Free Republic

Via Mediaite, it took a few days but at last we have some fall guys. It’s ludicrous, of course, to think the problem was limited to two people — the IG report last night specifically blamed ineffective management and, as Guy Benson reminds us, we already know that knowledge of the harassment went all the way up the chain — but pay attention to the fine print in the video clip at 1:22. Miller, the commissioner, apparently acknowledged that the IRS’s mishandling of this went beyond the two “rogues.” Evidently they’re setting up to put most of the blame on...

When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train. 'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training material.' That question was part of the tax collection agency's February 14, 2012 letter to Kevin Kookogey. founder...

With Obama’s IRS scandal mushrooming by the day, we’ve been learning that some applications for 501(c)(4) status have languished for years and while some targeted groups have simply given up since delays were so long. Yet curiously, some groups favorable to Obama or actually run by an Obama have been mysteriously sped up through the process. Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for...

Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it better: A rebel group of engaged activists, derided and harassed by authorities, becomes the obsession of a powerful political machine, leading to the demise of … the machine. Now, because today’s Internal Revenue Service scandal involves rebellious conservatives pitted against a progressive government, this true story is not likely to hit the big screen. However, given the fact that misuse of the IRS was one of the charges that brought about the end of the unpopular Nixon administration, the irony of potentially having something similar happen to the press’ favorite president is sweet, indeed! Frankly,...

“Hunchback of Notre Dame” star Bette Midler declared that she loves the Internal Revenue Service for targeting the tax-exempt status of conservative groups. “I LOVE THE IRS!!! HOW CAN A POLITICAL ORGANIZATION BE CALLED A NON-PROFIT THAT PROMOTES GENERAL WELFARE??,” Midler tweeted in all caps Monday. The IRS apologized Friday for improperly giving extra scrutiny to the tax-exempt status of conservative nonprofit groups — a confession White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama would find “outrageous” if confirmed by an independent report. Midler, an Obama supporter who has previously tweeted that “Obama inherited this [economic] mess, he...

It’s an Obama world… The IRS told a pro-life group that it had to promote abortion or they wouldn’t qualify for nonprofit status. World Net Daily reported: The Internal Revenue Service already has confessed to targeting and trying to injure tea party, Constitution and patriot organizations, by demanding answers to arbitrary questions and delaying their applications for a tax status so they could operate. Now WND has learned that the IRS also put an organization in its bull’s-eye that wanted to do nothing more than share its pro-life message with churches. Cherish Life Ministries was created to be a non-profit...

My rule of thumb is that a vast majority of alleged political scandals will have less electoral impact than the conventional wisdom initially holds. There are two main reasons for this. First, voters weigh major issues like economic performance and the conduct of foreign wars heavily in making their decisions, leaving relatively little room for everything else. Second, the news media may overplay the lead story, scandalous or otherwise, on any given day, even though it may turn out to be relatively unimportant in the context of a multiyear political cycle. But the recent admission by the Internal Revenue Service...

President Barack Obama said Tuesday the Treasury Department inspector general's report examining how the Internal Revenue Service allowed for the targeting of "tea party" and other groups shows some IRS employees "failed" to act in a way "that's worthy of the public's trust." "Regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is, it was wrong," the president said. In his statement, Obama said he's directed Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew "to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, and to make sure that each of the Inspector General's recommendations are implemented quickly, so that such conduct...

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls. It asked for printouts of Facebook posts. And it asked what books people were reading. A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups and the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere. The long-awaited report Treasury Department inspector general report released Tuesday says the agency itself decided some of its questions...

The IRS came after Billy Graham, too, his son charged Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama. Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010. With the IRS admitting it gave extra scrutiny to conservative political organizations, Graham says he now believes that the review was part of an Obama administration effort of “targeting and attempting to intimidate us.” The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association urging of voters...

