Too soon? Never!

A congressman asked, “What do you need to make it so that this wouldn’t have happened?”

“So there are two things, sir,” said Miller. “And I appreciate the kind words for our people because we are incredibly hard working and honest group, frankly, and that seems to be forgotten in all of this. With respect to political activity, it would be a wonderful thing to get better rules, to get more clear rules. And in terms of our ability to get to this work it would be good to have a little budget that would allow us to get more than the number of people we have to do 70,000 applications and to do our job and looking at whether an organization is tax exempt or not.”

Because everybody knows that the best way to stop corruption is to just throw more money at it.

What would a larger budget have accomplished? From the sound of Miller’s answer it would have allowed them to harass political undesirables at a quicker, more efficient pace.

As for the “rules,” if those still aren’t clear, so much for the expensive Star Trek training video.

At the hearing, Republican Rep. Mike Kelly gave Miller such a grilling that it should have been sponsored by Kingsford Charcoal, Johnsonville Brats and Hibachi (h/t Twitchy):

My reaction.

After the hearing, rumor has it that Miller was spotted in the lobby raising money for the IRS by selling his Mike Brady signature collection perm rods:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Tip: If you ever apply for medical treatment under the Affordable Care Act because you were burned by hot tea at a party, be very careful how you phrase it or you might end up in the waiting room for a looong time.

From ABC News:

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Ingram’s gig was apparently a very rewarding experience:

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 harassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.

That was in addition to the $175,000-ish annual salary. There are no details as yet about what precisely what Ingram did to merit large bonuses in the past few years, but somebody might be able to answer that question:

Bonuses as large as those awarded to Ingram typically require presidential approval, according to federal personnel regulations.

And now she’s one of the people in charge of coming up with the seating chart for the upcoming Obamacare train wreck.

The House is now holding a hearing about the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Watch live online here.

A sampling of questions the IRS asked conservatives groups seeking tax exempt status is here. I think it’s a joke, but these days it’s hard to tell the difference.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The man depicted in the photo above is Abu Sufian bin Qumu. I told you about him on September 20. He’s the former Gitmo detainee released in 2007 who was named as the possible lead plotter in the bloody attacks on our consulate personnel, staff, and private security contractors in Benghazi. We haven’t heard a thing about him from the commander-in-chief, who has vowed repeatedly to track down the killers and “bring them to justice.” On top of all the unanswered questions about Benghazi, there are these unasked questions — which I ask in my column today: Where exactly is Qumu? How exactly is President Obama’s little-discussed quest to hold the Benghazi murderers “accountable”? And how exactly does Eric Holder’s renewed effort to close Gitmo at a time when the bloody Gitmo recidivism rate is rising square with Obama’s empty promises to get “justice” and protect America.

No, we won’t stand down. And we must not roll over.

***

Obama’s emptiest Benghazi talking point
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2013

On Sept. 12, 2012, President Barack Obama vowed to “bring to justice” the perpetrators of the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya. On Oct. 26, 2012, Obama said his “biggest priority” was bringing the “folks” in Libya responsible for murdering four Americans to “justice.” Tick, tock, tick, tock.

While White House press secretary Jay Carney sneers at the GOP’s “obsession” with what went wrong at the besieged Libyan consulate, Obama continues to ply his emptiest talking point. On May 13, 2013, more than eight months after the bloody disaster, Obama snippily reminded reporters that he had told us all back in September that “we would find out what happened, we would make sure that it did not happen again, and we would make sure that we held accountable those who had perpetrated this terrible crime.”

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Justice delayed is justice denied.

A little more “obsession” from this administration with hunting down the jihadist killers would be a good thing. How about a little more anger directed at the perpetrators and a little less rage aimed at the conservative press? Nah. Team Obama seems more singularly focused on blaming its opponents, smearing whistleblowers and deriding those who are trying to hold the president to his words, words, words.

