Free Republic

NBC Eyewitness News 13 in Indiana — yes, Indiana -- shows a massive IRS tax loophole which provides over $4 billion per year in tax credits to millions of illegal aliens. In many cases recipients of American taxpayers' misused monies have never set foot in the United States. Indiana is approximately 1700 miles northeast of the Mexican border.

A year ago, Catherine Duval was embroiled in the scandal over former IRS official Lois Lerner’s lost email

For the first time in my life of fifty-one years, I still haven't received my tax refund because of the Obamacare portion of my taxes. I waited two hours on the phone in early September to finally talk to an IRS agent, only to be told I should give my situation another 60 days because the agency is so overwhelmed with Obamacare crap they are trying to process.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Monday morning that he is putting a hold on three of President Obama’s ambassadorial nominees until the administration shows it is taking steps to punish Secret Service staff involved in leaking unflattering information about a lawmaker. “This was apparently a violation of law, and absolutely shocking conduct,” Cotton said in an interview. “The executive branch all the way up to the West Wing needs to treat this with the seriousness it requires.” Cotton called on Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to “personally attend” to disciplining top Secret Service leaders — specifically including new Director Joseph...

The largest Muslim civil rights group in the U.S. may have violated the federal tax code when its executive director last week called on retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson to drop out of the presidential race because of his comments about Muslims. ... In calling for Carson to end his White House bid, Awad argued that Carson’s comments were in violation of the Constitution which states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust of the United States.” But Fox News’ Megyn Kelly reported on Tuesday that Awad’s statement may put...

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...

MADISON, Wisconsin — Conservative targets of Wisconsin’s political John Doe investigation were still waiting Wednesday for a judge’s decision on whether the state Government Accountability Board must turn over communications it had with liberal political groups. Waukesha County Judge Lee Dreyfus Jr. was expected to rule two weeks ago, but the court doesn’t have Microsoft Outlook software, and the judge was unable to view the correspondence in question. Attorneys for the GAB have since sent the documents in PDF. Eddie Greim, attorney for conservative activist Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, both plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging the...

**SNIP** To know NASCO is to understand why Mr. Jones’ 2007 letter to Lois Lerner, in which he discusses a “sentiment” for charities to become more transparent, is so typical of NASCO’s hypocrisy about transparency, honesty and ethics. Their annual conference was once completely closed off from representatives of nonprofit organizations because NASCO did not like being criticized for their questionable and overbearing tactics. Indeed, in his 2007 letter to Ms. Lerner, Jones criticizes “’push back’ from the nonprofit sector.” These bureaucrats do not like criticism from those they regulate, and they are effective at chastening their critics. Jones also...

Does anyone remember Henry Markopolos? In case you don’t, he was the former securities industry executive who for nine years persistently, but unsuccessfully, tried to convince the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the respected securities investment firm headed by Bernie Madoff was engaged in massive long-term fraud. Fast forward to 2009 when Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for operating the largest private Ponzi scheme in history adding up to billions of dollars in client losses. In 2010, Markopolos wrote about his dramatic whistle-blower experience in a book aptly titled, “No One Would Listen: A True...

Not a smidgen. To date, we’ve been aware of two email accounts used by disgraced IRS official Lois Lerner. The first was her official government account and the second was a personal home account. Both have produced materials salient to the ongoing investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups….And they’re about to be joined by yet another address. HTML5 video is not supported! According to IRS attorney Geoffrey J, Klimas, Lerner a third email account has been uncovered from which Lerner was conducting official IRS business. As the Washington Times reports:

Coca-Cola was notified by the IRS that it owes $3.3 billion more in federal taxes, as well as interest, for 2007 to 2009, the company said Friday. The Atlanta-based company said in a regulatory filing that it believes the assessments from the Internal Revenue Service are without merit and plans to pursue "all administrative and judicial remedies necessary to resolve the matter." The maker of Sprite, Dasani, Powerade and other drinks says the disagreement is over how much it should report as taxable income in the U.S., in relation with licensing that allows its foreign affiliates to sell products like...

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...

It has been widely reported that Hillary Clinton’s faltering presidential campaign has started the fall season with “new efforts to bring spontaneity to a candidacy that sometimes seems wooden and overly cautious.” To test this new effort, here are some new questions pertaining to an old issue about the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and the all-important IRS Form 990. There is no doubt that just asking these questions will make Hillary squirm — because the answers have the potential to derail her efforts to become our nation’s first female president. If you recall, back in April of this...

Do you remember Lewis "Scooter" Libby? In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Yet Plame may not have been a covert undercover agent, based on the formal government definition of that role. And even if she were, it was widely known at the time that Secretary of State Colin Powell's subordinate, Richard Armitage, had most likely disclosed her status earlier. In other words, Libby was in an Orwellian position of being accused of a crime...

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...

I'm upset that the presidential candidates, all of them, rarely mention a huge problem: the quiet cancer that kills opportunity -- regulation. The accumulated burden of it is the reason that America is stuck in the slowest economic recovery since the Depression. I understand why candidates don't talk about it: Regulation is boring. But it's important.The founders of this republic were willing to die rather than be subject to other people's rules. Today we are so accustomed to bureaucracy that we've forgotten what it means to be free.We now have a million rules -- many so complex that even legal...

U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz told an East Texas crowd the current political climate reminds him of another time in American history - the late 1970s. “We had the same failed economic policies, the same malaise,” he said during a brief campaign stop on Thursday at Smith’s Lone Star Event Center in Tyler. “We had the same failed foreign policies - with the same countries, Russia and Iran.” But the parallels give him hope, Cruz said. “Because we know how that story ends,” he said. “The American people rose up and gave us the Reagan Revolution. … We...

Markings on no fewer than four emails contained on Hillary Clinton’s private system were changed to a category that blocks Congress and the public from viewing their contents ... One of the lawyers present during the review by State’s legal office was government attorney Catherine Duval, who was a key player in the controversy surrounding ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s missing emails related to the investigation of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. Duval, who is now spearheading the release of materials related to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, formerly worked for the same law firm as the Clintons’ private attorney...

More taxpaying residents left New York than any other state in the nation, IRS migration data from 2013 shows. During that year, around 115,000 New Yorkers left the state and packed up $5.65 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI) as well. Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) notes, “This new data shows that New York will remain America’s ‘Biggest Loser,’ having lost nearly 1.6 million taxpayers between 1985 and 2013. Those residents took with them more than $80.8 billion in annual AGI.” “The phenomenal failure of New York to retain taxpayers and businesses is directly related to its uncompetitive tax and...