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The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is questioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the agency’s decision to prosecute a tree-trimmer who accidentally knocked herons out of a tree. Ernest Pulido is expected to face charges from the U.S. Attorney’s Office within a week for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. He could face a maximum fine of $15,000 and six months in jail. Pulido was hired by the U.S. Postal Service to prune trees May 3 outside an Oakland, Calif., branch, where postal officials were upset with birds pooping on mail trucks. One branch...

Either Darrell Issa is so miffed at Republican leaders for yanking the Benghazi investigation out from under him that he's intentionally undermining the new House Select Committee, or he just vindicated those who believe he wasn't up to the task. Either way he just blew a hole in one big piece of the conspiracy theory.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa claimed that an email he’s reviewed shows the White House decided to reach out to YouTube within hours of the Benghazi terror attack, to warn the website about the consequences of posting an anti-Islam video. The email would suggest the White House was connecting the attack to the video almost from the outset -- though their initial claim that the attack sprung out of protests over the film would later be proven false. According to Issa, who discussed excerpts from the otherwise classified emails on Wednesday, the email was sent at 9:11 p.m. ET on Sept....

Republican Congressman Darrell Issa on Thursday strongly condemned comments by GOP gubernatorial front-runner Tim Donnelly, in which the state lawmaker has tried to tie his Indian-American rival to fundamentalist Islamic law, calling his statements “hateful and ignorant garbage.” Donnelly, a state assemblyman who is popular with the tea party, has repeatedly said this week that Neel Kashkari supported Shariah banking code when he was a senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department in 2008. On Facebook, Donnelly posted a link to a banking seminar hosted by the department during which Kashkari, a Hindu, delivered opening remarks. “As far as I’m...

House Republicans have run out of patience with President Obama's administration, Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Wednesday. Issa, who has been investigating employee misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency, demanded that deputy administrator Bob Perciasepe produce documents within one month.

Several hearings we're keeping a close eye on today on Capitol HIll. There are two hearings on health care and the Affordable Care Act. One in the Senate, one in the House. We're expecting new data on enrollments today including who has paid after signing up. Insurance companies will reportedly testify that 80-85% of those who signed up have made their initial insurance payments. We're also awaiting a contempt vote for Lois Lerner. She is the IRS official accused of helping politically target certain political groups. There's a hearing on the IRS today where it could come up. Mike Emanuel...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is issuing a subpoena for Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before the committee May 21 about Benghazi, Issa announced Friday. The move comes in the wake of new, "smoking gun" emails that show top White House officials working to craft a narrative that the attack was the result of a YouTube video and "not a broader failure of policy." Republicans have expressed outrage that the documents were not provided earlier under subpoenas for them, but instead came out via a Freedom Of Information Request lawsuit by the conservative non-profit group Judicial Watch....

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is issuing a subpoena for Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before the committee May 21 about Benghazi, Issa announced Friday. The move comes in the wake of new, "smoking gun" emails that show top White House officials working to craft a narrative that the attack was the result of a YouTube video and "not a broader failure of policy." Republicans have expressed outrage that the documents were not provided earlier under subpoenas for them, but instead came out via a Freedom Of Information Request lawsuit by the conservative non-profit group Judicial Watch....

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called the now defunct Cover Oregon website the “biggest Obamacare train wreck in the entire country” Friday on MSNBC. “Today the state gave up and called for help on what has to be the biggest Obamacare train wreck in the entire country,” he said. “Oregon became the first state to dump its own troubled online health exchange and use the federal marketplace instead. Oregon spent $248 million of $305 million in federal grant, including $3 million on this cool ad campaign.”

On Wednesday Darrell Issa demanded Attorney General Eric Holder answer new questions about the Justice Department’s role in the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. In a letter sent to Holder, Issa sought answers about a newly released email between former IRS official Lois Lerner and DOJ official Richard Pilger in which Pilger asks Lerner “When you have a moment, will you call me? I’ve been asked to run something by you” and requests who at the IRS “DOJ folks could talk to” about ways to target politically involved non-profit groups. So far none of the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC)...

