BENGHAZI SUSPECTS SAFE BUT DRONE COULD HIT TEA PARTY MEETING ANY MOMENT

BENGHAZI SUSPECTS SAFE BUT DRONE COULD HIT TEA PARTY MEETING ANY MOMENT
Benghazi Suspects ID’d, But Administration Won’t Nab Them Because It Doesn’t Want to Send Them to Gitmo
   
Despite the fact that the Obama administration regularly strike at terrorists with lethal drone hits in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the White House is reportedly not rounding up five suspects identified in the Benghazi attack because of a lack of evidence to try them in civilian court.

The Associated Press cites officials who said there is enough evidence to seize the men as enemy combatants and send them to Guantanamo Bay.

But apparently the Obama administration wants civilian trials for anyone involved in the Benghazi attack and has sent the FBI back to collect more evidence, which could be challenging in a more tumultuous Libya today.
by
BRIDGET JOHNSON
PJ Media

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, LIMITED GOVERNMENT & FREE MARKETS - NAH

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, LIMITED GOVERNMENT & FREE MARKETS - NAH
Vern McKinley shows in his book “Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts”
Yet there is a deep irony in the 2400 pages of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform legislation: No serious person believes that it will prevent the next financial crisis and, despite bravado to the contrary, no one really believes that when that financial crisis hits that massive bailouts of financial institutions will not be forthcoming.
...  And the picture that McKinley presents is both depressing and realistic.  He shows government officials simultaneously consumed by panic, arrogance, and ignorance, bumbling frantically and repeatedly, producing responses that not only failed to accomplish their stated goals but actually producing counterproductive results, with George W. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson coming off as Washington’s chief Keystone Cop.

THE CHICAGO WAY: A tea-party group targeted by Democrats gets attention from the IRS—and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF.
UPDATE: WaPo/ABC News Poll: Majority Believe Obama’s IRS Targeting of Tea Party Was Intentional and Illegal.
WHICH IS, OF COURSE, THE GOAL: Michael Barone: Obama’s IRS and AP scandals cast Big Chill on free speech.
WELL, FIRST THEY CAME FOR FILMMAKER NAKOULA, AND THE A.P. DIDN’T DO ANYTHING: Shredding the Constitution: Obama’s attack on the media.
TWEET OF THE DAY: #Fact: DOJ had more surveillance of @JamesRosenFNC than Tsarnaev brothers.
Related: Investors Business Daily: The Obama Objective: To Control The News.
And note that neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney ever did anything like this. That was left to The Lightbringer.
HOW THE PRESS CAN STRIKE BACK: Just start covering Obama — on everything — the way you would if he were a Republican President. #Toast.

We’re split as wide open as a country

The President’s poll numbers show his approval rating holding steady at near 50%.  Really? This indicates a total bifurcation of ideologies in America.  We’re split as wide open as the country before the Civil War. Left vs. right. Liberal vs. conservative.  Bad in the sense that followers are destroying America; good in the sense that we are trying to stop the slide to Gomorrah.

Need a teeny bit of proof from a local ad from a kindergarten?  A cheerleader for the school says that it teaches all children to be leaders,  “most everyone.”  He says that  “those such a things” are taught. Really? Really?  Low information vs. informed.
America represents them vs. us.    

“YOU GOT A PROBLEM, RIGHT HERE IN RIVER CITY” SANG THE MUSIC MAN.

“YOU GOT A PROBLEM, RIGHT HERE IN RIVER CITY” SANG THE MUSIC MAN.
Has an Iron Curtain Descended on the Cincinnati IRS Office?
[MUST READ 2 COMMENTS FOLLOWING NEW ITEM]

ABC News visited the IRS Determinations office in Cincinnati, OH, the office that determines eligibility for 501(c)(3) and (4) groups. It has become a security state.
On Thursday morning, after news that Miller was sacked, two ABC News journalists walked into the Peck Federal Building in Cincinnati looking for answers. The newsmen were screened at the door by security. They emptied their pockets as instructed, removed their belts, then went through the metal detectors.We wanted to ask who about made the decisions in the unit and when the profiling started. And whether those decision makers been identified yet.
But the answers – like the people involved – remained elusive.
As we traveled the public hallways of the building – watched over by security cameras – an armed uniformed police officer with the Federal Protective Service followed us. We were looking for a particular office—of someone who would not want to be seen talking to reporters–but chose to bypass it because of our official babysitter.
Asked why we were being escorted in a public building, the officer identified himself as Insp. Mike Finkelstein and said he was only trying to make sure that the newsmen were not a “nuisance.” He brushed aside further questions. The cop said a supervisor would call to explain.

