Free Republic

Glenn Beck issued a response Saturday to the Internal Revenue Service’s shocking admission that it has unfairly targeted conservative groups, pointing out that he and his news organization have been reporting on the issue for over a year. “In February 2012, TheBlaze first reported what the IRS now admits to – that they unfairly targeted conservative groups including the 9/12 project. It is nice to see everyone else playing catch-up and finally asking the same questions that TheBlaze started raising over a year ago,” Beck’s statement read. As early as February 14, 2012, TheBlaze’s Mike Opelka published a story titled:...

When accusations first emerged in 2010 that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had targeted conservative and Tea Party groups for additional scrutiny, it was unclear how widespread the problem was, or how to respond. Some groups sued the IRS. Some contacted Congress, which sent inquiries to the IRS over a period of several months, beginning in October 2012. The House Ways and Means Committee, which is opening hearings on the subject on Wednesday, sent three separate letters to the IRS--but the IRS claimed no knowledge of the issue. It took the efforts of Mark Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation to find...

You don’t need an explanation. These aren’t the partisan political abuses you’re looking for. Move along. It was all a big mistake. An unfortunate, accidental error. And “what difference does it make?” anyway, since according to the New York Times headline, the “I.R.S. Apologizes to Tea Party Groups Over Audits of Applications for Tax Exemption.” Yes, indeed, the IRS says it is sorry. But not actually to the Tea Party and Patriot organizations, whose equal rights under the law the agency so flagrantly violated. Instead, last week, Lois Lerner, the Director of Exempt Organizations for the Internal Revenue Service, admitted...

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Sunday that the IRS´ admission of targeting various conservative groups for extra scrutiny was "absolutely chilling," and she called on President Barack Obama to apologize. "This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust that the American people have in government," Collins said on CNN´s "State of the Union." "It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review, and I think it´s very disappointing that the president hasn´t personally condemned this and spoken out." The Alabama Democratic Party:

“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...

Lois Lerner’s Response to Tea Party Question In response to a question about the IRS’s handling of Tea Party exemption applications, asked at the May 10 meeting of the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, Lois Lerner, Director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations office, made the following response: “We get about 60,000 applications for tax exemption every year, most of them are 501(c)(3) organizations. But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these organizations applying more than doubled,...

<p>Sarah Palin said the Internal Revenue Service's recent scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status is a sign of "corruption at the heart of big government" in Washington.</p> <p>"So many Americans knew this was happening, but many felt defenseless and even helpless against a government that seems to roll along without accountability or sense of obligation to the people it's supposed to serve. These Americans were mocked for being concerned about this, but now we see light shining on the truth, finally," she wrote in an online posting shortly after the IRS acknowledged it made "mistakes" in handling the applications of tea party groups.</p>

The Right constantly claims devotion to our founding documents. The problem: Its policies completely violate them. Last month, 20 House Republicans, along with staffers from nearly 40 congressional offices attended the first meeting of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus. The three premises behind the Caucus, according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who emceed the event, are “we’re taxed enough, we spend less than we take in, and we follow the Constitution.” This purported devotion to the founding documents echoes the themes reverberated at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March, where Sarah Palin and former Rick Santorum declared that...

A BEDROCK principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends. So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a...

This is getting real. Yesterday it was just some “low level” employees involved. Now AP is reporting that senior IRS officials were aware of the targeting, via AP, IRS watchdog: Senior IRS officials knew in 2011 tea parties’ tax-exempt status being targeted (h/t @GabrielMalor): WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS watchdog: Senior IRS officials knew in 2011 tea parties’ tax-exempt status being targeted. (added) AP has expanded its report now (h/t reader): A federal watchdog’s upcoming report says senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011. The disclosure contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Douglas...

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...

The IRS acknowledging that it targeted conservative political groups during the 2012 election season has sparked bipartisan calls for investigation -- with House Republicans already saying they will hold a hearing on the issue. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Friday the Republican-led chamber would investigate the tax-collecting agency for flagging the groups for additional review to see whether they were violating their tax-exempt status. “The IRS cannot target or intimidate any individual or organization based on their political beliefs,” the Virginia Republican said. Cantor’s comments were followed within minutes by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp saying...

An inspector general’s report due for release next week says senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew that agents were targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny as early as 2011, nine months before the IRS commissioner assured Congress the targeting was not happening. The report is certain to raise questions about the timing of the IRS’s disclosure of the targeting on Friday, how high up were the officials who knew about the practice, and whether anyone outside the agency was aware of it. Details of the inspector general’s audit, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of...

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...

Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew employees were singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny as early as 2011, according to a watchdog agency’s report set to be released next week, POLITICO has confirmed from a congressional source.The disclosure that senior officials knew agents were flagging applications containing the words “patriot” or “tea party” contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. He repeatedly denied that his agency was targeting conservative groups when asked by Congress last year.“There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people” who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman...