Free Republic

There were multiple reported sightings of agents with the Department of Homeland Security at several Tea Party-led IRS protests in states like Missouri, Florida, Illinois and Indiana. The rallies that occurred across the country on Tuesday were sparked by the IRS’ unfair targeting of conservative groups — one of the several scandals the Obama administration is dealing with. What is unclear though is why federal officials felt the Tea Party presence required more than the attention of local law enforcement. These photos, one showing “armed” DHS guards, were reportedly taken at the St. Louis IRS protest:

Early returns showed Portland residents voting to keep their city the largest in the U.S. without fluoride in the water. With more than half the expected ballots counted Tuesday night, the Multnomah County election website showed the fluoride proposal failing, 60 percent to 40 percent. Voters in Portland twice rejected fluoridation before approving it in 1978. That plan was overturned two years later, before any fluoride was ever added to the water. The City Council voted last year to add fluoride to the water supply that serves about 900,000 people. But opponents quickly gathered enough signatures to force a vote...

But here’s why you should care — and why this case, along with the administration’s broad snooping into Associated Press phone records, is more serious than the other supposed Obama administration scandals regarding Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service. The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of...

President Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Jack Lew, the current treasury secretary, said today at a Capitol Hill hearing that he was aware "questions had been raised" about the IRS when he was at the White House:

Snip: We have been importing jihadists for years now with Muslim immigration programs under the Refugee Resettlement program, diversity visas and religious visas. The Refugee Council USA says: “The U.S. has historically maintained a policy of admitting refugees of special humanitarian concern into the country.” Yet what that means in practice is very different from what most Americans would expect. It’s always a shock to people when they first find out how Refugee Resettlement works. Instead of giving refuge to the religious minorities that are persecuted, oppressed and subjugated under the Shariah, we are opening the floodgates to Islamic supremacists...

Well, you know how it is. When a reporter misbehaves, an administration sometimes has to call his parents…or, just seize their phone logs. Bret Baier revealed Tuesday that, according to Department of Justice documents, one of the numbers listed in DOJ’s demands “also relate to James’ parents’ home in Staten Island.” I can’t yet find a Fox follow-up story on the revelation, but the Staten Island area code, 718, shows up twice in DOJ’s filing in the Stephen Jin-Woo Kim case. The documents are posted here by the New Yorker.Here is the “Special Report” panel discussion that ends with Baier’s...

All Democrats on the committee, along with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and gang of eight Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), voted in favor of the bill, which will now go to the Senate floor. The crowd in the room erupted into applause when the final vote tally was read, rising to their feet and chanting "Yes we can!" then "Si se puede!"

"Some people dislike gays. Others dislike guns. We should not base our laws on personal dislikes," reads one adA new campaign cropping up around Washington state is intended to strike a chord with gay and lesbian gun owners by comparing gun control to anti-LGBT discrimination.The illustrated posters feature slogans like, “We won our right to marry, now it’s time to defend our right! And we sure as hell aren’t going to take shit from homophobes in the process!� and, “Some people dislike gays. Others dislike guns. We should not base our laws on personal dislikes.�A QR code on the ads...

Struggling with a reporter about which Republican concerns are and are not legitimate, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that if reporters are going to ask about every issue, they should include President Obama’s birth certificate. Carney was defending senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer, who on Sunday described the scandals Obama is dealing with as “partisan fishing expeditions.”

National Public Radio reporter Ari Shapiro reports that liberal pundits were seen entering the West Wing:

For weeks Obama has made the "claim" that no one 'Told' him or spoke with him about the three major scandals surrounding Obama's Team the past few weeks in 2013, Electronic communication including blackberry, IMs, Emails etc have accounted for 90% of when someone might be TOLD the MSM editors allow OBAMA to fade the word spoke or told without explaining what these words mean...its similar to Clintons "what is is " ? Obama is using words to skirt awareness and he needs to held to questions about IMs and Blackberry...how does valarie jarret communicate with him, how does white...

