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One of the dumbest moves made by Lois Lerner (and those above her who presumably approved her strategy to deflect blame) was blaming her subordinates in Cincinnati as "rogue agents" who launched the anti-tea party jihad the IRS has been carrying on ever since the 2010 midterm elections threatened the Obama agenda. She may have expected they would remain quiet and accept their role as scapegoats. Perhaps that is how she has operated before in the vast federal bureaucracy, using the threat of poor performance evaluations and truncated career advancement to intimidate subordinates into remaining quiet and covering her rear...

A Cincinnati-based Internal Revenue Service employee is pushing back against claims by Lois Lerner and other top IRS officials that the agency’s Cincinnati office was responsible for the the targeting of tea-party groups and the botched processing of their applications for tax exemption. Elizabeth Hofacre, who coordinated ”emerging issues” cases for the IRS and handled all tea-party applications between April and August 2010, called Lerner’s May 10 disclosure of the scandal at a tax-law conference ”a nuclear strike” on Cincinnati employees. Hofacre told House Oversight Committee investigators in an interview, the transcript of which has been reviewed by National Review...

Rep. Elijah Cummings has yet to reveal the name of the “conservative Republican” IRS agent he claims started the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups, despite evidence that the targeting was overseen by a registered Democrat working out of Washington, D.C. Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland and the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, claimed this week that an unnamed Republican manager in the IRS’s Cincinnati office started the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, and that “the case is solved” with no evidence of White House wrongdoing. Cummings claimed in a letter to Republican Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa,...

Elizabeth Hofacre has turned out to be a gold mine to investigators of political corruption at the IRS. The Cincinnati-office specialist didn’t take kindly to having the entire mess dumped on the shoulders of her colleagues and herself, and has made it plain in depositions that this was no low-level innovation. The Hill became the latest media outlet to peruse the transcripts, and added a little more to the growing public record of the targeting effort’s genesis in Washington rather than Cincinnati: An IRS staffer in Cincinnati told congressional investigators that a Washington official was the driving force behind the...

An IRS agent in the embattled Cincinnati office is lashing out at the agency's managers for pinning the blame on them for the targeting of conservative groups, describing one official's attempt to pass the blame as a "nuclear strike on us." According to transcripts of interviews that House investigators conducted with two Cincinnati office employees and which Fox News reviewed, agent Elizabeth Hofacre claimed that the idea this program was the work of two rogue agents is "absurd." She said that when Lois Lerner, the high-level official who oversaw the Cincinnati unit and is now on leave over the scandal,...

ItÂ’s commencement season. College seniors across the country are donning mortarboards, getting misty-eyed and preparing to face the realities of President Barack ObamaÂ’s sparkling economic recovery. The Daily Caller is a little misty-eyed, too, because college students will soon disperse from campuses for a long summer, which likely means far fewer stories about stupid and otherwise outrageous occurrences on campus. The time is right, then, to celebrate the academic year that was. Here are the 20 stupidest, most outrageous and most cringe-worthy campus moments of 2012-13. Florida Atlantic University: Worst university in AmericaWhat an embarrassing year for Florida Atlantic. The...

From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, according to both IRS sources and the inspector general’s report released in mid May. Officials in the Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office played an integral role in determining how the targeted applications were treated, provided general guidelines to Cincinnati case workers, briefed other agency employees on the status of the special cases, and reviewed all those intrusive requests demanding “more information” from tea-party groups. At times, the Technical Unit lawyers seemed to...

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling apart. The six Cincinnati workers we have identified, who sent scrutinizing letters to conservative groups with words including "patriot, liberty, tea party or 9-12" in their names are Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr, Stephen Seok, Liz Hofacre and a woman identified only as Ms. Richards. But was all of this done at the hands of a small group of Cincinnati employees working together? During Friday's congressional hearing, that appeared to be the theme. Now, that explanation just became less likely....

