Category Archives: IRS
Lerner Wanted Grassley
The emails Lois Lerner didn’t lose show that she seemed to think she could sic IRS examiners on Senator Charles Grassley.
Apparently she and Grassley received invitations to speak at the same event but, this being the IRS, Lerner somehow got Grassley’s invitation.
Lerner Wanted Grassley
According to Politico Lerner emailed tax law specialist Matthew Giuliano saying, “Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?”
Giuliano turned her down.
Smug Koskinen and a Smidgen of Corruption
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen smugly insisted there isn’t a smidgen of corruption at the IRS. Oh wait, those were President Obama’s smug words. Koskinen smugly insisted he’s never been called a liar before.
He must have meant before he promised to produce Lois Lerner’s emails. Emails he knew at the time were missing.
Michael Gerson says IRS has, “undermined respect for authority. And it doesn’t seem even to understand the damage it has done”.
Well, they’re not the only ones. A year ago EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson conducted official business on an email account under the alias of Richard Windsor. Clever, no? She gave herself an ethics award for the scam. Windsor is now a fat cat at Apple, where Climate Change skeptic shareholders have been told to get lost.
The governing class is losing its fear of humans. Is it too late to yank the chain?
To Victor Davis Hanson the federal government has evolved into a sort of a “rogue organism”.
Add up these various alphabet-soup pathologies — well apart from the NSA, AP, and Benghazi debacles. Government agencies are now eager to venture into areas well beyond their mandates. They will use any means necessary to further the careers of their executives, massage data to enhance the administration’s agenda, or simply abdicate their responsibility to enforce the law at all if it is found to be politically incorrect.
In other words, we are witnessing a new federal government that is a sort of rogue organism that exists for its own enhancement and is willing to do anything necessary to help those who help it.
Lois Has no Mail
Lois has no mail. Lois Lerner is the former IRS employee who pled the fifth to avoid answering questions about IRS harassment of Obama political opponents. Now that her email has been subpoenaed she claims she lost it when her hard drive crashed.
Lois Has no Mail
Not only that, IRS canceled its contract with the backup company. Not only that, Lois’s dog ate the crashed hard drive, had to be put down, and was cremated.
Issa and Cummings Committee Chaos
The big story on Fox New Sunday was that IRS kingpin Lois Lerner would waive her 5th amendment rights and testify before Daryl Issa’s House Oversight committee. At least that’s what Issa told Chris Wallace on Sunday. On Wednesday Lerner pled the fifth again.
Issa Cummings Committee Chaos
Angered by Lerner’s continued silence, Issa ruled the the hearing adjourned. He then silenced the leading committee Democrat, Ellijah Cummings, by cutting off his mic. The room erupted in chaos with Cummings shouting “I’m a U.S. Congressman” and fellow Dems chanting “shame”. Let’s go rinkside to Dana Milbank:
Issa told Wallace on Sunday that Lerner’s “attorney indicates now that she will testify” after refusing to do so at a hearing last year. The lawyer denied this, and Lerner did not testify Wednesday — and that would have been the news, if not for Issa’s sound-system antics.
Indeed. Issa keeps stepping on his own punchline. The news might have been about why Lerner doesn’t want to talk about these emails:
“Tea Party Matter very dangerous… Counsel and Judy Kindell need to be in on this one… Cincy should probably NOT have these cases,” Lerner said in a February 2011 email.
“Cincinnati wasn’t publicly ‘thrown under the bus’ (but) instead was hit by a convoy of Mack trucks,” wrote Cindy Thomas, former director of the IRS exempt organizations office in Cincinnati, in a May 10, 2013 email to Lerner.
It looks like the IRS intimidated conservative groups and the Tea Party was relatively quiet in the 2012 election. Was there corruption? So far Republicans haven’t come up with a smidgen of proof.
Smidgen of Corruption
Usually when a politician is asked about a particular scandal he stonewalls and says he’d love to set the record straight but he just can’t because an investigation is ongoing. In a refreshing change of pace President Obama told Bill O’Reilly there’s “not a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS.
George Will has said the IRS scandal should be treated like Watergate.
Lois Lerner was the head of the IRS division that grants tax exemptions to non profit groups. During a speech to the American Bar Association she arranged for a planted question so that she could account for increased scrutiny the IRS was giving to conservative groups, compared to liberal groups, seeking tax exempt status.
When asked about this by Congress Lerner pleaded the fifth.
Well, Maybe a Smidgen of Corruption
Cleta Mitchell, a respected attorney representing grass roots conservative groups, says the IRS contuse to target them to this day.
