Free Republic

What’s up with all the brew-ha-ha over Mr. and Mrs.Claire Shipman’s commie kitchen icons anyhow?Flipping: it’s the first step in learning how to spinThere’s nothing odd about the commie posters in the kitchen. In case you didn’t know, Mr. and Mrs. Claire Shipman met and fell in love in Russia. So these are simply sentimental tchotchkes from those happy days.And as for the odd Photoshop in their home library:In my *ahem* line-of-work I really shouldn’t say very much about transimaging. Besides, everything in politics is photoshopped today. It’s a “huge” industry. if you get my drift.For example, there was the...

Attorney Stanley Cohen, who has defended Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and the leader of Hamas .. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Stanley Cohen, a prominent lawyer who has represented political activists and terrorism suspects, among them Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, pleaded guilty this morning in Syracuse to obstructing the IRS. ... Last month, Cohen was the lawyer representing Osama bin Laden's son-in-law in a high-profile New York City criminal trial. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and of other terrorism charges. ... Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan wrote that Cohen failed to file tax returns from 2005 through...

... Instead of asking Congressman Cummings about this damaging new report surrounding the IRS scandal, Schieffer ignored the entire issue, and focused on ObamaCare and equal pay for women for the entirety of the interview. The CBS host even falsely claimed that the GOP did not support equal pay for women: “Marsha Blackburn says Republicans are actually for equal pay for women. But yet, it was blocked in the Senate by Republicans…What is going on here?” Given that Schieffer had the opportunity to interview the ranking Democrat on the committee leading the IRS investigation, it would have made sense to...

Sunday, April 13, 2014 The Paranoid Party Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The Democrat may no longer believe in God, the Constitution or even motherhood and apple pie, but he devoutly believes with all the faith of a 9/11 Truther in the impermeability of steel and of a Neo-Nazi in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that somewhere out there Republicans are sitting in a sealed room and plotting to bring back the 50s. And if not the 50s, then at least the early 60s. The left accuses the right of being deeply paranoid. Meanwhile...

As millions of Americans race to meet Tuesday’s tax deadline, their chances of getting audited are lower than they have been in years. Budget cuts and new responsibilities are straining the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to police tax returns. This year, the IRS will have fewer agents auditing returns than at any time since at least the 1980s. Taxpayer services are suffering, too, with millions of phone calls to the IRS going unanswered. “We keep going after the people who look like the worst of the bad guys,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in an interview. “But there are going...

Enabling an IRS witch-hunt By Post Editorial Board April 13, 2014 | 9:25pm Elijah Cummings was his characteristically restrained self last week when he accused Republicans who voted to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of putting themselves “on the same page of history books with [Joe] McCarthy.” From the start of the investigations into the IRS targeting of conservative organizations, Cummings has accused Republicans of a witch-hunt. But recently unearthed e-mails highlight his own involvement with the IRS, contradicting his earlier denials. During hearings back in February, Cummings objected to testimony from the founder and lawyer for...

When I say “debts,” I don’t mean loans that the parents willingly sought from SSA. It would be bad enough to hold a kid responsible for that (since when are children responsible for their parents’ obligations?), but at least it would have been voluntarily incurred by mom/dad. The “debts” here are overpayments of Social Security benefits, the product of SSA’s own errors. The parents who received them might not have even realized they were getting money they weren’t supposed to have. And now, somehow, it’s junior’s problem. But wait. It gets worse. When [Mary] Grice was 4, back in 1960,...

When are the sins of the father visited upon his children? When the IRS and Social Security Administration say so. Hit and Run: Holding children responsible for the debt incurred by their parents is a feature of historical feudalism and a few modern third-world shitholes. Developed countries, by and large, assume that a debt dies with the person who willingly incurred it, or at least stops with his or her estate. "By and large," I write, because the U.S. government has broken with centuries of tradition holding individuals responsible for their choices, opting to withhold tax refunds from children whose...

Mike Dickinson, the Democratic challenger for the Virginia Congressional seat currently held by Republican Eric Cantor went on a rant against opponents of abortion this week. “The people who say that abortion is against God’s plan are mentally disabled,” Dickinson maintained. “Look, they say they pray that abortions be stopped, but abortions continue. Since, in their view, God is all-powerful, the failure of their prayers must either mean that there is no God or that God is okay with abortions.” Not content with belittling pro-lifers, Dickinson also took a swat at the Tea Party, calling them “the true terrorists. The...

Catherine Engelbrecht became the face of the IRS scandal with her riveting testimony before Congress on how her group True the Vote was targeted by the IRS for selective persecution and harassment. Recently, it was discovered that Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings had a hand in the IRS targeting True the Vote. You might remember Cummings as the grandstanding Democrat who railed against Darrell Issa’s investigation of the scandal after a Congressional hearing with IRS official Lois Lerner had closed (and then implied that Issa was racist): Further making the situation ironic and unsightly for justice-avoiding Democrats is that emails show...

