Keep track of the many many scandals

keeping track of Obama's many many scandals this week alone
The Obama scandals user handbook

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - The Tygrrrr Express by Eric Golub
Eric Golub

WINCHESTER, Va., May 16, 2013 — So many scandals are engulfing the Obama administration that it can be difficult to follow. The White House released documents on one scandal right before going on television to discuss another one. It became necessary to compile a user handbook listing the scandals with what is known and unknown.

The most serious scandal is Benghazi, because four people died. On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Tyrone Woods were murdered by radical Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliate.

SEE RELATED: President Obama must not be impeached
Although the Libyan government informed their American counterparts of the cause, the White House and State Department blamed an anti-Muslim video. The film-maker remains imprisoned. Talking points originally  blaming the terrorists were stripped to eliminate any such references.

Three whistleblowers testified that they requested help in evacuating but were ordered to stand down. More whistleblowers exist along with some Benghazi survivors. The White House just released one hundred emails but is suspected of holding on to many more.

Numerous questions remain. Who pushed the video narrative? Why is the film-maker still in jail? Who gave Lt. Colonel Gibson the stand down order? Who edited the talking points? Where was President Obama? Was he asleep during the entire seven hour siege? Where are the seven Benghazi survivors? Why have they not been allowed to publicly testify? Why was Greg Hicks, a State Department employee with a sterling reputation, demoted after testifying?

The next scandal is Fast and Furious. Given back burner status in recent months, this one matters. The Department of Justice authorized a gunrunning sting. Guns were to be released by the DoJ and tracked. Then when those guns were used in crimes, the DoJ could prosecute the cases. Gun rights advocates maintained that this operation was an end run around the Second Amendment.

SEE RELATED: IRS scandal nothing new: Targeting dissenters is bipartisan
The operation went bad when the DoJ lost track of the guns. Many of them were used in crimes that killed Mexicans. One gun was used to murder American border guard Brian Terry.

Attorney General Eric Holder was asked the only question that mattered when he testified before Congress. Who authorized Fast and Furious? Holder refused to answer, and so far stonewalling has proven successful.

The Internal Revenue Service is now under a separate cloud. After over two years of denials, the IRS admitted to deliberately targeting conservative groups including tea party groups, evangelical groups, and pro-Israel groups. Groups with policy disagreements with President Obama saw their applications for tax-exempt status delayed while politically liberal groups received rapid approval.

Conservative applicants received extensive questions about their private donors, which they are not required to disclose. While the identity of tax-exempt groups is public, the groups are entitled to full privacy while an application is pending. Pending applicants had their identities leaked to politically liberal news outlets.

This scandal is dangerous because the IRS is not very popular to begin with. Obama has joked in the past about using the IRS to reward friends and punish enemies. The initial blame for this scandal fell on low level bureaucrats in Cincinnati, but Cincinnati is the home office for processing these applications. Now it is known that IRS agents in Washington were involved as well.

The Obama administration tried to blame two rogue agents, but that did not quell the scandal. Interim IRS Commissioner Stephen Miller was fired, but his term was set to expire anyway in less than one month.

Obama mouthed the words “responsible,” “accountable,” “unacceptable,” “intolerable,” and other Johnny Cochran rhymes. House Speaker John Boehner offered a much more forceful statement.

“My question isn’t about who is going to have to resign, my question is who is going to jail over this scandal.”

Unknown is who specifically ordered the IRS to harass Obama’s political opponents. IRS abuse of power led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation to avoid impeachment.

Another scandal involves the White House seizing Associated Press telephone records. The other scandals have facts not disputed by objective observers. This one has some ambiguity. Some media personnel see this as the most serious privacy breach in American political history, but this scandal is different. The White House has not denied doing what it’s accused of. It has relied on a justification defense, citing national security.

The AP was about to break a story on terrorism activity in Yemen that the White House wanted to remain secret. The White House went to a FISA court to get permission to monitor the AP, but they were still required to notify the telephone companies. This was not done. The AP had been cooperating with the White House, and has traditionally provided Obama with favorable media coverage. AP reporters had their private phone records seized for April and May of 2012.

It is tough to know if the underlying story was truly sensitive to national security without seeing evidence. The White House refuses to release the evidence because of the security claim. This circle may have to be broken by judicial order.

