Darrell "Benghazi" Issa sees the writing on the wall and will not seek reelection.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) will not seek another term in Congress, he announced Wednesday. 

“While my service to California’s 49th District will be coming to an end, I will continue advocating on behalf of the causes that are most important to me, advancing public policy where I believe I can make a true and lasting difference, and continuing the fight to make our incredible nation an even better place to call home,” he said in a statement. 

Here is Issa's full statement:   

Two decades ago, when I stepped away from the business I’d built to enter public service, I never could have imagined that a long-shot bid for U.S. Senate would lead to 18 years in the House of Representatives and endless opportunities to make a meaningful impact. 

From the first successful recall of a sitting Governor in California history, to establishing new and stronger standards for government accountability, to protecting the Internet from harmful regulation, and enacting the nation’s first open data standards, we attempted and achieved much in the service of our nation. 

Together, we put an end to abusive Congressional earmarks, strengthened the Violence Against Women Act, empowered better oversight of the executive branch, and cleared the course for better intellectual property protections to stop the piracy of American ingenuity. 

Throughout my service, I worked hard and never lost sight of the people our government is supposed to serve. Yet with the support of my family, I have decided that I will not seek re-election in California’s 49th District. 

I am forever grateful to the people of San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties for their support and affording me the honor of serving them all these years. Most humbling for me — and for anyone who represents this area — has been the special privilege of representing the Marines and Sailors of Camp Pendleton and their families. On countless occasions, and in every corner of the world I met them, I was inspired by their bravery and humbled by their sacrifice to keep us all safe from harm. 

Representing you has been the privilege of a lifetime. 

While my service to California’s 49th District will be coming to an end, I will continue advocating on behalf of the causes that are most important to me, advancing public policy where I believe I can make a true and lasting difference, and continuing the fight to make our incredible nation an even better place to call home.

Yeah that's all bullshit.

In actuality Issa engaged in mostly baseless partisan investigations for two decades, including the so-called "Fast and Furious" debacle, the investigation into the IRS supposedly rejecting non-profit status for conservative groups,  Benghazi (of course), Hillary Clinton's private server, and so on, while also leaking misinformation about these investigations to the press.

Issa once called President Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times," yet accused the Democrats of going on a witch hunt when they wanted to investigate how the Bush Administration managed to "lose" 22 million emails.

Also realize that the only reason he is not running again is because he KNOWS he will be destroyed by his Democratic challenger.

So yeah, definitely fuck this guy.

And I hope he is soon joined by a bunch of these GOP parasites who spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money going after imaginary crimes,  just to smear their ideological adversaries.

House Republicans defeat resolution to force the Justice Department to reveal Donald Trump's ties with Russia.

Mike Pence and House Republicans pose for a selfie.

Courtesy of HuffPo:

House Republicans on Tuesday defeated a resolution that would have asked the Department of Justice to reveal what it has uncovered about President Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia and his conflicts of interest with other foreign governments. 

Eighteen Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee opposed a resolution offered by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) that would have required Attorney General Jeff Sessions to hand over information related to investigations into the president, his campaign aides, the White House and Trump’s businesses. 

The vote came about after Nadler and other Judiciary Committee Democrats made several unsuccessful appeals to Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) requesting he hold hearings on Trump’s Russian ties and other foreign conflicts. Goodlatte opposed the resolution, calling it “overbroad” and “premature.” 

Nadler’s resolution is one way Democrats are pressuring Republicans over the president’s business conflicts and his campaign’s possible ties to hacking by Russian intelligence services against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

So is that it, is this whole thing over?

Fuck no!

In fact it is just getting started.

Right now the Republicans are hoping against hope that they can obfuscate, undermine, and ultimately delay all of this until the American citizens get distracted by the next shiny new thing.

However the more pressure they receive in the form of phone calls, emails, and faxes the harder it will be for them to keep putting things off. (You can start that process by clicking here.)

Want proof?

Here is what Darrell Issa, that guy who would have investigated the Obama Administration for wearing white after Labor Day, had to say after this was voted down:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) did not support the resolution, but said committee members should send bipartisan letters asking for information related to the Russian hacking allegations. He added: “If [Russia has] attempted to distort our democracy, we need to know it.”

So why would Darrell Issa, a guy who is so partisan that he would have thrown his own mother in jail for voting Democrat, be breaking with his GOP comrades over this?

Because he just barely won his seat in the last election that's why and he is smart enough at least to figure out where the wind is blowing on this, and it is not blowing in Donald Trump's favor.

All it takes for the Republicans to jump on board the "Let's investigate Donald Trump" train is the realization that if they don't their political careers are over.

Darrell Issa gets thrown out of Benghazi hearing by Trey Gowdy. Man do I love this!

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) tried to crash former Hillary Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal’s deposition before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Tuesday. 

