Exhaustive new report finds that, despite what the conservatives would have you believe, the IRS targeted both liberal and right wing groups seeking a tax exempt status.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

A federal watchdog investigating whether the Internal Revenue Service unfairly targeted conservative political groups seeking tax-exempt status said that the agency also scrutinized organizations associated with liberal causes from 2004 to 2013. 

The findings by the Treasury Department’s inspector general mark the end of a political firestorm that embroiled the I.R.S. in controversy, led to the ouster of its commissioner and prompted accusations the tax collection agency was being used as a political weapon by the Obama administration. 

The exhaustive report, which examined nine years worth of applications for tax-exempt status, comes after a similar audit in 2013 found that groups with conservative names like “Tea Party,” “patriot” or “9/12” were unfairly targeted for further review. 

The new report found that the I.R.S. was also inappropriately targeting progressive-leaning groups. While the investigation does not specify the political affiliations of the groups, names that were flagged included the words “Progressive,” “Occupy,” “Green Energy,” and Acorn — the acronym for the now defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. 

A spokeswoman for the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration noted that the report makes no characterization of the political leanings of any of the groups.

To be honest, while I appreciate that this report has come out, we ALREADY knew all of this years ago.

Almost from the second that the conservatives were pissing themselves with outrage that the IRS was "targeting" them, many news sites were publishing information which completely refuted their faux outrage.

And the fact is that the Right Wing media undoubtedly knew that it was all bullshit, but they also knew their audience was made up of drooling slack jawed morons who were never going to look for alternative information sources and would prove easy to manipulate into a frenzy.

What's more is that this report will not change a single mind because the idea that the government was out to quash the conservative movement fees into their confirmation bias, and nothing will rattle that cage.

Robert Mueller teams up with IRS investigators. Time to see those tax returns!

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Special counsel Bob Mueller has teamed up with the IRS. According to sources familiar with his investigation into alleged Russian election interference, his probe has enlisted the help of agents from the IRS’ Criminal Investigations unit. 

This unit—known as CI—is one of the federal government’s most tight-knit, specialized, and secretive investigative entities. Its 2,500 agents focus exclusively on financial crime, including tax evasion and money laundering. 

A former colleague of Mueller’s said he always liked working with IRS’ special agents, especially when he was a U.S. Attorney. And it goes without saying that the IRS has access to Trump’s tax returns—documents that the president has long resisted releasing to the public.

Donald Trump has done everything he can to keep his tax returns under wraps so I think it is pretty obvious that he does not want them scrutinized, and especially not by a bulldog like Robert Mueller.

Personally I think the key to this whole investigation can be found in these tax returns, and it seems that Mueller might feel that way as well.

What's more I think something he already found convinced that he needed the assistance of the IRS investigators. 

I can hardly wait to read what Trump tweets out about this.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller applies increasing pressure on Paul Manafort.

Courtesy of the Miami Herald:  

Paul Manafort’s place in the crosshairs of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Kremlin’s attempts to sway the 2016 presidential election seems to be growing more uncomfortable. 

Two sources familiar with the inquiry tell McClatchy that investigators are working to confirm information indicating that Manafort and the consulting firms he led earned between $80 million and $100 million over a decade from pro-Moscow Ukrainian and Russian clients. 

Mueller’s expanded focus on Manafort’s complicated financial picture is zeroing in on whether he may have evaded taxes or engaged in any money laundering schemes, the sources say, and the hunt for his financial records through a labyrinth of offshore bank and business accounts has become an important prong of the investigation. 

Given his pro-Kremlin connections and his closeness to the campaign, Manafort was uniquely positioned to play a role in any collusion between the campaign and operatives working on behalf of the Russian government to help elect Trump. 

Whether Manafort can be squeezed depends in part on whether he failed to report foreign income and overseas bank accounts annually to the Internal Revenue Service as required by law. The volume of money said to be involved and the time elapsed could put him at significant risk.

The IRS is involved? Well Manafort is screwed now.

