Free Republic

On Monday, only CBS This Morning reported Friday's stunning revelation that the IRS somehow lost two years worth of emails from Lois Lerner, the official at the center of the agency scandal in which conservative groups were unfairly targeted. Neither NBC's Today nor ABC's Good Morning America bothered to cover the shocking development. However, both broadcasts did manage to find time for full reports on Britain's baby Prince George learning to walk. Cordes then concluded her report with more IRS spin suggesting the congressional investigation of the scandal was just a waste of time and money:

Friday’s revelation that the IRS “lost” Lois Lerner’s emails in a computer crash came ten months after Congress first requested them and seven months after they were first subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. But what IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified about the emails at a hearing in March appears to be at odds with his agency’s newer reported claims that the emails are irretrievable. Under questioning by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on the House Oversight Committee, Koskinen said IRS emails are “get taken off and stored in servers.” That was part of the reason, he said, it was so...

Who knew that the Obama administration had a penchant for black humor? Earlier this year, in February, President Obama told Bill O’Reilly during an interview on Fox News that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS scandal involving the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups. In July 2103, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew foreshadowed his boss’s nonchalance by insisting that there was “no evidence” that any political appointee had been involved in the scandal. Now we may know why. After months of delay in responding to congressional inquiries, the IRS now claims that, for the period of January...

Explanations provided by the Internal Revenue Service for how it lost two years of former employee Lois Lerner's emails are "entirely reasonable," the White House said on Monday. "You’ve never heard of a computer crashing before?" White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters traveling with the president aboard Air Force One. Congressional Republicans have blasted the IRS's admission that it lost Lerner's emails from between 2009 and 2011 because of an apparent computer error. Lerner resigned from the agency amid controversy over charges her division unfairly targeted conservative political groups. In a statement Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa...

---snip--- Further, emails are universally backed up in some other medium, often electronic tape, for long-term storage. Thus, even if an email server is destroyed, or all emails are deleted from a server after a specified length of time, the emails are still recoverable from back-up storage media. The DOJ lawyer whom Scott quoted this morning was correct about this. The IRS, like virtually every other business or government entity, uses such a system. The Agency’s manual on “Managing Electronic Records” has been made public; you can read it here. A few relevant excerpts:

The IRS—remember those jaunty folks?—announced Friday that it can't find two years of emails from Lois Lerner to the Departments of Justice or Treasury. And none to the White House or Democrats on Capitol Hill. An agency spokesman blames a computer crash. Never underestimate government incompetence, but how convenient. The former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations was at the center of the IRS targeting of conservative groups and still won't testify before Congress. Now we'll never know whose orders she was following, or what directions she was giving. If the Reagan White House had ever offered up this excuse, John...

<p>A Florida man was charged Friday in an alleged plot to lure a 9-year-old girl to a vacant home, kill the girl's family members and then videotape himself raping the child.</p> <p>State law enforcement officials said Friday that 29-year-old Shawn Thomas was charged with attempted premeditated homicide, attempting to commit capital sexual battery and possession of child pornography.</p>

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claimed Friday that it cannot produce Lois Lerner’s emails to and from the White House and other administration departments due to a supposed computer crash. The IRS previously agreed to hand over all of the ex-IRS official’s emails from 2009 to 2011 to the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Dave Camp. But the IRS claimed Friday that it has Lerner’s emails to and from other IRS officials but it cannot produce emails to and from the Treasury and Justice Departments, the Federal Election Commission, or Democratic offices. The IRS’ computer crash may...

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, the IRS has "lost" two years of emails belonging to former head of tax exempt organizations Lois Lerner. The IRS doesn't have a record of her emails to outside groups or government agencies from January 2009 through April 2011, conveniently encompassing some of the same time when tea party groups were being targeted for extra scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution. The IRS says the loss of emails is due to a "computer crash" and claims emails from or to Lerner from the White House, Democratic members of Congress, the Treasury Department, FEC...