Welcome to PennLive's real time ward-by-ward, precinct-by-precinct coverage of Harrisburg's Democratic Mayoral primary. As the votes are counted, we will update the color-coded map indicating which candidate received the most votes where: incumbent Mayor Linda Thompson, in green; City Controller Dan Miller, in blue; businessman Eric Papenfuse, in yellow; and resident Lewis Butts, in red. The bar chart will keep track of the total vote count. You can join the fun on Twitter.

Can’t do better than Popehat’s wry take:*********************************TWEET***********************Popehat @Popehat ******************************Top IRS official will invoke 5th Amendment WASHINGTON — A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper... Los Angeles Times @latimes IRS Official to Reaffirm Importance of Constitutional Rights In Response To Congressional Inquiry http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-top-irs-official-fifth-amendment-20130521,0,6645565.story … 3:38 PM - 21 May 2013 Hey, remember when Steve Miller insisted there’s nothing illegal about the IRS targeting a particular political faction for extra scrutiny? He was wrong, potentially: There are civil-rights laws in play as...

“Benghazi is a laughable joke,” Dean proclaimed twice in a discussion with Republican National Committee communications chairman Sean Spicer last week. “With all due respect, governor, when four Americans die serving this country, that’s not a joke, sir,” Spicer responded. “Oh, stop it,” said Dean.

An outspoken and provocative conservative who emerged from Saturday's Republican Party of Virginia Convention as the party's nominee for lieutenant governor once compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and blasted African-Americans for their "slavish devotion" to the Democratic Party. E.W. Jackson, an African-American pastor and attorney from Chesapeake, made the comments in a self-produced "message to black Christians" posted on YouTube last year. "The Democrat Party has created an unholy alliance between certain so-called civil rights leaders and Planned Parenthood, which has killed unborn black babies by the tens of millions. Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal...

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) withdrew a controversial amendment to the immigration bill on Tuesday that would allow American citizens in same-sex marriages to sponsor green cards for their foreign partners.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved far-reaching immigration legislation that gives a chance at citizenship to millions living in the country illegally.</p> <p>The 13-5 vote clears the bill for a Senate debate expected to begin early next month.</p>

James Kaleda explains that the proposed NJ Gun Bills will not save any lives but will endanger them. He is ejected by Committee Chair Senator Norcross. This took place at the NJ Senate gun control hearings in Trenton on April 30, 2013.

Twice they say is a pattern. Or a charm. And there isn’t much charm in using government agencies to conduct an illegal war against the opposition. Perhaps no other IRS official is more intimately associated with the tax agency’s growing scandal than Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division. Since admitting the IRS harassed hundreds of conservative and Tea Party groups for over two years, Lerner has been criticized for a number of untruths—including the revelation that she apparently lied about planting a question at an American Bar Association conference where she first publicly acknowledged IRS misconduct. Prior...

Shifting stories cast doubts on answer to core question: Did Team Obama know about IRS abuse in real time?“You and others have said that no one in the White House knew about IRS actions before getting the heads up on the inspector general's report last month,” George Stephanopoulos told senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday. “Are you absolutely sure of that?”“Yes,” Pfeiffer replied.Do you believe him?Knowing the consequences that would befall the Obama administration if the White House or Obama’s reelection campaign knew in real time that the IRS was targeting conservatives, I desperately want to believe Pfeiffer....

No dissenter can ever rest assured he is safe from the arbitrary power of the IRS.The Internal Revenue Service has been caught engaging in political profiling while processing applications for tax-exempt status. In this case it was against organizations with “tea-party” or “patriot ” in their names and other right-wing groups. Next time it could be libertarian or left-wing antiwar and pro-civil-liberties groups. No dissenter can ever rest assured he is safe from the arbitrary power of the IRS.Nothing will have been learned from this scandal if all that happens is the firing of some IRS administrators and the issuance of new guidelines...