There is some evidence that Manafort is already cooperating with the investigators, but whether he has flipped or not the existence of this increasingly bad information now being leaked to the press means that he may have little choice but to cooperate or face a rather lengthy prison term. 

All in all this should have Trump shitting bricks.

Good question. Update!

And the thing is that right now the media is working over time in an attempt to slime Hillary with allegations that folks who contributed to the Clinton Foundation got special access, and here they have a factually based story of bribery and political corruption and virtually all you hear are crickets.

Update: Trump claims there is no connection between the donation and the Trump U case.

Here is a picture of Donald Trump walking with the Florida Attorney General that he totally did not pay to dismiss a lawsuit against him just last month.

The majority of Americans do not believe Donald Trump's BS about a border wall.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

ABC News together with our partners at SSRS survey research firm asked our online opinion panel if they believed Trump would be able to get Mexico to pay for building a wall along the U.S. southern border.

Seventy-eight percent said they believed Trump could not deliver on this promise, while 13 percent said he could. 

Asked to give a one-word response to a video of one part of Trump's highly anticipated immigration speech last week, 67 percent reacted with a negative word, such as “ridiculous” and “disgusting.” Just 27 percent responded with a positive word, such as “great” and “agree.”

I wonder if that 78% also realizes that Trump is full of horse pucky when it comes to the reason why he will not release his tax returns?

Courtesy of Think Progress:

It’s worth noting that the existence of an audit, according to the IRS, does not preclude the release of tax returns. In fact, it actually makes the release of returns less risky. The primary issue with making your tax returns public is triggering an audit. Trump doesn’t have to be worried about that. 

But there is a bigger problem with the Trump campaign’s argument that all his returns are under audit: It’s not true. 

The truth is disclosed in a letter from his accountants that was published to the Trump campaign website in March. It reveals that Trump’s returns from 2008 and prior are not under audit and have been “administratively closed” by the IRS.

So when Trump and his campaign staff say they are not releasing his taxes because they are under audit, that’s not true. None of his taxes from 2008 or prior are currently under audit, and yet Trump still hasn’t released those returns.

So for those of you who have recently been in a coma, Donald Trump essentially lies about EVERYTHING.

And it appears that perhaps the American voters are coming to recognize that fact.

Finally.

Sarah Palin seems inordinately concerned with how much the federal government spends on UN "activities." Can you spell Illuminati?

Wanna hear something crazy?

Courtesy of the Whack-a-Doodle from Wasilla's Facebook page: 

THE UN... IT JUST GETS CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER 

Just asking... have Americans forgotten we have every right to know where our tax dollars go for UN activities, and Congress has every responsibility to do the asking? 

American taxpayers ponied up around $3.024 billion last year for the United Nations’ regular and peacekeeping budgets, more than what 185 other countries combined are paying. - CNS News 

Palin then links to a Daily Mail article about the sighting of a white UN "combat vehicle" on the road in Virginia.

Here is an actual Alex Jones quote from the article:  

'Are these U.N. troops here preparing for economic collapse in America? Is this related to Iran ships approaching the U.S. border?' while Alex Jones posted a video warning of the 'U.N. takeover of America.' 

Ooookay.

It should be pointed out that the vehicles in Virginia were actually being transported and not driven.

There was a response to the Facebook post about this sighting which read, "30 United Nations vehicles, fully loaded with combat-prepared troops, were driving down our highway in Dallas, Texas."

Well hell, a Facebook post from a Texan about the UN invading America, what could be more reliable than that?

Palin followed all of this up by writing:  

Congress also has a responsibility to oversee the Administration's unexplained actions. There's truly no need for our government to keep citizens in the dark about expenditures like these. We're seeking answers.

And then she links to yet another article from a far Right Wing news source which reports that the amount of money non-military federal agencies, which it labels "bureaucrats,"  spend on arms and ammunition is now more than our armed forces spend.

I read through the report and it includes such "bureaucrats" as the FBI, Fish and Game, US Customs and Border Control, the Coast Guard, the US Secret Service, and a number of other agencies which seem to spend money on security forces for their employees, which include the IRS, Bureau of Land Management, and the United States Mint.

