Free Republic

An Internal Revenue Service manager who described himself as a "conservative Republican" told congressional investigators that no one in the agency's Cincinnati office was trying to target tea party organizations for political reasons, according to an interview transcript released Tuesday. The manager, John Shafer, said he and an employee in his screening unit decided to pull applications for tax-exempt status filed by political groups and send them to managers in Washington. He said they were aware of the controversy over the groups and wanted to ensure they were treated uniformly. "Because of media attention that he had seen, he had...

The White House may invoke it in its peculiar way, but its occupants only show contempt for the rule of law. Last Thursday, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) started a Twitter prairie fire with his call for people to describe #ObamacareInThreeWords. (My contribution was “Sorry, Doctor retired.”) Other gems included “Max Baucus regrets,” “A massive failure,” “Rammed down throats” and the extremely uncomfortable proof of Godwin’s Law, “Arbeit. Macht. Frei.” Liberal participation brought “Win for kids,” “Republicans suck balls,” “Republicans hate me”... --snip-- House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) hit the nail on the head in his opening...

If there's one foundational lesson for conservatives of various stripes to glean from the recent revelations about the atrocities routinely committed by the IRS, it's that there are reasons the Founders considered property rights among the most sacred of all rights -- and rights that a limited government must protect. Several groups focused on "values voters" and "moral issues" have learned recently just how difficult it is to accomplish anything for their values when the IRS is using the awesome weight of a massive federal government to confiscate resources, perform harassment audits, and withhold non-profit status... --snip-- Of course, it...

Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.” Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews. Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington. Many conservative groups complained during the election that they were being harassed by the...

Democrats unleash the IRS and Justice on donors to their political opponents. If at first you don't succeed, get some friends in high places to shut your opponents up. That's the latest Washington power play, as Democrats and liberals attack the Chamber of Commerce and independent spending groups in an attempt to stop businesses from participating in politics. Since the Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass legislation to repeal the First Amendment for business, though not for unions. Having failed on that score, they're now turning to legal...

If at first you don't succeed, get some friends in high places to shut your opponents up. That's the latest Washington power play, as Democrats and liberals attack the Chamber of Commerce and independent spending groups in an attempt to stop businesses from participating in politics. Since the Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass legislation to repeal the First Amendment for business, though not for unions. Having failed on that score, they're now turning to legal and political threats. Funny how all of this outrage never surfaced when the...

Obama Administration supervised , paid and directed bloggers have for some time made it known that they would call upon the IRS to investigate me as a means of harassment. They have now posted that they have secured the assistance of the IRS, just days after I received notice from the Internal Revenue Service that I am being "reviewed" by the IRS! Also note how I have never posted a single word about having received the IRS Notice, yet they knew it was being sent! First Biden and Obama make false claims to the Social Security Administration in an attempt...

WASHINGTON — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund have helped to secure exoneration by the Internal Revenue Service for two non-profit organizations targeted by a leftwing special interest group in Washington. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a complaint to the IRS, demanding that it open an investigation to revoke the tax-exempt status of a crisis pregnancy center and an abstinence information clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, S.D. “Pro-life and pro-abstinence viewpoints should not be treated as second-class perspectives. This is just another attempt by political special interests to silence these viewpoints in the great debates of the day,”...

The Cisneros probe: Who's hiding what? Sunday, January 8, 2006 Independent Counsel David M. Barrett has spent $22 million on a 10-year-old investigation of Henry Cisneros. Mr. Cisneros was a Clinton-era housing secretary who pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI. Just before he left office, Bill Clinton pardoned him. Snip You'd think it was all over with the guilty plea. It wasn't. Mr. Barrett also was possibly looking into Cisneros' tax records and then allegations the Clinton administration used the IRS against political enemies. Stonewalling by the IRS and the Justice Department may...

A three-judge panel overseeing Independent Counsel David Barrett's investigation into abuses by the Internal Revenue Service under the Clinton administration has ordered Barrett to make "discrete deletions" is the draft he submitted 15 months ago. The deletion order "has stoked speculation that [it] has more to do with the next presidential campaign," reports the Wall Street Journal, noting widespread rumors that "the draft report contains information potentially embarrassing to another Clinton administration figure, former first lady and current New York Sen. Hillary Clinton." "The one Clinton official rumored to be implicated in the report is former IRS Commissioner Margaret Richardson,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate decided Thursday that it was time to close to a decade-old, $20 million investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros - years after Cisneros received a presidential pardon. The amendment to a spending bill, approved by voice vote, would require that the report of Independent Counsel David Barrett be made public within 60 days, and that the independent counsel close his office within 90 days after the report is published. ``The American taxpayers have spent a lot of money on this report and they deserve the right to see it,'' said Senate Finance Committee...

WASHINGTON - The independent counsel investigation that led to the conviction of a former Clinton administration housing chief could come back to haunt Sen. Hillary Clinton. The Daily News has learned that lawyers are fighting to suppress a potentially embarrassing final report from the probe that found Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros lied to the FBI about paying $250,000 in hush money to his ex-mistress. Cisneros paid a $10,000 fine after he was found guilty in 1999 and was later pardoned by Bill Clinton. And though neither Hillary Clinton nor her husband was targeted by independent counsel David Barrett, his 420-page...

Senators Byron Dorgan, John Kerry and Richard Durbin pulled a fast one last week on their congressional colleagues. They tried to bury forever documents alleging that senior government officials tried to transform portions of the IRS and the Justice Department into a goon squad for attacking political enemies and aiding political friends. Naturally, they didn’t declare their intentions openly. Instead, Sen. Dorgan attached an innocent looking amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill that will fund government operations after September 30. The last-minute amendment read: “At the end of the bill, add the following: “SEC. __ . (a) None of...

When Susan Peacher hung up her latex evening gown and wooden paddle for a job with the federal government, the former dominatrix thought she was done with abuse. She went to work for the Treasury Department in San Francisco, but when she arrived at her new job, she found that one of the office managers was a former client. This man wouldn't leave her alone, she said in a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit, charging that he sexually harassed her, attempting to kiss her in the elevator, telling her she had "luscious lips,'' and repeatedly asking for "sessions.'' When she...

<p>The Internal Revenue Service fired 71 employees between July 1998 and September 2002 for misconduct under a provision of a 1998 IRS reform law, a new report said.</p> <p>The General Accounting Office report said the IRS or the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration completed investigations on 3,512 allegations and substantiated 419 as violations, resulting in 71 IRS employees being fired. Among the violations were failures to file tax returns on time and failures to state tax liability accurately. Remedies in other cases included penalties and employees leaving the IRS, the GAO said.</p>

April 18, 2002 BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST When Bill Clinton left office, conservative gadfly Larry Klayman was locked in combat over Internal Revenue Service audits of the Clinton administration's enemies--including Klayman's Judicial Watch organization. Surprisingly, nothing has changed during 15 months of Republican rule, according to court papers just made public. The unsealed documents reveal that the IRS is still pressing Judicial Watch for truckloads of records and that the Justice Department has rejected Klayman's bid for a criminal investigation into alleged past misuse of the government's taxing arm. In rhetoric once reserved for the Clintons, Judicial Watch's pleading...