The unfolding IRS scandal is a symptom, not the disease.For decades, campaign-finance reform zealots have sought to limit core political speech through spending limits and disclosure requirements. More recently, they have claimed that it is wrong and dangerous for tax-exempt entities to engage in political speech. The Obama administration shares these views, especially when conservative, small-government organizations are involved, and the IRS clearly got the message. While the agency must be investigated and reformed, the ultimate cure for these abuses is to unshackle political speech by all groups, including tax-exempt ones, from arbitrary and unconstitutional government regulation. Beginning in March...

Carney: White House, Treasury strategized how to tell public By Justin Sink - 05/21/13 02:47 PM ET Officials in the White House discussed how and when the Internal Revenue Service would tell the public that the agency had targeted political groups, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday. Carney said that Mark Childress, the White House deputy chief of staff, twice spoke with officials at the Treasury Department about the strategy for revealing conservative targeting. Childress and the Treasury officials discussed the possibility that Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw the agency's tax-exempt organization, would reveal that an...

Carney: Obama Didn’t Ask Why He Didn’t Know about IRS Before News Reports By Andrew Johnson May 21, 2013 4:12 PM Comments 21 Jay Carney told reporters that President Obama did not ask his senior staff why he was learning about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for the first time through news reports two weeks ago, rather than from his staff. The administration has admitted that White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was informed in late April of the inspector general report detailing the targeting and that she shared the information with members of the the president’s senior staff. The...

Edward "Ed" Mezvinsky born January 17, 1937, is a former Democrat congressman. As a Democrat, he represented Iowa 's 1st congressional district in the United States House of Representatives for two terms, from 1973 to 1977. He sat on the House Judiciary Committee that decided the fate of Richard Nixon. He and the Clinton's were very politically intertwined for years. In March 2001, Mezvinsky was indicted and later pleaded guilty to 31 of 69 charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. He was sentenced to 80 months in (Federal) prison. Ed Mezvinsky embezzled more than $10 million...

With his estimated wealth exceeding $200 million, Albert Arnold Gore has come a long way from the time he began a career in government politics. But it hasn’t all been a green path. He can thank some earlier events for paving over muddy ground, a time when his father, Al Gore Sr. met Occidental Petroleum’s CEO Armand Hammer at a cattle auction in the 1940s. When zinc was discovered on some of Gore’s land,

<p>WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — U.S. officials say they have identified five men they believe might be behind the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year. The officials say they have enough evidence to justify seizing them by military force as suspected terrorists — but not enough proof to try them in a U.S. civilian court as the Obama administration prefers.</p>

Nearly four months ago, Oklahoma Senators Tom Coburn and James Inhofe both voted against H.R.152, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act that eventually sent $50.5 billion in relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. And in the flurry of last night's devastation in Moore, Oklahoma. it was impossible not to forget that fact, knowing the federal government would soon rally to the cause. Part of that reason was because of the social media aspect to the storm—like the Boston Bombings and like Hurricane Sand —information on Monday's storm was quickly dispensed through mediums like Twitter and Facebook. But with that came tweets...

During an appearance on Dr. James Dobson's 'Family Talk' radio show today, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said that "God is going to answer our prayers and we'll be freed from the yoke of Obamacare" (audio below), reports RightWingWatch.org. Rep. Bachmann could not prove that God opposes Obamacare, which will help provide health insurance to millions of Americans, will no longer allow health insurance companies to discriminate against pre-existing conditions, will allow children to stay on their parents' health insurance until they are 26 and provides preventive health care with no co-pay. Dr. Dobson parroted a false right wing claim that...

“That’s a very serious offense that happened where Republicans on the Hill, we voluntarily provided these e-mails to, took one of them, doctored it and gave it to ABC News in an attempt to smear the president.” — White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” May 19, 2013 “I think one of the problems that there’s so much controversy here is because one of the e-mails was doctored by a Republican source and given to the media to falsely smear the president.” — Pfeiffer, on Fox News Sunday, May 19 “They received these e-mails months...

