MARK LEVIN: “Yes, we’re going to cover the ins and outs of this — we’re going to come into the weeds, but folks, it’s time to kill the IRS. That’s the bottom line.
This agency has been corrupt since its founding. And the bigger the government gets, the more corrupt it gets, the more ubiquitous it gets. And I don’t just mean political partisanship and cronyism, I mean its abuses…
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Photo Credit: Joe MabelBy Fox News. The Justice Department temporarily lost track of two known or suspected terrorists who were in the witness protection program — and allowed others on the no-fly list to board commercial flights — according to a watchdog report which fueled criticism of the administration.
“This is gross mismanagement — pure and simple,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
The allegations were made in an inspector general report released Thursday. The report found agencies in the department did not properly share the new identities of some in witness protection — the lapse meant those new names were not updated in the no-fly list.
“Therefore, it was possible for known or suspected terrorists to fly on commercial airplanes in or over the United States and evade one of the government’s primary means of identifying and tracking terrorists’ movements and actions,” the report said. The report said “some” in the program were able to do just that.
The inspector general’s office also said the U.S. Marshals Service, as of last July, was “unable to locate” two former participants who were known or suspected terrorists, and that they were thought to be outside the U.S. The report said the department “did not definitively know” how many known or suspected terrorists had been admitted into the program either. Read more from this story HERE.
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How Did U.S. Marshalls Lose Suspected Terrorists in Witness Protection?
By J.K. Trotter. This is not the good news Attorney General Eric Holder was likely hoping for. A public memorandum issued on Thursday by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General indicates that in July 2012 the U.S. Marshal Service, the federal law enforcement agency of the DoJ of Tommy Lee Jones notoriety, was unable to locate two “known or suspected terrorists” participating in the Witness Security Program, the well-known protection program (of Goodfellas fame) administered by the Marshal Service. “Through its investigative efforts,” the Inspector General writes, the agency “concluded that one individual was and the other individual was believed to be residing outside the United States.”
The mishap was apparently one of many incidents where the agency inadvertently allowed protected witnesses, who were also identified as “known or suspected terrorists,” to travel freely out of and within the United States. Indeed, the agency is only beginning to track how many witnesses have been tagged as such. From the inspector’s report:
We found that the Department did not definitively know how many known or suspected terrorists were admitted into the [Witness Security Program]. The Department has idenitifed a small but significant number of USMS WITSEC Program participants as known or suspected terrorists. As of March 2013, the Deparment is continuing to review its more than 18,000 WITSEC case files to determine whether additional known or suspected terrorists have been admitted into the program.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: APThe Senate rejected an effort Wednesday to expand the use of firearms on some of the nation’s most frequently visited federal lands, handing gun control advocates a modest success.
The measure, backed by the National Rifle Association, represented one of two efforts Wednesday by gun rights supporters to take the offensive in Congress. Across the Capitol, a Republican-run House committee voted to make it easier for some veterans with mental difficulties to get firearms.
The rejected Senate proposal would have let people use guns for any legal purpose on lands managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees nearly 12 million acres that abound in lakes, rivers, campsites and hiking trails. Currently, guns on those properties are limited to activities like target-range shooting and hunting, and weapons must be unloaded while being carried to those activities.
Senators voted 56-43 for the proposal by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., but it fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage.
Eleven Democrats and one Democratic-leaning independent voted for Coburn’s plan, underscoring the party’s divisions on the gun issue.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: APPresident Obama insisted Thursday that he knew nothing about the internal investigation into the IRS’ practice of singling out conservative groups for special scrutiny before it was made public, as he moved to name a new director for the embattled agency.
“I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the (inspector general) report” beforehand, Obama said Thursday.
The president, though, did not say whether he was previously aware of the IRS’ actions, which allegedly started as early as 2010, well before the inspector general’s office began to investigate. Republican lawmakers were inquiring about the alleged targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS more than a year ago.
Obama, who spoke during a press conference alongside the Turkish prime minister, focused his remarks specifically on the IG report, noting that he wouldn’t have caught wind of that report since those investigations are typically kept under wraps. He reiterated that he found the agency’s actions “unacceptable” and sought to fix the problem “the minute” he found out about it.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has previously said no one in the White House knew about the practice. The comments were the latest effort by the White House to tamp down the controversy.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy John Parkinson and Steven Portnoy. The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.
Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.
As the House voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer. Read more from this story HERE.
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IRS Grilled Tea Party Groups on Relationship to True the Vote
By Brandon Darby. At least two Texas Tea Party groups have reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) questioned them on their relationship to the election integrity organization True the Vote and its parent group, the King Street Patriots Tea Party.