It seems fairly obvious that the point of this Facebook post is to suggest that while the Democrats are seeking to limit access to military style weapons by every day Americans, the federal government is arming their people to the teeth.

Now if you are a reasonable person you would probably assume that the increased spending on arms and ammunition by the Feds is likely in response to the increased number of military style weapons in the hands of 2nd Amendment advocates who loudly proclaim that they need them to keep the government "in check." (Just look to the Bundy ranch standoff as an example of the increased danger some of these federal agents now face.)

However if you are a Sarah Palin, or another unhinged conspiracy theorist, it is clear that the federal government is trying to take away our guns so that they can work together with the UN to herd us all into FEMA camps and then start gassing us like the Nazis did in Auschwitz.

Now the truly concerning part in all of this, aside from the fact that Sarah Palin has clearly lost her shit, is that I strongly suspect that current Republican candidate Donald Trump also gets his news from some of the same sources referenced in this post. (Where else do you think he got the idea that President Obama was born in Kenya?)

And that means that these unhinged, batshit crazy, conspiracy theories are now entering the mainstream of American thought, and if Trump were to be elected, possibly inform actual American policy moving forward.

If that does not give you a case of the tremors then you my friend are not paying attention. 

Department of Justice finds IRS did nothing criminal in denying tax exempt status to Tea Party groups.

Courtesy Washington Times:  

The IRS did mishandle tea party and conservative groups’ nonprofit applications, but their behavior didn’t break any laws, the Justice Department said in a letter to Congress Friday that cleared the tax agency and former senior executive Lois G. Lerner of any crimes. 

“Ineffective management is not a crime,” Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik said in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee. “The Department of Justice’s exhaustive probe revealed no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution. What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action — but it does not warrant criminal prosecution.”

What? You mean even though former IRS Director Lois Lerner plead the fifth before Congress, and the Teabaggers are completely convinced that she targeted them for ideological reason, she is not going to serve any jail time?

Right Wing freak out in 3...2...1

P.S. Boy has this been a bad week for the conservatives or what?

In news I was too busy to cover yesterday, that "veteran's group" that Donald Trump did a fundraiser for loses its nonprofit status.

Courtesy of the AP: 

The Internal Revenue Service revoked the nonprofit status of the veterans benefit organization that hosted and sold tickets to a foreign policy speech by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump aboard a retired U.S. battleship, The Associated Press has learned. The group's endorsement of Trump at the event also could raise legal problems under campaign finance laws. 

Trump's campaign did not respond to questions from the AP about whether it was aware that the IRS had revoked the nonprofit status of the Veterans for a Strong America, which sold tickets to Trump's event for up to $1,000 as a fundraiser. The IRS issued its decision Aug. 10, citing the group's failure to file any tax returns for three consecutive years, according to IRS records reviewed by the AP. 

The group's chairman, Joel Arends of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said the organization was appealing the IRS decision. He would not provide AP with copies of any tax returns, which would show how much money the group has collected over the years and how it spends its money. By law, such records are supposed to be available to the general public for inspection. 

"We disagree with the IRS determination letter," Arends told the AP in an interview. He appeared alongside Trump on Tuesday night on the ship.

"We disagree?" Doesn't he mean "I" disagree?

Gee I wonder if the Right Wing will suggest that this is yet another example of Obama's IRS hit men coming after conservative groups due to their ideologies, or if this smells a little too shady for even them to touch with a ten foot pole?

Lois Lerner e-mail allows Bristol Palin to play the victim again. Update!

Hey look at me! Don't judge, just look.

Courtesy of On Politics: 

One email, cited by Chairman Orrin Hatch as an “example of Lerner’s interest in conservative organizations,” asked whether the IRS should open an audit of Candie’s Foundation, which paid Palin $332,500 in compensation to be a celebrity spokesperson. Lerner was concerned that the salary figure could violate IRS rules against charitable groups being for the private benefit of individuals. 

Palin is the daughter of 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and she became a household name when it was revealed during that campaign that she had become pregnant at age 17. She later performed on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and was briefly engaged to Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer. 