Kenya said Tuesday it was "fine" with US President Barack Obama avoiding the country on an Africa tour next month, rejecting reports it was due to upcoming crimes against humanity trials of its leaders. Obama will leave on a first African tour in late June, visiting Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa, but his itinerary bypasses Kenya, where his father was born. "America, just like Kenya, is an independent country and its president has the democratic right to visit wherever he wants," Kenyan government spokesman Muthui Kariuki told AFP. "Kenya is moving on with its development agenda and we continue to...

More whistleblowers will emerge shortly in the escalating Benghazi scandal, according to two former U.S. diplomats who spoke with PJ Media Monday afternoon. These whistleblowers, colleagues of the former diplomats, are currently securing legal counsel because they work in areas not fully protected by the Whistleblower law. According to the diplomats, what these whistleblowers will say will be at least as explosive as what we have already learned about the scandal, including details about what really transpired in Benghazi that are potentially devastating to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The former diplomats inform PJM the new revelations concentrate in...

I’m not talking about conservative publications either, but outlets that normally would allow Barack Obama and his team the benefit of the doubt. Bloomberg starts us off with a straight report on the changing explanations:

Enough! For many years, the American Left has and continues to shamelessly abuse the American people; slandering, beating up and bullying them into submission by using the easily proven false narrative that America is a racist nation. In other words, the Left recklessly and unfairly plays the Race Card. Why? The Left has great disdain for traditional American values and desires to transform America into it's dreamed Socialist/Progressive utopia. Calling an opponent to the Left's agenda “racist” typically frightens and shuts them down. On behalf of my decent and hard-working fellow Americans, I demand an apology from the NAACP, the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: It took five minutes. Five minutes. It only took five minutes before the Democrat Party politicized the tornado in Oklahoma. They politicize everything, folks. They rub their hands together in glee when there is a natural disaster that they think they can spin in such a way as to advance their political agenda. If any of you doubt that global warming is a political issue and not a science issue, then you must open your mind and consider why in the world, ask yourself, why in the world, five minutes after the news hits of this horrible...

Will Rogers, the great humorist, once said, “If you ever injected truth into politics, you would have no politics.” If you injected truth into the teleprompter during one of Obama’s speeches, there would be nothing left but an empty chair. Fourteen days after the September 11, 2012 attacks, Obama appeared at the United Nations to deliver a eulogy for the man he had not troubled to save and to declare that the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Obama denounced the “crude and disgusting video” that had “sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world” and...

Bernie Quigley is one of the few writers for an MSM publication who gets Governor Palin.  He has written extensively on her impact on culture and our current state of politics.  You can check out what he wrote about her last week here.   Today’s column on her was no exception.  He starts out by saying this: Why Sarah Palin? Because when I write a blog here on Jeb Bush or President Obama, it will bring in maybe 10 comments. A piece on Sarah Palin last week brought 135. Same every time. She strikes a chord which runs deep.She has a...

WASHINGTON — Ranking Member Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, didn’t mince words. He said IRS’s decision not to notify Congress of the agency’s targeting of tea party groups was “a lie by omission” and that the man in charge at the time just “sat on that guilty knowledge.” Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Steve Miller replied, “Mr. Hatch, I did not lie.” But during Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing Hatch insisted Miller knew there was a list IRS officials were using to target conservatives when he failed to inform Congress of the abuse. Hatch said “you knew what was...

Protesters in Cincinnati Denounce IRS By Dionne Searcey CINCINNATI—About 300 people gathered Tuesday for a short, angry rally outside the federal building here that houses the unit of the IRS embroiled in a scandal over workers improperly scrutinizing the charity applications of politically conservative groups. Holding signs that said “Internal Rigging Service” and “Tyranny” and shouting chants of “You work for us!” and “IRS! KGB!” the group included many members of the local Tea Party organization who demanded punishment for those who were involved. “Heads have to roll here,” said one protester, Kevin Tinsley, who works in advertising sales and...

McClatchy Newspapers has an excellent story on immigration today, reporting on how farmers are framing the debate to their representatives: Walk the aisles of any neighborhood grocery store today and you’re as likely to find tomatoes picked in Sinaloa, Mexico, as Central California or oranges from Sao Paulo, Brazil, as Bradenton, Fla.Farmers across the country warn that shoppers will find even more imported food on their store shelves if Congress fails to pass immigration legislation that would guarantee them enough workers to milk their cows and harvest their fruits and vegetables.“The bottom line is people need to decide whether...

