http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348220/loyalty-truth There’s a duty to speak out about the failures of the Romney campaign. Even before my new book, A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider’s Account, went on sale and could be read, it was suggested to me by former colleagues in a series of e-mails, calls, and statements in the press […]
http://www.newsmax.com/Newswidget/insurance-premiums-obamacare/2013/05/14/id/504399?promo_code=EB8D-1&utm_source=National_Review&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1 Some of the nation’s largest insurance providers are estimating that premiums could increase as much as 400 percent under Obamacare, The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday. Citing internal reports from 17 companies provided to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Examiner reported the estimated increases would be tied to the cost of implementing the […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348324/slimy-dem-snoops-and-dumpster-divers
It’s always the “low-level” peon’s fault, isn’t it? When Democrats get caught red-handed abusing government powers and bullying their political enemies small and large, nobody at the top knows nuttin’. The buck stops . . . in the janitor’s closet or something.
Here’s what I know: While they pretend to champion privacy rights, top left-wing operatives have routinely ransacked and plundered the private documents and personal records of conservative groups, business owners, and public figures. Through it all, those on the right standing against government tyranny have refused to stand down.
During the Clinton years, senior IRS official Paul Breslan revealed that the administration’s auditors specifically targeted conservative critics. On the hit list: Judicial Watch, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, the National Rifle Association, National Review, The American Spectator, Freedom Alliance, National Center for Public Policy Research, Citizens Against Government Waste, Concerned Women for America, and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.
Steven Miller, one of the Clinton IRS agents who helped conduct those witch hunts in the 1990s, is currently the head of the Obama IRS department that has now admitted it discriminated against tea-party groups. Jackboot history repeats itself.
In 1997, far-left congressman Jim McDermott obtained and leaked an illegally taped phone call involving House GOP leaders to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times. Far from a low-level underling, McDermott was the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee at the time. Ohio GOP representative John Boehner won a $1 million civil lawsuit against McDermott. McDermott’s leak was condemned by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan as “willful and knowing misconduct [that] rises to the level of malice in this case.”
In 2005, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — headed by New York senator Charles Schumer — targeted then-Maryland GOP lieutenant governor Michael Steele as he considered a U.S. Senate bid. Two of Schumer’s staffers illegally obtained Steele’s credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. They set up a fake e-mail account and then impersonated Steele on a website to filch his financial information.
Democrats framed the sleazy move as the work of junior staffers. But the supervising operative involved, Katie Barge, was senior research director of the DSCC, a former researcher at the George Soros-funded attack group Media Matters for America and a researcher for presidential candidate Senator John Edwards.
Schumer’s other document plumber, Lauren Weiner, was a DSCC researcher who had worked for Dick Gephardt and the Democratic National Committee. She pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a credit report and escaped jail time. After she was fired, she earned a journalism degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
In 2006, longtime Democratic operative Bob Fertik called on his minions to attempt to obtain the private phone records of prominent conservatives through shady online information brokers. “If money is scarce,” Fertik vowed, “Democrats.com will reimburse you if you buy the records for an important phone number and discover gold when you get the records.”
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
The media, in one of its bursts of manufactured moral panic, has turned its eye on the teenage girls tweeting and tumblring away in support of Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Serial killers have always had their fan clubs. Before the Boston Marathon bombings spawned the #FreeJahar crowd, there were the Holmies, who adored James Holmes, who murdered 12 people at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises.
Even if Adam Lanza hadn’t committed suicide, it’s doubtful that he would have his own Lanzies fan club or a #FreeAdam hashtag. It’s not that he killed children. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev murdered Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy. James Holmes murdered Veronica Moser-Sullivan, a 6-year-old girl. Murdering children is not a turnoff for serial killer groupies, but Adam Lanza’s drawn gnomish face and bowl haircut would be.
Charles Manson had an entire cult around him. Some members like Squeaky Fromme went on worshiping him and trying to kill in his name even once he was behind bars. If Fromme were a teenage girl today, she would have a Tumblr and #InLoveThereIsNoWrong would be a hashtag.
But let’s not pretend that there’s much of a difference between New York Times reporters and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s groupies.