Issa marched into the closed-door deposition and remained inside for about a minute before he was escorted out by the panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). 

The pair briefly exchanged hushed words in a nearby hallway before Issa stormed off, throwing an empty soda can into a nearby trash bin. 

NBC News producer Frank Thorp posted a video showing Gowdy and Issa.

Looks like karma to me. 

After months, and months of beating the underbrush trying to find something that he could pin to President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton concerning Benghazi, and failing, Issa is now kicked out of a hearing conducted by his successor.

Of course now Gowdy is trying to make like it was no big deal, but I think we all know that these guys don't want Issa anywhere near their witch hunt for fear people will not take it seriously. 

Which of course they shouldn't.

As it turns out not only did the Republicans already know that Hillary Clinton used a private e-mail service while Secretary of State, they have already read them.

Courtesy of Politicususa:  

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said, “We knew as of last summer that the Secretary used a private email account. This is not something new. We knew also that she was cooperating. She was giving us everything that we asked for. Nothing changed except for the pressure on the Republican members of the committee this week became too great for them to resist from the Stop Hillary PAC people and the RNC people, so they issued a subpoena for records that we already have. Now, the Secretary has called for those records to be made public. Why isn’t the chairman doing that? Why aren’t we doing that? The reason is we’ve read them. There’s nothing in them. My colleague says well, how do we know we have them all? The reality is that if this secretary or anyone else emailed a stand down order as this mythical claim exists out there, there would be several people on the receiving end of that email. There would be people at the Pentagon, people in the field who would have to receive that order. None of that. There is no evidence of that.” 

Rep. Schiff brought up a great point. If there were anything in the emails, Republicans would have quickly made the emails public in order to build and prolong the story. The fact that former Sec. Clinton has called for the emails to be released, but Republicans refuse to make them public, speaks volumes about what this “scandal” is really about. The subpoena for documents that they already had in their possession is straight out of the Republican Benghazi playbook.

You know this occurred to me when I first heard about his so-called "scandal" as well. 

There have been several investigations into the Benghazi incident, by a number of Republicans. Which means they would have seen that Clinton's e-mails were coming from a non-government e-mail address, and yet that did not seem to raise a red flag until just last week?

And by the way, just speaking for myself, whenever I see a debate on ANY topic that includes Darrel Issa taking the side of the Republicans, I immediately feel that they have lost the argument.

The guy is one of the biggest clowns in the GOP, and I swear that if he were trying to convince me that water was wet I would have a hard time believing him.

After 18 months Rep. Darrell Issa finally releases his report which finds, hold on for a shocker folks, NO connection between the White House and the IRS "scandal." What?

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) wasted enormous congressional resources over the last 18 months trying to inflate the IRS "scandal" into a mountain. The release Tuesday of his final, petulant report on the affair marks what may be its final decline into a mouse. 

The bottom line: Contrary to his assertions in countless appearances on Fox News, there's no evidence that the Obama White House directed -- or indeed was involved in any way -- in the supposed targeting of conservative nonprofit groups for special scrutiny by the IRS. There's no evidence that "tea party" groups were exclusively targeted, as opposed to tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations from across the political spectrum. 

The evidence set forth in the report, which was issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's GOP majority without sharing it first with the Democratic minority, instead depicts an IRS struggling to apply complicated rules for nonprofits engaging in political activity, all without guidance from Congress. 

Issa launched his investigation last spring with the charge that the IRS had screened c-4 applications for words such as "tea party" in their names in an effort to deprive conservative organizations of a tax exemption.

Of course that turned out to be bullshit as the report  reveals that the IRS also applied scrutiny to various liberal groups seeking the c-4 exemption as one of the keywords they were looking for was "progressive."

In fact the ONLY group applying for the exemption, who did not receive it, was a group called Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office.

So in other words there was a wild goose and Darrell Issa spent millions of taxpayer money to chase it around for a year and a half. 

And let's not forget that Issa wasted similar amounts of taxpayer money in his "Fast and Furious" and Benghazi investigations.

God what a tool.

Did Darrell Issa just sabotage the newest Benghazi investigations? Sure looks that way.

Hey, I get left out, people gonna get hurt. What are ya going to do about it?

Courtesy of the New Republic:  

Either Darrell Issa is so miffed at Republican leaders for yanking the Benghazi investigation out from under him that he's intentionally undermining the new House Select Committee, or he just vindicated those who believe he wasn't up to the task. Either way he just blew a hole in one big piece of the conspiracy theory. 

A still-classified State Department e-mail says that one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the “ramifications” of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. 

The memo suggests that even as the attack was still underway—and before the CIA began the process of compiling talking points on its analysis of what happened—the White House believed it was in retaliation for a controversial video. 