Amid the controversy over Uncle Sam singling out politically conservative groups, Matt Drudge took to Twitter on Monday morning to offer his take. Linking the IRS scandal to President Obama‘s health care law, the Drudge Report creator foreshadowed civil war, an “American Holocaust,” and a “brave new president.” Recently, Sarah Palin, too, drew a connection between health care and the IRS, noting that the “same corrupt” agency “will be in charge of enforcing Obamacare.” Drudge weighed in thusly — including some interesting hypotheticals: (TWEETS AT LINK)

David Plouffe had an intriguing comment yesterday on the scandal involving selective tax-law enforcement against Tea Party groups. The manager of the 2008 Obama campaign who served as a top White House aide until this January, tweeted: "What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $." National Journal's Ron Fournier responded with a trio of "serious questions: Why is that important to note? Is it justification for the action you called wrong? If not, why note?" Fournier describes the responses he got: Several...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, folks, on this IRS business, I think the 2010 midterms really shocked the Democrats. I think they might have expected to maybe lose some seats, although, actually, my memory -- no, no, no, no, no, my memory is that they thought with the overwhelming popularity of Obama it might be the first time that a sitting president's party increased seats. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. I think Bush did it. But they were clearly hoping for at least a draw. In the 2010 midterms they got shellacked. It's one of the reasons I...

“…statements in the [group’s] case file criticize how the country is being run.” -- One of the criteria used by IRS investigators to target small-government groups for special scrutiny, according to an agency audit provided to congressional investigators. Team Obama has always known how to make the most of critics in order to make the least of criticism. During the 2008 campaign, it was “Stop the Smears,” an Obama effort to single out those who made claims about the candidate’s nativity, faith or personal conduct, rounding up the most slanderous and paranoiac claims, publicizing and then refuting them. Then when...

Kevin Drum outlines what I take to be the emerging case for the defense of the IRS agents who applied special scrutiny to tax-exemption applications from Tea Party groups: Roughly speaking, what seems to have happened is that three years ago the IRS was facing an explosion of newly formed 501(c)4 groups claiming tax exempt status, something that's legal only for groups that are primarily engaged in promoting education or social welfare, not electioneering. So some folks in the Cincinnati office tried to come up with a quick filter to flag groups that deserved extra scrutiny. But what should that...

Just months after being slimed by President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, Mitt Romney supporter and businessman Frank VanderSloot was informed that he was going to be audited not only by the Internal Revenue Service, but by the Labor Department as well. VanderSloot’s saga was told by columnist Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal last July. In April 2012, VanderSloot, who served as the national co-chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential finance committee, was one of eight Romney backers to be defamed as ”wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records” in a post on the Obama campaign’s website. The post, entitled “Behind the...

Washington Republicans on Sunday characterized the IRS targeting Tea Party groups and other conservative political organizations as “chilling” and intimidating acts that heighten Americans' mistrust in government. Their comments follow the IRS acknowledgment Friday that the agency targeted such groups during the 2012 election cycle to see whether they were violating their tax-exempt status -- a revelation followed by a report that such activity dated back to the previous year......

“Whoa: Did the IRS also target Jewish groups for ‘extra-special attention’?,” Twitchy asks: The IRS admits to targeting conservative groups for additional review and laughably claims the witch hunt wasn’t “motivated by political bias.” What will its math-challenged spokeswoman Lois Lerner say about allegations that the IRS gave “extra-special attention to the tax-exempt status of some Jewish groups for political reason”? * * * * * The pro-Israel group Z STREET filed a lawsuit against the IRS in 2010, claiming an IRS agent said the organization would come under extra scrutiny because it’s “connected to Israel.” In addition, the IRS...

AS a taxpayer and a conservative who hopes to remain on good terms with the Internal Revenue Service for many April 15ths to come, I don’t want to speculate too freely about the motives of the “low level” I.R.S. employees who decided to single out Tea Party groups for an inappropriate level of attention during the heat of the 2012 campaign. But I’m willing to guess this much: Even though an American Civil Liberties Union official described their excessive interest in right-wing groups as “about as constitutionally troubling as it gets,” the bureaucrats in question probably thought they were just...

In September 1989 the New York Times magazine published an excerpt of "The IRS: A Law Unto Itself," a book by former Times reporter David Burnham. Burnham detailed how the Internal Revenue Service had misused its power in an attempt to stifle political dissent: During the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, the focus of the I.R.S.'s effort at political control was individuals and organizations demonstrating for civil rights and against the American presence in Vietnam. . . . On June 16, 1969, Randolph W. Thrower, I.R.S. Commissioner during the Nixon Administration, wrote a memorandum for the record about a meeting he...