One of the reporters wanted to know if the act of following the journalists was an effort intended to scare off any federal employee who might have considered speaking to the press. That’s sure what it looked like; and, even if that wasn’t the goal, it was the effect.

The supervisor never called to explain. After repeated calls to Washington to obtain an explanation, the Department of Homeland Security eventually called back to tell the ABC reporters that the security guard following them around was proper.

So, the reporters’ calls of inquiry about a Department of the Treasury office were eventually referred over to the Department of Homeland Security. For what?

Is this America anymore, or have we truly been fundamentally transformed into something else?

h/t Dan Riehl

COMMENTS:

Kirk Parker
Sadly unenterprising of the ABC reporters. Here's how to escape your "minder":
1. Go up to every person you meet.
2. Say, "Hi, I'm from ABC news. If you have anything of interest you'd like to tell me, privately, here's my card."
3. Hand them your card.
So now Mr. Minder has no idea who, if any, of the recipients might actually call one of the ABC folks, and if they *did* try to confiscate the business cards wouldn't *that* make for a wonderful story in and of itself?

elkhoong
Let's be clear to use the correct terms for the transformed America: minders, not babysitters; Schutzstaffel, not Homeland Security; apparatchiks, not officers or supervisors.

THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND: IRS Scandal Contradicts Central Narrative of Obama Administration.
Posted at 8:39 am by Glenn Reynolds

Much now being done by the state could better be done by free enterprise

Milton Friedman’s and Daniel Boorstin’s
The accepted approach to this problem [of highway provision] is an illustration of the way in which the proponents of our free enterprise system accept the role which is given them by their opponents – a role as fighters of a rear-guard action against socialism.  While they devote their energies to preventing further encroachment by government, they take for granted that those areas in which government is at any moment operating must be so operated.  Those of us who believe in free enterprise should show as much imagination, intellectual daring, and willingness to experiment in extending the scope of free enterprise as the opponents of free enterprise have shown in seeking to extend the power of the state.  If we do, we shall find that much now being done by the state could better be done by free enterprise.

OBAMA AND THE IRS: The Smoking Gun? President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.

FREE NAKOULA
Indeed. Also, filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail, over a YouTube video that no one now thinks led to the attacks.

AROUND THE COUNTRY, TEA PARTIERS WILL BE PROTESTING AT IRS OFFICES ON TUESDAY. At noon, local time. Yeah, it’s short notice, but I’ll bet some people will show up.

It's Obamanomics, baby. Punish the productive, reward the reprobate

Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?

Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30
In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”
The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:
April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.
In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.

SALENA ZITO: Scandals vs. Sway:
In T.S. Eliot’s drama “Murder in the Cathedral,” kowtowing knights who overhear England’s Henry II vent frustration with Thomas Becket decide to please the king by killing the archbishop.

Confronted with the scandalous murder, Henry is forced to deny involvement and punish his knights. Secretly, he is quite happy to be rid of the pesky archbishop.

So when Obama joked about auditing enemies’ taxes, it wasn’t really a joke at all. . . .


THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS BECOME THE STUFF OF NEW YORKER SATIRE: Obama Denies Role in Government.
[Fiction turning into fact]
President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.

“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”

The President’s outrage only increased, he said, when he “recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice.”

“The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them,” he said. “They sound like bad news.”

Mr. Obama closed his address by indicating that beginning next week he would enforce what he called a “zero tolerance policy on governing.”

Obama Denies Role in Government.

[Fiction turning into fact]

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS BECOME THE STUFF OF NEW YORKER SATIRE: Obama Denies Role in Government.

President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.
“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”
The President’s outrage only increased, he said, when he “recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice.”
“The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them,” he said. “They sound like bad news.”
Mr. Obama closed his address by indicating that beginning next week he would enforce what he called a “zero tolerance policy on governing.”

‘RETRAIN THE HORSE’

‘RETRAIN THE HORSE’
Peter Drucker’s 1967 volume, The Effective Executive:
“The need to slough off the outworn old to make possible the productive new is universal.  It is reasonably certain that we would still have stagecoaches – nationalized, to be sure, heavily subsidized, and with a fantastic research program to ‘retrain the horse’ – had there been ministries of transportation around 1825.”

MARK HEMINGWAY: Ideological Revenue Service.
Some 471 conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status were harassed by the IRS over a period of years, and our self-styled watchdog media played no role in bringing this injustice to light. It only became a scandal after the IRS publicly admitted its wrongdoing.

THE HILL: Complaints of IRS targeting by religious groups on the rise.

The number of religious groups reporting they were improperly targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is increasing.

At least a half-dozen conservative groups say they received an unusual degree of scrutiny from the IRS, according to the Religion News Service, a non-profit news service operated out of the University of Missouri’s journalism school.