The White House is thrilled with this revelation because it supports the view that their early citations of the YouTube video were sincere—not intended to whitewash the truth, that American public servants had been victims of a terrorist attack. The claim that this YouTube business was all a big lie is central to the entire convoluted Benghazi conspiracy, and something Select Committee chairman Trey Gowdy has harped upon in the past. Just two weeks ago, Gowdy told Charlie Rose, " I think that Ben Rhodes memo was probably the straw that broke the camel's back because that memo made it really clear that we're going to blame an internet video and not a broader policy failure in Libya.... If you really think it was the video, then site (sic) me all the evidence." Issa's leak is the evidence.

Gee it looks like one of the clowns jumped out of the clown car, and pulled out its transmission.

And what you expect really? After all there is no way that Trey Gowdy is going to take this away from Issa without him resorting to some backstabbing.

I mean just look at that picture of Issa at the top.

If that doesn't say Mafia hitman I don't know what does.

Secretary of State John Kerry will comply with House GOP subpoena to testify about Benghazi.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday indicated he would comply with a House GOP subpoena to testify about Benghazi and other questions from the new select committee appointed by House Speaker John Boehner. 

But in his first comments on the topic since renewed attention to it began in the last week, Kerry batted away the inquiry into the September 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi as a “partisan” effort that won’t bring forward anything that isn’t already known. 

“I think this sort of speaks for itself, frankly,” Kerry said at a press conference at the State Department he held with European Union High Representative Lady Catherine Ashton, following a day of meetings. “We have had more than 50 briefings, there have been in the double digits of hearings and we’ve released 25,000 documents.”

Such a monumental waste of time and tax payer dollars.

I hope Kerry embarrasses the crap out of the House Republicans over this on national television.

Personally I think that the country should demand that the Republicans in Congress pay the American people back for all of the money they have wasted investigating this non-scandal.

It's a Boisterous Benghazi Bukakke for the Republicans and their Right Wing propagandists.

Courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) issued a subpoena Friday for Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before his panel on May 21 over Benghazi. 

Today I announced a subpoena requiring Secretary Kerry to testify at a public @GOPoversight hearing on May 21. #Benghazi
— Darrell Issa (@DarrellIssa) May 2, 2014

Issa made no suggestion that Kerry -- who was a senator during the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi -- was guilty of wrongdoing. 

"State Dept's response to congressional investigation of #Benghazi has shown a disturbing disregard for its legal obligations to Congress," the GOP chairman wrote on Twitter. 

He continued, deploying the hashtag #Benghazi in a series of follow-up tweets: "Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game. The State Dept has failed to meet its legal obligations. ... Secretary Kerry must answer questions about the State Dept's response to the congressional investigation. Yesterday, BGen Lovell testified that the State Dept never asked military forces to go save Americans in #Benghazi during the attack."

Here is the letter that Issa sent to Kerry here. In it Issa suggests that he is thinking of charging the State Department with a criminal offense.

No, seriously.

Of course as most of know John Kerry was not the Secretary of State during the Benghazi attack, and it is abundantly clear that the real focus of this inquiry is the previous SOS, and future presidential candidate.

Issa is not alone in launching this assault.

Courtesy of TPM: 

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) intends to form a select committee to investigate the 2012 Benghazi attacks, he announced Friday. 

"[T]he House will vote to establish a new select committee to investigate the attack, provide the necessary accountability, and ensure justice is finally served," the Speaker said in a statement.

It is beyond clear that his new memo has reinvigorated the Republican scandal manufacturing faction, and even though it had virtually nothing to do with Benghazi it was the lifeline that the Right Wing had been praying for.

In fact so focused are the conservatives on Benghazi that Fox News is uninterested in covering much of anything else:  

Fox News stopped airing President Barack Obama's joint press conference Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel because, the network said, reporters weren't asking him about Benghazi. 

The topic has animated the conservative news network, and especially so Friday because Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had just announced the House will vote to establish a select committee to investigate the Obama administration's response to the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate that left four Americans dead. 

When cutting away from the news conference, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner was quite blunt about the fact that Benghazi was all Fox wanted to discuss at that moment. 

"If in fact somebody throws him a question on this topic, we'll go back to that joint news conference with Angela Merkel and you could hear the translation points. We're going to move on here with what is breaking," Faulkner said. 

The president wasn't asked about Benghazi, and the network didn't return to the joint press conference with the two U.S. and German leaders.

This memo is really nothing. But then the Republicans don't have anything else.

With the health care numbers going through the roof, and the economy on the mend, what other basket does the Right Wing really have to put all of their eggs into?

So I have a feeling that from now until November it will be "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!"

Newly released documents prove that Darrell Issa's witch hunt against the IRS is a complete waste of taxpayers money.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

A series of IRS documents, provided to ThinkProgress under the Freedom of Information Act, appears to contradict the claims by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only Tea Party organizations applying for tax-exempt status “received systematic scrutiny because of their political beliefs.” The 22 “Be On the Look Out” keywords lists, distributed to staff reviewing applications between August 12, 2010 and April 19, 2013, included more explicit references to progressive groups, ACORN successors, and medical marijuana organizations than to Tea Party entities. 