A fifth scandal involving the Environmental Protection Agency is getting little attention. The EPA funded failed green companies such as Solyndra after knowing these companies were financially unsound. This same EPA is accused of harassing oil, coal, and natural gas fracking companies by delaying permits. Former EPA Director Lisa Jackson was caught using a fake email account named after her dog to hide official correspondence.

A sixth scandal involves Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius. The Obamacare Czar stands accused of threatening companies and states that do not implement provisions in the way the White House wants. She is also accused of fundraising on behalf of the law, which would be illegal given her position.

The seventh scandal is the entire Obama record. Obama domestic and foreign policy have both been reduced to ashes under the weight of unmet expectations, broken promises, and failed results. From Obamacare at home to Iran and Syria abroad, there is only darkness as far as the eye can see.



Brooklyn born, Long Island raised, and now living in Los Angeles, Eric Golub is a politically conservative columnist, author, public speaker, satirist and comedian. Eric is the author of the book trilogy “Ideological Bigotry, “Ideological Violence,” and “Ideological Idiocy.”

Eric is 100% alcohol, tobacco, drug, and liberalism free. Follow Eric on Twitter @TYGRRRREXPRESS. Follow us: @wtcommunities on Twitter



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Obama up to his eyeballs

POTOMAC WATCH
Updated May 16, 2013, 8:41 p.m. ET

The IRS Scandal Started at the Top

The bureaucrats at the Internal Revenue Service did exactly what the president said was the right and honorable thing to do.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that's not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. "He put a target on our backs, and he's now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?" asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

At the White House, President Obama addresses the IRS scandal, May 15.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a "wealthy individual" with a "less-than-reputable record." Other donors were described as having been "on the wrong side of the law."

This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot's divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn't account for what the president's vilification has done to his business and reputation.

The Obama call for scrutiny wasn't a mistake; it was the president's strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as "less than reputable" to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn't need a telephone; he had a megaphone.

The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, claiming that it "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests" (read conservative groups).

The president derided "tea baggers." Vice President Joe Biden compared them to "terrorists." In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. "Nobody knows who's paying for these ads," he warned. "We don't know where this money is coming from," he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: "All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."

Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having "failed to address" the "problem" of groups that were "improperly engaged" in campaigns. Because guess who controls that "independent" agency's budget?

The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders—openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president's "animosity" toward Citizens United, might he have "appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those . . ." Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with "That's a preposterous assertion."

Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is "outraged" and "angry" that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to "operate with absolute integrity." Even when he does not.

common Chicago street thug lying tyrannical politician

Obama's IRS targeted pro Israel groups too! When are decent fair minded heretofore slavish Obama admirers going to realize he is a common Chicago street thug politician, lying tyrant? He seems likable enough and can be articulate when on a teleprompter, but if ruining the US economy isn't enough, and allowing terrorism to flourish abroad and here, what will it take?      

Richard Baehr

The lies pile up and the president goes silent
The week just ended may have been the worst week experienced by the Obama administration, and there are over 220 to choose from. The congressional testimony by three whistle-blowers on the widening Benghazi scandal drew attention even from the mainstream media outlets, which had chosen to bury the story for months. The president's press secretary, Jay Carney, in a performance worthy of a short career in this capacity, managed to double down on the falsehoods, continuing to avoid admitting even the obvious. For starters, Carney maintained that the talking points distributed to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for use in her appearances on the major news networks a few days after the attack in Benghazi on September 11 reflected what was known about the attacks, as opposed to the story the administration wanted to get out there (a spontaneous demonstration in reaction to an anti-Muslim video), and that the changes in the talking points in the days prior to Rice's appearances were merely stylistic, rather than substantive.

It is understandable that with less than two months to go in the presidential campaign, and the president ahead in the polls, and holding favorable ratings on his management of foreign affairs, there was pressure from the political types, who seem to be central to every decision by the administration, to defend the Obama foreign policy narrative even if a totally invented script on Benghazi needed to be written to do this. The narrative that needed defending, in reality, more mythology than substance, argued that al-Qaida had effectively been destroyed with the death of bin Laden, and that our Libyan intervention had been a great success.