Earlier this week Rev. Billy Graham’s son made headlines with a letter to President Obama accusing the administration of targeting the Samaritan’s Purse charity and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in an attempt to intimidate the group.

Since then, the Catholics United Education Fund and the Christian Voices for Life have reported significant delays in their applications for tax-exempt status from the IRS.

The Coalition for Life of Iowa also said that it took unusually long to receive their tax exempt status, according to the Thomas More Society, a non-profit group focused on supporting pro-life causes.

At a House hearing investigating the IRS abuses on Friday, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) called attention to The Coalition for Life of Iowa’s complaint, citing one particular question that the group was asked by the agency.

“Their question, specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers. Would that be an inappropriate question to a 501 c3 applicant? The content of one’s prayers?” asked Schock of the IRS’s former acting commissioner, Steven Miller.

Render unto Caesar . . . . But what if what Caesar needs is a swift kick in the ass?

OBAMA AIDE: Legality of IRS targeting conservative groups “irrelevant.”

Also “irrelevant” — where the President was during Benghazi attacks. Not a good day for the White House on the Sunday shows. . .

SCAPEGOATED “LOWER LEVEL OFFICIALS” NOW LEAKING IN SELF-DEFENSE: Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official: “Everything comes from the top.”

THE REALLY BAD NEWS FOR THEM ISN’T THAT PEOPLE ARE CALLING IT A CULTURE OF INTIMIDATION, IT’S THAT THEY AREN’T BEING INTIMIDATED ANY MORE: White House defends IRS handling, McConnell asserts ‘culture of intimidation.’

THE POWER TO TAX IS THE POWER TO DESTROY: The IRS Will Come for You Next, Unless Congress Acts Now. “The scandal isn’t about politics—it’s about civil liberties. And Congress needs to make sure it never happens again.”

AROUND THE COUNTRY, TEA PARTIERS WILL BE PROTESTING AT IRS OFFICES ON TUESDAY. At noon, local time

Does anyone still trust Obama?

Does anyone still trust Obama?
BY: CHRIS WILSON
Right now, our government is embroiled in scandals which show how much the rights of Americans have eroded in the five years Barack Obama has been in office.

 When there’s a scandal, Obama always finds out what his administration is doing from the news
BY: DAVID FREDDOSO
Jonathan Stewart pointed out on last night’s Daily Show that President Obama’s bad habit of finding out what his own government is doing from the news.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Cloudy with a 100% chance of scandals: Obama ducks and weaves.


Bob Woodward compares Benghazi with Watergate. Is he right? (+video)
The similarities: line-by-line edits of what to tell the public, says Bob Woodward, the media's authority on all things Watergate. Regarding the White House Benghazi edits, they show pressure 'in the system not to tell the truth' about what happened, he said Friday.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

“The murder of four Americans in Benghazi has become a mess of partisan bickering. But the disturbing facts now transcend politics. The Obama administration — the president himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. ambassador Susan Rice, White House press secretary Jay Carney — all at various times blamed an obscure video maker for the “spontaneous violence” that killed Americans last September.

The problem is not just that such scapegoating was untrue, but that our officials knew it was untrue when they said it — given both prior CIA talking-point briefings and phone calls from those on the ground during the attacks.
What is the common denominator in all these second-term administration embarrassments? “Hope and change” is fast becoming the 1973 Nixon White House.”

:
JONATHAN TOBIN: Denial Flows Like A River At The IRS.

Related: Questioner initially denied IRS Q&A was set up.



"Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers."
IS THERE NOTHING THAT CANNOT BE ASKED OF A CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATION?
Information the IRS demanded from the Coalition for Life of Iowa. Asked if that's an appropriate question to a 501(c)(3) applicant, IRS commissioner Steven Miller says he's pained at his inability to answer

"Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers."

"Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers."
IS THERE NOTHING THAT CANNOT BE ASKED OF A CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATION?
Information the IRS demanded from the Coalition for Life of Iowa. Asked if that's an appropriate question to a 501(c)(3) applicant, IRS commissioner Steven Miller says he's pained at his inability to answer.

“more efficient workload selection?”

Did you know the stated reason from the IRS for targeting Tea Parties and conservative groups (including Jews) was “more efficient workload selection?”  Are we not thoroughly tired of this liberal Democrat doublespeak?  Also, with the claim that there was “no political motivation” for the targeting?  Are we not fed up with lies, just lies?  I for one am ‘sickofit.’  

GOVERNANCE BY INTIMIDATION

RAND SIMBERG: A CULTURE OF INTIMIDATION. “If Barack Obama didn’t directly order the harassment of his political enemies, he certainly encouraged it.” Punch back twice as hard.

