Newt Gingrich : 2014-06-18 : The IRS Scandal Just Got Much Worse

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June 18, 2014
Newt Gingrich

We are watching the most significant crisis of constitutional order since Watergate, the last time an administration broke the law deliberately and repeatedly. And none of the current cases look more Nixonian than what has been happening at the IRS.

Thirteen months ago, President Obama stood before the American people, acknowledged that the IRS had “improperly screened conservative groups,” and promised to get to the bottom of the matter and to “hold the responsible parties accountable.”

“It’s inexcusable,” he said, “and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives…[T]he IRS has to operate with absolute integrity. The government generally has to conduct itself in a way that is true to the public trust. That’s especially true for the IRS.”

Americans might be forgiven for thinking their president actually meant to get to the bottom of the matter and hold the responsible parties accountable. But the administration’s conduct over the last year has proved that promise was just another lie.

By February, the president was already telling a very different story, saying on FOX News that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” behind the IRS screenings.

He held to the line even after Bill O’Reilly gave him an out by suggesting that the corruption might have been contained to the Cincinnati office. Not even there, Obama said. Not a smidgen.

“What happened here,” the president now claimed, “is you have a 501(c)(4) law that people think is confusing. The folks did not know how to implement it.” The only reason “these kinds of things keep on surfacing,” he told O’Reilly, is “because you and your TV station will promote them.”

Is he even talking about the same events? Just months before, he’d fired the commissioner over the scandal.

He’d labeled as “inexcusable” the conduct described in the Inspector General’s report–the report that first revealed the targeting of conservative groups.

In other words, despite the president’s promises, the White House handled the corruption at the IRS the same way it has handled every other question about the administration: express outrage if required, pledge an investigation, stonewall until coverage fades, and then dismiss any allegations as baseless, politically motivated attacks by a right-wing fringe.

The dishonesty is galling.

That the news media falls for it boggles the mind. As Peggy Noonan points out in a recent column, it’s hard to find a reporter who believes there is an IRS scandal at all.

But even the media must have a hard time swallowing the explosive claim the IRS buried deep in a letter to Congress on Friday.

The agency says it has lost two years’ worth of email for seven key people allegedly involved in targeting conservative groups, including Lois Lerner, who ran the division overseeing tax-exempt organizations during the period in question.

The IRS is asking Congress and the American people to believe that the seven individuals’ computer hard drives all crashed during this critical period, that their emails were also lost from the from the server where they were stored, that all the backups of the seven computers and the servers have been destroyed, and that forensic techniques for recovering data from hard drives failed on all seven and the server.

Just as bad, Congress asked for “all” of Lerner’s more than a year ago, as the Wall Street Journal notes today.

It wasn’t until House investigators discovered, through other means, the emails Lerner sent to the Justice Department that they realized the IRS had not, in fact, turned over “all” of the emails. “Only after Congress demanded the IRS explain why it hadn’t provided this Lerner-Justice correspondence,” the Journal points out, “did the IRS suddenly confess in its Friday letter that it had been picking and choosing emails.”

The data-loss story is almost impossible to believe, and the IRS’s admission of missing emails only when caught elevates its already suspicious claims to Watergate levels of alarm–comparable, as others have pointed out, to the missing 18-and-a-half minutes on the Nixon tapes.

Where is the president who promised Americans more than a year ago “to hold the responsible parties accountable,” to “follow up on the IG report,” to “make sure we understand all the facts”?

Who promised that he would “not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS”?

President Obama owes Americans an explanation as to why he looked the other way while the IRS continued its evasion and dishonesty. And he owes us something else, too.

The administration has had its chance to cooperate with the investigation in good faith. It’s time for a special prosecutor.

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"We have to frankly break the back of the secular-socialist machine, elect people committed to representing the American people, and then methodically rip the system apart."

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Yep ...

that's Newt Gingrich (architect of the historic Contract for America and capturing the House after forty (40) years of Democratic rule) ...

and Nancy Pelosi (a historic figure as first woman Speaker of the House, albeit an idiot) ...

sharing a photo-op, discussing, of all subjects, "Global Warming".

Newt's critics have a field day with this 2008 photograph, totally IGNORANT of Newt Gingrich's later confession that ...

"it was the dumbest thing I've done in recent years."

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Newt's critics then attack his 2008 remarks about Global Warming ...

again, IGNORANT of the circumstances involved

and how New Gingrich (along with the rest of America) was DECIEVED by the SCIENTIFIC LIES about Global Warming.

