The war on the rule of law

[Crafty_Dog]

pasting this from Electoral Process

Wife of Former IRS Chief Campaigned for Obama, Questioned Romney's Taxes

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/02/Wife-of-Former-IRS-Chief-Campaigned-for-Obama-Questioned-Romney-s-Taxes

Former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman is under fire from Congress for his agency's targeting of Tea Party and other conservative organizations. Shulman himself is under suspicion for his numerous visits to the White House compared to other administration officials. Additionally, Shulman's wife Susan L. Anderson reportedly works for the Washington D.C. based liberal organization Public Campaign.

Anderson's group, Public Campaign, describes itself as, "a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics."

(The article goes on at the link to publish many of her tweets during the campaign. "If Romney loses the election, I bet he can file an amended return and claim the deductions he didn't claim.”",  "Romney in class by himself - see @SunFoundation charts comparing Romney's tax returns to other presidents. ", "Folks go to Caymans to dodge taxes or dive reefs - wanna bet what Mitt was doing there?")

During a Congressional hearing, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) questioned Shulman if he knew how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had information in supporting a July 2012 claim that Romney had not paid taxes for the last ten years. Shulman appeared not to know how or why Senator Reid made such a claim.

[rickn]

The whole point of Watergate was that not even the most powerful government official is above the law.  The first specified charge in Article II of the Articles of Impeachment alleged that Nixon, "acting personally and through his subordinates," violated the rights of citizens by causing "income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

How soon they forget!

[Crafty_Dog]

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against
absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the
sport of every wind." --Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

"A clue as to whether the targeting by the IRS of Tea Party and other
conservative groups was discussed at the 157 meetings that former IRS
Commissioner Douglas Shulman had at the White House may be found in
remarks by Stephanie Cutter, deputy manager for President Obama's 2012
reelection campaign, in a recent appearance on Jake Tapper's show 'The
Lead' on CNN. ... Cutter attempted to dismiss charges they were
political meetings but admitted she had attended meetings with Shulman
at the White House. ... Well, if they were not political meetings, why
was she there at all? Was she there to offer her health care or tax code
expertise? ... When she appeared on CBS' 'Face the Nation' to defend the
president's new campaign slogan 'Romnesia,' she went on to say that
Republican nominee Mitt Romney was 'severely conservative' and had run
as the 'ideal' Tea Party candidate. She said this as she was sitting in
meetings with the head of an IRS that was charged with implementation of
ObamaCare as it was targeting groups that were created to oppose
ObamaCare. Though she denies it, Cutter was also deeply involved in the
ads run by the pro-Obama super-PAC Priorities USA in which steelworker
Joe Soptic recounted how his wife died of cancer after he lost his
health insurance when his plant was shuttered after a takeover by Bain
Capital and other companies working with Romney's private equity firm.
... Cutter should be called to testify under oath before the House
Oversight Committee to explain why a key Obama campaign operative was in
on meetings to discuss ObamaCare implementation with an IRS official
whose agency was targeting groups opposed to it." --Investor's Business
Daily

[Crafty_Dog]

second post:

Obama's Tax Audit Strategy

By DICK MORRIS

Published on TheHill.com on June 4, 2013

Did the Internal Revenue Service scandal begin when the Obama administration
aggressively tried to deny tax-exempt status to pro-Israeli groups that funded
settlements on the West Bank in defiance of its wishes? The IRS seems to have used
tax audits to try to cripple these Jewish groups. When the Citizens United decision
came down, did President Obama turn the guns focused on the conservative Jewish
groups to fire on Republican political organizations?

The Washington Free Beacon reports that the idea of using the IRS to undermine
settlement activity surfaced barely two months after Obama took office.

On March 26, 2009, The Washington Post questioned the tax-exempt status of
pro-settlement Jewish groups.

The next day, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which has
enjoyed warm relations with the president, asked the IRS to investigate groups
"allegedly raising funds for the development of illegal settlements in the occupied
West Bank."

