It should be no secret to the people that read this blog regularly, but http://lewrockwell.com is an almost daily stop for me, with new insights and revelations from behind the scenes about current events, from an independent liberty-minded thinker’s perspective:
I may or may not own a gun, but for those who do, or who are considering:
Mini/Pocket 9mm Pistols for Concealed Carry:
http://lewrockwell.com/rep4/mini-9mm-concealed-carry.html
Real Men Wear Red: Sportsmen Who Choose To Wear the Colour Are More Likely To Be Winners Because They Are ‘Dressing To Kill’:
http://lewrockwell.com/spl5/real-men-wear-red.html
Evidence for Confiscation: 5 Examples That Show the Threat Is Real by S.H. Blannelberry:
http://lewrockwell.com/orig14/blannelberry11.1.html
There was a news conference by the targets of the IRS witch-hunt. Make no mistake that’s what it was. It’s not just the keyword searches for putting the applications behind the rest of them. There were some that were not from any “tea party” or “patriot” names, but “American Grizzlies”? And how about that keyword “constitution”? Are neutral officials –ahem, “neutral”– somehow allergic to the United States Constitution? How about the groups with the name “Christian” in them?
The story of Gary Johnston, a retired police officer from Kingston, Tenn., seemed to typify the abuse suffered by many rank-and-file tea party members at the hands of the IRS.
Johnston told WND he put together a small tea party group in 2009 and had no plans to file for tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(4) organization. But the IRS told him he had to do it. So, he first filled out a 19 page questionnaire in March of 2010. In August, the IRS sent him another form with 22 more questions, and embedded within those were another 60 questions.
“A lot of the questions struck me as strange,” Johnston said.
“Intrusive, terrible questions. They wanted to know any and every email that’s ever come to us or sent by us, personal or private, that might be construed to be political. They wanted to know everybody that was coming to our meetings, if we charged money, who donated, what the donations were. They wanted to know everything about our personal lives and our families’ personal lives — anyone in our family that might be politically connected.”
What sort of personal information did the IRS want to know?
“They wanted to know who we were affiliated with, what we did, what we aspired to do, what positions we might run for politically. They were asking questions that you could not answer, but could trap you.”
Did they ask you anything about reading material?
“Oh, yes, they asked any and all literature that you’ve ever had disseminated or had sent to you; anything that’s ever been written about you; anything you’ve ever written on a blog or to a newspaper. They asked me for outlines of what I’ve been reading, you could call that a book report. They asked what we were really trying to accomplish. It went on and on and on.”
After 70 days of filling out all sorts of intrusive documents, Johnston finally consulted a CPA and tax attorney. He said the attorney took one look at the material and said, “What did you do to upset the IRS? You’ve made somebody angry. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. 80 percent of this is illegal. They can’t ask you this stuff.”
She advised Johnston not to respond to many of the questions and not provide the IRS with much of the material it had requested. The IRS then sent him a form with another 40 questions, including some of the same questions he had refused to answer earlier.
Then Johnston’s group started getting “a lot of calls from the IRS.”
“These IRS agents who were calling us were apologetic. They were saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. … I’m with you guys, I have to do this. This is part of my job.’”
Johnston said their bosses, at the Cincinnati office, “were telling them they have to do this.”
The witch hunt was executed by the IRS against the targeted groups. Why did they think they could get away with this?
And that’s not all. Look at the way the IRS treated Dr. James Dobson‘s application for Family Talk:
“Ms. Medley did not call back until March 19. Family Talk Action’s attorney asked her when the IRS would issue its determination letter. Ms. Medley responded saying, I don’t think your Form 1024 (application for exemption) will be granted because Family Talk Action is ‘not educational’ because it does not present all views. She continued, saying that Family Talk Action sounded like a ‘partisan right-wing group’ because, according to Ms. Medley, it only presents conservative viewpoints. She then added, ‘you’re political’ because you ‘criticized President Obama, who was a candidate.’” [Ed: So WHAT
if it presented issues from their point of view? They all
do, and the IRS has routinely approved the left-wing
groups over the years with much worse bias!]
