Free Republic

Cruz has largely built his program out of his Houston headquarters, where a team of statisticians and behavioral psychologists who subscribe to the burgeoning practice of “psychographic targeting” built their own version of a Myers-Briggs personality test. The test data is supplemented by recent issue surveys, and together they are used to categorize supporters, who then receive specially tailored messages, phone calls and visits. Micro-targeting of voters has been around for well over a decade, but the Cruz operation has deepened the intensity of the effort and the use of psychological data. Cruz, a critic of excessive government data collection,...

documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)... confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS. The IRS produced the records in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents about selection of individuals for audit-based application information on donor lists submitted by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations....Lois Lerner, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, is mentioned four times in the report...In 2009, Barack Obama “joked” about having the IRS...

A pretty neat little film about the various parts of the mechanical fire control computers of those days, and how they are applied to real-life gunnery issues.

The United States on Wednesday accused Israel of targeting members of a Palestinian family whose teenage son was kidnapped and killed in July, including two cousins, who are US citizens. Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem plunged to a new low on July 2 when 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was snatched from a street in Jerusalem and later found burned alive. Israeli police arrested six alleged Jewish extremists as suspects and on July 17 charged three, freeing the others. The death of the Arab teen - thought to have been carried out in retaliation for the abduction and killing...

Commissioner John Koskinen testified at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the investigation of the IRS' criteria to process applications of tax-exempt organizations.

A year after it began, the IRS targeting controversy has been overtaken by the Benghazi attacks on the oversight agenda of House Republicans. While Republicans are convinced that the Obama administration is stonewalling them on both matters, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the House GOP have only set up a special committee for Benghazi. On the IRS, House Republicans have instead pushed the Justice Department to more aggressively pursue its investigation, and this week pushed Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor. There are a variety of reasons for the emphasis on Benghazi, including the chance to further...

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...

This was a terrific interview on The O’Reilly Factor tonight. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and Deputy Whip and Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, told Bill O’Reilly the committee has already caught the White House lying about the IRS conservative targeting scandal. Rep. Kevin Brady: We’ve interviewed IRS persons of interest more than 50 times. Which is where we quickly discredited much of the White House’s earlier claims. So we’re going to continue to work through the documents… When the time is right, when we think we have a much clearer...

The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power. The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to.

WASHINGTON – Though President Obama insists the Internal Revenue Service is not guilty of political targeting of nonprofits, WND has learned the agency contracts with an avowedly “progressive” organization supported by George Soros to process data filed by smaller tax-exempt groups. The federal agency process sends details contained in the annual filings for organizations with $50,000 in annual receipts or less to the Urban Institute, which is funded at least partly by government payments as well as contributions from far-left activist George Soros. The IRS page directs groups to file with the Urban Institute, although apparently other providers also can...

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/

Americans for Prosperity has two new ads targeting House Democrats in swing districts, both of which make the case that Obamacare "doesn't work" and should be repealed. The first ad, running in New Hampshire, tells Democratic congresswoman Annie Kuster to "stop thinking about politics and start thinking about people." Watch it below:

In Wisconsin, dozens of conservative groups and allies of Gov. Scott Walker are undergoing political intimidation from the left at the hands of a special prosecutor. Subpoenas have been issued demanding correspondence and donor information of right-leaning organizations and individuals and raids have been conducted resulting in law enforcement officers taking computers and files in a secret investigation, according to reports. “In recent weeks, special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has hit dozens of conservative groups with subpoenas demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaigns to recall Governor Walker and state legislative leaders,” the Wall Street Journal writes. It continues,...

AFP - Al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on Europe's high-speed rail network, German mass circulation daily Bild reported on Monday, citing intelligence sources. The extremist group could plant explosives on trains and tunnels or sabotage tracks and electrical cabling, said Bild, Europe's most widely read daily. Bild said the information came from the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States, which had listened in to a conference call involving top Al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks on Europe's rail network was a "central topic" of this call, Bild said.

The Internal Revenue Service continues to target pro-life conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status despite pending investigations into the IRS targeting scandal, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller. The IRS’ infamous Cincinnati office, which handles applications from groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, badgered pro-life groups for information on their protesting activities as recently as late June 2013, well after IRS investigations began on the floor of the House of Representatives and elsewhere. “We’ve had three more groups come to us that have had problems with the IRS — some very recent, some current or still pending. One...

Last thing I remember hearing on the IRS targeting of conservative groups was that none of them nor their attorney's had been contacted. That aspect has dropped off the face of the earth. Have they been contacted?

The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, met with Obama on April...

Are these agency scandals being deliberately leaked by team Obama to cause Americans to hop on board for a new form of government? Are these scandals all part of Obama's coup d'tat on our government? Why did the IRS plant a question with a reporter that would trigger a scandal implicating itself? Why was a subpoena leaked, implicating the DOJ for spying on Fox News' journalist James Rosen? What better way to get Americans to hate their government than to tell them they're being spied on by the NSA? Gee, thanks Mr. Snowden! In less than 6 months Obama has...

They are only working with democrats and is another organization being converted after the campaign to a standing entity. Listen carefully to what they say they can do... This is pretty scary and does make me wonder if there is some sort of a connection to the NSA here. If not directly perhaps through a handoff of technology?

The Internal Revenue Service has failed to turn over documents requested by the powerful Senate tax-writing panel, which is investigating the tax agency´s practice of targeting conservative organizations. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the panel´s top Republican, gave the IRS a May 31 deadline to answer dozens of questions related to the special scrutiny the agency was giving to right-leaning groups seeking tax-exempt status. But the troubled IRS let the deadline go by.