Let's have some straight talk about Newt Gingrich's so-called "endorsement" of Global Warming ...

First, assuming you're old enough Battle Hymn (i.e. experienced, intelligent) you'll agree that, for the most part, scientists' word (especially in published journals) has for decades been very respected.

Right ?

Remember those days, Beaver ?

Even into the 1970's (unless you were still in diaper-land) scientists were assumed to be honest.

Enter the Hillary Clinton "hippie quasi-Marxist generation", especially as they were graduating with all those PhD and masters degrees in the 1980s.

For some of these "intellectual scoundrels" all that mattered was ideology.

Period.

These folks were the kind (like the University of East Anglia fraudsters) who even FAKED the DATA ... just to advance their Socialist Agenda.

Now, I'm a college-degree Mechanical Engineer who's always been interested in the sciences.

And even when the "Man Made Global Warming Data" was being FALSIFIED for years and years, and then PUBLISHED "as fact" in the leading scientific journals, how could even a "smart educated guy" like me (/sarcasm-off) known that the data and findings were RUBBISH ?

I had neither the "correct data" or access to the "inner scientific circle" to have even known that the Global Warming Data was poppycock.

Now ... what's you technical background, Battle Hymn ?

Do you have a college degree ? What subject ?

Let's presume that you do, and that it's in "climatology".

Let's next presume (a wild guess) that you have access to ALL of the correct temperature data (you copied it to a 5.25-inch floppy disk before the bad guys erased it on the VAX mainframe).

Now ... let's further assume (really wild here) that you have COMPLETE and FREE access to all of the NASA supercomputers that the "bad guys" used in their Bravo Sierra climate computer models.

Finally ... let's assume you've discovered the TRUTH about the GLOBAL WARMING LIE.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!

Now ... go get that news story published.

I'm certain (/sarcasm-off) that CNN, The New York Times, Newsweak, The Economist and Rolling Stone will start a million-dollar bidding war over your new revelation.

Right ?

Unfortunately (as you already know) ... wrong ... wrong ... wrong.

Your GREAT news story about the GLOBAL WARMING LIE gets pigeon-holed.

For ever, or until Rush Limbaugh gets a hold of it.

That was rather a long, sad story, wasn't it ?

What exactly does it have to do with Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi making a joint statement about GLOBAL WARMING ... in 2008 ... 2008 ... 2008?

Newt Gingrich assumed that the respective scientists were HONEST and TRUTHFUL.

And what did Newt Gingrich say in 2011 ... AFTER THE FRAUDULANT SCIENTIFIC DATA was discovered ... that his Global Warming statement with Nancy Pelosi ...

"was the dumbest thing I've done in recent years."

How could Newt Gingrich (being a non-technical person) known the difference ?

How could Battle Hymn (being a non-technical person) known the difference ?

How could Patton-at-Bastogne (being a TECHNICAL person) known the difference ?

Battle Hymn, you and Newt and I would ALL been buffaloed by the bravo-sierra data.

So how (being the reasonable man I presume you are) can you make fun of Newt Gingrich for thinking GLOBAL WARMING ...

when YOU would have been BUFFALOED like Newt Gingrich ...

as well as me, too ?

Best Regards,

Patton-at-Bastogne (Free Republic member since 1998)

Meanwhile, take a look at what Rush Limbaugh had to say about the Global Warming Fraud ....

RUSH: You know, there are all kinds of left-wing publications and individuals, folks, who are beside themselves over global warming.

I have an entire Stack of Stuff today on this.

From the Australian newspaper: "Twenty-Year Hiatus in Rising Temperatures Has Climate Scientists Puzzled," and they are all citing a magazine article in The Economist.

"In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity -- the way climate reacts to changes in carbon dioxide levels -- would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded."

Because this story indicates that carbon in the atmosphere may actually be making things cooler, not warmer.

They are beside themselves with rage and anger and frustration in the global warming community, which we know is a hoax now.

That continues to be something that's utterly laughable to me.

We know by virtue of released e-mails from the University of East Anglia in the UK that the whole thing -- the manmade global warming program -- is a hoax.

It's a political hoax.

I realize there are some people who haven't heard this. We have new listeners tuning in each and every day, and I realize that many of you new arrivals here think that global warming is the law of the land.

You've never questioned it, and you think it's happening. Global warming is as real as the sun coming up.

Considering the alternative is impossible, and you believe that people who don't believe in it are literal kooks.

I want to tell you new arrivals about this -- and I know you low-information people are here in increasing numbers each and every day.

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