Free Republic

Letters from the IRS to tea party-related organizations in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, New Mexico show that IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and two satellite offices in California, were directly involved with sending harassing letters to conservative organizations that sought tax-exempt status. The IRS has acknowledged only the involvement of its Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati, Ohio, which typically makes most decisions about granting or denying tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations. And Wednesday afternoon, CNN cited a congressional source in reporting that the acting IRS Commissioner – whom President Obama fired later in the day – had identified two 'rogue'...

How might you feel if you had performed, with your bosses’ permission and direction, a project that they later blamed on you and publicly denounced as a rogue operation? That’s the situation in which some employees of the Cincinnati’s IRS office find themselves. The IRS and the Obama administration have repeatedly said that low-level, “rogue” employees in Cincinnati were to blame for the agency’s inappropriate targeting of conservative groups, despite an array of evidence to the contrary. As a result, those Cincinnati employees are understandably miffed. Several IRS employees in the Cincinnati field office acknowledge in recent interviews with the...

TITLE:Documents: IRS letters harassing conservative groups came from Washington, DC headquarters and from California offices, despite Inspector General's focus on Cincinnati employees Tax agency has admitted targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for special, politically motivated scrutiny IRS inspector general focused on wrongdoing in Cincinnati, Ohio office and ignored abusive letters coming from other cities MailOnline found letters from IRS's Washington, D.C. headquarters, and from IRS offices in two southern California cities The American Center on Law and Justice is threatening to sue the IRS if 27 tea party groups aren't granted tax-exempt statuses by Friday Letters from...

Oliver Friedfeld, a senior at Georgetown University (GU) and his roommate were recently mugged at gun point -- but Frieldfeld says he deserved it because of his "privilege." In an oped for the GU newspaper, The Hoya, Friedfeld wrote that he "can hardly blame" the assailants for robbing him. He argued that income inequality is to blame for the incident. "Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education, to condemn these young men as ‘thugs?’ It’s precisely this kind of ‘otherization’ that fuels the problem," Friedfeld wrote.

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/read-darren-wilsons-full-grand-jury-testimony/1472/?hpid=z2 This is from the Post.

I’m pretty sure that Iowa Congressman Steve King thought that his detractors would give it a rest for a while after he defeated his Democrat opponent by 24 points earlier this month.  Yet once again headlines like, “Stay away from Steve King,” have been published this week.  This time it’s not the liberals who are ranting and raving about King, its nameless “Republican insiders” and a conservative blogger from the Washington Post. On Tuesday, King announced that he is partnering with Citizens United to put on a 2016 presidential forum in Des Moines on January 24th called the Iowa Freedom...

(with video) Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson had a heated argument on Ferugson on Sunday's broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press. Giuliani confronted Dyson over the fact that blacks don't have mass protests when blacks kill other blacks. "But the fact is, I find it very disappointing that you're not discussing the fact that 93% of blacks in America are killed by other blacks," Giuliani said to Dyson.

A federal judge is weighing a request to hold the District in contempt of court for enacting new gun laws that are so restrictive as to be out of compliance with his order to allow for firearms to be carried publicly in the city. During a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. asked the city and the plaintiffs fighting the regulations for additional filings on whether the city should be considered in contempt of his order that officials develop a licensing scheme “consistent with constitutional standards enabling people to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.”

Howeird Dean-- once chair of the DNC, once Governor of Vermont, who grew up at the Maidstone Golf Club in the Hamptons, attended prep school both in the US and in the UK, went to Yale, dodged the draft-- is having a meltdown again.Once famous for melting down on the air after coming in third in the Iowa caucuses, thereby ensuring he won nothing else, Dean is complaining that Obamacare was written by a bunch of elitists who don’t understand Americans.Well, duh: They’re Democrats. “The core problem under this damn law is that it was put together by a bunch...

The Obamacare architect that dares not speak its name. At least from the lips of Democrats who nowadays are pretending to have little or no knowledge of Jonathan Gruber. The most prominent of the Gruber denialists is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi quoted by Washington Post reporter Sean Sullivan whose story headline also featured this denial: "I don't know who he is. He didn't help write our bill." Gee. If Nancy Pelosi said that then it must be true! If you think me a bit too credulous for accepting Pelosi denial without checking her veracity, well that is exactly what...