The IRS provided the heavily-redacted lists to ThinkProgress, after nearly a year-long search. From the earliest lists through 2012, the “historical” section of the lists encouraged reviewers to watch out for “progressive” groups with names like “blue,” as their requests for 501(c)(3) charitable status might be inappropriate. Their inclusion in this section suggests that the concern predates the initial 2010 list. 

Explicit references to “Tea Party,” included in the “emerging issues” section of the lists, also began in August 2010 — but stopped appearing after the May 10, 2011 list. From that point on, the lists instructed agents to flag all political advocacy groups of any stripe. The documents instructed the agents to forward any “organization involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy” applying for 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status be forwarded to “group 7822″ for additional review. Groups under both categories are limited in the amount of of lobbying and political activity each can undertake. 

Other types of groups received explicit scrutiny for longer than “progressive” or “Tea Party” organizations. These included applicants involved with “medical marijuana” but not “exclusively education” (19 appearances in the “watch list” section of the lists), which were to be forwarded to a “group 7888″ and groups believed to be possible successor-groups to ACORN, the now-shuttered Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (12 appearances on the “watch list” section). Those applications were also to be elevated to managers for further review. All 22 documents also flagged applicants with Puerto Rico addresses and certain types of “Testamentary Trusts.”

It is worth noting that Issa subpoenaed the IRS records last year, and has certainly seen these same documents. As has ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings which helps to explain why he blew up at Issa back in March.

Much like Fast and Furious and Benghazi, this whole thing has been bullshit from day one.

And it is taxpayer money that is being spent while the Republicans desperately beat the bushes hoping to uncover, or create out of whole cloth, some scandal that will stick against the Obama administration.

"Absolutely un-American!" After Darrell Issa closes the IRS hearing without allowing the minority party to ask questions Rep. Elijah Cummings explodes in anger. Update!

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

During a hearing of the House Oversight Committee into allegations that the Internal Revenue Service scrutinized conservative groups’ tax-exempt status filings unduly, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) exploded at Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). Cummings charged that the way in which the proceedings were being conducted were “Un-American.” In apparent protest, Issa then walked out of the committee hearing. 

While making a statement before the committee, Issa stood up and asked Cummings to yield. 

“If you will sit down and allow me to ask a question,” Cummings insisted. “I am a member of a Congress of the United States of America.” 

“I am tired of this,” he continued. “You cannot just have a one-sided investigation. There is absolutely something wrong with that, and it is absolutely un-American.” 

“We had a hearing. It was adjourned,” Issa replied. “I gave you an opportunity to ask your questions. You had no questions.” 

“I do have questions,” Elijah replied. “Chairman, what are you hiding?”

At this stage, Issa walked out of the hearing 

"He's taking the fifth Elijah." I LOVED that!

I had the opportunity to see a longer clip from MSNBC this morning, and what Mediaite and this shorter clip leave out is that Issa adjourned the hearing right as Rep. Cummings started to make his statement, and then cut his mic.

I mean no wonder Cummings was pissed, but what angered him just as much was the fact that this whole hearing was a waste of time as the attorney for Lois Lerner stated that she would not be testifying today.

Update: Now Issa is claiming that Cummings slandered him:  

“He was talking into a mic in an adjourned meeting,” Issa said. “The fact is Mr. Cummings came to make a point of his objections to the process we have been going through. He was actually slandering me at the moment that the mics did go off by claiming that this had not been a real investigation.”

Ahh, somebody got hims feelings hurted.

Update 2: Here is the longer version of Issa's tantrum courtesy of MSNBC.

(By the way I just noticed that  Lois Lerner sat and listened to Elijah Cummings entire statement about the Republican IRS witch hunt even though Issa had dismissed her. For some reason that really tickled me.)

Sunday on Fox News Darrell Issa claimed that former head of the IRS tax exempt division will testify on Wednesday. Her lawyer says no she won't. Issa responds with yes she will. I love a good Mexican standoff.

ICYMI: Lois Lerner's attorney indicates she'll testify at Wed's @GOPoversight #IRS hearing. pic.twitter.com/zywdGAqRma

— Darrell Issa (@DarrellIssa) March 2, 2014

Courtesy of Politico:  

Rep. Darrell Issa doesn’t know what he’s talking about, the attorney for former IRS official Lois Lerner said Sunday. 

Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that Lerner, the former head of the IRS tax-exempt division, would testify before his committee Wednesday, which he said he had been told by her attorney. 

That attorney, William W. Taylor, said Issa is wrong. 

