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Washington (CNN) - Expanding his IRS investigation by more than two decades, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-California, has sent a subpoena to the Federal Elections Commission for all communications involving former IRS administrator Lois Lerner from January 1, 1986 to the present day. This new search is the broadest-yet for records in a year-long investigation by Issa and congressional Republicans, who are trying to assess why the agency targeted tea party and other political groups for extra scrutiny.

A petition drive to divide California into six separate states was active on Saturday and Sunday in Los Angeles, aimed at getting the plan on the ballot in 2016. According to the Los Angeles Times, Timothy Draper, a venture capitalist from Menlo Park, is spearheading the current effort and has injected $2 million dollars into the project so far. The optimistic Draper argues that a truncated California will dissolve bureaucratic gridlock in Sacramento and will be more conducive for business. Draper told the Times back in April that "California has become the worst managed state in the country… It just...

Current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will testify this morning at the Ways and Means Committee, as well as on Monday at Oversight, on why he testified in March that the records would be retrievable, only to change course last Friday. Koskinen offered up his opening statement in writing, in part to suggest that e-mail should not be considered an “official record” anyway: In discussing document retention at the IRS, it is important to point out that our email system is not being used as an electronic record keeping system. Furthermore, it should be remembered that not all emails on IRS...

Despite growing outrage over the mysterious disappearance of former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner’s emails, the new White House press secretary sees nothing wrong with the government’s inadequate explanation. “I think it’s entirely reasonable. And it’s fact,” incoming spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, according to CNN. “You’ve never heard of a computer crashing before?” The IRS admits that it can’t find two years’ of emails requested during the time tea party activists claim they were targeted. Even CNN anchor John King found the explanation unbelievable. “Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?” he...

JACKSON, Mississippi — Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) is appealing to Democratic voters to cross party lines and vote in an upcoming runoff election against his conservative challenger, state senator Chris McDaniel. But a noted election law expert says that may be illegal. J. Christian Adams, a former Civil Rights Division attorney at the Department of Justice with experience litigating election law cases in Mississippi, said a law there prevents people from voting in the primary for candidates they don't plan to support in the general election. Adams is now a high-profile author and news commentator for conservative outlet PJ Media....

Friendly reminder, America. They think you're stupid: A top White House official blamed a computer crash for the disappearance of emails from embattled former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, echoing the explanation the agency gave Congress last week for the two years' worth of missing subpoenaed correspondence. "I think it's entirely reasonable. And it's fact," incoming White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One Monday. "You've never heard of a computer crashing before?" he asked.

A source tipped me off last week to a curious occurrence: It seems that two planeloads of illegal aliens were recently shipped to Massachusetts. The first reportedly landed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. According to my tipster, approximately 160 illegal immigrants arrived on that flight and stayed nearly a week before being transferred to a Department of Homeland Security site and then released. The second flight reportedly was diverted from Hanscom to Boston's Logan Airport this past weekend. I am told that both Massachusetts and New Hampshire officials were on hand. I reached out to Hanscom AFB...

A Texas court ruled Thursday to overturn the conviction of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who was found guilty of money laundering in 2010. According to KHOU 11 and the Associated Press, the Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the case's evidence was "legally insufficient to sustain DeLay's convictions," formally acquitting the former congressman on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Still wondering why Lois Lerner took the Fifth or if there is indeed a “smidgen” of corruption in the IRS targeting scandal? It now appears that the IRS was not only engaged in an illegal witch hunt of conservatives applying for tax-exempt status, but that it was actively pushing criminal investigation of already approved groups. The latest revelations from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s investigation of the IRS are that Lois Lerner sent the Obama Administration’s FBI a 1.1 million document file of then-current 501(c)(4) organizations. This file, given to the FBI just weeks before the 2010 elections,...

The Internal Revenue Service may have been caught violating federal tax law: In October 2010, the agency sent a database on 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups containing confidential taxpayer information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to documents obtained by a House panel. The information was transmitted in advance of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s meeting the same month with Justice Department officials about the possibility of using campaign-finance laws to prosecute certain non-profit groups. E-mails between Lerner and Richard Pilger, the director of the Justice Department’s election crimes branch, obtained through a subpoena to Attorney General Eric Holder, show Lerner asking about the format in which...