Perhaps with their newfound skepticism toward the lying liars of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the former lapdogs of the White House press corps will start asking questions like this: Where the hell is Sufyan Ben Qumu a.k.a. Abu Sufian bin Qumu?

Qumu, a suspected Libyan Islamic Fighting Group militant with ties to the financiers of the 9/11/01 attacks, was held at Guantanamo Bay for six years. The Bush administration foolishly handed him over to the Gadhafi regime on the promise that he would remain imprisoned. In 2010, Qumu was granted amnesty and released.

Contrary to the delusions of the International Gitmo Bleeding Hearts Fan Club, the supposedly poor and oppressed Qumu did not content himself with writing poetry or farming potatoes. A week after the 9/11/12 attack, the Ansar al-Sharia leader was named a possible chief plotter in the deadly terrorist assault on our consulate personnel, staff and private security contractors in Benghazi. In April, international media outlets reported widely that Qumu had survived an assassination bid.

Two weeks ago, the FBI finally got around to publicizing photos of three individuals at the Benghazi murder scene who are wanted for questioning.

Congressional and intelligence sources have said the probe has moved at a snail’s pace. There’s been a “near total lack of progress,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said in December.

It’s all par for this administration’s foot-dragging course. Remember: The FBI conducted a drive-by investigation last fall, flying in and out of Libya after a paltry 12 hours on the ground. What difference did the phony YouTube narrative plied by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and President Obama make? As former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, Greg Hicks testified last week that the damage done was “immeasurable” because it delayed the FBI probe. Classified documents were left unsecured at the compound. Critical time and evidence were squandered.

As Hicks explained, the YouTube fable publicly contradicted Libyan President Mohammed Magariaf, who had immediately reported after the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack that “this was an attack by Islamic extremists.” The nonsense YouTube talking points “affected cooperation with the Libyans,” Hicks said. “I firmly believe that the reason it took us so long to get the FBI to Benghazi is because of those Sunday talk shows.” Meanwhile, the Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz reports, Qumu’s Ansar al-Sharia goons “continue to operate freely” in Benghazi and spread jihadist ideology.

Instead of keeping as many terror operatives as possible off the streets and out of commission, the Obama administration is once again vowing to shut down Guantanamo Bay. Attorney General Eric Holder, whose former law firm Covington and Burling represented 18 Gitmo detainees demanding freedom, announced “a renewed effort to close Guantanamo” this week. This despite the chilling disclosure by the office of the director of national intelligence that 27.9 percent of the 599 former detainees released from Guantanamo were either confirmed or suspected of later engaging in jihadist attacks. That’s a “2.9 percent rise over a 25 percent aggregate recidivism rate reported by the intelligence czar’s office in December 2010,” according to Reuters.

Closing Gitmo, you should note, just happens to be the top policy goal of the left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights. As I reported in September, CCR is the U.S. group of jihadi-sympathizing lawyers who helped spring none other than Benghazi terror plotter Abu Sufian bin Qumu from Gitmo.

Social justice for Qumu and the Gitmo Goon Squad. No justice for the Benghazi Four. When it comes to Obama’s vow to hold the killers accountable, there is no there there.

Related:

Reminder: Who is White House visitor Hisham al Talib?; plus: 2 must-watch Benghazi videos

A while ago I ran across this on Drudge, and what the Marine must be thinking is begging for some captioning:

Here’s how that moment came about. The speaker to Obama’s right is the Turkish prime minister, and their appearance was interrupted by rain when the president called in the Corps:

Coincidentally, soon after the rain stopped, the Hyades received notice that they were going to be audited by the IRS.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

At yesterday’s congressional hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder said “I don’t know” at least 20 times, thereby breaking a record I set on a quiz day back in high school algebra class.

Holder, and President Obama for that matter, are so concerned with ensuring fair and impartial investigations that they have selflessly decided to recuse their temporal lobes until the dust settles.