Usually, the Internal Revenue Service is the one getting paid this time of year, but Uncle Sam will be lining someone else's pockets this tax season because of its attachment to Windows XP. In case you hadn't heard, support for XP officially stopped on April 8th, meaning that Microsoft will no longer provide support or security updates for the venerable OS. However, governmental computers can't be left vulnerable, so the IRS will be paying Microsoft millions of dollars for custom support to keep their machines secure and functional. Right now, over half the agency's PCs still run XP...

April 12, 2014 True the Vote president calls Cummings damning emails ‘the tip of a very ugly iceberg’ by Michael Dorstewitz The explosive discovery by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that its ranking Democratic member coordinated with the IRS to target True the Vote came as no surprise to its founder and president. She called it “the tip of a very ugly iceberg.”Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the committee’s chairman, released emails earlier this week strongly suggesting that Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was in direct communication with disgraced IRS supervisor Lois Lerner in an effort to target True the...

The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee actively conspired to inappropriately target and silence tea party-affiliated groups, says Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote. House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa released emails this week that suggest Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maryland Democrat, prompted the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the conservative organization as it was applying for nonprofit status, according to The Washington Examiner. Engelbrecht told John Bachman and J.D. Hayward of "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV that these emails will undermine claims by Cummings and the IRS that no conservative groups were targeted for political reasons. "I'm thrilled to...

The Washington Post reports that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds this month are instead getting letters informing them that because of a debt they never knew about — often a debt incurred by their parents — the government has confiscated their check. http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/social-security-treasury-target-hundreds-of-thousands-of-taxpayers-for-parents-old-debts/2014/04/10/74ac8eae-bf4d-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html?tid=HP_more

When I say “debts,” I don’t mean loans that the parents willingly sought from SSA. It would be bad enough to hold a kid responsible for that (since when are children responsible for their parents’ obligations?), but at least it would have been voluntarily incurred by mom/dad. The “debts” here are overpayments of Social Security benefits, the product of SSA’s own errors. The parents who received them might not have even realized they were getting money they weren’t supposed to have. And now, somehow, it’s junior’s problem.But wait. It gets worse. When [Mary] Grice was 4, back in 1960, her...

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s decades-long battle against the federal government over grazing rights has heated to the point where militia groups have joined in and taken up spots against the feds who’ve circled his land — and talk is, they’re not afraid to open fire. A spokesman for the one of the militia groups said as much to local 8 News Now: I’m not “afraid to shoot,” he said. Margaret Houston, Mr. Bundy’s sister and a cancer survivor, said at a town hall gathering this week that the situation “was like a war zone” and that she felt “like I...

On MSNBC last night, host Alex Wagner continued her ongoing “leave the IRS alone” theme with a defense of the organization and its key players that tread into the territory of virtuosity in the art of reversing the spin. Not only, Wagner would have you believe, is the IRS not guilty of anything, not only were conservative groups not harmed or hampered in any way, but in fact it is the IRS who is truly the victim of unjust targeting. They are not the aggressor but the innocent victim, the simple, plainspoken agency that gosh darnit just wants to do...

In a Thursday appearance on Sean Hannity's radio program, Cruz said Holder should be impeached for "defying Congress and the rule of law." He said Holder's actions were not in the spirit of the Department of Justice, which Cruz said has "a bipartisan tradition of resisting partisan pressure and upholding the rule of law." Cruz cited examples of Holder's predecessors (Janet Reno and Elliot Richardson, respectively) from Bill Clinton's and Richard Nixon's administrations. Cruz said he was "very pleased" that Lerner was held in contempt by the House Committee but noted that the Justice Department has not indicted one person...

MSNBC does it again! MSNBC host Alex Wagner attempted to argue that the IRS was actually the victim of the recent investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups that were seeking 501(c)(4) status. “In my mind the IRS who is trying to get this out are the ones who have actually been targeted in this investigation.” Wagner stated during her program on Thursday night.

Just before I hit play at Mediaite, this floated through my Twitter timeline: The boldest thing Comedy Central could do to replace Colbert: a show parodying MSNBC left just as Colbert parodied Fox News right.— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) April 10, 2014 Good luck parodying this one. Evidently there’s no sin so grave that it can’t be forgiven at MSNBC in the name of making life more difficult for conservative 501(c)(4) groups. Doesn’t matter that Lois Lerner’s been caught daydreaming about working for Obama’s political org while pursuing audits of outfits like American Crossroads. Doesn’t matter that she shared info with...