April 18, 2014 CUMMINGS’ “MCCARTHYISM” CHARGE IN LERNER HEARING IS BOGUSM.Stanton Evans Five plus decades after he left the national scene, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis) remains the target of inaccurate charges by leftward elements in Congress and the press corps.The latest example in this vein is the uproar over IRS official Lois Lerner, who took the Fifth Amendment before the House Government Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), concerning hostile treatment of conservative groups seeking tax exemptions,. Having proclaimed her innocence of wrongdoing, Lerner then refused to discuss specifics, pleading possible self-incrimination. This led Issa and his GOP...

April 12, 2014 True the Vote president calls Cummings damning emails ‘the tip of a very ugly iceberg’ by Michael Dorstewitz The explosive discovery by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that its ranking Democratic member coordinated with the IRS to target True the Vote came as no surprise to its founder and president. She called it “the tip of a very ugly iceberg.”Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the committee’s chairman, released emails earlier this week strongly suggesting that Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was in direct communication with disgraced IRS supervisor Lois Lerner in an effort to target True the...

The heat in the IRS investigation just went up. Rep. Darrell Issa, head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter today to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings in which he accuses Cummings of working to "obstruct the investigation" into IRS misbehavior. The bulk of Rep. Issa's letter is devoted to some recently uncovered emails which demonstrate that Rep. Cummings was seeking information on True the Vote, the voter integrity group based in Texas which became the target of much unwanted government attention. Cummings' staff contacted the IRS in August 2012 to inform them that they...

A House committee voted Thursday to hold Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, as Republicans escalated their bid to "get to the bottom" of the former IRS official's role in the political targeting scandal. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 21-12 to hold Lerner in contempt. The party-line vote followed hours of heated debate on the committee. The contempt measure heads next to the House floor. House Speaker John Boehner predicted earlier this week that unless Lerner agrees to cooperate, the full House will support contempt -- from there, the case would likely head to the courts. "This...

This story was published at 4:33 p.m. and has been updated with a response from Rep. Cummings.House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has accused the panel's top Democrat of prompting the Internal Revenue Service in 2012 to target a conservative organization applying for non-profit status. Issa said records obtained last week from the IRS show communications from the office of ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., about True the Vote, a Texas-based, non-profit conservative group that aims to prevent voter fraud.The communications at one point involved Lois Lerner, the ex-IRS official whom Issa's panel is poised...

The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee actively conspired to inappropriately target and silence tea party-affiliated groups, says Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote. House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa released emails this week that suggest Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maryland Democrat, prompted the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the conservative organization as it was applying for nonprofit status, according to The Washington Examiner. Engelbrecht told John Bachman and J.D. Hayward of "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV that these emails will undermine claims by Cummings and the IRS that no conservative groups were targeted for political reasons. "I'm thrilled to...

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer told Special Report with Bret Baier Wednesday night that the window had passed on prosecuting the Obama administration Benghazi, and that the GOP’s disorganzed approach to congressional hearings had let Benghazi as an issue “slip away.” “Politically speaking the administration has won,” Krauthammer said. “They ran out the clock. If we had had a select committee from the beginning, really had coherent hearings — unlike what we’ve had, which were disjointed hearings, that let all things sort of slip away —we really would have been somewhere. We would have gotten to the bottom of this. But...

Corruption: A House panel votes this week to formally ask the DOJ to pursue criminal charges against former IRS employee Lois Lerner. It is time someone in this administration were held accountable for something. A staff report by House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa reveals testimony by IRS agents that the IRS has not deliberately targeted progressive groups. Now comes word that the House Ways and Means Committee is sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder accusing former IRS director of tax-exempt organizations Lois Lerner of committing at least three crimes in the IRS's targeting tea party and other...

March 31, 2014 A House could fall on LernerGlenn Farber Look out for that House! For all we know, Lois Lerner could be roused out of bed one morning this week or next by a congressional complaint charging her with contempt for having refused repeatedly to testify at two House hearings regarding the IRS targeting of certain nonprofit advocacy groups for extra scrutiny based on their names and policy positions. Lerner, who headed the IRS division that reviews tax-exemption applications, has repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right instead of testifying about the agency, and she, her former lawyers, and her...

It could take years for Congressional committees to get all the documents demanded about the IRS scandal under mandatory subpoenas, IRS’ new Commissioner John Koskinen testified. The new IRS Commissioner displayed the slippery style of a snake-oil salesman while testifying March 26 before Congressman Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government. Koskinen’s excuses were especially surprising because similar demands for documents are imposed upon private companies all the time by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Your author has worked as a lawyer on teams responding to such massive governmental document requests. Any time there is...