Free Republic

The attorney for Lois Lerner, a central figure in the IRS scandal, signaled Wednesday that his client will not comply with a request to testify on Capitol Hill next week. Attorney William Taylor said Lerner, who resigned last year as the agency’s tax-exempt organizations chief, will return and testify only if compelled by a federal court or if given immunity for her testimony. Taylor stated his position in a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He was responding to a letter Tuesday from Issa saying, in part, that Lerner’s testimony...

Attorney General Eric Holder is now arguing that state attorney generals who refuse to defend provisions in their state constitutions restricting marriage to the union of one man and one woman are following in the footsteps of the civil rights movement. "Mr. Holder has said he views today's gay-rights campaigns as a continuation of the civil rights movement that won rights for black Americans in the 1950s and '60s," the New York Times reported Tuesday. Holder provided an example of what the Times was talking about when he spoke earlier this month at a dinner sponsored by the Human Rights...

Attorney General Eric Holder is taking the lawless attitude of the Obama administration and passing it down to state attorneys general. Yesterday during an interview with The New York Times, Holder said state attorneys general do not have to enforce laws they disagree with, specifically when it comes to the issue of gay marriage. It is highly unusual for the United States attorney general to advise his state counterparts on how and when to refuse to defend state laws. But Mr. Holder said when laws touch on core constitutional issues like equal protection, an attorney general should apply the highest...

Whether Democrat or Republican, do you really want your private tax information leaked with impunity? On March 9, 2010, around 10 a.m., I announced my plans to run for senate representing Delaware. Later that same day, my office received a call from a reporter asking about my taxes. It’s since come out, after a halting and unenthusiastic investigation, that a Delaware Department of Revenue employee named David Smith accessed my records that day at approximately 2 p.m. — out of curiosity, he says. That these records ended up in the hands of the press is just a coincidence, the IRS...

Most Americans believe that government corruption has gotten worse under the Obama administration, according to a new national survey conducted by two conservative organizations. The survey, conducted by the conservative Judicial Watch in partnership with Breitbart.com, shows 77 percent of the 1,000 adults questioned are concerned about government corruption and 52 percent of them think the problem has gotten worse over the past five years since President Barack Obama first took office. "The Judicial Watch-Breitbart poll shows that the American people are thoroughly disenchanted with a government they see as corrupt and secretive," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The...

Testimony related to the IRS Targeting investigation Testimony: Catherine Engelbrecht Shortly after filing IRS forms to establish 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations, an assortment of federal entities –including law enforcement agencies and a Congressman from Maryland, Elijah Cummings –came knocking at my door. http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Engelbrecht.pdf Catherine Engelbrecht Founder and President Other testimony can be found here: http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/irs-targeting-investigation-administration/

**SNIP** Eight months later, the probe has shown few public signs of progress, and many of the tea party victims say they still haven’t heard from the FBI or Justice Department lawyers. House Republicans said they were concerned about the direction of the probe, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican and a subcommittee chairman on the House oversight committee, asked Ms. Bosserman to testify at a hearing next week. The GOP has identified her as the lead lawyer on the investigation, and they have questioned her role, given her history as a significant political donor to President Obama’s 2008 and...

A year ago this month, the attorney general for the District of Columbia let NBC News anchor David Gregory off scot-free for possession of a “high capacity” magazine because doing so “would not promote public safety.” Now, Irvin Nathan refuses to use that same prosecutorial discretion for an average citizen who violated a bizarre technicality that makes empty casings and shells a crime as serious as having an illegal firearm.

Senate Intelligence Committee members did not include important testimony from Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks about security at the U.S. mission in their final report, which had the effect of blaming the fallen ambassador and protecting a top State Department official from responsibility for the attack. "I was interviewed by the Select Committee and its staff, who were professional and thorough. I explained this sequence of events," Hicks (who worked with the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, in the lead-up to the attack) explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday. "For some reason, my explanation did not...

You can add Timothy Geithner to the list of people who have abused Americans in the vain pursuit to keep Obama’s reputation well coiffed. He joins a distinguished group of Obama scofflaws including the IRS, NSA, Eric Holderbeast, the Department of Energy, Lois Lerner, the Department of Justice, the National Park Service, Hillary Clinton, Debo Adegbile, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Sneezy, Doc and Hopey Congress are you listening? Do you care? Court filings in an ongoing lawsuit between the U.S. Department of Intimidation, er, Justice and McGraw Hill- the company that owns rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P)- say...

An Italy-based American diplomat brazenly bedded staffers and hookers, fabricated expense reports, and knowingly served rotten meat to a visiting British consul general, a blockbuster Brooklyn federal lawsuit charges. Naples Consul General Donald Moore even gave favored ladies of the night entry codes to secure areas at the embassy and told underlings that “women are like candy, they meant to be unwrapped and thrown away,” according to a $300,000 sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a whistleblower. ... The suits states that Howard began working at the consulate in 2010 and alleges she soon learned that Moore had impregnated a staffer...

The secret court that oversees the nation’s intelligence activities renewed its approval of the National Security Agency’s telephone-records program on Friday, granting the government a new three-month window to collect data on all Americans’ phone calls. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office announced the court’s ruling in a statement, though officials didn’t make the ruling itself public, saying it was going through declassification procedures. The decision marks the 36th time the program has been approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “It is the administration’s view, consistent with the recent holdings of the United States District Courts for...

The rule of law is a matter of much concern lately, thanks to President Obama’s extraordinary use, and often flagrant abuse, of executive power. Congress held hearings on the subject in December, with some of the most damning testimony coming from leading liberal intellectuals. For the past five years, no one has worked more diligently to hold this Administration accountable than Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who represents northern San Diego County, and chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. After serving in the Army and reaching the rank of captain, Issa built an impressive private-sector business resume, founding Directed...

John Dodson, the federal agent who blew the lid off the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal, claims the FBI had ties to the men who killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010 near Nogales, Ariz. In fact, Dodson says the Mexican bandits who gunned down Terry were working for FBI operatives and had been sent to the border to do a “drug rip-off” using intelligence gathered by the DEA. Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he doesn’t think the FBI was part of the rip-off crew, but the...

The Justice and State departments are now citing a year-old FBI investigation and a future criminal prosecution to block access to survivors of last year’s Benghazi terror attack. In an Oct. 28 letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, Julia Frifield, refers to "significant risks" and "serious concerns about having the survivors of the attack submit to additional interviews." Graham has been asking since last year for the FBI’s transcripts of interviews with State Department and CIA survivors who were evacuated to Germany after the Sep.11 attack on the U.S. consulate. He and other...

Discussing the Obamacare disaster in the Rose Garden on Monday, President Obama led with a phrase to which we have become accustomed: “Nobody,” the president emoted, “is madder than me” about this mess. Along with “let me be clear” and “make no mistake,” this is a favorite construction. Obama, you see, is more concerned for and correct about everything than everybody else at all times. “Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do,” he told WABC earlier this month; “nobody is more frustrated” than he about the IRS scandal; “no person,” the president affirmed during the...

It is outrageous enough that the IRS and The White House were working in tandem so that the IRS shared confidential taxpayer information with the president and/or his aides. What makes the law-breaking doubly contemptible is that the information was shared in the context of a lawsuit against the despicable, unconstitutional ObamaCare abortifacient/contraceptive mandate: [Top ObamaCare official Sarah Hall] Ingram attempted to counsel the White House on a lawsuit from religious organizations opposing Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Email exchanges involving Ingram and White House officials — including White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz and deputy assistant to the president for...

Rep. Darrell Issa, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, recently informed the IRS that the committee's investigation has revealed that senior IRS officials were using their private emails to transmit confidential tax information. The investigation was sparked by the agency's alleged targeting of conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status. "[W]e have uncovered a troubling pattern of IRS officials sending official documents to non-official email accounts as well as the use of non-official email accounts to conduct official business," the September 30th letter to acting IRS Commissioner Dan Werfil reads. "In some instances, IRS officials have sent taxpayer protected information to non-official...

Senior Internal Revenue Service officials—including one at the heart of the IRS “targeting” scandal—violated agency policies and possibly federal records laws by using private email to send confidential taxpayer information, the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in a letter. In a Sept. 30 letter to IRS Acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel obtained by the Free Beacon, Oversight Chairman Darrel Issa (R., Calif.) said an investigation revealed a “troubling pattern” of at least four top IRS officials using their private email addresses to relay confidential tax information. “This not only raises the prospect of violations of the Federal...

Remember when the media rushed to talk about transparency in the Barack Obama “Hope and Change” era? Good times, good times. Leonard Downie, who once worked as the executive editor of the Washington Post and wrote a novel about Washington corruption and the Iraq War, finds a bigger and non-fictional problem in the successor to George W. Bush. Downie gives the Post a preview of his report from the Committee to Protect Journalists which outlines the Obama war on reporters and their sources: “A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and...