Click the pic to roll an impressive “I don’t know” compilation on the Aloof-O-Tron:

There are, however, things that Holder does know for sure — such as if he plans to appoint a special counsel to investigate Benghazi.

Here’s the least surprising item from today’s Obama news conference — one that started fashionably late and featured the Marine Corps coming to the rescue:

The President says he has complete confidence in Attorney General Eric Holder

— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) May 16, 2013

(h/t Weasel Zippers)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Former acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller had originally said that a couple of lower level employees went “rogue” and “off the reservation” by targeting conservative organizations for extra scrutiny. With that in mind, there’s this from FOX19 in Cincinnati:

One of FOX19′s two sources went on say that these four IRS workers claim “they simply did what their bosses ordered.” FOX19 reported on Tuesday that the report by the Office of Inspector General states that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011.

In fact, according to that report, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, was told on June 29, 2011 that groups with ‘Tea Party’, ‘Patriot’ or ’9/12 Project’ in their names were being flagged for additional, and often burdensome, scrutiny.

While the IRS is pointing at ‘two rogue employees,’ the number of organizations that were singled out has swelled to nearly 500, according to Rep. Congressmen Darryl Issa and Ohio’s Jim Jordan.

The Right Scoop has the video here.

And let’s not forget that the fact that knowledge of these allegedly “rogue” activities went at least all the way to the top of the IRS for a couple of years, and nothing was done (Miller will testify at a congressional hearing tomorrow). Even more troubling is the leaking of that information to at least one outside group.

The allegations of IRS abuses continue to pour in. Here’s one more:

IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”

President Obama will be notified about this the same way he claims to be finding out about everything these days: By reading about it in news reports just like everybody else.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

“Unacceptable” and “shameful.” Those were two words used at today’s House Judiciary Committee questioning of Eric “I only know what I read in the papers” Holder.

It should be noted that those accusations weren’t directed toward Holder, but rather made by him in reference to Rep. Darrell Issa’s line of questioning.

The charge came after an aggressive exchange about Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez, whom Republicans say acted inappropriately during his time at the Justice Department.

“I am not going to stop talking now,” Holder countered as Issa objected to the attorney general’s attempts to interject.

“It is inappropriate and too consistent with the way in which you conduct yourself as a member of Congress,” Holder said. “It is unacceptable. It is shameful.”

Pot, meet kettle:

Meanwhile, the uproar over the Justice Department’s broad secret subpoena of AP records has prompted the Obama administration to attempt to jump-start legislation that would protect reporters from, well, the Obama administration:

The Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters from penalties for refusing to identify confidential sources, and that would enable journalists to ask a federal judge to quash subpoenas for their phone records, a White House official said.

The official said that President Obama’s Senate liaison, Ed Pagano, called Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who is a chief proponent of a so-called media shield law, on Wednesday morning and asked him to reintroduce a bill that he had pushed in 2009.

Final word:

The guy who pardoned Marc Rich and who runs a DOJ that send 2500 guns to drug cartels just called Darrell Issa “shameful”

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 15, 2013

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Our first competing headline comes by way of an article at CNN’s website:

Dueling with that headline is this one from ABC News that appeared the previous day:

The answer to the first question, at least from the president’s perspective, would appear to be “yes.”

Dueling Headlines archive here.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Keeping straight all the scandals, cover-ups, obfuscations and excuses for massive DOJ document seizures that are occurring during the watch of the administration that replaced the Bush era with unprecedented levels of transparency and rule of law does tend to be confusing. However, if these guys aren’t careful, at some point they might accidentally start talking about a scandal that the public doesn’t yet know about:

At Rep. Steny Hoyer’s weekly meeting with reporters on Tuesday, the Maryland Democrat was asked if he was concerned about the DOJ seizing phone records from Associated Press journalists working in the House press gallery in the Capitol building.

Hoyer’s answer was well-delivered: Articulate, clear, firm and precise.

