Free Republic

Becky Gerritson from the Wetumpka Tea Party delivered a powerful and emotional testimony at the House Ways and Means committee hearing on IRS abuse inn June 2013. Gerritson began crying at one point while describing how she was abused by her government. Gerritson also told Congress that the IRS letter sent to her group was signed by Lois Lerner. Gerritson did not let the criminal activity by the Obama administration shut her down. She continues to lead conservative efforts in Alabama. Today Becky Gerritson announced she is running for Congress. She will challenge incumbant RINO Martha Roby for the right...

<p>Forty employees in the Census Bureau’s hiring office bilked the government out of $1.1 million in pay they never earned, broke government rules by hiring friends, and tried to intimidate whistleblowers, according to a new inspector general’s report. Supervisors even “led” the misconduct.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Internal Revenue Service revoked the nonprofit status of the veterans benefit organization that hosted and sold tickets to a foreign policy speech by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump aboard a retired U.S. battleship

It could have been the first general election rally of a Trump-Cruz 2016 ticket. In front of a crowd of more than a thousand on a blisteringly hot Wednesday outside the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas fired up the crowd for Donald Trump, who brought them to frenzy status at a rally in opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran. It is certainly too far off to say it could happen, but not too far off to envision a similar scenario playing out a little less than a year from now on the larger stage...

A National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge ruled that agreements signed by employees of Oklahoma-based arts and crafts company Hobby Lobby requiring them to submit to arbitration rather than go to court in work disputes are unenforceable. The ruling by the government's labor enforcement agency, announced Wednesday, could potentially undermine a common practice used by employers to avoid litigation under federal labor laws. "This is a dramatic decision," said David Rosenfeld, attorney for the Committee to Preserve the Religious Right to Organize, the group that brought the charges against Hobby Lobby. "If the board affirms it and the courts...

A federal judge Friday ordered the IRS to turn over records of any requests from the White House seeking taxpayers’ private information from the tax agency, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the IRS cannot refuse by citing taxpayer confidentiality laws. “This court questions whether section 6103 should or would shield records that indicate confidential taxpayer information was misused, or that government officials made an improper attempt to access that information,” the judge wrote. The ruling marks yet another federal judge who has ordered the Obama administration to be more transparent when responding to open-records records. The State Department is facing...

It was particularly revealing when David Axelrod explained that, of all his accomplishments in Barack Obama’s White House, he was proudest of the fact that “there hasn’t been a major scandal.” The qualifier “major” lays the burden on shoulders of the press to define what constitutes a serious scandal, and political media had thus far reliably covered the administration’s ethical lapses as merely the peculiar obsessions of addlebrained conservatives. Surely, much of the political establishment in Washington nodded along with Axelrod as he patted himself on the back. A mere seven months later, though, and it is clear now that...

A federal judge Friday ordered the IRS to turn over the records of any requests from the White House seeking taxpayers’ private information from the tax agency, delivering a victory to a group that for two years has been trying to pry the data loose. It’s not clear that there were any such requests — but Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the IRS cannot just refuse to say so by citing taxpayer confidentiality laws, known as section 6103 of the tax code. “This court questions whether section 6103 should or would shield records that indicate confidential taxpayer information was misused,...

The most disturbing aspect of the scandal around Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state is not the former first lady’s penchant for secrecy. What’s truly unsettling is that it has been widely taken as read among both the media and the general public that Mrs. Clinton will likely avoid serious legal consequences for her behavior because the Justice Department is ultimately answerable to President Obama – and Democrats will not use the instruments of government to destroy one of their own. Whether that eventually proves true, the sentiment itself reveals a...

The Internal Revenue Service must answer in court for a data breach in which hackers gained access to personal identifying data belonging to at least 330,000 people. Two Texas women sued the agency Thursday in Washington, complaining that "the U.S. government cannot be relied upon to keep the personal data of its citizens safe." The women, Becky Welborn of Dripping Springs and Wendy Windrich of Conroe, are seeking to represent anyone whose information was stolen after using the IRS "Get Transcript" service that allow taxpayers to get information on their own filings. They're also asking for unspecified money damages for...