Then on Friday, an arguably bigger story blew up on the administration. The Treasury Department's inspector-general for tax administration is expected to level serious charges next week of an attempt by Internal Revenue Service officials to target conservative groups seeking to obtain tax-exempt status under the code. The administration, as is its habit, released the news of the problematic behavior by agents in the Cincinnati office of the IRS on Friday afternoon, assuming the story would get overshadowed by the continuing Benghazi controversy, with which it would have to compete. The release of the news included suggestions that the singling out of the Tea Party and other conservative groups, was the work of lower level employees, in a branch office, and of course was unknown to departmental superiors or other higher up officials (e.g., the White House). These intimations have already proven false. Certain IRS officials were either in the dark about the operation or lied under oath to Congress in 2012 when asked about the program by members of Congress who had been informed about the behavior of the IRS by groups trying to gain the tax exemption. Incredibly, spotting words such as "constitution," "Bill of Rights," and "patriot" in the name or mission of groups, were red flags for the IRS agents. The IRS agents also asked for donor lists, which is both illegal and chilling for potential donors. And the supposedly rogue "way down the totem pole" agents in Cincinnati were anything but; that office is the central processing office for the IRS to consider applications for tax exempt status, so it represents ground zero for this activity.

One can easily make a case that the current law is too lax, and organizations that achieve tax-free status are more interested in political advocacy than in charitable purposes, such as education and communication on issues. If this is one's view, however, then enforcement of the law should presumably be applied consistently, across the board, to organizations and groups that may have crossed the line, regardless of their message. Groups that are really conducting politics and only pretending to have a charitable purpose would be identified from both the Left and the Right. This, of course, is not what happened here. The only groups that were identified by their mission or name, were on the Right, in other words, perceived political opponents of the Obama administration.

There is much evidence that Americans are not well versed in their history, including relatively recent history. Going back fewer than 40 years, the first impeachment article drawn up in the U.S. House of Representatives for President Richard Nixon in 1974 described his abuse of presidential authority by using the IRS to target political opponents. Is the offense of less significance now because the Democratic Party is in power, and it stuck the IRS on Republicans and conservatives? So far, the connection between the banana republic activity of the IRS agents and the White House has not been made. But this controversy is in its first weekend. So far, there has been no testimony under oath by anyone before a congressional committee. And more importantly, the misconduct is so serious that even the administration's most ardent defenders are not spinning that nothing bad happened here. Even Jay Carney admitted this was wrong, and that may be a first for him.

The president, who loves to be in the public view at all times, so long as the audience is friendly (worshipful is preferred), was little seen this week except for an appearance before a carefully selected group of cheering women to promote the increasingly troubled rollout of his health care reform bill, popularly known as Obamacare. That legislation will result in significant financial costs and prove politically embarrassing to the administration if healthy younger people do not enroll in large numbers. There was not a word from the president about Benghazi or the IRS controversy. Instead, Jay Carney was served up as the piñata for a suddenly aggressive White House press corps, which for over four years seemed to see its role as mainly to provide political cover for the administration.

The IRS story will get much bigger this week. The pro-Israel group Z Street, for which I serve as a board member, received a brushback from the IRS when it applied for tax-free status in 2010. The IRS agent who communicated with Z Street indicated that a special division of the IRS had been created to review applications for groups involved with Israel, and in particular was interested in its involvement with terrorism (!) There were also questions about the group's political positions, in particular how consistent they were with those of the administration. Until this weekend, no one had put together the IRS political harassment campaign against pro-Israel groups with the stories that had been circulating of roadblocks and challenges to the Tea Party and conservative groups.

The scrutiny of Z Street was not an isolated event for the IRS. Other Jewish groups, including groups not focused on Israel, were also targeted.

"And at least one purely religious Jewish organization, one not focused on Israel, was the recipient of bizarre and highly inappropriate questions about Israel. Those questions also came from the same non-profit division of the IRS at issue for inappropriately targeting politically conservative groups. The IRS required that Jewish organization to state "whether [it] supports the existence of the land of Israel," and also demanded the organization "describe [its] religious belief system toward the land of Israel."