One problem: He responded to the wrong scandal.

“The IRS activity was inappropriate, inconsistent with our policies and practices as a country, very concerning, needs to be reviewed carefully,” Hoyer, one of the top-ranking House Democrats, said in response to a question from Fox News’ Chad Pergram about the DOJ. “We need to ensure that this does not happen again, and we need to find out how long it continued, when it was stopped. It is my understanding—there was a front-page story on this at the [Washington] Post—it’s my understanding that [IRS official] Lois Lerner, who was apparently overseeing this, at some point in time found out about this and said …”

When Hoyer named Lerner, Pergram interrupted.

“We’re talking about two things,” Pergram, who apparently had not heard the first mention of the IRS, said from across the table, “You said Lois Lerner and the IRS.”

Another reporter sitting closer to Hoyer, Public Radio International’s Todd Zwillich, learned over and said softly, “He’s talking about the AP story.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, excuse me,” Hoyer said, pausing briefly. “Whatever happened, we need to find out why it happened. But clearly it should not have happened. I don’t know enough about whether there was a warrant sought.”

Maybe the three should be condensed into one big scandal — APBenghazIRS — just so no matter which they’re commenting on, they’ve got the right one.

(h/t Guy Benson)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

A Brief History of Slimy Dem Snoops and Dumpster Divers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2013

It’s always the “low-level” peon’s fault, isn’t it? When Democrats get caught red-handed abusing government powers and bullying their political enemies small and large, nobody at the top knows nuttin’. The buck stops…in the janitors closet or something.

Here’s what I know: While they pretend to champion privacy rights, top left-wing operatives have routinely ransacked and plundered through the private documents and personal records of conservative groups, business owners and public figures. Through it all, those on the right standing against government tyranny have refused to stand down.

During the Clinton years, senior IRS official Paul Breslan revealed that the administration’s auditors specifically targeted conservative critics. On the hit list: Judicial Watch, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, the National Rifle Association, National Review, The American Spectator, Freedom Alliance, National Center for Public Policy Research, Citizens Against Government Waste, Concerned Women for America, and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.

Steven Miller, one of the Clinton IRS agents who helped conduct those witch hunts in the 1990s, is currently the head of the Obama IRS department that has now admitted it discriminated against tea party groups. Jackboot history repeats itself.

In 1997, far-left Congressman Jim McDermott obtained and leaked an illegally taped phone call involving House GOP leaders to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times. Far from a low-level underling, McDermott was the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee at the time. Ohio GOP Rep. John Boehner won a $1 million civil lawsuit against McDermott. McDermott’s leak was condemned by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan as “willful and knowing misconduct (that) rises to the level of malice in this case.”

In 2005, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — headed by New York Sen. Charles Schumer — targeted then Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele as he considered a U.S. Senate bid. Two of Schumer’s staffers illegally obtained Steele’s credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. They set up a fake email account and then impersonated Steele on a website to filch his financial information.

Democrats framed the sleazy move as the work of junior staffers. But the supervising operative involved, Katie Barge, was senior research director of the DSCC, a former researcher at the George Soros-funded attack group Media Matters for America and a researcher for presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards.

Schumer’s other document plumber, Lauren Weiner, was a DSCC researcher who had worked for Dick Gephardt and the Democratic National Committee. She pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a credit report and escaped jail time. After she was fired, she earned a journalism degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism.

In 2006, longtime Democratic operative Bob Fertik called on his minions to attempt to obtain the private phone records of prominent conservatives through shady online information brokers. “If money is scarce,” Fertik vowed, “Democrats.com will reimburse you if you buy the records for an important phone number and discover gold when you get the records.”

In October 2008, top Ohio Democrats targeted real plumber Joe Wurzelbacher after he challenged then presidential candidate Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth” radicalism. Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, ordered underlings to scour government databases for dirt. In addition to pawing through his child-support papers, her agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes.

