Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Senior Treasury officials were made aware in June 2012 that investigators were looking into complaints from tea party groups that they were being harassed by the Internal Revenue Service, a Treasury inspector general said, disclosing that Obama administration officials knew there was a probe during the heat of the presidential campaign. J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testifying alongside ousted IRS head Steven Miller on Friday, said he had told the department's general counsel about his investigation on June 4, 2012, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin "shortly thereafter." But, George cautioned, those discussions...

NBC's Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election:

... putting Benghazi, the IRS's Tea Party targeting and the Justice Department's leak-hunting seizure of Associated Press phone records in the same basket is like comparing a mirage to a dishwasher to a diamond. There is no common thread. Benghazi is a scam, not a scandal. It began as a political ploy during the 2012 presidential campaign. Republicans tried to pin a cover-up on the President.... The Justice Department's secret seizure of AP phone records is more a policy dispute than a scandal..... The irs's targeting of Tea Party groups is, however, an actual full-blown scandal. In fact, it is...

When it comes to investigative reporters, how do you change a bulldog into a lapdog? Easy: change the occupant of the Oval Office from a Republican into a Democrat. Witness Carl Bernstein's pitiful performance on today's Morning Joe. The man who teamed with Bob Woodward to bring down Richard Nixon now credulously claims that he "can't imagine" that President Obama is possibly involved in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Bernstein instead blames the "hyper-partisanship" in Washington. Yeah, cause politics were so kumbaya in 1972, Carl. View the video here.

An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas. The additional guidelines created by the agency were part of a timeline, obtained by Fox News, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is looking into the controversial IRS practice. IRS officials apologized Friday for the scrutiny, but new information suggests senior leaders were apprised of the effort as early as 2011 despite public denials from the top.

Lois Lerner’s Response to Tea Party Question In response to a question about the IRS’s handling of Tea Party exemption applications, asked at the May 10 meeting of the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, Lois Lerner, Director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations office, made the following response: “We get about 60,000 applications for tax exemption every year, most of them are 501(c)(3) organizations. But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these organizations applying more than doubled,...

For the last 8 months, many news organizations have looked very casually (to put it lightly) on the Benghazi story…some journalists and news organizations have even been highly critical of those journalists or news organizations who dared to think the American people were not getting the whole story (yes, Fox News has been the subject of some sneering but we can take it …. we are big boys and big girls…and more importantly, we are also not afraid of what the media clique says about us. We do our job.) I don’t know what will shake out when we finally...

Eight months after four Americans died in a terrorist attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, a House committee held another hearing on Wednesday to examine whether the Obama administration mishandled the tragic events. What follows is an update on what is known about the Benghazi episode and why it has become such a political flash point: Q. Why is the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holding a new hearing on Benghazi? A. Committee investigators found two State Department officials who previously had not spoken publicly and who are scathingly critical of the administration’s response to...

Officials found guilty in Obama, Clinton ballot petition fraud: A jury in South Bend, Indiana has found that fraud put President Obama and Hillary Clinton on the presidential primary ballot in Indiana in the 2008 election. Two Democratic political operatives were convicted Thursday night in the illegal scheme after only three hours of deliberations. They were found guilty on all counts.

Progress Kentucky, the liberal super PAC that came under fire for making racial slurs about the wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is also responsible for a recently-leaked recording of the senator in a strategy meeting, according to Louisville radio station WFPL and Fox News. Both outlets are quoting Jacob Conway, a committee member of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, as naming Sean Reilly and Curtis Morrison, respectively the founder and a former employee of Progress Kentucky, as the culprits. "They happen to be friends of mine. Or were friends of mine," Conway told Fox News in a phone interview...

A California billionaire is pledging to spend as much of his fortune as necessary to make climate change “the defining issue of our generation.” Tom Steyer, who made his riches as a hedge fund manager, told The Hill on Tuesday that he wants to make climate change a campaign issue for years to come and Democratic support for environmental protections as widespread as support for gay marriage and immigration reform. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory,” Steyer said of candidates he judges to be on the...

The Associated Press announced Tuesday that it will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant.” On NBC’s Tonight Show, host Jay Leno said, “They will now use the phrase ‘undocumented Democrat’” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary)...

State Sen. Malcolm Smith and city Councilman Dan Halloran were arrested this morning on charges they were plotting to rig this year’s mayoral election through fraud and bribes. The pols allegedly formed an alliance built on cash payments and fraud to get Smith — one of the state’s top Democrats — placed on the GOP mayoral ballot, sources said. FBI agents arrested them both at their Queens homes shortly after 6 a.m. [snip] Prosecutors are planning to lay out the whole sordid scheme during a news conference later today.

The executive order will direct the commission to produce a report for Obama within six months of its first public meeting, principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said. The panel will be tasked with considering "a variety of ways to shorten lines and promote the efficient conduct of elections" and its findings will be "intended to serve as a best practices guide for state and local election officials to improve voters' experience at the polls under their existing election laws."

When conservatives complain about the harm that the endless debate schedule had on the 2012 Republican primary candidates, the conversation often turns to the hosts and the moderators. Why are Republican candidates letting someone like ABC’s George Stephanopoulos — a former aide to Democrat Bill Clinton — ask them “gotcha questions” during a GOP primary? Why are GOP presidential hopefuls agreeing to meet for a debate hosted by an outlet like MSNBC, a cable network that has increasingly grown hostile to Republicans as it self-identifies as a liberal news network? As the Republican Party released a 100-page report on Monday...

Four Democrats involved in an upstate New York voter fraud scandal were sentenced yesterday for their respective roles, receiving punishments ranging from hundreds of hours of community service, to jail time. The group consisted of a former city clerk, an ex-City Councilman, a Democrat operative, and a Committeeman who a year ago had declared ballot forgery in upstate New York to be “a normal political tactic“. Those sentenced yesterday were cooperating witnesses in a scheme which saw dozens of voters testify that absentee ballots had been submitted in their names during the 2009 Working Families Party (WFP) primary. Securing the...

The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters...

The Democratic National Committee has no plans to repay Duke Energy for an unprecedented $10 million line of credit it guaranteed to help the Democratic convention’s local host committee put on President Obama’s three-day nominating convention in Charlotte, N.C., last September. A Duke company official said the company was claiming the money as a business expense for tax purposes, meaning shareholders will foot $6 million of the cost, according to a report in the Charlotte Observer. The company didn’t limit its convention financial support to the loan guarantee. It also donated $4.1 million to a separate fund formed to accept...

The case of the phantom ballots: an electoral whodunit By Patricia Mazzei pmazzei@MiamiHerald.com TIM CHAPMAN / MIAMI HERALD STAFF About 2,000 rejected absentee ballots at Miami-Dade Elections Department, mostly for lack of signatures or review of signatures from the last election. The first phantom absentee ballot request hit the Miami-Dade elections website at 9:11 p.m. Saturday, July 7. The next one came at 9:14. Then 9:17. 9:22. 9:24. 9:25. Within 2½ weeks, 2,552 online requests arrived from voters who had not applied for absentee ballots. They streamed in much too quickly for real people to be filling them out. They...

This rabble-rousing spew comes via Moonbattery: "The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat. … Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition’s most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will...