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Democratic Congressman Goes Ballistic At IRS Hearing After Darrell Issa Cuts Off His Mic Brett LoGiuratoMar. 5, 2014, 10:26 AM Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democratic ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, flipped out at Republican Chairman Darrell Issa during a hearing on the IRS' targeting of certain conservative groups Wednesday morning. Issa hauled former IRS official Lois Lerner back before the committee Wednesday morning as part of his ongoing investigation into the IRS' scrutiny of certain conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status. Lerner, as expected, invoked her right to plead the Fifth Amendment in the investigation, as she...

There are emails between Issa and Lerner’s attorney and now she is asking for more time. She is coming Wed., but may testify at a later time as well. Why did Lerner do what what she did ? We have the evidence and it is save yourself or go down in flames.

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa announced Lois Lerner, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS, would be back in front of Congress this week to testify about the inappropriate targeting of conservative, tea party and patriot groups. Issa cited Lerner's attorney, William Taylor, as the source of confirmation of her agreement to testify on Wednesday, March 5. Shortly after that appearance, Taylor told POLITICO an agreement Lerner would testify was not made, that he didn't know where Issa was coming from and that Lerner would continue to plead the Fifth. “As...

House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning with some “late breaking news”: “[Lois Lerner´s] attorney indicates that she now will testify,” Issa said, referring to the chief witness in his investigation of the IRS’ alleged targeting of conservative groups. Lerner, who was the Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division during the supposed targeting, has thus far invoked the Fifth Amendment in front of Issa’s committee. “We believe the evidence we’ve gathered causes her, in her best interest, to be someone who should testify,” Issa said. Host Chris Wallace even double-checked that Lerner...

The New York Department of Financial Services is shortly to begin its hearing about bitcoin and other digital currencies. Taking place in the 4th Floor Boardroom of 90 Church Street, New York, the hearing is set to begin at 11:30 (EST) today (28th January) and the second session will begin tomorrow at 10:00. A live webcast of the hearings can be found here.

The Senate vote Thursday to curb the use of filibuster against judicial nominees, over the objections of the Republican minority, can only be seen as a terrifying development. Why, next thing you know we could be deciding all sorts of things by majority vote. The average American may think deciding things by majority vote is the basic idea of our democracy. But say something like that, and you risk getting a lecture on how America is not a democracy but a constitutional republic, and that the framers took care not to give too much power to the people, and that...

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) rose from his seat on Tuesday during a congressional hearing into the Affordable Care Act’s problematic roll-out. He accused his Republican colleagues in the House of dishonestly seeking to identify the problems with the ACA because they would prefer to see it repealed entirely. Pascrell began by insisting that, even though Democrats opposed Medicare Part D in the Bush Era, they worked to make sure that the program was a success. He became animated as he said that Democrats put aside their opposition to Bush in order to make a policy objective work for the good...

Capitol Hill Republicans are gearing up for hearings next week on the botched rollout of Obamacare — and the White House said on Saturday that about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through the new exchanges. **SNIP** The officials did not want to be cited by name and would not discuss the health insurance rollout unless they were granted anonymity, the AP reported. Since going online on Oct. 1, the main Obamcare exchange, Healthcare.gov, has been marred by technical glitches and cost overruns — leading technology specialists to conclude that the company hired to build the site, CGI, was...

In the year since the Benghazi terrorist attack took the lives of four Americans, House Republicans have continually pressed the Obama administration for answers regarding events preceding the attack, the administration’s response, and what has been done to protect the lives of Americans going forward. Those efforts will continue with three House committee hearings this week. Here’s more: The House Foreign Affairs Committee holds a hearing Wednesday, September 18th at 10 am ET titled: “Benghazi: Where is the State Department Accountability?” The committee notes that four employees placed on administration leave following the attack have recently been re-assigned within the...

Hearing will be live on CSPAN.

Hearing will be live on CSPAN.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trayvon Martin’s father told a crowded Capitol Hill forum on Wednesday that “a statute or amendment” safeguarding young people against the type of circumstances that resulted in his son’s death would be a fitting legacy for his son. “The question is, what can we do as parents, what can we do as African-American men, to assure our kids that you don’t have to be afraid to walk outside your house?” Tracy Martin asked during a forum convened by the Congressional Caucus on Black Men and Boys, one of several such caucuses comprised of House members who want...

House Republicans plan to ratchet up scrutiny of the IRS during a hearing Thursday morning where agency workers are expected to discuss the involvement of high-level officials in slowing down applications from Tea Party groups. For the first time, the House oversight committee has invited two key agency officials to testify. Republican leaders of the committee claimed Wednesday that one of them recently revealed that the IRS chief counsel's office -- led by a political appointee -- played a role, along with embattled IRS official Lois Lerner, in scrutinizing conservative groups. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the committee, told...

Patterico unearthed something that, to my knowledge, had not been reported previously: a November 2011 Business Week article about the business operations of non-profit universities that concludes with this: Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations who is overseeing the investigation, says many schools are rethinking how and what they report to the government. Receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS, she says, is a “behavior changer.”

What's happened to the hearings on these scandals? Congress should be just as anxious to get these criminal players on record as they are finding the terrorists who killed Americans in Benghazi. Oh wait.. Never mind. They seem more interested in finding Snowden than they do seeking justice for the family of the dead in Benghazi and conservatives targeted by the DHS, EPA, NSA, IRS, DOJ, etc.

Some Democrats participating in the House IRS hearings have used the opportunity to ask tough questions and promise to punish any government employees who unfairly singled out conservative non-profit applicants for unfair treatment. Not Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore...He even took the opportunity to trash 501 c(4) advocacy groups that advocate things he doesn’t like, such as the traditional legal definition of marriage:

Testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday, witnesses from Tea Party, pro-life and patriotic educational groups from around the country testified about their experience of intimidation and targeting from the Internal Revenue Service. Witnesses described being sent hundreds of pages from the IRS asking invasive questions about members, books, contents of prayers and the names of anyone attending meetings, including children. "The IRS sought documentation of our meetings, rallies, events, or candidate forums. That included video and audio transcriptions, notes, copies of all handouts; the political party of speakers, and an “issues” list. The IRS sought identifying information on employees; data on...

...Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., went on a bit of a rant earlier against the victims of IRS targeting who are testifying in today’s hearing. He was not the only Democrat to defend the IRS’s behavior....

CNSNews.com) – The government has “forgotten its place,” Becky Gerritson, president of the Wetumpka, Ala. Tea Party, told the House Ways and Means Committee at a hearing on Tuesday on the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative groups. “I am a born-free American woman – wife, mother, and citizen – and I’m telling my government that you have forgotten your place,” Gerritson said. “It is not your responsibility to look out for my well-being or to monitor my speech.”

If you’re going to step in the ring with your government, you should expect to get punched in the face. And by “step in the ring,” I of course mean “avail yourself of the same perfectly legal tax strategies that are routinely permitted to liberal nonprofits.” I confess, while I expected some stupid and predictable Democratic scandal spin this week, I didn’t expect to watch a congressman indirectly defend government discrimination on grounds that the victims could have avoided it by simply not asserting their statutory rights in the first place. And yet here we are.That’s not the only problem...