GALVESTON, Texas — A man who voted absentee in Texas and Minnesota during the 2012 general election then touted his bogus balloting on Facebook has pleaded guilty. A judge in Galveston on Tuesday fined Richard Alan Collier $4,000 after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of Texas election law. Collier, who pleaded guilty to attempt to commit illegal voting, claimed residence in both states when seeking absentee ballots for the November 2012 election. Authorities say Collier then voted in Anoka (uh-NOH'-kuh) County, Minnesota, and in Galveston County. Prosecutors in Galveston say a tip that Collier posted a Facebook message...

Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio get thrown around a lot as possible GOP presidential candidates for 2016. One prominent Republican who does not get mentioned much in that context is Rep. Peter King (R-NY). But during one of his frequent interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Friday, King said he is seriously considering making a run at the nomination, if only to prevent those younger, more right-wing candidates from becoming president. Asked by Blitzer about his 2016 plans, King said he’s “certainly looking at” the possibility, which will include a trip to New Hampshire next month. He...

Democrats are thinking about using Internet balloting in 2016 to expand their voter base and select a president -- prompting Republicans to consider such a strategy to keep from losing ground. Iowa Democrats proposed the idea and several others during a recent Democratic National Committee meeting, saying Internet balloting could expand access to their unique caucus process to overseas military personnel, absentee voters and others. -SNIP- “I think it’s a very bad idea,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, who thinks computer-based voting will never happen, or at least not in the “foreseeable future.”

Federal Elections Commission Chairman Lee Goodman said he believes there are “impulses in government every day,” (he specifically said “the left,)” to “look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers.” Goodman is vowing to keep the media and internet free,” but his chairmanship expires in December 2014. Graphic_Free_Speech_1 “The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and internet communications,” he added. Noting the success of sites like the Drudge Report, Goodman said...

Full Title: FEC chair warns that conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity face regulation --- like PACs Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media's exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight. Sign Up for the Paul Bedard newsletter! “I think that there are impulses in the government every day to second guess and look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers,” warned Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee...

Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media's exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight. “I think that there are impulses in the government every day to second guess and look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers,” warned Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee E. Goodman in an interview. “The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense...

A poll released Monday shows that 88 percent of Florida voters support allowing adults to legally use marijuana for medical purposes, bolstering the arguments of advocates who have placed a constitutional amendment on the November ballot seeking legalization. The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University, indicates widespread support across political and demographic lines — Republicans and Democrats, men and women, young and old — for legal medical marijuana if it is prescribed by physicians. The constitutional amendment needs approval from 60 percent of voters to pass.

CNSNews.com) - Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova says he'll be happy if Democrats decide not to appoint members to the special select committee on Benghazi that Republicans plan to establish. "I'm delighted the Democrats don't want to participate. All they would do is obstruct," diGenova told WMAL talk radio in Washington, D.C. Monday morning. "The president is going to pay a price ultimately," he added. "It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but his performance and Leon Panetta's was shameful that night." DiGenova says on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks that killed four Americans,...

May 5, 2014 11:24 AM Wanted: Recording of Prep Call Before Susan Rice’s Post-Benghazi TV Interviews By Deroy Murdock I like the way Jim Guirard thinks. The former Democratic U.S. Senate aide is a conservative who sees things not just “out of the box,” but “out of the District.” The long-time chief of staff to the late U.S. senator Russell Long (D., La.) offers imaginative suggestions for unraveling various scandals and controversies in the national debate. His intriguing ideas and writings are gathered at TrueSpeak.org. Guirard now is focused on a detail in the previously obstructed Benghazi e-mail that finally...

Senate Democrats said Wednesday that the Supreme Court has stretched the First Amendment too far when it comes to campaign finances, and vowed to hold a vote to amend the Constitution and undo a number of landmark decisions. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat and chairman of the Rules Committee, said he will push a constitutional amendment to the full floor later this year that would give Congress the power to impose strict limits on campaign finance. “It will draw to a fine point where we are at — and that is, the First Amendment is sacred, but that...