“Thoughts on the Bristol Palin issue?” Lerner, then the director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit, wrote to her staff in 2011. “I’m asking because I don’t know whether to send to Exam as a referral.” There’s no evidence from the Senate report that an audit was ever opened.

As the article states there was no investigation launched, so this was really nothing more than open question as to whether there was anything suspicious about how much money Candies was funneling to Bristol, and whether or not she was doing anything to earn that amount.

I think most of us would answer that first question with a "yes," and the second with a "hell no."

I also think most of us realize that there are all kinds of methods, from bulk book sales, to political PAC donations, that allow wealthy, and not so wealthy, individuals to provide certain conservatives with a substantial amount of cash that they lack the talent and intellect to earn on their own.

Of course this news report allowed Brancy to puff up and demonstrate some faux outrage, as was expressed on the blog this morning:

By now, you’ve heard that the IRS under the Obama administration targeted, harassed, and intimidated tea party, pro-life, and patriotic groups. 

Today, I saw this news… they also considered targeting me! 

(Links to article.)


Looks like I almost got caught up in her assault of people who love America. 

I’m honored.

Oh yeah Bristol was "targeted" because she "loves America."

I think Nancy French is just happy that there is an article about Bristol which doesn't mention that she is once again pregnant out of wedlock.

Because there are certainly numerous others that are hot on that topic.

Update: Well of course if Nancy French is going to ghostwrite one post about this, she might as well write two.

Courtesy of Palin's Facebook page:

If 7 years ago I had predicted the Obama administration was targeting my family and all conservatives who posed a threat to their radical agenda you never would have believed me, right? Well..... hmmm

Nope, and there is no reason to believe you today either.

John Oliver attempts to make us feel a "small amount of sympathy" for the IRS. Good luck.

Courtesy of Mediaite:

 John Oliver already knows that Americans have a hate-hate relationship with the IRS: “Dealing with them is obligatory, it often functions badly, and it combines the two things that everyone hates the most: someone taking their money, and math.” But, he argues, the IRS deserves our grudging respect. 

First, it’s really not the IRS’s fault, and it certainly doesn’t help that they’re loathed and undercut at every turn. Isn’t it bad that people call them Nazis and attack them and give them so much hate? Isn’t it bad that the employees — the “human version of Ambien” — have to do some boring, boring work? And isn’t it bad that the reason that the IRS has to go after you, is because Congress is literally telling them how to do it, and then slashed their funding by 20%? (Let’s not even talk about their old backwards-ass tax data, stored on actual magnetic tapes.)

Okay, I admit it, I did feel a little sorry for them. 

And what's even more impressive he kind of made me like Michale Bolton a little bit as well. Which, for the record, is a much harder sell.

Besides in my opinion any agency that the conservatives attack as often as they do the IRS, must be doing SOMETHING right.

Sarah Palin suffers some kind of conservative flashback and decides to attack former IRS Director Lois Lerner. Wait, who?

Click crazy eyes to play video.

"Remember Lois Lerner? You remember Lois Lerner. One of the bureaucrats there at the IRS, at the top. The IRS official at the very center of the Tea Party targeting scandal. She helped engineer the targeting of conservative groups and tried to get the Department of Justice to prosecute conservatives." (Yeah, no she didn't.)

"No evidence, they didn't do anything wrong. Uh this is the same Lois Lerner who allegedly lost tens of thousands of key e-mails when Congress wanted to get to the bottom of her wrong doing and the corruption there in the IRS under her watch." (Actually those e-mails were recovered in 2014 before Congress finished it's witch hunt investigation.)

"Well it turns out that Lois Lerner, she not only didn’t really get punished, she was rewarded. Lois Lerner received more than $129,000 in bonuses during the exact period when the IRS targeting was at its worst! I bet some folks in the Obama administration believed she earned every penny of that. (You know, cause she did.) That’s pretty sickening. After all, it’s pretty clear that the IRS was weaponized and used against American citizens to protect the President’s party and the president himself from a grassroots, Tea Party movement that threatened to stop his left-wing agenda — a Tea Party movement that, well, it was essentially just asking questions, trying to hold our government accountable." (Wow, there is so much stupid in that last part of the paragraph I have no idea where to start.)

"Mmmm, the president didn’t like that. Lois Lerner, though, heck, she was laughing all the way to the bank! She’s still laughing. She’s collecting her taxpayer-paid federal pension still, while the Obama Administration continues to obstruct and stonewall any investigation trying to get to the bottom of this and stop this corruption in the IRS. And now we found out that her lost e-mails, well they may not have been lost after all.  (Yeah, I mentioned that up above.) Eh what a shock. At this point nothing should surprise us about the IRS, or the Department of Justice."

"Nah the Obama administration in general. I do not know how these bureaucrats, these politicians, how do they sleep at night?" (Okay how many of us would like to ask Sarah Palin that very question?)

From there Palin launches into a plea to her six viewers that they help to elect and "honorable" Commander-in-Chief who will uphold the oath of office.

You know she's going to scuff up her red, while, and blue pumps if she keeps kicking those dead horses.

Apparently Palin failed to read the results of Darrell Issa's witch hunt investigation  which came out in December of 2014, and which essentially said the following: 

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. 

After that everybody pretty much moved on to the next scandal du jour, which right now is Hillary Clinton's e-mails. 

So I don't know how Palin got caught in a time warp, but she is currently attempting to drum up outrage over a nothing scandal, that never amounted to anything, and that nobody even remembers anymore.

"Remember Lois Lerner? You remember Lois Lerner." No, no they don't.

Of course this video comes from our friends at Wonkette who also had this to say:


In one of her three new videos this week — seven minutes and 34 seconds of total run time, for those keeping score at home — Sarah Palin decided to squawk about Lois Lerner, because apparently that horse is not yet dead and requires further beating. 

Wow, seven minutes and 34 seconds of video a week. That must be that work ethic that Palin keeps bragging about.

I wonder how many subscribers are still sending her money for this lazy, watered down, trip through memory lane?

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.

Benghazi might not be over as an issue in 2016 after all. At least not if Rand Paul has anything to say about it.

Courtesy of The Hill:  

Paul, a likely 2016 presidential contender, criticizes potential rival Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of State during the attacks, and vows to seek the truth about Benghazi. 

"This new Benghazi ‘intelligence’ report is little more than a C.Y.A. attempt designed to protect incompetent politicians and government agents at the expense of justice for the victims of September 11, 2012," Paul writes in an op-ed for Breitbart, a conservative website, using an acronym for "cover your ass." 

The report in question was issued by the House Intelligence Committee before Thanksgiving, and counters several claims made by some Republicans critical of the Obama administration's handling of the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi. 

The report found that "there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks," "no evidence" of a stand down order to U.S. personnel responding to the assault and no CIA operation to secretly ship arms from Benghazi to Syria. 

Paul expresses skepticism at the report’s findings.

Now this is important because lately Rand Paul has been working pretty hard to portray himself as far less wingnutty than we know him to be. (Remember Paul has a fifteen year relationship with professional lunatic Alex Jones, and was once a frequent guest on his radio show.)

So for Paul to ignore the fact that this is just the latest of several investigations into Benghazi, all of which turned up no evidence of malfeasance on the part of the White House, nor any attempt to launch a coverup.

Now personally I expected certain individual to speak out against these findings, and so they have including Senator Lindsey Graham ("Full of crap!"), former Congressman Allen West, and various other Right Wing types. However I thought that Rand Paul was attempting to resist the conspiratorial whispers from the voices in his head and continue straightening his hairpiece and trying to play the grownup.

However I believe I may have given him too muhc credit. Take a look at how he justifies his reticence in accepting the findings of the report: 

"None of these accusations contain even a modicum of truth?" he asked. 

He points to a Fox News report that U.S. security personnel said the top CIA officer in Benghazi prevented them from responding faster, and to multiple articles on arms smuggling from Libya to Syria. 

"The Obama Administration has tried to paint members of Congress who ask these questions as somehow being extreme or crazy — and perhaps the House Intelligence Committee will now follow suit," Paul writes. "But remember, this is the same administration that called the investigation into the IRS scandal a product of a 'conspiracy theory.' "

So to support his faith that there really is a Benghazi scandal, despite the fact that his has been debunked, Paul turns to the IRS "scandal," which has also been debunked.

Awesome plan.

The GOP's greatest Obamacare nightmare has arrived.

Courtesy of TPM:  

The politics of the health care law have undergone a sea change since its disastrous rollout last fall, when many conservative operatives were salivating at the prospect of a GOP wave in the midterm elections due to an Obamacare "train wreck." 

But the train never wrecked. The law rebounded, surpassing its signups goal and withstanding a flurry of attacks. The issue seems to have mostly lost its power as a weapon against Democrats, and a growing number of Republican governors — even in conservative states — are warming to a core component of Obamacare, the Medicaid expansion. 

To get a sense of why this is worrying for Republicans in the long run, look no further than conservative strategist Bill Kristol's 1993 memo — "Defeating President Clinton's Health Care Proposal" — warning that reform would paint Democrats as "the generous protector of middle-class interests" and strike a "punishing blow" to the GOP's anti-government ideology. 

"But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse — much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for 'security' on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government," Kristol wrote. 

In other words, the real fear back then was that health care reform would succeed.

And now, thanks to Obama, it has.  

Two decades later, Kristol's prophecy is haunting Republicans. Obamacare has provided a lifeline by providing coverage to 8 million people on the exchanges, 7 million under Medicaid expansion and 5 million who bought insurance outside the exchanges but benefit from new regulations like the coverage guarantee for individuals with preexisting conditions. Even Republicans in deeply conservative states are suggesting that the popular new benefits cannot be taken away, even if the Obamacare brand still struggles.

The Republicans pinned all of their hopes on using Obamacare to attack the Democrats who voted for it, and defeat them in 2014.

But now with that hope dashed to the rocks of the Obamacare success, what is left in their quiver?

Jobs? Nope their getting better.

Immigration? Nope the President is tabling that until after the midterms.

Benghazi? The IRS "scandal?" Fast and Furious?

Nope, nope and nope.

Those are all bullshit and really only reflect on the President anyhow.

So exactly HOW are the Republicans supposed to retake the Senate in 2014?

The IRS is about to start taxing churches that engage in electioneering. And here you thought the conservatives were upset about the so-called "IRS scandal."

Courtesy of Christian News:  

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has reached a settlement with a prominent atheist organization, agreeing to crack down churches and religious groups for infringements of its prohibition against ‘electioneering.’ 

As previously reported, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, sued the IRS in 2012, asserting that many non-profit religious organizations have been “blatantly and deliberately flaunting … electioneering restrictions,” but the government has not enforced its rules pertaining to the matter. 

According to the IRS website, “Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. The prohibition applies to all campaigns including campaigns at the federal, state and local level. Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.” 

However, while candidates may not be promoted or opposed, churches and ministries that obtain 501 (c)(3) status may speak out on political and moral issues and/or generally encourage others to vote. 

“Under federal tax law, section 501(c)(3) organizations may take positions on public policy issues, including issues that divide candidates in an election for public office,” the IRS outlines. “However, section 501(c)(3) organizations must avoid any issue advocacy that functions as political campaign intervention. Even if a statement does not expressly tell an audience to vote for or against a specific candidate, an organization delivering the statement is at risk of violating the political campaign intervention prohibition if there is any message favoring or opposing a candidate.”

Well damn!

If you are like me you undoubtedly think this kind of thing should have been happening for years now, but I think we know that the Religious Right is going to lose its collective mind.

The conservatives are already on the warpath against the IRS, and this will surely push them over the edge, with renewed calls to abolish the agency.

All in all it is going to be great theater, though I wonder if they will actually ever be able to remove a church's tax exempt status without rioting in the streets?

And since this comes as a result of efforts from an Atheist organization? Well they really could not hate us anymore than they already do anyway.

