Free Republic

Why was the IRS interested in efforts to ensure the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was legitimate? As the Obama Administration seeks to pivot to a new explanation for their activist Internal Revenue Service (IRS), we find out they took particular interest in the Verify the Recall effort which took place in Wisconsin during 2012. Two of the three groups involved in Verify the Recall experienced delays in receiving their non-profit status. More ominously, the IRS asked at least one other conservative organization, in another state, about their relationship with the effort. The North East Tarrant Texas Tea Party...

In Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton as a moral reformer. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change transparency to Washington. Five years later, those vows are in shambles. True, the murder of four Americans in Benghazi has become a mess of partisan bickering. But the disturbing facts now transcend politics. The Obama administration -- the president himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney -- all at various times blamed an obscure video maker for the "spontaneous...

It's rigorous work keeping pace with all of these scandals, as House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer discovered earlier this week, but we're doing our best nonetheless. On the IRS targeting issue, we covered a lot of ground yesterday and earlier, but the "fun" never ceases. It will come as a surprise to no one that IRS employees lean heavily Democratic. Their livelihoods depend on the existence of big, complicated government, so of course they'd vote blue. In the 2012 cycle, during which their agency's abusive methods were in place, IRS employees donated to Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by more...

Jon Stewart mercilessly tore into the Obama administration tonight over the revelation that the Internal Revenue Service specifically targeted Tea Party groups for scrutiny. Stewart slammed the government’s lack of “managerial competence” and said that thanks to this scandal, conspiracy theorists how have a level of vindication they’ve never had before. After briefly responding to Bill O’Reilly going after him, Stewart mockingly opined that there is no possible justification for all the wild claims conservatives have made about government overreach, only to be caught up with the IRS scandal. Stewart said the whole tax-exempt status thing is “bullsh*t,” but it’s...

Jay Leno did not waste anytime before digging into President Obama for his sudden barrage of scandals during his Tonight Show monologue last night. The host tied together the controversies over Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservatives and the Justice Department wiretapping the AP into one larger narrative, asking, “Remember the old days when President Obama’s biggest embarrassment was Joe Biden?” “They’re warning this could be a long, hot summer,” Leno began, supposedly referring to the California heat wave. “They’re telling everyone to cover up. And believe me, you don’t have to tell the Obama White House twice. They know about...

Letters from the IRS to tea party-related organizations in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, New Mexico show that IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and two satellite offices in California, were directly involved with sending harassing letters to conservative organizations that sought tax-exempt status. The IRS has acknowledged only the involvement of its Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati, Ohio, which typically makes most decisions about granting or denying tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations. And Wednesday afternoon, CNN cited a congressional source in reporting that the acting IRS Commissioner – whom President Obama fired later in the day – had identified two 'rogue'...

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...