Free Republic

Meet Karen Kenney, the first in what will undoubtedly be a parade of victims of the intimidation tactics of the IRS aimed at conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Twitchy captures Kenney’s statement and the immediate Twitter reaction to it. With President Obama attempting to pre-empt the hearing with an odd live statement on judicial nominations — usually a matter left to press releases — coverage of the hearing has been spotty, but this needs to be seen and read in full:

A tea party witness from Alabama launched into emotional testimony Tuesday as she described her group’s political abuse at the hands of the Internal Revenue Service. “We peacefully assemble. We petition our government. We exercise the right to free speech. And we don’t understand why the government tried to stop us,” Wetumpka Tea Party President Becky Gerritson said during her opening statement before the House Ways and Means Committee. “I’m not here at as a serf or a vassal,” she went on, beginning to choke up. “I’m not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother...

Interviews with IRS employees have established that the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service was engaged in targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for unfair levels of scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. Rep. Darrel lssa, chairman of powerful House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, made that startling announcement on CNN Sunday morning. 'As late as last week,' he said, 'the [Obama] administration was still trying to say the [IRS targeting scandal] was from a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, when in fact the indication is that they were directly being ordered from Washington.'

Scooped by Scooter Van Neuter at Big Hairy News

The Liberty Township Tea Party was one of several Tea Party groups in Ohio who were harassed by the IRS in the lead-up to the 2012 elections. The group recently released the extensive list of the questions sent to them by the IRS. Ohio patriot Carol Greenberg sent in this information. As many of you know, the IRS issued an apology for targeting “tea party” and “patriot” groups. We within the Liberty Township Tea Party are painfully aware of these intrusive actions. Click this link and download a PDF to see the type of questions that were demanded of us...

Steven T. Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who managed the division that has admitted targeting anti-Obama Tea Party groups, was one of several agents who investigated anti-Clinton organizations including Judicial Watch during that Democrat´s administration, according to court documents and interviews. Miller, who headed the IRS Services and Enforcement Division from 2009 until the end of last year, is named in court documents as part of a trio of Internal Revenue Service officials who allegedly characterized the 1998-2001 investigation of Judicial Watch as politically motivated.

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:

The Internal Revenue Service admitted Friday to improperly targeting conservative groups for aggressive applications processes for tax exempt status in 2012, using the terms “Tea Party” and “patriot” as flags. Here are some of the things they wanted to know about those groups. 1. We’re gonna need all your direct and indirect communication. “‘Direct and indirect communications’ is profoundly chilling of First Amendment rights, ” said David French, senior counsel for American Center for Law & Justice, which has been representing 27 conservative organizations met with IRS inquisitions. “It’s so vague as to be impossible to comply with.”

This Tea Party Thing I am a Tea Party Patriot. I know what that means to me but I am confused about what it means to others. The point of this post is to learn what being a Tea Party Patriot means to other Tea Party Patriots. I doubt I will learn anything that would alter what I believe but I can’t know until it is learned. Declaring I am a Tea Party Patriot means I favor a constitutional government. No more and no less. I accept the Constitution as the proper amount of government. My believe is that the...

A short clip but the parallels between UKIP & UK Conservatives mimics the GOPe & Tea Party.

Commentators across the board have been hailing the "British Tea Party" for at least a year. Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP, has even tried to launch one, without much success. The latest to ride on the coat-tails of the popular US movement is Nigel Farage, newly re-elected as UK Independence Party leader. Speaking on Sky News, he said that his party shared the feeling of being "overtaxed, overgoverned, not being listened to". He claimed that this gave the party a "bigger political opportunity than ever before" to recruit Tories dissatisfied with David Cameron's EU-friendly policies. Could Ukip be the British...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Both drinks have fiercely loyal followings. Which side are you on?

Time to tell Rove -and more importantly his good-money-after-bad donors- that this Prog Lite schtick will not only fail to attain incremental black/hispanic/+? votes, but will have conservatives going third-party in droves... Out there pimping his so-called 'Conservative Victory Project', Rove claimed in a speech to the California Republican Party's spring convention in Sacramento this past weekend that '(Republicans) need to ... have people asking for the vote who are comfortable and look like and sound like the people that we're asking for the vote from.' Yet back in reality, the Obammunists have driven this country to the edge of the abyss economically, socially, and...

Democrats and the media have accuses Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) of "McCarthyism" merely for posing tough questions to and about Chuck Hagel during the latter's confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Yet a recent column by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich reveals who the real McCarthyites are in U.S. politics today, as Reich likens the Tea Party to a conspiracy "to undermine the government of the United States." Reich, who has steadfastly supported President Barack Obama's big-government, tax-and-spend agenda, wrote that the Tea Party had "infiltrated" the government at every level, and had used the budget cuts...

Their official name is the Richmond County Tea Party Patriots -- and they arguably put Congressman Michael Grimm (R-NY) in office twice, first in 2010 when Tea Party supported this U.S. Marine veteran for the U.S. House, and again in 2012. Grimm won the 2010 general election for his district which covers both parts of New York City's Staten Island and Brooklyn with 51 percent of the vote. Ron Devito also created a video of the entire collection of speeches. It can be seen on YouTube.

Virginia's House of Delegates has voted to approve what would become the first major reform in a generation of the state's system for financing its highway network. Friday's vote was 60-40.

'...the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine' Weighing-in on PAC-man Karl Rove's semi-declared war on constitutional conservatives, former House Speaker Gingrich made clear in a Human Events column what the discredited RINO-pumper is attempting to do with his so-called 'Conservative Victory Project': basically crush the TEA Party wing and centralize Republican Party power in favor of 'Rockefeller Republican', Big Government RINOs- an effort Newt described as 'repungnant' and alien to GOP principles: _______________________________________________________________________________ It is appalling how little some Republican consultants have learned from the 2012 defeat. It is even more disturbing how arrogant their plans for the future...

'What America needs is not Robin Hood, but Adam Smith' Ever since Sen Paul clearly distanced himself from his dad's wackadoodle foreign policy, I've been starting to think this guy's closer to my own views than what I've been seeing and hearing from Ryan or Rubio -or anybody else- lately: ______________________________________________________________________ After enduring the latest Five Year Plan from Dear Leader, we were last night offered enlightened responses from Sen Marco Rubio (for the Republicans) and fellow GOP Senator Dr Rand Paul, who brought a comprehensive indictment of the Obama fiscal-death-spiral (along with a bright, Reaganite alternative vision) delivered specifically on behalf of the TEA...

Discredited political consultant, blathering TV talking head, and big-bux fundraiser/PAC-man Karl Rove was once hailed by George W Bush as 'The Architect' in the wake of the 2004 campaign victory he had engineered. In retrospect, we'd probably have been better off in the long-term letting John Kerry try and deal with the earthshaking real estate collapse his Dems' own affirmative-action housing initiatives were soon to bring us. Instead, Rove -as White House Senior Adviser and Deputy Chief-of-Staff- resided over a Bush 2nd-term popularity dive so steep and so politically damaging to the GOP brand that the United States seems to have shifted...