Mediaite reminds us who else had missing emails besides former IRS official Lois Lerner.

Sarah Palin at Newsmax dinner.

So all of you undoubtedly remember that last week Palin unleashed a nasty little Facebook post comparing the missing IRS e-mails to the 18 minute gap during the Watergate investigation.

Well that reminded the folks at Mediaite of a little something:

Perhaps Palin forgot what it was like to be the subject of a similar investigation exactly three years earlier after her office released her emails to the press. On June 13, 2011, the Anchorage Daily News reported that “Nearly a month of former Gov. Sarah Palin’s emails are missing from the documents released to media organizations last week, a gap that raises questions about what other emails might also be missing from what’s being nationally reported as her record as Alaska governor.” 

According to the documents Palin’s office provided, she sent no official emails from between December 8, 2006 and December 29, 2006, in other words her first full month in office. As the paper put it, “That means zero emails during a period during which, among other things, Palin put out her proposed state budget, appointed an attorney general, killed the contract for a road out of Juneau and vetoed a bill that sought to block state public employee benefits to same-sex couples.” 

The Anchorage Daily News that the gap was due to Palin’s preponderance to use a personal Yahoo email account instead of the official state account, thereby allowing her to hide certain communication from public view. The first email Palin was on record as sending came on January 2, 2007, one month after she took office. 

You know I think a couple of you brought that up last week as well.

And Mediaite is right that once again Palin is demonstrating a staggering amount of hypocrisy, especially when you remember that she created that Yahoo account specifically to keep her e-mails from being subpoenaed in case of an investigation, which kind of makes it seem that she was always planning to engage in some unscrupulous behaviors even at the very beginning of her first term.

I am sure that Richard Nixon would beam with pride at her deceptive activities and attempts to outmaneuver those who were supposed to keep her on the straight and narrow.

(More Newsmax photos here.)

Fox News finds out that there is at least one public television in America where their network is NOT playing 24 hours a day, freak out about it and compare the non-viewers to POW's.

Courtesy of News Corpse: 

A local TV station in Fresno, California did a rather trivial story about a waiting room at a Veterans Administration pharmacy. The story concerned an allegation that Fox News had been banned from the televisions at the facility. So the reporter sent one of his veteran buddies into the pharmacy to pretend to want to view Fox News. Whereupon they discovered that the channel was not accessible. 

That set off a flurry of outrage over at the Fox News mothership. They aired panicky segments on this massive censorship plot on multiple programs, including America’s News Headquarters, The O’Reilly Factor, and Fox & Friends. In each case they characterized the situation as a blatant attempt to silence Fox News due to their reporting on the scandalous backlogs and corrupt management at some V.A. hospitals. The only thing wrong with these reports was – well – everything. 

First of all, there was no attempt to censor Fox News. A spokesperson for the facility made it clear that that the channel was removed because of patient concerns. At least some of the patients explicitly objected to Fox News and the resultant controversy created an uncomfortable environment. 

“It was just a misunderstanding. We’ve had a lot of veterans with diverse personalities. A lot of veterans complaining about one news station or the other, so the intent was really to be fair and equitable and take all stations off. [...] We’ve had several incidents of veterans actually arguing, fighting over the different news stations. Some wanted to watch news, some did not. Others wanted to watch specific stations.”

This kid of reminds me of the so-called "IRS Scandal" where the IRS dealt with the influx of applications by 501 (c) (4) organizations by flagging those that seemed suspicious for later review, which the Right Wing distorted to make it appear as if it were an attack on them.

In this case all cable news stations get removed, but the only one to play the victim is the one that promotes Right Wing ideologies.

Notice a pattern?

News Corpse then goes on to explain that there was no reason to single Fox News out over reports on problems with the VA, as they did no more than any other cable news network. (And besides CNN broke the story, NOT Fox News.)

But what was REALLY troubling was HOW Fox played the victim:

Particularly disturbing was the framing of this phony whining about censorship by the Fox & Friends crew, where co-host Brian Kilmeade packaged the segment as “Abandoned Brothers.” They actually employed language generally reserved for prisoners of war or fallen soldiers on the battlefield to describe people waiting to get their prescriptions filled in a downtown Fresno drug store who weren’t able to watch a gaggle of Fox News blondes in short skirts mutilate journalism.

