Free Republic

....Obama took a victory lap on Stewart’s show, ticking off a list of achievements on health care, foreign policy and more. “The VA works better than when I came into office. Government works better than when I came into office. The economy is better than when I came into office,” Obama boasted.

In a classic and cynical attempt to never accept blame...

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.” Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.” Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites. This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already...

The official behind the IRS' conservative nonprofit targeting scandal, Lois Lerner, was friends with the Wisconsin regulator who targeted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's conservative aides and allies. Lerner and Kevin Kennedy, director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, were friends for 20 years and traded emails on campaign finance, politics, and personal matters between 2011 and 2013, emails obtained by the Wall Street Journal reveal. That was the same time frame the IRS increased its harassment of conservative groups and Wisconsin prosecutors conducted a secret John Doe probe of Walker's allies, raising the troubling question of whether they coordinated their...

Lois Lerner, the former IRS official accused of targeting conservative non-profit groups, is longtime friends with a Wisconsin state regulator who helped local prosecutors investigate aides and conservative allies of Gov. Scott Walker. The Wall Street Journal reports in an editorial ["Wisconsin's Friends at the IRS"] that Lerner and Kevin Kennedy, the director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB), were in routine contact via email between 2011 and 2013. Emails viewed by The Journal show that the two regulators discussed issues ranging from the personal to political. They shared news articles about campaign finance and also discussed dinner plans....

MADISON, Wis. – The reaction from Republican lawmakers was outrage and the response was swift Friday following the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell revelations that the director of the state’s political speech regulator and the head of the IRS division accused of targeting conservative groups may have shared information about Wisconsin’s political John Doe investigation. Republican leadership called on the Legislature to “double down” on finalizing reforms to the state’s Government Accountability Board, the agency that oversees, election, campaign finance and ethics laws. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson, called for a reform bill to be ready...

It turns out that the vast left-wing conspiracy isn’t all that vast. From the Wall Street Journal: Wisconsin’s campaign to investigate conservative tax-exempt groups has always seemed like an echo of the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. It turns out that may be more than a coincidence. Former IRS tax-exempt director Lois Lerner ran the agency’s policy on conservative groups. Kevin Kennedy runs the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) that helped prosecutors with their secret John Doe investigation of conservative groups after the 2011 and 2012 recall elections of Governor Scott Walker and state senators. Emails...

Madison— Key Assembly Republicans renewed their call Friday for overhauling the state's elections and ethics board after The Wall Street Journal reported the agency had been in touch with the Internal Revenue Service as it investigated conservative groups. "Nothing should be more important than free speech and it's outrageous that there's a coordinated effort to undermine this basic constitutional right," said a joint statement issued by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Rep. Dean Knudson (R-Hudson). "Now that the state budget is complete, it's time to double down on finalizing the necessary reforms for the (Government Accountability Board) so the...

Via a Freedom of Information Act Request, Judicial Watch obtained several documents. Among those was a DOJ Recap with the following: On October 8, 2010, Lois Lerner, Joe Urban, Judy Kindell, Justin Lowe, and Siri Buller met with the section chief and other attorneys from the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section, and one representative from the FBI, to discuss recent attention to the political activity of exempt organizations.The section's attorneys expressed concern that certain section 501(c) organizations are actually political committees "posing" as if they are not subject to FEC law, and therefore may be subject to...

So the Obama IRS wasn’t just persecuting right-leaning nonprofits — it was out to prosecute them, too. And with the help of the Obama Department of Justice and FBI. Via Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the watchdog group Judicial Watch just got evidence of the plot. A “DOJ Recap” on an Oct. 8, 2010, meeting tells how officials from the three agencies discussed “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law” against groups “posing” as tax-exempt nonprofits. As part of the project, the IRS handed the FBI 21 computer disks with 1.23 million pages of confidential IRS returns...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing...

I know her secret, I know she’s scared, and I know what she did last summer. If you need something lighthearted to pick yourself up and get back into work after a long holiday weekend, I’ll give you a column that would more humorous if it weren’t so close to the truth. It’s the story about what Lois Lerner and her new bestie, Hillary Clinton, did last summer. The 4th of July reminded me of the 1997 horror-thriller, “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” where a girl gets attacked on the 4th of July. Which then reminded me of...

Attorney Catherine Duval is in charge of handling inquiries from Congress about emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the conservative targeting scandal. Just last week we learned during Congressional testimony from internal government watchdogs that Lerner's hard drive containing emails sent and received when the agency was targeting conservative groups between 2010 and 2012 likely crashed due to "an impact of some sort." We also learned that her hard drive allegedly crashed on a Saturday and that the IRS didn't bother looking for backup tapes. “When asked about the possible cause of...

Catherine Duval, the attorney in charge of the Internal Revenue Service’s email production to Congress, has changed jobs: She now manages the State Department’s email production to Congress, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday, June 25. Both the IRS and State Department have come under congressional scrutiny over their email production amid suspicions that critical documents may have been withheld or destroyed. Word that Catherine Duval – also known as Kate Duval -- has worked at both the IRS and the State Department came last Thursday, when Gowdy questioned...

Cue the backlash!Following this morning's history-making Supreme Court Decision on marriage equality, Vikings cornerback Josh Robinson took to Twitter to condemn gay marriage in a series of homophobic tweets. He event compared marriage equality to incest and pedophilia."Love is love? So what will we say when the 30yr old loves YOUR 10 year old. When the dad loves HIS 6 year old? It's different? Yea okay!" the 24-year-old football star wrote Friday. "The day one person makes that stand, some may support, but many will say that's sick! That day I will say ‘hypocrites.'""When did we start defining a word...

Democrat Leader Elijah Cummings Could Face Prison Time for his Illegal Attacks on on a Voters Rights Group– Today Cummings called on Congress to end its IRS investigation. Last April House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released a report implicating Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in colluding with the IRS and Lois Lerner against the nonpartisan voters rights group “True the Vote.” Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of “True the Vote,” testified before Congress in February. She was targeted by FBI, IRS, ATF, and OSHA after she filed for tax exempt status for her voters rights group. Engelbrecht said this during...

Former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner’s hard drive most likely crashed due to “an impact of some sort,” like somebody hitting it or smashing it, according to new congressional testimony. Then the hard drive was shredded and its pieces were sold for scrap. Lerner’s laptop, which crashed on June 11, 2011 between 5 and 7 PM, was sent to an IT technician two days later. The Hewlett-Packard technician looking at her laptop determined that the hard drive failed because of an impact of some sort.

Agency destroyed e-mails after telling Congress they couldn’t be found. House Republicans investigating the IRS’s targeting of tea-party groups are seriously considering an effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen or other agency employees for “culpable misdemeanors” pertaining to the destruction of e-mails written by Lois Lerner, the former official at the heart of the scandal. “We’ve briefed the leadership’s counsel, and I think that they’re open to it, but it’s the type of thing where this town is like, ‘oh, that’s not how we do things, it’s not really been used lately,’” a Republican member of the House Oversight...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Investigators are blaming mistakes by IRS employees — not a criminal conspiracy — for the loss of thousands of emails related to the tax agency's tea party scandal. IRS workers erased 422 computer backup tapes that "most likely" contained as many as 24,000 emails to and from former IRS official Lois Lerner, who has emerged as a central figure in congressional investigations, according to IRS's inspector general. The workers erased the tapes a month after IRS officials discovered that an untold number of Lerner's emails were lost. The IG says the workers were unaware of a year-old...