Meanwhile, Arab pressure to audit the settlement groups escalated. In October 2009,
a cable revealed by WikiLeaks recounted a meeting between the chief negotiator for
the former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and U.S. Consul General Daniel
Rubinstein. The cable noted that Qurei gave

Rubinstein "a copy of an article ... in Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper on August
17, entitled 'American Non-profit Organization Raises Funds for Settlement' and
asked the US to review the situation with an eye toward eliminating organizations'
tax exempt status if they are funding settlement activity."

The Free Beacon notes that the following week, J Street, a pro-Palestinian lobbying
group, also demanded an investigation into U.S. charities that contribute to
settlements.

HaYovel, a group that sends volunteers to work in West Bank vineyards, was the first
to be audited, six months after its role was prominently featured in a New York
Times article. The Times quoted a senior State Department administration official
calling such groups "a problem" and "unhelpful to the efforts that we're trying to
make." It was the first of many Jewish pro-settlement groups to experience IRS
audits.

When the Citizens United decision came down, outraging the Obama administration, the
IRS already had begun to use the agency's power to audit and intimidate Jewish
groups promoting West Bank settlements. The idea of using the same M.O. to go after
tax-exempt groups that sprang up in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision likely
was another fruit of the same tree.

Was the president personally involved? The numerous visits to the White House by
Acting IRS Director Douglas Shulman -- including four personal meetings with the
president -- in a two-year period after the court ruling bear further scrutiny. By
comparison, the Bush 43 IRS director visited the building only once in his tenure.

Schulman's meetings with White House staff may have focused on the IRS's role in
administering ObamaCare, but the chances that the audit of conservative groups was
discussed cannot be ruled out, especially in view of the work of Schulman's wife,
Susan L. Anderson.

Anderson works for Public Campaign, an organization "dedicated to sweeping campaign
reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in
American politics" and funded by groups like Health Care for America Now!

Anderson, who supported the Occupy Wall Street campaign, appears to have occupied
the IRS through her husband. According to Breitbart.com, Anderson's tweets indicate
that she worked for Obama and had an obsession with cutting Karl Rove's Crossroads
group down to size.

On June 20, 2012, for example, she tweeted "Karl Rove Crossroads get money out," and
appealed to supporters to come to a demonstration to "CONFRONT Karl Rove plus
American Crossroads REBUILD THE AMERICAN DREAM."

Anderson's activities and Schulman's White House visits need further congressional
scrutiny. Who knows where it might lead?

[DougMacG]

Are these not marching orders to the public employee union activists working in the Obama administration agencies?

Kim Strassel, WSJ today, excerpt, link below
...
 Aug. 9, 2010: In Texas, President Obama for the first time publicly names a group he is obsessed with—Americans for Prosperity (founded by the Koch Brothers)—and warns about conservative groups. Taking up a cry that had until then largely been confined to left-wing media and activists, he says: "Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads . . . 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."

Aug. 11: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sends out a fundraising email warning about "Karl Rove-inspired shadow groups."

Aug. 21: Mr. Obama devotes his weekly radio address to the threat of "attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. We don't know who's behind these ads and we don't know who's paying for them. . . . You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. . . . The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide."

Week of Aug. 23: The New Yorker's Jane Mayer authors a hit piece on the Koch brothers, entitled "Covert Operations," in which she accuses them of funding "political front groups." The piece repeats the White House theme, with Ms. Mayer claiming the Kochs have created "slippery organizations with generic-sounding names" that have "made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington."

Aug. 27: White House economist Austan Goolsbee, in a background briefing with reporters, accuses Koch industries of being a pass-through entity that does "not pay corporate income tax." The Treasury inspector general investigates how it is that Mr. Goolsbee might have confidential tax information. The report has never been released.

This same week, the Democratic Party files a complaint with the IRS claiming the Americans for Prosperity Foundation is violating its tax-exempt status.