Kind of icky. Especially considering how they tried and convicted Sgt. Bergdahl, an actual POW, without bothering to get the whole story about his capture and subsequent release.

After producing 750,000 documents for the Republican IRS witch hunt at a cost to taxpayers of 10 million dollars, it is revealed that some of Lois Lerner's e-mails were lost when her computer crashed, which immediately inspires Sarah Palin and the Right Wing to compare it to Watergate. No, seriously.

Courtesy of Sarah Palin's Twitter page:  

Remember the 18 minute gap in Nixon’s White House tapes during the Watergate scandal? Now Obama’s IRS top dog claims a communications gap of 1,052,000 minutes. Hmm. Wonder if the press will recognize similarities. Maybe a smidgen? The IRS claims it just “lost” two years worth of email records sent to and from the central figure in their harassment of conservatives scandal. Try claiming that next tax season: “Oops-a-daisy, computer crash, all records gone, so... just trust me on what I claim I owe you, IRS.” You know, Obama Administration, at this point why not just say the dog ate it? Watch now as the Administration tosses us a bone while the public demands Obama find those evaporated emails. And about that promise of transparency? About that claim to be “The Most Transparent Administration Ever”? All bark, no bite. 

- Sarah Palin

Just in case you are not up to date on the recent Right Wing conspiracy theories, this is what Palin is  gnashing her teeth over:  

Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy. 

The IRS said Lois Lerner's computer crashed in 2011, wiping out an untold number of emails that were being sought by congressional investigators. The investigators want to see all of Lerner's emails from 2009 to 2013 as part of their probe into the way agents handled applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups.

Now if you are absolutely convinced that this administration is the most corrupt in the history of presidential administrations, this might seem like a smoking gun to prove that everything you hear on Right Wing news sites is real and the End Times are nigh.

However if you read a little further down into the AP article you discover this: 

The IRS said technicians went to great lengths trying to recover data from Lerner's computer in 2011. In emails provided by the IRS, technicians said they sent the computer to a forensic lab run by the agency's criminal investigations unit. But to no avail. 

The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from the 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. The agency said it pieced together the emails from the computers of 82 other IRS employees.

So while some are apparently missing, 24,000 of them have been made available for Cotton Mather and his Inquisition to sift through with a fine tooth comb.

And then there's this: 

The IRS said in a statement that more than 250 IRS employees have been working to assist congressional investigations, spending nearly $10 million to produce more than 750,000 documents. 

Overall, the IRS said it is producing a total of 67,000 emails to and from Lerner, covering the period from 2009 to 2013.

So to be clear, the IRS has spent ten million dollars  of taxpayer money, to produce 67,000 e-mails and 750,000 documents, on a "scandal" that has already been proved to be bullshit, and THIS is what Sarah Palin and the Right Wing feel is comparable to Watergate?

Obamacare now working too well for Republicans to use against Democrats. You know what that means, Benghazi time!

Courtesy of The Week:  

After pounding Democrats on ObamaCare for the last several years, Republicans have a big problem. The law is working and their message is falling flat. 

This was confirmed again by testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday in which health-care-industry executives surprised Republican lawmakers. They said the law has not led to a government takeover of the industry, that most enrollees are paying their premiums as required, and that premiums are not certain to go up next year as Republicans claim. 

With more than 8 million people enrolled in health plans through the ObamaCare exchanges, many Republicans know it's much harder to repeal the law now than it might have been several years ago. And they tried more than 50 times already without success.

The Republicans of course were hoping to use Obamacare to defeat the Democrats in 2014.

So what do they do now?

Well it's back to the scandal trough for another bite at the IRS pseudo scandal which they are pursuing by voting to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt.

And of course by going full bore after the Benghazi issue, which has now moved to the forefront of their attention now that Obamacare has refused to cooperate by being the disaster that they desperately need this election cycle.

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.