Jones-Kelley was not just a high-level state official. She was also an Obama campaign donor who volunteered to arrange an event for Michelle Obama and provided the campaign with nearly 20 names of potential donors ahead of a Dayton campaign stop. Three years after resigning, she found herself back on the taxpayer dole with another government job. Corruptocrats protect their own.

Also in 2008, Obama’s allies at a Soros-tied outfit named Accountable America sent out “warning” letters to 10,000 top GOP givers “hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” Witch hunt leader Tom Matzzie, formerly of Soros-funded MoveOn.org, promised “legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” Matzzie also advertised a $100,000 bounty for dirt on conservative political groups “to create a sense of scandal around the groups” and to dissuade donors from giving money.

The effort was supported by Judd Legum, founder of Think Progress, which is run by former Clinton scandal manager turned Obama confidante John Podesta‘s Center for American Progress.

During the 2010 midterms, the Obama bully brigade waged a similar campaign against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its donors as payback for the organization’s ads opposing the federal health care takeover. During the 2012 election season, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina declared war on free-market philanthropists Charles and David Koch and private donors to their nonprofit activist group Americans for Prosperity.

As I warned in my column in March 2012, it seemed “no small coincidence” at the time that Team Obama was threatening conservative activists publicly “just as numerous tea party organizations (were) reporting that the Internal Revenue Service (had) targeted them for audits. According to Colleen Owens of the Richmond (Va.) Tea Party, several fiscally conservative activist groups in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio and Texas (had) received a spate of IRS letters. The missives demand(ed) extensive requests to identity volunteers, board members and … donors.”

The latest confession by Obama IRS officials that they targeted tea party, pro-Constitution and pro-Israel groups isn’t a sign of “rogue” behavior. It’s tyrannical Democratic business as usual.

***

Related:

Mike Ciandella, CNS: Soros Gave $6.1 Million to Groups Linked to Pressure on IRS to Target Conservative Nonprofits

The woman in charge of the IRS division responsible for reviewing tax-exempt status applications and who is at the heart of an ongoing scandal over revelations the agency targeted conservative groups is set to receive an honorary tribute from Western New England University School of Law on Saturday.

Lois Lerner – director for the IRS Exempt Organization Division – is slated to deliver the school’s commencement address and be given the university’s “President’s Medallion.”

Established in 2002, the award is “bestowed upon those who have distinguished themselves in a particular field or in service to an important cause that has benefited society locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally,” the college’s website states.

A tipster of mine e-mailed the school and received this response:

I contacted the school to make sure she is still set to give the commencement address, and this was the response that I received:

“…Thank you for your email. Lois Lerner was chosen several months ago to deliver the commencement address at the School of Law’s commencement. We reviewed the matter following her apology on Friday for the inappropriate actions of certain agents within the exempt organizations division of the IRS. Our plans for commencement have not changed.

Maybe they should read the IRS Inspector General’s report before Saturday. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

The latest on the AP/DOJ fallout by way of Katie Pavlich at Townhall:

Attorney General Eric Holder has recused himself from the Associated Press leak investigation. He will officially announce his recusal at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. Fox News is reporting his recusal comes partially because Holder has testified about potential national security leaks surrounding a May 7, 2012 Associated Press story.

Holder’s recusal is of course in response to this story:

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

Did the Obama Justice Department try just asking first? It’s not like the AP hasn’t been amenable in the past.

We’re now awaiting what promises to be an interesting White House press conference. Years later the press is starting to show up to the party — it’s amazing what happens when the intrusions start hitting so close to home. You can watch live here. Cue Jay Carney’s theme song. (Update: Carney and Holder are holding their separate press conferences simultaneously — and they expect everybody to believe they don’t coordinate activities?)

The AP, IRS and Benghazi — but still another shoe yet to drop?