The organization said it had submitted sample radio programs after the IRS had demanded them, although none was aired during an election year.
“It was the opinion of Family Talk Action’s legal counsel that these samples were not only 501(c)(4) qualified but 501(c)(3) qualified,” the statement said.
“Family Talk Action’s legal counsel had never heard an IRS agent express biased statements like those he heard during the March 19 call. He also felt that the this agent did not understand the difference between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities,” the report said.
Not educational because it “doesn’t present all views”? Oh yeah? How about all the multitude of 501c4 AND 501(c)(3) entities it routinely approves that only present leftist and anti-Christian views, like Media Matters and others?
Oh, and what did the Big “O” say he’s going to do about it? He’s going to put a stop to this because it’s important that Americans “understand and believe that the IRS” is fair. Oh yeah, except this episode shows it’s NOT fair. How about it’s important to follow the Supreme Law of the Land, the Constitution?
So who is he going to put in jail over this for abuse of power? Anybody?
Look, does the Socialist Workers Party get the third degree grilling, send us all of your emails you ever got or sent? What an uproar that would be right? How about from the unions?
It’s not a “small cadre” of a couple of “rogue agents”. It looks like it was ALL the conservative groups that had any of those “suspicious” keywords in their names!
http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/lawmakers-demand-jailtime-for-irs-scandal/
According to Fox News, an internal timeline by the inspector general’s office revealed the IRS began looking at tea party and “patriot” groups as early as 2010, shortly after Obamacare was passed.
However, in 2011 the organizations scrutinized were expanded to include groups focused on government debt and spending, taxes and education on “ways to make America a better place to live” as well as those who criticized “how the country is being run.”
In early 2012, the IRS expanded the list even further to include groups that were educating people on the Constitution and Bill of Rights and involved in limiting/expanding government.
Gardner told WND that among the multiple conservative groups targeted by the IRS was at least one group from Colorado.
The group, which is asking that its name be kept private for now, applied for 501(c)(4) status and had its application illegally released to the public during the application process, which is a clear violation of federal law.
“The information on their application was confidential and the IRS was required by law to treat it as such, yet that information was leaked to ProPublica,” Gardner said. “Who’s to say the IRS didn’t give out confidential donor information either? This confirms people’s worst beliefs about government overbearance.”
They’re demanding health records from medical organizations, too:
Yeah, just apologize and that’s it? We put a muzzle on the voices of tens of thousands of Americans, and tilted the election to an administration that expands the Patriot Act, confiscates two months of emails and reports from a press organization (a leftist one even!) to catch a whistleblower supposedly, tells the man in charge in Tripoli second to the late Ambassador he’d better muzzle himself instead of testify to events, covers up the truth about events that left four people to die in an attack that could have been avoided. And refuses to give up the prerogative (it’s not a “right”) to kill any American the President fingers as a threat. And under whom even the Pentagon is now claiming the power to kill Americans and control them under certain conditions.
And nobody goes to jail? Watergate was a LOT less than all this, and people went to prison. Hello?
And Holder, after treating the Congress with such contempt and stonewalling on Fast and Furious, and to this day refusing to release relevant documents, and even bald-faced punishing the whistleblowers of Fast and Furious, he rebukes Congress for incivility and lack of respect?!
http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/hot-tempered-holder-lashes-out-in-defiance/
And yet another one:
http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/irs-rejected-group-on-behalf-of-planned-parenthood/?cat_orig=politics
(BREITBART) The IRS scandal of targeting tea party or conservative organizations grew deeper Wednesday with the revelation that the agency denied tax-exempt status to a pro-life organization because of its hypothetical opposition of Planned Parenthood.
The Thomas Moore Society, a public interest law firm announced that one of their clients was told that their approval as a non-profit was conditioned on a commitment not to protest outside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.