June 13, 2014 THE TWO-YEAR GAP Scott Johnson The IRS has informed the House Ways and Means Committee that it has lost Lois Lerner email messages from January 2009–April 2011. Harkening back to the allegedly accidental erasure of 18 1/2 minutes of critical Oval Office recordings that contributed to Richard Nixon’s resignation from office, the IRS attributes the loss of Lerner email to a computer crash.Some email survives: the agency retains Lerner email to and from other IRS employees during this period. The IRS claims it cannot produce email written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups,...

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy has issued a warning to Republicans who continue to question the integrity of the agency’s scientific data: we’re coming for you. McCarthy told an audience at the National Academy of Sciences on Monday morning the agency will go after a “small but vocal group of critics” who are arguing the EPA is using “secret science” to push costly clean air regulations. “Those critics conjure up claims of EPA secret science — but it’s not really about EPA science or secrets. It’s about challenging the credibility of world renowned scientists and institutions like Harvard University...

Another credentialed dimwit has a really great idea for fixing everything wrong with the world, as related by the Washington Times: A Harvard professor wants to abolish the white race. Noel Ignatiev, a founder of a journal called Race Traitor and a fellow at Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute, a leading black-studies department, argues in the current issue of Harvard Magazine that "abolishing the white race" is "so desirable that some may find it hard to believe" that anyone other than "committed white supremacists" would oppose it. In excerpts appearing this week in newspapers nationwide, Mr. Ignatiev, who is white, writes...

TV Today @ 4PM CST....A biology professor ends a faculty meeting with gunfire and reveals a surprising history of violence.

ALBANY, N.Y. - A group of 1,200 New Yorkers has forced a court review of whether New York's new gun controls were rushed into law in violation of the state constitution. Robert Schulz, of Warren County, calls Gov. Andrew Cuomo a "king" for pushing through the nation's toughest gun law by suspending the three-day review usually required before votes on bills. It's been 6 weeks since New York's SAFE Act was signed into law, banning defined assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Since then, thousands of people have rallied, and Friday, a court order forcing a review of whether the...

Three Occupy Oakland Protesters Charged with Hate Crimes (Reuters) - Three Occupy Oakland protesters accused of surrounding and taunting a woman before stealing her wallet were charged on Friday with robbery and hate crimes, authorities said. Michael Davis, 32, Nneka Crawford, 23, and Randolph Wilkins, 24, confronted the woman on the streets of Oakland in February after she told them not to riot in her neighborhood, the Oakland Police said in a written release. "She was surrounded by three protestors and battered as they yelled vulgar epithets regarding their perception of her sexual orientation," Oakland Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said....

Let’s face it: Big Oil is used to getting its way. But not any more. President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline -- a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us. His decision represents a victory of historic proportions for NRDC and hundreds of thousands of committed activists like you who have waged an uphill, years-long fight against one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time. Please thank the President right away for his game-changing decision. But get ready to...

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday apologized for his network's "appalling lack of judgment" in comparing a Mitt Romney campaign slogan to the Ku Klux Klan. The Hardball host conceded, "It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this, and it showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize. We really do, to the Romney campaign." [See video below. MP3 au

Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, and Michael Moore, in varying degrees and contexts, have long indicted capitalism for the inequality of its spoils. Yet recent news suggests that their critique of the capitalist status quo is a very good capitalist way of making lots of money.

KILLEEN, Texas — The US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in a shooting spree on a Texas army base has been ruled sane and thus fit for trial, a source familiar with the case said. The ruling by a group of medical experts, called a sanity board, opens the door for a court martial that could end in the execution of Major Nidal Hasan, who was paralyzed from the neck down during the November 5, 2009 massacre. Neither prosecutors nor retired Army Colonel John Galligan, a veteran military lawyer representing Hasan, 40, would confirm the board's decision.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, leaving the funeral of a murdered Border Patrol agent Wednesday, scolded a reporter for asking her to address the victim's family's concerns that not enough is being done to secure the southern border. The family of agent Brian Terry had complained that Napolitano had offered them "empty words" when she called to express her condolences. Terry's father, Kent Terry, in an interview with ABC affiliate KGUN, said he told Napolitano to "wake your man up in the White House," to which she replied that he's done more in two years than any president. Napolitano attended...