NEW YORK (AP) — Voters in Oregon and the District of Columbia approved ballot measures Tuesday allowing the use of marijuana by adults, elating legalization activists who hope to extend their winning streak across the country. Oregon will join the company of Colorado and Washington state, where voters approved the recreational use of pot two years ago. And the District of Columbia is on the same path unless Congress, which has review power, blocks the move. Still to come were results from Alaska, which also had a marijuana-legalization measure on its ballot Tuesday. Other volatile issues on state ballots include...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Liberal MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams said the “old white people” in the South who vote Republican are “going to die someday” and hopefully usher in a new era of Democratic rule in the region. Host Krystal Ball, a former failed Democratic congressional candidate, asked Williams whether white Southerners should just be written off by the party, but Williams said never, saying that since they are “for people” and Republicans aren’t, they would eventually win the day. “Mitt Romney only won South Carolina with 53 [percent], John McCain with 52,” he said. “That’s a changing South. Those old white people? They’re...

Last week a voting machine in Cook County, Illinois switched votes for Republicans to votes for Democrats. Election officials blamed a "calibration error" for the change. Now, the same thing is happening in Maryland and again officials are citing a "calibration error." More from Watchdog.org: Voting machines that switch Republican votes to Democrats are being reported in Maryland. “When I first selected my candidate on the electronic machine, it would not put the ‘x’ on the candidate I chose — a Republican — but it would put the ‘x’ on the Democrat candidate above it,” Donna Hamilton said. “This happened...

The top deputy to Attorney General Eric Holder announced his resignation on Thursday amid revelations that Operation Fast and Furious scandal guns were used to harm Americans in Phoenix in 2013, a development top congressional Republicans say President Obama’s administration sought to cover up. ... Holder, the attorney general, has failed to cooperate with the Fast and Furious congressional investigation led by Issa and Grassley. Holder was voted, on a bipartisan basis, into both criminal and civil contempt of Congress—a first in the history of the United States for a Cabinet-level official—after he failed to provide documents to Issa’s committee...

(CNSNews.com) – Power plants generating 72 gigawatts (GW) of electricity in 37 states have either closed or are scheduled to shut their doors to comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, according to the Institute for Energy Research (IER). The loss of generating capacity is “over seven times the amount originally predicted by EPA modeling,” IER’s updated report, released October 7, noted. “Originally, EPA calculated that only 9.5 GW of electrical generating capacity would close as a result of its MATS (Mercury and Air Toxics Standard) and CSAPR (Cross State Air Pollution Rule) rules,” the report stated. “Before President Obama’s...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Kremlin-backed Russia Today news network has rolled out a provocative ad campaign that takes a sharp poke at U.S. media and the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The pitch is aimed at convincing Americans of the merits of Russia Today - or RT - as an alternate news source to U.S. networks. Featuring a stylized image of former U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations, one ad reads: "This is what happens when there is no second opinion. Iraq War: No WMDs. 141, 802 civilian deaths." The campaign includes two other...

Two Washington area hospitals said within hours of each other Friday that they had each admitted a patient with symptoms and travel histories associated with Ebola. A person who had recently traveled to Nigeria came to Howard University Hospital in the District overnight "presenting symptoms that could be associated with Ebola," spokeswoman Kerry-Ann Hamilton said in a statement. "In an abundance of caution, we have activated the appropriate infection control protocols, including isolating the patient," she said. "Our medical team continues to evaluate and monitor progress in close collaboration with the CDC and the Department of Health." Just hours later,...

Post your conditions or noticable behavior of your city officials here. Little Rock-

Between 1989 and 2010, Congress rejected nearly 700 cap-tax-and-trade and similar bills that their proponents claimed would control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate and weather. So even as real world crises erupt, President Obama is using executive fiats and regulations to impose his anti-hydrocarbon agenda, slash America’s fossil fuel use, bankrupt coal and utility companies, make electricity prices skyrocket, and “fundamentally transform” our economic, social, legal and constitutional system. Citing climate concerns, he has refused to permit construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and blocked or delayed Alaskan, western state and offshore oil and gas leasing and drilling. He’s proud that...

You know, being a fan of the Minnesota Vikings is difficult enough just based on what happens on the field. We’re 0-4 in Super Bowls. We’ve got to deal with the stomach-curdling memories of the 1999 NFC Championship Game, not to mention 41-doughnut in the same game two years later, and the bounty-hunting Saints putting out a contract on Brett Favre in 2010. But on a cultural level . . . hey, what the heck did we do? We were just sitting here minding our own business. First we got stuck with a petulant, attention-mongering punter who couldn’t and can’t...