Update II: Press conferences are over. Holder justified seizing AP phone records by saying they were investigating a “very serious” leak. Holder also said the number of leaks they’ve been investigating is higher than previous administrations, making it sound as if the amount of freedom we have will depend on the number of leakers in any given administration. Imagine the left’s reaction if this had come from John Ashcroft.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

We knew that Obamacare could cause a physician shortage and require a recruitment push, but I didn’t know it would go this far:

Actually Nelson’s honorary doctorate is in music, but word is he will have the authority to write medical marijuana prescriptions once Obamacare fully kicks in.

Willie was awarded an honorary doctorate, and the IRS is under fire. My how the tables have turned.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The Boston Herald is going all in:

Meet the “low level IRS employees” who worked out of the Cincinnati office:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.

IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Knowledge of the practice went at least all the way to the top of the IRS:

The IRS issued a statement Monday saying that Miller had been briefed on May 3, 2012 “that some specific applications were improperly identified by name and sent to the (exempt organizations) centralized processing unit for further review.” That was the unit in Cincinnati that handled the tea party applications.

Miller became acting commissioner in November, after Commissioner Douglas Shulman completed his five-year term. Shulman had been appointed by President George W. Bush.

How far beyond the top of the IRS this goes remains to be seen. Jay Carney said the White House was unaware of any of this until recently. Carney also said that the IRS’s actions, though inexcusable, weren’t planned in advance and might have been motivated by a YouTube video. Wait, I got that mixed up with something else. Never mind.

As if all this wasn’t troubling enough, the IRS actually leaked the information to the non-profit ProPublica (and who knows how many others). ProPublica just happens to have among its financial supporters an Obama bundler by the name of Jeffrey Katzenberg. That might help explain this observation:

Interesting that @propublica only divulged this info *after* IRS malfeasance went public. washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-…

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) May 14, 2013

Also, Massachusetts Democrats (is that redundant?) express outrage:

Outraged Bay State Democrats are blasting President Obama for exhibiting a Nixonian abuse of power after the stunning news that the Department of Justice secretly obtained Associated Press phone records and the IRS targeted conservative groups — new scandals emerging against the backdrop of heightened Benghazi criticism.

“There’s no way in the world I’m going to defend that. Hell, I spent my youth vilifying the Nixon administration for doing the same thing. If they did that, there should be hell to pay,” U.S. Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Somerville) said about the IRS scandal. “Not only is it bad government and bad to society, it is horrendous politics. The worst thing you can do is give your opponent an easy hammer with which to hit you.”

“It doesn’t seem to be a couple rogue employees. This appeared to be a systemic issue,” said U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-South Boston), who wants to investigate the matter as a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee already has scheduled a hearing on the issue for this week, Lynch said, adding, “No American should find themselves the target of the IRS or any other federal organization because of their political beliefs.”

There should be outrage about this from both sides of the aisle, but it’s probably too much to hope for that those who continually call for bigger government will take a lesson from this example of an inevitable effect of big government.

Welcome to Chicago, everybody! #youwerewarned

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 14, 2013

Last but not least: For some, there is no “off” position on the idiot switch.

Update: From President Obama’s commencement speech at Ohio State University on May 5th:

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.

Uh huh.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

There are very few degrees of separation between the Obama administration and the mainstream media, and not just ideologically. The Obama administration/MSM family tree grows straight up with very few branches. Here are just a few examples:

It was revealed today that CBS News President David Rhodes’ brother is Obama Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who was instrumental in rewriting the Benghazi talking points. But it gets worse. It is now learned that ABC President Ben Sherwood’s sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is a Special Assistant to Barack Obama on national security affairs. But even this isn’t it! CNN’s deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is the wife of Tom Nides, who until February was Hillary Clinton’s deputy.

To add to the above list, Jay Carney is married to ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman, and word is that Chris Matthews has been wed to a life size cardboard cutout of Barack Obama in MSNBC’s break room for going on five years now.

Video via Newsbusters:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe