Happily, the House Congressional committee investigating the outrageous conduct of Obama’s minions is all up in their faces:

Unhappily, the Democrat standard retort has shifted from “I don’t remember who was responsible” to “Citizen’s United caused it” -

At this morning’s IRS targeting scandal hearings, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., questioned the ability of IRS officials to tell the truth. He forced Acting IRS Commissioner Stephen Miller to swear in — something that is not usually done for government officials — citing the fact that the IRS has misled the committee so much in the past. Noting the multiple scandals currently percolating in the news along with this one, Camp said in his opening statement that “it seems like the truth was hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., identified what is perhaps the most obvious deception of all. Miller, who is obligated by law (with or without an oath) to give Congress the truth and the whole truth, had been specifically asked about  targeting of conservative non-profit applicants — and it happened after he had been briefed on the targeting of groups with names that included “Tea Party,” “Patriot” and other words frequently used by conservative activists. Miller maintained throughout Round One that he “answered truthfully,” but his failure to mention this at the time suggests he may not have — at least not according to the standards expected in Congressional Testimony.

Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee focused like a laser on the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision as the true culprit for this targeting. But there are a few problems with this explanation.

First of all, this excuse blames the victims and turns the perpetrator — the IRS — into some kind of victim of their constitutional rights. It’s one thing if Democrats don’t like what the law or the Constitution or the Supreme Court has to say about free speech — they are welcome to attempt to change it. But that doesn’t justify the singling out of conservative groups, who were not given any special status above and beyond their liberal peers. At best, it’s a separate issue.

Second, the data show that there was no surge in 501c(4) applications by Spring 2010, around which time the IRS decided to target conservative applicants — in fact, the number of applications declined sharply between fiscal 2009 and 2010. So the idea that a sudden surge of Citizens United-inspired non-profit applications created the need for this extra scrutiny is a completely false one. (When this fact came up in the hearing, Miller played dumb and pretended he hadn’t read this part of the Inspector General’s report.)

Read it all, but the takeaway is this:

“If Citizens United had ever been the problem, no one was solving it by targeting the mom-and-pop organizations who got the Spanish Inquisition from the IRS.”

Related articles

• Pelosi: IRS Was Wrong For Targeting Groups, But They Deserve It (tarpon.wordpress.com)
• IRS Head Doesn’t Remember Who Was Responsible for Targeting (nationalreview.com)
• IRS official denies intentional targeting, lying to Congress (fox6now.com)

Here is the IRS Org Chart -

Use as you see fit, but this is massive. Whether our Teflon President has anything stick to him or not isn’t as important as understanding how this can’t be allowed to happen under any President. Ever.

Elections have consequences, and we’d damn well better learn from this one or we’re sunk as a nation.

Remember this speech?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

Yeah. Good times back in the “old days” before the IRS targeted conservative groups and Obama’s DOJ tapped the Associated Press phone lines.

Wonder how skeptical those reporters are today now that it’s them as well as us.

With Benghazi heating up (finally) in the news, and people demanding answers (still after all these months), the White House announced a Press Conference for today.

Then, oops:

WH press briefing scheduled for 12:30, then 1:45, now 3:15

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 10, 2013

Suddenly, there turned out to be ANOTHER White House press conference, this one “off the record” -

If there’s one thing you want to do when accusations are flying about an attempted cover up and a disinterested, collusive media, it’s holding an off-the-record briefing.

Time for the team to huddle.

The White House held an off-the-record briefing with reporters on Friday afternoon to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO.

The meeting began around 12:45 p.m. and postponed the daily, on-the-record White House press briefing to 1:45 p.m. White House press secretary Jay Carney did not respond to a request for confirmation of the meeting.

The off-the-record session was announced to reporters in the wake of an ABC News report showing that White House and State Dept. officials were involved in revising the now-discredited CIA talking points about the attack on Benghazi.

Were they discussing troop movements or something? What reason could there be to go off the record, and why would the press agree to it? If there’s classified material involved, just redact the bits that can’t be publicized. Or maybe I have this wrong; maybe the reason Carney wanted to huddle is because Ron Fournier was onto something this morning in sensing that the White House is trying to point a finger at Hillary and the State Department for redacting the first draft of the CIA’s talking points. For obvious reasons, if Carney wants to steer them in that direction, he wouldn’t want to do it on the record. Then again, there’s no reason to task the White House press secretary with that; if Team O wants to push Hillary under the bus, they’ll do it the old-fashioned way, through anonymous leaks. So again, why is this briefing off the record?

Yeah, way to be “Open and Transparent, there, Obama.

Twitchy has more. Lots more.

One correspondent, April Ryan, seems especially upset -

Big mistake!!!!!!Reporters are not happy with this off the record briefing before the briefing with a handful of the Press Corps.

— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) May 10, 2013

Dubious, I had to ask her:

.@aprildryan So, would you be upset if you were one of the “invited ones”? Just curious.

— Erick Brockway (@erickbrockway) May 10, 2013

To which she replied:

@erickbrockway they say I can never be satisfied.The answers need to be on the record.

— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) May 10, 2013

…which, I guess, means if she were in the secret meeting, she’d be equally unhappy? I’m again dubious…

Dana Perino, former White House spokesperson after the untimely death of Tony Snow, said it all right here:

@aprildryan y’all should have refused to go.

— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) May 10, 2013

Yes. If you call yourself a “Journalist” and don’t want it to be said of you you’re nothing but an “Opinion Journalist” – refuse to go unless it’s on the record. Supposed to be watchdogs, aren’t you? Or is this reserved for when a President you don’t agree with ideologically is in office?

Crossposted to Unified Patriots

Related articles

• White House slams ‘attempts to politicize’ Benghazi (politico.com)
• Perino: Press Would Never Have Let Bush Get Away with Benghazi (breitbart.com)
• White House: Press briefing will be late today. Oh, no reason. (Cough, Benghazi, cough) (twitchy.com)

But, we’ll be seeing non-union Twinkies (maybe) over the next few months:

Hostess filed for Chapter 11 in January 2012. In November 2012, the company announced it would be shutting its doors for good. By that time, it had lost about $1.1 billion, largely due to bankruptcy filings.

But last month Apollo Global Management, LLC, and Metropoulos & Co., which owns Pabst Blue Ribbon and Vlasic pickles, bought the 83-year-old company for $410 million, renaming it Hostess Brands LLC. It is planning to re-open four bakeries over the next two and a half months, in Columbus, Ga.; Emporia, Kan.; Schiller Park, Ill.; and Indianapolis. It is also contemplating a fifth in Los Angeles.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, C. Dean Metropoulos, the company’s chief executive, said that between now and September, he plans to inject $60 million in capital investments into the plants, and hopes to hire at least 1,500 workers.

But those workers won’t be unionized.

“It appears that they are discharging the union contract in bankruptcy,” said Matthew A. Kaufman, a labor attorney in Los Angeles who is not affiliated with the case.

My emphasis above

I guess we can expect Twinkies that refuse to unionize to be targeted ala WalMart shortly after they hit the shelves?

Related articles

• Twinkies Are Coming Back; Hostess To Reopen Schiller Park Bakery, 3 Others (chicago.cbslocal.com)
• Corporate News: Twinkie’s New Owners Will Shun Union Labor (thesmallstreetjournal.wordpress.com)
• Twinkies Return, Hostess Unions Won’t (patdollard.com)

“When I think about kids watching a TV show like American Idol or The Voice , then they think, ‘Oh, okay, that’s how you become a musician, you stand in line for eight f****** hours with 800 people at a convention centre and then you sing your heart out for someone and then they tell you it’s not f****** good enough.’ Can you imagine?” he said to Sky magazine back in March.

The rant has suddenly gone viral. Grohl continued: “It’s destroying the next generation of musicians! Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy an old f****** drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll f******* start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some s***** old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-a** s***, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don’t need a f****** computer or the Internet or The Voice or American Idol .”

Makes sense to me.

Related articles

• Reality TV Destroys the Reality of Music (phillipbrandvold.wordpress.com)

There was no “video protest” as team Obama said repeatedly in multiple places. That was an outright lie, no doubt to protect His Highness B. Hussein Obama and his election chances in November.

Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media pushed a false story then, and are dutifully ignoring the real story now.

The real story – Americans are dead, this administration dropped the ball, and then lied to you, their employer, to save their own jobs.

Now, today at the Congressional hearings, Democrats still want to obfuscate and tell you it’s nothing but politics:

@erickbrockway: Via @SooperMexican GOP is at a hearing investigating Al-Qaeda attacks on #benghazi, Dems are at same hearing investigating attacks on Obama.

h/t Yid With Lid

Related articles

• Patricia Heaton ‘speechless’ over Benghazi hearing; Retweets what happened ‘far worse than reported’ (twitchy.com)

H/T The Other Erick

As Cassy says:

Why doesn’t she just go shit on each grave in that cemetary while she’s at it? Stupid bitch.

I think a nice spot in a landfill should be appropriate. That’s just me.