Christine O’Donnell,...

In March of 2011, former Rep. John Leboutiller predicted in a News Max article that, “the tea party will select the 2012 GOP nominee.” At the time, it was a safe prediction given the strength of the tea-party movement in the 2010 elections and the influence it was expected to have on the GOP presidential primaries just over a year later. But something went terribly wrong in the meantime. Many politicians heavily supported by the tea-party movement seem to have switched sides, pursuing their own agenda at the expense of the conservative movement and the tea party. Take Christine O’Donnell,...

Obama’s Lie du Jour: There is nothing he can do, other than drill, to lower gas prices – LIE! by Christine O’Donnell on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 at 3:11p If I were a betting woman, I’d make the following bet with President Obama – and if any Dem takes the wager, I’ll become a betting woman! In a childish, unpresidential tone, President Obama mocked Republicans saying we have a three point plan for bringing down gas prices; drill, drill, drill. I’m challenging Pres. Obama or Any Democrat with the guts to take this wager… If I can come up with...

Mitt Romney rolled out coordinated endorsements by tea party leaders Christine O'Donnell and Nikki Haley (Governor of South Carolina) and Ann Coulter in about the same week, just when Newt Gingrich was ahead of everyone nationwide in the Presidential Republican primary race. Yes, the endorsements did make a huge difference, because they crowded out attention for Newt Gingrich just at the moment (intentionally planned, no doubt) that Newt Gingrich was surging ahead of all the other GOP candidates. Whether or not anyone will vote as Christine O'Donnell recommends, the story "stepped on" Newt's best week in public relations term, crowding...