The day before the Boston bombings, the New York Times printed an op-ed from one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards complaining how hard it is to be on a hunger strike and the media poured on the sympathy as thickly as any of Dzhokhar’s future groupies.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323716304578483102122589628.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion
One notable aspect of the Internal Revenue Service scandal is President Obama’s strange view of accountability within the executive branch. In his Monday remarks addressing the targeting of conservative groups for tax-exempt scrutiny, Mr. Obama declared that the IRS is “an independent agency.”
In his press briefing after the story broke on Friday, White House press secretary Jay Carney hit the same note. “The IRS is an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees,” he said.
The IRS is many things, but “independent” isn’t one of them. It is formally part of the Treasury Department and is headed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed by the President. The Commissioner is accountable to the President reporting through the Treasury Secretary.
The White House has also been at pains to stress that former Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who told Congress in 2012 that there had been no targeting of political groups, was appointed by George W. Bush. So the Commissioner is accountable to the President, as long as he’s the former President? Or what?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324715704578481461934680982.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Even as the politicized tax enforcement scandal expands, the Internal Revenue Service continues to expand its political powers thanks to the Affordable Care Act. A larger government always creates more openings for abuse, as Americans will learn when the IRS starts auditing their health care in addition to their 1040 next year.
Over the last decade or so the tax agency has stretched its portfolio and become an enforcer and decision-maker for government benefits and programs. Three years ago, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates within the IRS, presciently noted that ObamaCare is “the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history.”
This March the IRS Inspector General reiterated that ObamaCare’s 47 major changes to the revenue code “represent the largest set of tax law changes the IRS has had to implement in more than 20 years.” Thus the IRS is playing Thelma to the Health and Human Service Department’s Louise. The tax agency has requested funding for 1,954 full-time equivalent employees for its Affordable Care Act office in 2014.
Instead of going after tax cheats, these bureaucrats will write and enforce tax regulations for parts of the economy in which they have no core competence. For example, do ski instructors or public school teachers count as seasonal workers? How long is a “full time” work week? Is it 40 hours, or 30?
The IRS will also dispense ObamaCare’s insurance subsidies since technically they’re “advanceable” tax credits, i.e., transfer payments made prior to filing a tax return. The IRS will also police the individual mandate-tax to buy health insurance, as well as the business penalties for not offering Washington-approved coverage to employees.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/that-nineties-show/?print=1
Enemies lists, IRS audits of same, cover-ups at high levels of government, an aloof president who has others do his (unspoken?) bidding — after the events of the past week, many have been comparing the Obama administration to another one that ended almost forty years ago. And while many of the comparisons of Barack Obama to Richard Nixon are indeed apt, one doesn’t have to go that far back in history to find an even better parallel.
For those of us politically aware in the 1990s, the Obama administration has come to seem like a bad rerun of the corrupt Clinton era, complete with witness intimidation and character attacks on their political opponents, stonewalling and obfuscating while claiming that their crimes are being “politicized,” false claims of “exoneration” by official reports, and, yes, even IRS audits of their political enemies. All with a sycophantic media complicit, and even incestuous and inbred [1], with the White House.
For example, several days ago, when the Benghazi scandal started to climb out of the grave to which the administration and its enablers in the press thought they had consigned it last fall, the first response from the president’s spokesman was that it was something that happened a long time ago [2], seemingly back in the Cambrian era of late 2012. As opposed, of course, to the Bush administration, which apparently remains evergreen four and a half years after its departure, at least when it comes to assigning blame for otherwise unexplainable and “unexpected [3]” mishappenings during this one. Of course, as PJ Media’s Ed Driscoll points out, Jay Carney’s own corruption is not exactly new-fallen snow [4].
This was a standard tactic of the Clinton administration and its defenders, in every scandal from Whitewater [5] and Castle Grande [6], to the illegal campaign donations from James Riady (who, in another case of what was old is new again, has somehow recently turned up in the new series as well [7]). And then there was John Huang [8] and the Chinese donations [9] (and others too numerous to recount in this brief piece), to L’Affaire Grand — the Lewinsky scandal.
In each and every case, the tactic would be to prevaricate, stonewall, and withhold requested documents for weeks, months or years. Then, when some evidence managed to evade the combined media/administration cover-up and come to light (such as Hillary Clinton’s law-firm billing records [10]), it would suddenly become “old news.”
We’re seeing a repeat of other tactics as well.