True the Vote was created by the Houston-based King Street Patriots Tea Party group, and both groups were founded and led by Catherine Engelbrecht.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Robert Gonzalez of the Houston, TX area Clear Lake Tea Party revealed that he and his wife Lisa received the same type of probing and scrutinizing questions as other Tea Party and conservative groups, but theirs came with a specific question about one of Engelbrecht’s groups.
“The IRS wanted to know what our relationship was to ‘King City Patriots,’ but it was clear they meant Catherine Engelbrecht’s ‘King Street Patriots,’” said Gonzalez. “My wife Lisa founded this Tea Party, and of course we knew Catherine; everyone does. But to be specifically questioned by the federal government about her? If we had not previously known her, we would have thought she was of questionable character or something by them asking that,” he added.
Julie McCarty, president of the NE Tarrant Tea Party, another Tea Party leader from the Dallas, TX area, said she was also probed by the IRS about one of Engelbrecht’s efforts. “In the probing questions we received from the IRS, there was a question specifically asking us about our relationship to one of Catherine’s and True the Vote’s efforts named Verify the Recall,” said McCarty. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AFPBlogger and professor Daniel Drezner tweeted over the weekend: “So, in all, this has been a pretty crappy week for people who dislike conspiracy theories.” Well, yes.
The week started out with President Obama disparaging those who worried about tyranny as conspiracy theorists, and telling college students to reject them:
“Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.”
The rest of the week consisted of scandal after scandal, suggesting that maybe our government is . . . a sham with which Obama, at least, can’t be trusted.
Generating the most bipartisan outrage were the revelations that IRS agents went after Tea Party groups for political reasons. And — despite repeated denials to Congress — it turns out that senior IRS officials knew as far back as 2011. As the editors of The Washington Post commented:
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Breitbart In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) unloaded on Attorney General Eric Holder, offering up the possibility that the nation’s top law enforcement official may turn on President Barack Obama and shed light on one or several of the many scandals facing the White House.
“Here’s your chance, Eric: You can throw the president under the bus, too, just like he’s going to throw you under the bus,” Gosar, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in the phone interview.
Gosar has previously called for Holder’s resignation. He introduced a resolution, which attracted many cosponsors, demanding Holder’s immediate resignation as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. He told Breitbart News he is currently “pushing” his resolution calling for Holder’s immediate resignation “hard.”
“We want his job,” Gosar said. “We have had renewed interest already.”
Calls for Holder’s resignation have resurfaced in recent days, and mainstream media outlets have come to call Obama’s top cop “embattled.” A report from the Chicago Sun Times suggests that President Obama is considering naming Deval Patrick, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, to replace Holder. Patrick’s name has been mentioned for other cabinet positions, including Attorney General.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Life NewsThe name Kermit Gosnell has become familiar to most Americans because of the gruesome abortions and infanticides that resulted a jury finding him guilty on three counts of first-degree murder. The mainstream media either ignored Gosnell’s murder trial or barely reported on it.
This week, LifeNews exposed a second Kermit Gosnell — Douglas Karpen — who, like the Philadelphia-based abortion practitioner, is also killing babies born alive after botched abortions. Unlike Gosnell, who killed babies by jamming medical scissors into their necks at his Houston abortion clinic, former employees of Karpen testify he goes one shocking step further, he kills the babies wit his bare hands by twisting their necks execution style.
Thus, far, the mainstream media hasn’t touched the Karpen expose’ outside of Texas-based news outlets, according to Google and Yahoo News searches.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Reuters Hundreds of illegal immigrants with criminal records were released earlier this year as the Obama administration prepared for budget cuts, according to newly released data that challenged claims the program involved “low-risk” individuals.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement released the figures to two top senators, after a three-month delay and under the threat of congressional subpoenas.
Of the 2,226 detainees that were released in February, the department revealed, “622 have been identified as having some type of criminal conviction.”
A statement from Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., who received the stats, said 32 of them had multiple felony convictions. The department then “re-apprehended” 24 of those, the senators said, after realizing the “seriousness” of their crimes.
McCain called for those responsible to be punished.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Daily Caller The Republican-controlled House voted Thursday to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.
With implementation of Obamacare set to begin later this year, the vote is largely symbolic. The Senate is highly unlikely to even take up a vote on repeal.
The House voted for repeal 229-195, with votes cast almost entirely down party lines. Two Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of repeal: Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah and Rep. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina.
This is the third time the House has voted to fully repeal Obamacare, and there have been a number of other votes to repeal parts of it — 37 votes in total.
Boehner explained last week that he was holding the vote again because new members had been asking for the opportunity to vote on repeal.
Read more from this story HERE.