“As of now, she intends to continue to assert her Fifth Amendment rights,” Taylor told POLITICO. “I do not know why Issa said what he said.” 

Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment rights not to implicate herself when she appeared before the committee in May 2013, but only after delivering a brief statement defending herself. At the time, Issa and other Republicans said she had waived her Fifth Amendment rights by delivering the statement.

Issa does know that just saying somebody is going to testify is not the same thing as having a commitment that they are going to testify, right?

After this Politico story came out Issa released this statement: 

“Bill Taylor, Ms. Lerner’s attorney, has confirmed in writing that Ms. Lerner is willing to testify and she is now requesting a one week delay for the public hearing. We have informed Mr. Taylor that Ms. Lerner may make her request for a delay on Wednesday when she appears for the hearing.”

Okay so, if I have this straight,  Lois Lerner has no intention of testifying on Wednesday, and according to Issa is asking for a one week delay, which he will consider IF she shows up for the hearing that her attorney has stated she has no intention of showing up for.

I hate to jump to conclusions here, but it looks to me is if Issa will be interrogating an empty chair on Wednesday. And yet still going to be outmatched in a battle of the wits.

Chris Wallace of Fox News pissed that White House has shunned him for the second week in a row. Aww!

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

Last week, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace was peeved that National Security Advisor Susan Rice appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, but not on his show — perhaps, he suggested, due to the fact that he would have asked her the “tough questions” about Benghazi. 

This week, it was John Kerry who left Wallace hanging, as the Secretary of State appeared on Meet the Press, This Week With George Stephanopoulos, and Face the Nation to discuss Russia’s invasion of the Crimean peninsula — but skipped Wallace’s show. 

“For the record, we invited Secretary of State Kerry to join us today,” Wallace said, “but although the White House put him out on all the other Sunday shows*, they declined to make him available to us, or you.” 

Wallace then pivoted right to House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA), who spent the entire next segment discussing last summer’s IRS investigation.

So first Wallace bitches that he can't get the White House to take he and his network seriously, and the next he engages in a conversation with a well known Republican attack dog about a made up controversy.

Yeah I have NO sympathy for this guy. None.

Darrell Issa continues to place the security of Healthcare.gov in jeopardy while pretending to look for security breaches.

Would you trust sensitive national security information with this man? Nope, me neither.

Courtesy of ElectaBlog:  

Congressman Darrell Issa is determined that he’s going eventually uncover an actual scandal. If it’s not regarding Benghazi then it will be regarding the IRS. If it’s not the IRS then, by God, it will be about the security of the healthcare.gov website. Yesterday he held yet another hearing to “prove” that the site is not secure. 

At the hearing, the top cybersecurity official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Teresa Fryer, testified that, despite concerns she had previously expressed regarding the security of the site, extensive testing done more recently has changed her mind. “This security control assessment met all industry standards, was an end-to-end test and was conducted in a stable environment that allowed for testing to be completed in the allotted time,” she told the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform panel. 

However, Rep. Issa prefers to believe a private security consultant, David Kennedy of TrustedSec LLC, who has no relationship with the Department of Health and Human Services or any access to the website that the average citizen doesn’t have. He told the panel, “HealthCare.gov is not secure today…It is insecure – 100 percent.” 

Mr. Kennedy may be right about the vulnerability of the healthcare.gov but the threat is not because the site is insecure. Rather, it is vulnerable because the code behind the website may be insecure because it is in the possession of someone known to leak government information when it suits his political agenda: Darrell Issa. 

Yes, healthcare.gov faces a serious and imminent security threat. That threat comes in the form of a hyper-partisan politician looking to further his own political career and shore up support from his far-right conservative benefactors and supporters, even if it compromises the personal and private information of American Citizens.

Now I have written about the fact that Issa presents a security threat to Americans seeking health care before.  And so have many others, and yet so far nothing has been done to protect us from this traitorous POS.

That is possibly because nothing CAN be done.

Issa is in a very powerful position, which due to his lack of integrity and self control, make him very dangerous to the country, to its citizens, and to our national security.

Simply put the man is a viper who needs to be stomped on by the voters in California's 49th district who put him in office in the first place.

As Republicans warn of security breaches with Healthcare.gov, Darrell Issa seems to be trying to make that a reality.

"Healthcare.gov security breaches. Don't worry I'm on it."

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

House Republicans are kicking off the year with more votes on Obamacare bills, this time pushing a measure they say will help protect people from security breaches of HealthCare.gov. 

But there is some irony in their latest whack at the Affordable Care Act. The GOP bill set for a Friday vote would require the Health and Human Services secretary to tell people if their private data was compromised in a security breach, but, as laid out in a Democratic committee memo issued Thursday, HHS is already required to do that, and there haven't been any successful breaches thus far anyway. Not only does the bill target a nonexistent problem, but the most credible threat to the website's security may be the GOP's loudest critic of the website's security: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. 