Sept. 2: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee warns on its website that the Kochs have "funneled their money into right-wing shadow groups."

Sept. 16: Mr. Obama, in Connecticut, repeats that a "foreign-controlled entity" might be funding "millions of dollars of attack ads." Four days later, in Philadelphia, he again says the problem is that "nobody knows" who is behind conservative groups.

Sept. 21: Sam Stein, in his Huffington Post article "Obama, Dems Try to Make Shadowy Conservative Groups a Problem for Conservatives," writes that a "senior administration official" had "urged a small gathering of reporters to start writing on what he deemed 'the most insidious power grab that we have seen in a very long time.' "

Sept. 22: In New York City, Mr. Obama warns that conservative groups "pose as non-for-profit, social welfare and trade groups," even though they are "guided by seasoned Republican political operatives" who might be funded by a "foreign-controlled corporation."

Sept. 26: On ABC's "This Week," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod declares outright that the "benign-sounding Americans for Prosperity, the American Crossroads Fund" are "front groups for foreign-controlled companies."

Sept. 28: The president, in Wisconsin, again warns about conservative organizations "posing as nonprofit groups." Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, writes to the IRS demanding it investigate nonprofits. The letter names conservative organizations.

On Oct. 14, Mr. Obama calls these groups "a problem for democracy." On Oct. 22, he slams those who "hide behind these front groups." On Oct. 25, he upgrades them to a "threat to our democracy." On Oct. 26, he decries groups engaged in "unsupervised spending."

These were not off-the-cuff remarks. They were repeated by the White House and echoed by its allies in campaign events, emails, social media and TV ads. The president of the United States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative "front" groups—"posing" as tax-exempt entities and illegally controlled by "foreign" players—were engaged in "unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy. Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups? A mere coincidence that among the things the IRS demanded of these groups were "copies of any contracts with and training materials provided by Americans for Prosperity"?

This newspaper reported Thursday that Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics, that was obvious from the start.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578529571309012846.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[Crafty_Dog]

Source reliability unknown, but the idea that the Feds are monitoring FB like this is scarily plausible , , ,

http://www.examiner.com/article/secret-service-to-outspoken-obama-critic-we-ll-come-for-your-guns-media-silent?cid=PROD-redesign-right-next

[Crafty_Dog]

second entry

http://therightscoop.com/armed-irs-agents-seized-tens-of-millions-of-medical-records-from-private-insurance-companies/

[Crafty_Dog]

third entry


Before this IRS scandal (though that word certainly does not do justice to
the injustice at work here) gets swept under the rug, this was an
interesting interview in the Journal last weekend.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578528193656378164.html

[Crafty_Dog]

CBS confirms Benhazi reporter's computer tampered with

Private investigators found that CBS News Washington reporter Sharyl Attkisson's
computer was tampered with multiple times late last year, the network said Friday.

Read more...
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2013/06/14/cbs-confirms-benhazi-reporters-computer-tampered-with/?subscriber=1

[DougMacG]

CBS confirms Benhazi reporter's computer tampered with

No worry when it was Fox.  Now that it is AP and CBS, they have crossed an ethical line, not just the legal one.

[DougMacG]

Before this IRS scandal (though that word certainly does not do justice to
the injustice at work here) gets swept under the rug, this was an
interesting interview in the Journal last weekend.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578528193656378164.html

Yes, it is more than an IRS scandal, more than election interference, and more than an attack on the rule of law.  The tax law itself is what armed the IRS to wage their war - against free speech, against free assembly and against equal protection for targeted groups.

[Crafty_Dog]

Assuming it was the Feds who tampered with SA's computer' then this is quite a bit more than spying

[DougMacG]

Distrust of Government Is What It's All About

By Scott Rasmussen - June 14, 2013

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/06/14/distrust_of_government_is_what_its_all_about_118824.html#ixzz2WUeQEBwf

Only 24 percent now are confident that the federal government does the right thing most of the time.

(That number seems high to me.  24% might be misunderstanding the question.)