MICHAEL BARONE: Benghazi and IRS Targeting: Politics by Other Means. “What do the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal have in common? They were both about winning elections, under false pretenses.”

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Durbin Asked IRS’ Shulman to Probe ‘Several’ Conservative 501(c)(4) Groups in 2010. “Democrats’ background on the issue underscores their interest in turning the current scandal into a campaign finance narrative.” (You may remember Durbin as the Sen. Who compared our troops to Pol Pot, Nazi Genghis Khan)

TWEET OF THE DAY: “These scandals are so bad that for the first time Obama wants to talk about the economy.”

COVERUP: Report: IRS Deliberately Chose Not to Fess Up to Scandal Before Election. “[I]f this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”

BARACK OBAMA AND THE CASE AGAINST EMPATHY. “Empathy has some unfortunate features—it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it.”
Psychopaths are surprisingly high in empathy. They understand other people’s feelings very well. They just don’t care, except to the extent that they can use them for their own benefit.
In a thoughtful new book on bullying, “Sticks and Stones” (Random House), Emily Bazelon writes, “The scariest aspect of bullying is the utter lack of empathy”—a diagnosis that she applies not only to the bullies but also to those who do nothing to help the victims. Few of those involved in bullying, she cautions, will turn into full-blown psychopaths.

Related: A Bad Week For Obama, A Worse Week For Statism.

UPDATE: Frank J. Fleming: Without letting the left in charge every so often, our arguments about how awful the government could be would only be theoretical.

PEGGY NOONAN: This Is No Ordinary Scandal: Political abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government. “Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don’t, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn’t stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.”

Peggy’s right, but I was saying the same thing — right there in the Wall Street Journal — way back in 2009, when she was still going on about Obama’s transformational energy. So welcome to the party. Wish you’d gotten here before the re-election. . . .

Posted at 10:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

JAMES TARANTO: President Asterisk: Why the Obama IRS scandal may be worse than “a cancer on the presidency.” “No one can deny that Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were highly skilled athletes. But their accomplishments are forever tainted by their use of banned performance-enhancing drugs. The use of the Internal Revenue Service’s coercive power to suppress dissent against Obama is the political equivalent of steroids. The history books should record Obama’s re-election with an asterisk to indicate that it was achieved with the help of illicit means. . . . One thing we have learned from the IRS scandal is that sports journalists are morally superior to political journalists. Whereas the former understand that cheating is an assault on the basic integrity of the sport, the latter all too often treat it as if it were just part of the game.”

“GOP do you love me?”, asked the Tea Party

“GOP do you love me?”, asked the Tea Party.
SO WHY DIDN’T ROMNEY, OR THE GOP, PUSH THESE SCANDALS HARDER BEFORE THE ELECTION? A variety of explanations are offered, and I find this one troublingly plausible: “Obama’s prime target was the Tea Party (which had crushed him in the 2010 midterms), and the establishment Republicans were at odds with the Tea Party movement. I’m not saying I believe this, but sober reflection tells us we need to redraw the line between paranoia and vigilance. The theory is that establishment Republicans appreciated the suppression of the Tea Party.”
Plus, from the comments: “The IRS chilling hampered some of the exact groups who might have brought this stuff to light.”

IT JUST GETS WORSE: IRS tax exemption/Obamacare exec got $103,390 in bonuses.
Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harrassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.
More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency’s Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS’ regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.
Great. So the woman who oversaw the targeting of Tea Partiers is now in charge of healthcare regulation? You may be paranoid. But are you paranoid enough?

PEGGY NOONAN: This Is No Ordinary Scandal: Political abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government. “Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don’t, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn’t stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.”

Peggy’s right, but I was saying the same thing — right there in the Wall Street Journal — way back in 2009, when she was still going on about Obama’s transformational energy. So welcome to the party. Wish you’d gotten here before the re-election. . . .
Posted at 10:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

MOE LANE ON THE IRS SCANDALS: Remember, this is not a failure of the system. This is the system.

THE “SOFT SPOT” OF LIFE

THE “SOFT SPOT” OF LIFE Analysis of the human condition is no better appraised than by our greatest living philosopher, Earl Pitts, who speaks truth to power each morning on my local radio station. When our illustrious politicians in Washington claim the economy has hit a “soft spot,” beware. Nothing from propaganda land, of course, can be further from truth. Earl Pitts, American, paints the correct picture for us folks out here safe from the beltway of wisdom. Normal Americans struggle daily, living so to speak, in a “soft spot” for their entire lives. The struggle to maintain the status quo is a soft spot - not on ground totally hardened and impossible to till, not totally squishy enough to sink us into the slough of despond. Earl’s right; Washington’s wrong. Earl speaks for ‘real’ Americans; Washington elites lie.