HealthCare.gov could clearly be compromised if, say, sensitive documents were leaked to the public that included software code or other technical information that provided hackers with a road map for vulnerabilities in the site. Such documents currently reside with Issa, who obtained them last month -- unredacted -- after subpoenaing them from MITRE Corporation, the federal contractor overseeing security of the website. 

Throughout the subpoena process, MITRE officials warned Issa in three separate letters that the documents could result in "irreparable harm" to the website's security if they end up in the wrong hands, even with redactions. They offered to let him come into MITRE's offices and view redacted versions of them. Beyond that, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler sent Issa a letter warning that disclosures could increase risks to all IT systems across the federal government. Top House Democrats, meanwhile, pressed for a classified briefing with administration cyber security officials to assess the risks posed by a potential leak of those documents. 

But Issa insisted on getting the unredacted versions, and on Dec. 17, he posted excerpts from them online in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius raising concerns with the website's security. 

The move drew a harsh response from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He blasted Issa for being "reckless" with sensitive data.

Are there any among us who would trust Darrell Issa with ANY sensitive material?

Add to that the fact that he wants desperately to sabotage the success of the ACA and we know exactly where the trail should lead if any security breaches do occur.

Watching Darrell Issa squirm over new revelations about Benghazi.

The above was the exchange between David Grefgory, Andrea Mitchell, and a clearly uncomfortable Darrell Issa. Transcript courtesy of Mediaite:

“You’ve said repeatedly that it was al Qaeda,” Gregory said. “The reason that matters is that you and other critics said that the president specifically won’t acknowledge that it was al Qaeda because it was an election year and he wants to say that after bin Laden [al Qaeda] has been decimated, and it would make him look bad if it as al Qaeda.” 

“Al Qaeda is not decimated and there is a group there involved that is linked to al Qaeda,” Issa replied. “What we never said—and I didn’t have the security to look behind the door, that’s for other members of Congress—of what the intelligence were on the exact correspondence with al Qaeda, that sort of information—those sorts of methods I’ve never claimed.” 

“Why use the term al Qaeda?” Mitchell asked, somewhat rhetorically. “Because you and other members of Congress are sophisticated in this and know that when you say al Qaeda, people think central al Qaeda. They don’t think militias that may be inspired by bin laden and his other followers. So it is a hot button, for political reasons, from the administration’s view.” 

“But Andrea, it was accurate,” Issa responded. “There was a group that was involved that claims an affiliation with al Qaeda. Now, al Qaeda is not a central command and control. It was, in fact, a loose group that could take general statements and act on them…The fact is people from this administration, career professionals, have said under oath there was no evidence of any kind of a reaction to a video and, in fact, this was a planned attack that came quickly. That’s the evidence we have by people who work for the U.S. government and were under oath.” 

Issa is a slippery POS but he is caught repeatedly during this exchange in lie after lie, and simply changes the focus every time he is cornered.

By the way his contention that the video was not "widely seen in Benghazi" at the time of this attack is essentially irrelevant. It only had to have been seen, or at least heard about, by the actual attackers.

And that fact is reported in the New York Times piece: 

The violence, though, also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.

So though a rather unspecific attack HAD been in the planning stages before the assault, it was the anger over the video that provided the spark.

Now Susan Rice did not yet have the information about nonspecific plans for an attack, all she knew as that there were no direct ties to al-Qaeda at the time she went on TV in an attempt to head off a full frontal attack from the Right during an election year.

This is what she said:  

MS. RICE: Well, Jake, first of all, it’s important to know that there’s an FBI investigation that has begun and will take some time to be completed. That will tell us with certainty what transpired. 

But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.

As it turned out there was no evidence of any protests outside this compound, but based on reports around the world of similar occurrences, and the limited eyewitness accounts at this time, there is every reason to believe the administration was relating what they believed to have taken place in good faith.

What the Republicans did in response, was anything but in good faith.

And what Darrell Issa did in particular should be categorized as either criminal or treasonous behavior. 

With the Healthcare.gov website problems ironed out, Darrell Issa and his GOP thugs turn their attention to intimidating the Obamacare navigators.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is accusing Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House oversight committee, of attempting to "stifle, intimidate and impugn the reputation" of Obamacare navigators, the individuals tasked with helping others sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. 

In an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News, Sebelius said a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the Affordable Care Act set to be held in Texas on Monday was "designed" to derail the work of the navigators. 

"What opponents of the new law could not do legislatively, at the ballot box, or even by shutting down the federal government, they’re now trying to do through other means," Sebelius writes. "Case in point is Monday’s congressional hearing in Dallas, designed to stifle, intimidate and impugn the reputation of people who have been working hard to help their fellow Texans get covered." 

