Free Republic

Homeland Insecurity: The IRS is diligent to a fault when it comes to vetting conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. But it's out to lunch when vetting employees posing security risks. While the Internal Revenue Service was investigating Tea Party patriots in the run-up to last year's presidential election, it dispensed with basic background checks and hired a convicted Islamist traitor as a high-level official. Mohammad Weiss Rasool, whom the FBI busted last decade for tipping off an al-Qaida terrorist suspect, reportedly now works for the deputy IRS chief financial officer as a financial management analyst, drawing a lucrative salary...

Misfeasance: While the IRS was hassling any nonprofit group with the word "patriot" in its name, it was rubberstamping exemptions for "Islamic" groups, even organizations that violate disclosure laws. Worse, it was even finding favor with nonprofits tied to terrorism — namely, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which not coincidentally is yoked to the Democratic Party. Despite being blackballed by the FBI, which still suspects it's fronting for Hamas, and despite failing to file annual tax reports as required by federal law, CAIR apparently has found friends in high places at the nation's powerful taxing authority. Last year, in...

Corruption: The inspector general's report on the IRS targeting of conservatives makes it seem like a case of bureaucratic bumbling. But the more we learn, the more it looks like a concerted effort to hobble Obama's political foes. 'Inappropriate criteria," "insufficient oversight" and "lack of managerial review." That's what led the IRS to target hundreds of conservative groups for intrusive, costly and lengthy scrutiny during their application for tax-exempt status, according to the IG report released on Tuesday. In other words, it wasn't a politically motivated attack on conservative groups during a presidential campaign. It was just a case of...

The rabbit hole is getting ever deeper for the embattled IRS. Last Friday, Lois Lerner of the IRS tax-exempt-organizations division, issued an apology for the targeting of conservative groups in the screening process for 501c(4) tax-exempt status. She also claimed then that only low-level employees in a Cincinnati office had been guilty of singling out groups containing the words “tea party” or “patriot.” However, a report reviewed by both The Wall Street Journal and Reuters has indicated that the questions of who initiated the practice and how the conservative groups were targeted are more complicated than previously thought. The report...

Your government, as currently administered by President Obama, doesn’t like the word “patriot.” If you associate yourself with an organization using that word, you may be investigated and prosecuted. Under Obama, government employees think they are doing what their superiors want them to do when they harass and menace political organizations that might oppose the president. Vladimir Putin is probably jealous of Obama. He and others like him will hardly be able to hide their smiles when they hear the United States preach about the need to let political organizations function freely. What lessons should the Muslim Brotherhood learn from...

The Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to "make America a better place to live," according to new details of a government probe. The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn't targeting conservative groups.

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog President Obama refuses to fire IRS employees who illegally targeted conservative groups In May 2013, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional reviews. Organizations with the words “tea party” or “patriot” were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide a list of donors, details about their internet postings on social networking websites, and information about their family members.When this was first reported by the media in May 2013, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that had conducted these illegal activities, claimed that only low level...

A timeline of Internal Revenue Service activities that was developed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and provided to congressional staff indicates that early last year—as the nation was headed toward a presidential election—the IRS issued a “be on the lookout order” (BOLO) for officials in its “Determinations Unit” to ferret out for heightened scrutiny organizations applying for tax exempt status that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” The inspector general’s timeline indicates that as early as March 2010 the IRS’ “Determinations Unit” had begun targeting for special scrutiny organizations that used...