Internal Revenue Service managers and workers involved in the Obama administration’s targeting of conservative groups were engaged in criminal activity, and should face those charges in court, according to one of the organizations in the program’s bull’s-eye. “We believe the IRS has been involved in criminal activity,” said Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association. “When a government office abuses its power to access personal financial records, then uses that information as a tool for revenge, we have reached a new low in American politics.” The AFA Tuesday called for charges to be filed against all of those involved...

Organizers mobilizing for demonstrations Tuesday at agency buildings Prompted by the admission by the Internal Revenue Service that tea-party groups and other conservative organizations seeking non-profit, tax-exempt status were targets of discrimination, the tea-party movement is mobilizing like-minded citizens to hold demonstrations in front of IRS buildings across the nation at noon, local time, Tuesday. “I’ll bet this is gonna be huge,” said talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh on his show Monday. “It’s entirely possible that people are going to see once again just how big and how deep the tea party is.” Nothing tells the story of the tea-party movement...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 20, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Would the woman most closely associated with the TSA airport stripsearches make a good presidential candidate? The abortion lobbying group EMILY's List and The Washington Post think so. This month, EMILY's List launched an initiative entitled "Madam President" dedicated to electing the first female president. The group's president, Stephanie Schriock, said she was not placing all her bets on a Hilary Clinton candidacy. "If she chooses not to, our options are far from exhausted," she said. "We have a deep bench of women leaders committed to fighting for progressive change who are up...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is sweating it out under the harsh lights of the White House briefing room these days, revising stories and spinning away suspicious facts in what is becoming an almost comical daily exercise in scandal avoidance. “Are you going to ask me about Myanmar?” Carney joked Monday as yet another White House reporter teed up a question about one of the various scandals swirling about the administration. The leader of Myanmar was to meet with President Obama later in the day. Carney Monday was escorted by reporters down several nightmarish paths. The most ghastly of...

A Safe Time to Tell Your Story By Anne Hendershott May 21, 2013 9:56 AM Comments 63 Two years ago in May 2010, when Michael Iannotti, an IRS agent with the New Haven IRS office, called my home to notify me that I was being audited, I was not terribly surprised. While my husband and I had never been audited throughout our 39-year marriage, I knew that the Obama administration had greatly expanded the offices of the IRS, hiring thousands of agents. I just assumed that we were among the many more audits the agency was doing that year. But,...

The outspoken conservative Republican has won the state GOP nomination also accuses Democrats of ‘saturating the black community with ridiculous lies.’ E. W. Jackson delivers his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for Lt. Gov. at the Virginia Republican convention in Richmond, Va., Saturday, May 18. He calls the Democratic party “anti-God.” The conservative Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia once compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and has made several other inflammatory statements that are likely to play into the state’s competitive race for governor. E.W. Jackson, a black pastor and attorney with a reputation for...

To understand the current state of the gun-ban crowd’s “conversation” about destroying the Second Amendment, it boils down to this: insanity versus sanity. With the horrific series of mass murders culminating in the cold-blooded killing of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December, this latest iteration of “gun control” is entirely directed at making the sane pay the price for unthinkable acts committed by the insane. It is the root of the civil disarmament movement in America today.The Sandy Hook rampage was the evil work of an individual who was clearly insane. There...

The foreign-headquartered company that recently purchased the leading U.S. electronic voting firm is boasting that it was highlighted in a report on how technology is making the election process more efficient, secure, transparent, accessible and reliable. The report, WND has learned, was authored by a firm with links to billionaire activist George Soros. The information comes after WND reported two weeks ago that SCYTL recently acquired the software division of a non-profit election organization tied to Soros’ Open Society Institute. Yesterday, WND reported SCYTL announced its technology will be deployed at more U.S. jurisdictions ahead of the 2014 midterm elections....