She continues, "With so many Texans lacking affordable coverage, now is not the time to be putting up roadblocks. We should be helping navigators and other assisters in their important work, not demonizing, demoralizing or deterring them." 

Monday's hearing will focus on "recent reports of fraudulent activity related to the ObamaCare navigators program," according to a press release issued by the committee last week.

Yeah, I think we all know that any "recent reports of fraudulent activity"  were pulled right out of Darrell Issa's ass.  This is such a blatant misuse of power that I cannot believe even Republican supporters do not see this as nothing more than a case of revenge against the administration for not caving into Republican pressure and more obstructionism going forward.

I can no longer even say Issa's name without spitting.

He is perhaps the most vile POS in the House and his strong arm tactics are just this side of Mafia-like intimidation techniques.

He is a joke who has launched so many bullshit investigations that even if he were to uncover evidence of wrongdoing by this administration, there are few who would take him seriously.

Well besides Fox News of course. 

Obama administration proposes new rules to rein in groups that are spending millions of dollars to hijack politics in this country. Tea Party heads to explode in 3..2..well you get the idea.

Courtesy of Accounting Today:  

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday they are issuing initial guidance regarding qualification requirements for tax-exemption as a social welfare organization under Section 501(c)(4) of the Tax Code after a scandal erupted earlier this year over claims that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status. 

The proposed guidance defines the term “candidate-related political activity,” and would amend the current regulations by indicating that the promotion of social welfare does not include this type of activity. The proposed guidance also seeks initial comments on other aspects of the qualification requirements, including what proportion of a 501(c)(4) organization’s activities must promote social welfare. The initial guidance is expected to be posted on the Federal Register later today. 

The Treasury is issuing the guidance in response to a recommendation in a report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on how the IRS selected inappropriate criteria for screening applications from tax-exempt status from various groups. Ahead of the release of the TIGTA report. Lois Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations, touched off a firestorm of criticism of the IRS after she disclosed in May that the agency was using terms such as “Tea Party,” “Patriot” and “9/12” to filter through applications for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status from conservative organizations. It later emerged that the IRS was also using terms like “progressive” and “Occupy” to filter out applications from liberal groups. Lerner was eventually forced out of the agency along with other officials such as former acting commissioner Steven T. Miller. 

His replacement, the current IRS acting commissioner Danny Werfel, has pledged to stop using so-called “BOLO,” or “Be on the Lookout,” lists, and to enable streamlined processes for tax-exempt status including allowing 501(c)4 organizations to self-certify themselves as tax-exempt until their applications have been examined. Meanwhile Congress has been grilling IRS officials at a contentious series of hearings and introducing legislation as recently as last week to reform the process further (see Congress Introduces Bill to Change IRS Reviews of Tax-Exempt Organizations). 

The TIGTA report recommended that the Treasury Department and the IRS chief counsel develop guidance on how to measure the primary activity of 501(c)4 social welfare organizations.

The whole kerfuffle over the IRS trying to determine who was gaming the system, which used key words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" to identify groups that required extra scrutiny, would be completely unnecessary once these new guidelines are in place.

Then the conservatives could not accuse the IRS of targeting them, because the new rule changes would affect EVERY group who claimed to be a "social welfare group" but were in fact partisan smear merchants.

Of course, as you can imagine, this rule change has already sparked anger from one side of the political aisle: 

"The fact that the administration's new effort only affects social welfare organizations - and not powerful unions or business groups - underscores that this is a crass political effort by the administration to get what political advantage they can, when they can," said Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican. Some of the biggest spenders in the last election also expressed outrage at the proposal.

In my opinion ANY rule change that pisses off Darell Issa is a good rule change.

And remember there is NOTHING saying these groups cannot exist, that would be un-American, they simply cannot claim tax exempt status. 

Darrell Issa accused of leaking misinformation about Healthcare.gov in attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are accusing Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) of selectively leaking misinformation about HealthCare.gov in an effort to portray administration officials as misleading the public about the implementation of Obamacare. 

On Thursday, Issa appeared on Fox News and claimed that he had obtained documents proving that contractors working on Healthcare.gov believed that the site could only handle 1,100 users before launch. U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had publicly stated that the administration believed that the site could handle 60,000 concurrent users. 

But in a letter to Issa, Rep. Ellijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member on the Committee, pointed to an interview Issa’s own staff conducted with Henry Chao, the Deputy Information Officer. Chao explained that the 1,000 figure were “the results of a much smaller testing environment” and were not conducted “with final production testing of the system at full capacity.” 

“The estimates for the full [Obamacare] website environment were considerably higher,” Cummings writes, adding, “[I]t is reckless and highly irresponsible to make unsubstantiated public allegations by taking information out of context, especially when the Committee has information in its possession that directly contradicts these unfounded allegations.”