Monday afternoon, ABC News released a chilling report that details what journalists have faced while trying to get some answers from the Cincinnati IRS office, which is where a majority of the Tea Party targeting took place. According to ABC, an "armed uniform police officer with the Federal Protective Service" "escorted" reporters through the public building. ABC says if the intent wasn't to "scare off" employees who might talk, "it was the effect."

New defenses and distractions in the IRS scandal are going to come rolling out from the administration and its defenders like water off a duck's back. One ploy is evident in this sympathetic story from Friday's Washington Post seeking to portray the IRS Determinations Unit as a just a group of nice, non-partisan number-crunchers: The [determinations] staff member [in Cincinnati], who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through...

A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue ServiceÂ’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agencyÂ’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agencyÂ’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents. The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters: As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, donÂ’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume theyÂ’re engaged in partisan...

"Can you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort, but that they didn't intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?"

(CNN) -- Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steven Miller has said his agency has pinpointed two "rogue" employees in the agency's Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for "overly aggressive" handling of Tea Party requests for tax-exempt status over the past two years, a congressional source told CNN on Wednesday.

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) -FOX19 has exclusively learned that as many as four people may be the first Cincinnati Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees to face disciplinary action, and possibly even criminal charges, for allegedly targeting Tea Party and Liberty groups applying for non-profit status.

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - FOX19 has exclusively learned that as many as four people may be the first Cincinnati Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees to face disciplinary action, and possibly even criminal charges, for allegedly targeting Tea Party and Liberty groups applying for non-profit status. On Wednesday, the IRS announced that it has pin-pointed two employees at the agency's Cincinnati office for being 'primarily' responsible. In addition, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller resigned his position, revealed by President Obama on Wednesday. "Secretary Lew took the first step by requesting and accepting the resignation of the acting commissioner of the IRS,...

To understand the moral context of the IRS' admission that it improperly targeted conservative Tea Party and Patriot nonprofits during the 2012 presidential campaign, it helps to know that Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have something in common besides twice being elected to the Oval Office: All three appear to have been quite willing to use the most intrusive powers of the federal government against their political opposition. Nixon was especially craven about it. He made clear to aides that they were to use the IRS against Democratic nominee George McGovern, senior members of McGovern's campaign staff and...

Burying the dead is a work of mercy. So, too, is voting for them, according to Sister Marguerite Kloos. Or at least that’s what she thought last year until Ohio investigators nabbed her for an act of voter fraud. This week she plead guilty to the charge of voting twice, acknowledging that she forged the signature of a deceased nun, Sister Rose Marie Hewitt, on an absentee ballot.“When the absentee ballot was received at Ms. Hewitt’s address, (Kloos) opened the envelope, forged Ms. Hewitt’s signature, voted Ms. Hewitt’s ballot, and mailed the ballot back to the Board of Elections,” according...

The Hamilton County Prosecutor announced charges of voter fraud against three people. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said he was pursuing charges against Russell Glassop, 75, Melowese Richardson, 59, and Sister Marguerite Kloos, 54. A grand jury indicted Glassop and Kloos for one count of illegal voting each, a felony. Glassop and Kloos could face up to 18 months in prison if convicted. The grand jury indicted Richardson on eight counts of illegal voting. If convicted, she faces up to 12 years in prison. …

Organizers say they know the gun collections are just a drop into the bucket but they're hoping to save lives. "People who are coming out are people who realize we're not trying take away their 2nd amendment. We're just trying to make it safe for our children and grandchildren who to live at home with grandparents... Or documented or registered the right way." Also in front of the church were people offering to buy the guns off of people before they reached the buyback event. No word if anyone sold their guns. The guns turned into the buyback will be...

The Cincinnati Enquirer (http://cin.ci/W41mWY ) reports that a federally licensed gun dealer showed up to provide some competition. He bought a dozen weapons for $40 to $100 by standing outside the church with a sign that read "Cash 4 Guns."