>>>>
Whattaya know, now they tell us there was a “suicide note” inside that boat in Boston? How convenient. All of a sudden they “found” an admissible “confession”? And how convenient that the “suspect”, umm, “shot himself” in the throat? Now he can’t yell something like “I’m a patsy!” like Lee Harvey Oswald did…
>>>>>
In another story, McClatchy newspapers are quoting ” two anonymous government officials”:
CAIRO — In the month before attackers stormed U.S. facilities in Benghazi and killed four Americans, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens twice turned down offers of security assistance made by the senior U.S. military official in the region in response to concerns that Stevens had raised in a still secret memorandum, two government officials told McClatchy.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#storylink=cpy
What American official in such a land would report in a “still secret memorandum” that he had security concerns, and then turn down military offers of more security? And then go to the city where other states had pulled completely out? Why would any official do that? This thing does NOT pass the “fishy smell” test:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#.UZi_gIJnEZc
There is something else going on there. Presuming, just for the sake of argument, that it’s true, the big question is indeed WHY? The Embassy had just reported that they could NOT defend the compound in Benghazi, and they needed “additional security upgrades”.
Note, this is some anonymous somebody’s recollection of somebody else’s phone call. Stevens can no longer tell his side of that phone call, ey?
The next three paragraphs from the McClatchy report are interesting because they seem to be an example of “Does. Not. Compute.” Or maybe post-facto C. Y. A.:
Why Stevens, who died of smoke inhalation in the first of two attacks that took place late Sept. 11 and early Sept. 12, 2012, would turn down the offers remains unclear. The deteriorating security situation in Benghazi had been the subject of a meeting that embassy officials held Aug. 15, where they concluded they could not defend the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The next day, the embassy drafted a cable outlining the dire circumstances and saying it would spell out what it needed in a separate cable.
“In light of the uncertain security environment, US Mission Benghazi will submit specific requests to US Embassy Tripoli for additional physical security upgrades and staffing needs by separate cover,” said the cable, which was first reported by Fox News.
Army Gen. Carter Ham, then the head of the U.S. Africa Command, did not wait for the separate cable, however. Instead, after reading the Aug. 16 cable, Ham phoned Stevens and asked if the embassy needed a special security team from the U.S. military. Stevens told Ham it did not, the officials said.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#storylink=cpy
But further on, this “report” seems to come back down to Earth:
“That is odd to me because Stevens requested from the State Department additional security four times, and there was an 18-person special forces security team headed by Lt. Col. Wood that Gen. Ham signed off on that the State Department said no to,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who has been among the most vocal critics of the Obama administration on Benghazi. “The records are very clear that people on the ground in Libya made numerous requests for additional security that were either denied or only partially granted.”
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#storylink=cpy
Senator Lindsay Graham is not my favorite politician, being an advocate as he is for shredding the US Constitution. But note that the Embassy had made repeated security requests and were denied, not by the military brass, but by the State Department in Washington, D.C.
Maybe this is the military brass doing its own CYA “not my fault” public relations effort, true or not. I can believe it, of course. But there are more questions raised in this McClatchy report than answers.
(1) WHO GAVE THE ORDER to the military security team in Tripoli to stand down instead of moving to help defend the Americans under attack?
(2) WHO in the D.C. State Department hierarchy turned down the request for better security in Libya? How high did that decision go? How high does it usually go?
(3) AT THIS POINT, what difference does it make? (This has been answered but it’s good to keep it in mind).
(4) If the important thing is to make sure it doesn’t happen again, then why is the Administration trying to make sure the people they work for don’t even know what happened?
(5) It the important thing is to track down those responsible for this and administer appropriate measures on them, then why are those responsible –already even publicly identified– publicly walking around as free men, and the State Department knowing where they ar
English: Anti-United States Internal Revenue Service symbol. Commonly used by tax protesters and tax reform advocates in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
?
(6) The acting head of the diplomatic mission in Libya described the situation to the Secretary of State, we now know, finally from his own mouth to Congress. So WHY did Clinton, and Susan Rice (who reports to her), and don’t forget OBAMA himself, repeat so often that this was a spontaneous demonstration and blame a VIDEO?
(7) WHY IS SOMEBODY WHO MADE A VIDEO STILL IN PRISON? DID SOMEBODY SUSPEND THE CONSTITUTION?