This, of course, is nothing new coming from Issa who is well known to have virtually NOT one ethical bone in his body. He approaches his job as House Oversight Committee Chairman as if he is  a"fixer" for the Mafia and is tasked with making GOP problems go away while exaggerating the problems with his political enemies. 

Issa is a street hood who has been dressed up to appear less thuggish in public, but at his core he is still the punk kid who was indicted twice for stealing cars.

Not a surprise that he is one of the more prominent members of the House Republicans.

Inspector General reviews 5,500 e-mails, finds NO evidence of political targeting of Tea Party groups by IRS. Can this "scandal" finally be considered dead?

"I have an agenda, Stop trying to confuse me with the facts!"

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

An inspector general’s review of 5,500 e-mails among Internal Revenue Service employees found “no indication” that their scrutiny of Tea Party groups was politically motivated, according to documents being released today by Democrats. 

An e-mail from a top investigator in the inspector general’s office bolsters Democrats’ claims that anti-tax Tea Party groups received extra scrutiny because of confusion and unclear direction, rather than an attempt to hurt Republican-leaning organizations. 

“The e-mail traffic indicated there were unclear processing directions and the group wanted to make sure they had guidance on processing the applications so they pulled them,” the investigator said in the e-mail, dated May 3, just 11 days before the inspector general’s report criticizing the IRS came out. “This is a very important nuance.” 

The partially redacted documents also contain information that supports Democrats’ contention that “progressive” groups were scrutinized and Republicans’ assertions that Tea Party groups applying for nonprofit status were treated differently. 

The documents are being released by Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who is questioning the quality of the report from J. Russell George, the inspector general for tax administration.

I asked the question in the headline whether THIS was finally enough evidence to put this thing to rest and convince the Republicans that they  were beating the crap out of a clearly deceased horse.However sadly I already know the answer.

This from the Huffington Post: 

Internal Revenue Service officials from Washington and the Cincinnati office at the center of the controversy over IRS scrutiny of conservative groups are set to testify in Congress next week. 

The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said the not-yet-named officials will appear on July 18 before the panel, which is investigating the matter. 

"This hearing will examine why decisions to elevate cases to more senior levels of the IRS led to unjust delays and unfair treatment of Tea Party applications," Republican Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said in a statement on Wednesday.

I know, right?

My only assumption about this is that Issa is determined to keep this issue open as long as possible in the vain hope that while digging he will somehow uncover a REAL scandal that he can then focus on much like how the misguided Whitewater investigation against President and Hillary Clinton stumbled across Monica Lewinsky.

This is how the Republicans do politics these days.

And they have substantial help from Fox News, who just the other day reran their "Special Report" on Benghazi. Which of course was yet ANOTHER "devastating scandal" that was going to take down this President and his administration.

Just imagine how much we could be accomplishing if we had Republicans in office willing to work in good faith with the Democrats, rather than constantly on alert for possible conspiracy theories, and opportunities to damage the Presidents credibility.

New evidence proves that Darrell Issa purposefully narrowed focus of IRS probe on Tea Party applicants in order to politicize the hearings.

"Well this blows."

Courtesy of the Rockford Register Star:  

The Treasury inspector general (IG) whose report helped drive the IRS targeting controversy says it limited its examination to conservative groups because of a request from House Republicans. 

A spokesman for Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, said they were asked by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) “to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations.” 

The inspector general’s audit found that groups seeking tax-exempt status with “Tea Party” and “patriots” in their name did receive extra attention from the IRS, with some facing years of delay and inappropriate questions from the agency. 

But top congressional Democrats have wielded new information from the IRS this week that liberal groups were also flagged for extra attention on the sorts of “be on the lookout” lists (BOLOs) that also tripped up conservative groups. 

The spokesman for the Treasury inspector general noted their audit acknowledged there were other watch lists. But the spokesman added: “We did not review the use, disposition, purpose or content of the other BOLOs. That was outside the scope of our audit.” 

The admission from the inspector general comes as Democrats have sharpened their criticism of George, with Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) dubbing the audit fundamentally flawed on Monday. 

Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, stressed to The Hill on Tuesday that the inspector general did not say the audit was limited to Tea Party groups when it was released in mid-May. 

The Michigan Democrat also maintained that the audit’s shortcoming had emboldened Republicans to try to link the targeting of Tea Party groups to the White House. 

“You need to get at the facts. And those facts weren’t given to us, even when asked,” Levin said. “The Republicans used the failure of the IG to spell out what they knew as an opportunity to totally politicize this.”

Issa knew at the get go that there was no scandal, so he purposefully tried to create one, JUST like he did with Fast and Furious, and just like he did with the Benghazi investigation.

The man is a putrid piece of shit and he needs to be impeached NOW! (Okay I got a little carried away and forgot that Senators cannot be impeached. So with that in mind I think the only reasonable alternative is to have Issa face a firing squad after being found guilty of treason. How does that sound?)