The mainstream media disregarded Barack Obama's political history in Chicago, his work as a community organizer, his connections with radicals and Israel haters such as Bill Ayers, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Ali Abunimah and Rashid Khalidi, or his attachment to Saul Alinsky's methods and blueprint for political action. The president has so far largely kept his distance from the storm clouds gathering over his administration over Benghazi and the IRS. On Benghazi his fingerprints are clearer, since he personally provided misleading information (you can use a different word) about the attack in several talks and interviews in the two weeks after September 11, in every case blaming the anti-Muslim video maker for stirring up a mob to attack the consulate. He knew that was untrue, but kept saying it anyway. The bigger question will be this: Is it really possible that IRS agents simply chose to deal with conservative groups and Jewish groups in the way they did without any direction from above? And if there was direction from above, from how far up the chain of command was the direction given?

Hillary lies lies lies

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Ben gazi gate

The Obama Administration’s Tower of Fabrications Begins to Crack

Peter Wehner | @Peter_Wehner05.10.2013 - 3:30 PM

We continue to learn more disturbing things about the Benghazi scandal. In addition to the story by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, which Jonathan Tobinreferenced, Stephen Hayes–who has been doing fantastic reporting on this matter–has a story in the forthcoming issue of the Weekly Standard in which we learn this:

CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version — produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers — was a shadow of the original.

After recounting the details, Hayes says this:

This candid, real-time assessment from then-CIA director Petraeus offers a glimpse of what many intelligence officials were saying privately as top Obama officials set aside the truth about Benghazi and spun a fanciful tale about a movie that never mattered and a demonstration that never happened.

It’s worth recalling here that in the aftermath of the attacks on the American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, the Obama White House was eager to throw the CIA under the bus. During the vice presidential debate, for example, Joe Biden was asked why the White House had attributed the death of Ambassador Stevens to the video. He responded: “Because that was exactly what we were told by the intelligence community.” (h/tMichael Gerson.)

That statement is exactly false, as are so many of the things said by the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the U.N. ambassador, and the White House press secretary weeks after the attacks–and weeks after the truth was fully known.

The president’s courtiers in the press clearly wish this story would go away. I can understand why. Because it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Obama administration’s account of events was built on a tower of fabrications. That tower is beginning to crack. And there will be more to follow. 

Obama the tyrant uses IRS against patriots who are in loyal opposition,. What is this KGB?

Obama the tyrant uses IRS against patriots who are in loyal opposition,. What is this KGB? The IRS and Obama’s Enemies List
Posted: 10 May 2013 11:24 AM PDT
(John Hinderaker)
The IRS has admitted, and apologized for, targeting conservative political groups for audits:
The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” she added.
We actually knew about this. Some time ago, we started getting calls and emails from Tea Party groups saying that they were being audited by the IRS, and had learned that other Tea Party groups were likewise in the crosshairs. We had also heard about the IRS asking for donor lists, presumably so that they could audit the donors as well. The IRS says the improper audits occurred during the 2012 campaign, but we had heard about them prior to last summer or fall.
The IRS claims that “the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.” That last point is risible. Of course it was motivated by political bias. Ms. Lerner says further that “no high level IRS officials knew about the practice.” That, too, seems extremely doubtful. If I knew the IRS was auditing Tea Party groups, how likely is it that no senior agency officials had heard about it?
Congress should investigate this, obviously. By Congress, I mean the House of Representatives. There is zero chance of the Democratic Senate investigating anything related to the Obama administration. (See David Gelernter’s essay posted immediately below.) Come to think of it, this may be one more reason why Obama is so single-mindedly devoted to winning back the House in 2014: the way his administration’s scandals are multiplying, an all-Democrat Congress provides insurance against having to leave office via helicopter.

More on Obama and Hillary's lying betrayals on Libya

House Oversight Committee hearing on Benghazi today. The former deputy chief of mission in Libya told the committee: “The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya.” We commenced this series in response to Obama administration spokesman Susan Rice’s round of Sunday post-attack gabfest appearances asserting: ”What happened this week…in Benghazi was a result, a direct result of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, that we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.”
Obama and Hillary lied  about it for weeks even though within hours they knew Ben Gazzi had nothing to do with the video. The narrative that terrorism was over when the bad boy was killed had to be maintained even if it meant a dead ambassador +3. shameful.