Newly released emails from Lois Lerner show the former IRS official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal calling Republican critics “evil and dishonest,” and even “hateful.” The emails -- part of a report released Aug. 6 by the Senate Finance Committee -- offer a revealing look at Lerner, who used to head the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status and was at the center of the scandal over the alleged targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. The bipartisan report found evidence that both the Obama administration’s political agenda, and the personal politics of IRS...

A new poll released on Monday shows that support for Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran continues to unravel. According to the poll from Monmouth University, only 41 percent of Democrats believe Congress should approve the president’s nuclear deal with the Iranian regime. The numbers only get worse among independents and Republicans. Overall, just 27 percent of those polled believe Congress should approve the controversial nuclear deal with Iran. A majority of Republicans (55 percent) and a plurality of independents (33 percent) believe Congress should reject the deal: The public is divided on how Congress should handle the recently negotiated agreement...

Most Americans tend to agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of this country’s better presidents, having saved the nation from imploding on itself with the Civil War. Former IRS chief Lois Lerner, however, does not apparently have the same thoughts about keeping the South in the union. “Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” Lerner wrote in 2014. “He should (have) let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets.” The Senate Finance Committee released a report yesterday that examined 1.5 million pages of IRS emails. A significant focus...

The questions don’t come much bigger.In essence, it was: Is this last chance to save America as we know it?Some might find the answer chilling.WND asked Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas: If the Democrats win the White House again in 2016, will it be too late to prevent the country from turning into a permanent social-welfare state, and will it be the end of American exceptionalism?“I do believe, with this election – it’s now or never,” was his succinct and foreboding response.Why?“The threats to our liberty have never been greater,” Cruz began to explain.First, he addressed the immediate...

After the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage, religious leaders feared that religious universities, nonprofits and other institutions could lose their tax-exempt status. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has promised the Senate Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee that his agency would not go after the tax-exempt status of religious colleges and universities that oppose gay marriage. During a hearing Wednesday conducted by the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked Koskinen whether the IRS would “not, in the absence of a directive by Congress or by the courts,” take action to remove religious schools’...

There have been dozens of questions surrounding the disappearance of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS targeting scandal. Some of Lerner's emails have been recovered, after IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said under oath they were lost forever. Thousands are still missing. But perhaps the most compelling questions that have been asked since the IRS targeting scandal broke in May 2013 are 1) Exactly where were Lerner's emails and backup tapes destroyed? 2) Who destroyed them? Now, we have an answer. According to Americans for Tax Reform,Lerner's hard drive was...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Summary of Obama’s IRS scandal, as of July 31, 2015 In May 2013, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional reviews. Organizations with the words “tea party” or “patriot” were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide a list of donors, details about their internet postings on social networking websites, and information about their family members. When this was first reported by the media in May 2013, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that had conducted these illegal activities, claimed that only low level employees...

At a hearing Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked IRS Commissioner John Koskinen why the tax agency would demand that an Iowa prolife group tell them about the content of their prayers. Koskinen admitted the request was "totally inappropriate," saying he has apologized for the IRS. The agency also made every member of that Iowa group promise not to picket Planned Parenthood. "We should not have a federal government agency that becomes an intimidator, going after citizens, going after citizen groups, violating their First Amendment rights," Cruz said. Overall, the IRS targeted dozens of conservative and Tea Party groups, blocking...

New ( documentation) released by the House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner’s hard drive was physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it. The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner's hard drive contained “well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk.” The Oversight Committee report states: "Using the...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch released 906 pages of newly recovered Lois Lerner emails from the IRS that are believed to recently have been recovered by the IRS’ internal watchdog – the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).  The IRS released the emails under a court order by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan.  The new documents show that Lois Lerner and other top officials in the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including soon-to-be Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, closely monitored and approved the controversial handling of tax-exempt applications by Tea Party organizations.  The documents also show that...