In the nineties, whenever they were withholding documents, they would say “we’ve released thousands of documents,” not mentioning that they didn’t include all requested, or that they had been redacted of all useful information. We see exactly the same thing now. In the Fast and Furious Mexican gun-walking non-scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder (a notable cast member from the previous series, in which he played a corrupt Justice Department official who approved pardons of a man who had paid off Bill Clinton) said that they had released thousands of documents, many of them with pages entirely blacked out [11]. Many more thousands remained unreleased, for which he was found in contempt of Congress. And just this past Sunday, Senator Jack Reed, running interference for a Democrat administration, said that [12] “Congress has already had 11 hearings on the topic, over 25,000 pieces of documentation have been provided to the Congress.” But there remains much that we don’t know.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/saluting_pamela_geller_a_champion_of_liberty.html Tragically, during these times of great peril, truth is sacrificed by the politically correct, the myopic self-serving in the liberally dominated media, and the ruling class. Against this backdrop, a women of great courage and integrity labors tirelessly in speaking the truth and in the defense of liberty Pamela Geller’s work in objectively revealing […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/the_end_of_the_obama_illusion.html
President Obama is shattering the illusions of his supporters, and eyes are opening, even among his former media allies. As if waking from a slumber, a newly aggressive White House press corps yesterday raked Jay Carney over the coals over various lies and evasions, prompting Megyn Kelley of Fox News to quip, “What’s happened? Who are these reporters who showed up here?”
They are disillusioned and angry liberals who are starting to grasp that they have been lied to, who realize that a skeptical stance is necessary when examining a narrative offered by team Obama on Benghazi or the IRS scandal.
Even worse, the media have discovered that they are themselves targets of government abuse, just like those Tea Partiers the IRS was picking on. The Associated Press, whose newsroom and reporters’ personal phone line records were secretly subpoenaed, is collectively owned by members of the mainstream media. As the largest newsgathering organization in the country, it stands for media freedom itself in their minds. An attack on it is an attack on them.
Right now, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going on in the punditocracy: how could a constitutional law professor turn on the free press? Obama’s just not behaving like the good guy they thought him to be. Awkward questions of character are being raised in their minds.
The love they offered Obama all those years has not been reciprocated. John Yoo observed, “[T]his is how you get treated when you are in a politician’s pocket.” As with many scorned lovers, they are ripe to reframe their understanding of their ex-amour in a more negative light. The illusion of Obama the godlike light-bringer, the man who could bring us together, has dissolved into an uncomfortable, soon to be angry, memory.
And therein lies serious peril for President Obama. Once it becomes accepted that his narratives are false, a Pandora’s Box opens. To a remarkable degree, the biographical narrative he offered to the media when he suddenly appeared on the national scene, and which they accepted and aggressively defended, was built on illusion. Serious questions about Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, his authorship of Dreams from my Father, and his academic transcripts once were rudely brushed aside as racism and paranoia.
Two polar opposite ways of seeing Barack Obama emerged in his first presidential campaign. The mainstream view saw an inspiring, brilliant high achiever who could bring us together, while among conservatives, as exemplified over the years at American Thinker, a decidedly more negative interpretation of the biographical facts emerged. Just a few of many possible examples include:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/army-sexual-assault_n_3275941.html
WASHINGTON — A soldier assigned to coordinate a sexual assault prevention program in Texas is under investigation for “abusive sexual contact” and other alleged misconduct and has been suspended from his duties, the Army announced Tuesday.
Just last week an Air Force officer who headed a sexual assault prevention office was himself arrested on charges of groping a woman in a parking lot.
The Army said a sergeant first class, whose name was not released, is accused of pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates. He is being investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. No charges have been filed.
He had been assigned as an equal opportunity adviser and coordinator of a sexual harassment-assault prevention program at the Army’s 3rd Corps headquarters at Fort Hood, Texas, when the allegation arose, the Army said.
“To protect the integrity of the investigative process and the rights of all persons involved, no more information will be released at this time,” an Army statement said.
The back-to-back Army and Air Force cases highlight a problem that is drawing increased scrutiny in Congress and expressions of frustration from top Pentagon leaders. Pentagon press secretary George Little said after Tuesday’s announcement that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is angry and disappointed at “these troubling allegations and the breakdown in discipline and standards they imply.”
