BREAKING: Oversight Committee Votes to Hold Lois Lerner in Contempt of Congress

Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

After five hours of debate, the House Oversight Committee has voted along party lines 21-12 to hold former IRS Director of Tax Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress. The charges come after Lerner failed to answer questions about the IRS targeting of conservative groups and after failure to cooperate with the Committee investigation into the targeting.

Before the vote, Democrats repeatedly defended the rights of Lois Lerner, arguing she did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights even though she made a statement before declaring she would not answer questions last year and again in early 2014. Republicans argued Lerner did in fact waive her Fifth Amendment rights due to making a statement and defended the rights of taxpayers who were targeted by her organization.

The contempt charge will now go to the full House for a vote. A date for when that vote will happen has not been set. If the House votes to hold her in contempt, the charge will then go to the court system. Yesterday the House Ways and Means Committee referred Lerner to the Department of Justice for criminal charges.

Read more from this story HERE.

ARREST HER: Republican Rep – ‘Let’s Hope the Attorney General Does His Job’

Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

By Joel Gehrke.

House Ways and Means Committee Republicans aren’t ruling out the use of the chamber’s “inherent contempt” authority if Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to act on the panel’s accusations against former IRS official Lois Lerner.

The committee voted Wednesday to seek an investigation of whether Lerner violated federal law by using her power to ensure Right-leaning groups were targeted for extra scrutiny by the agency, giving misleading information during a probe of the matter by the Treasury Department’s inspector general and using her personal email to conduct official business, which could have resulted in the disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.

“The Ways and Means Committee, led by Chairman [Dave] Camp [R-Mich.], has conducted a serious and thorough investigation of the IRS, uncovering abuses and criminal acts that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of the referral. “As I’ve said, if Lois Lerner continues to refuse to testify, then the House will hold her in contempt. And we will continue to shine the light on the administration’s abusive actions and use every tool at our disposal to expose the truth and ensure the American people get the answers they deserve.”

Among those tools is the House’s “inherent contempt” authority under the Constitution, which was initially exercised in 1795 during the First Congress and on multiple occasions thereafter. Lerner could be held until January 2015 when a new Congress is seated, which could issue another subpoena and throw her in the clink again if she still balks at testifying.

Read more from this story HERE.

________________________________________________________________________________

Timeline of Targeting: The Evidence Mounts Against the IRS’s Lois Lerner

By Matthew Clark.

Today, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to recommend criminal charges against Lois Lerner.

The Committee’s letter to the Justice Department documents in detail the nefarious character of Lois Lerner’s actions.

The Committee pointed to three specific violations of federal law:

– “Lerner used her position to improperly influence agency action against only conservative organizations, denying these groups due process and equal protection rights under the law. She showed extreme bias and prejudice towards conservative groups. The letter lays out evidence on how Lerner targeted conservative organization Crossroads GPS as well as other right-leaning groups, while turning a blind eye to similarly-organized liberal groups, like Priorities USA.

– “Lerner impeded official investigations by providing misleading statements in response to questions from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

– “Lerner risked exposing, and may actually have disclosed, confidential taxpayer information, in apparent violation of Internal Revenue Code section 6103 by using her personal email to conduct official business.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Holder on Gohmert Exchange: ‘What Attorney General Has Ever Had to Deal With That Kind of Treatment?’

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Gary Cameron

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Gary Cameron

Eric Holder ventured off script in a speech Wednesday to the National Action Network, the organization led by MSNBC host and recently-exposed FBI informant Al Sharpton.

“I’m pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms,” said Holder at the conference of black activists, before improvising “even in the face, even in the face, of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly, and divisive adversity.”

“If you don’t believe that, if you look at the way, forget about me, forget about me, if you look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House Committee, it had nothing to do with me, forget that, what attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”

Holder’s remarks — not contained in the text of the speech published at the website for the Department of Justice — were in reference to a terse exchange he had Tuesday with Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert in a House Judiciary Committee hearing about documents related to a terror trial. (RELATED: Eric Holder explodes at GOP rep: ‘You don’t want to go there buddy!’)

Read more from this story HERE.

Former NASA Scientist, Global Warming Advocate, Now Says It’s All Nonsense

Green Guru James Lovelock on Climate Change: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess’ – Lovelock Reverses Himself on Global Warming

By Marc Morano.

Green guru and geophysicist James Lovelock, considered one of the pioneering scientists of the 20th century, has officially turned his back on man-made global warming claims and the green movement’s focus on renewable energy. Lovelock conceived the Gaia theory back in the 1970s, describing the Earth’s biosphere as “an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis.”

In an April 3, 2014 BBC TV interview, Lovelock has come out swinging at his fellow environmentalists, accusing the new UN IPCC global warming report of plagiarizing his now retracted climate claims from his 2006 book ‘The Revenge of Gaia.’

“The last IPCC report is very similar to the (now retracted) statements I made in my book about 8 years ago, called The Revenge of Gaia. It’s almost as if they’ve copied it,” Lovelock told BBC Newsnight television program on April 3.

BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman noted to Lovelock during the April 3 program: ”Sure. But you then, after publishing these apocalyptic predictions, you then retracted them.”

The newly skeptical Lovelock responded: ”Well, that’s my privilege. You see, I’m an independent scientist. I’m not funded by some government department or commercial body or anything like that. If I make a mistake, then I can go public with it. And you have to, because it is only by making mistakes that you can move ahead.”

Read more from this story HERE.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Deepening Divide Over Climate Change Sparks Fierce Debate

By Doug McKelway.

In the climate change debate, believers and skeptics alike have vastly different opinions based on widely divergent facts.

That was illustrated by Wednesday’s release of “Climate Change Reconsidered II,” a study by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, which draws its conclusions from thousands of peer-reviewed papers, and which finds global warming to be an entirely manageable, if not beneficial, change in the climate.

The report stands in stark contrast to the U.N.’s latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of March 31, which predicts “severe impacts” from climate change, but which was toned down from earlier IPCC reports that predicted an array of global catastrophes resulting from the proliferation of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

The IPCC reports have, through the years, stood as the unassailable foundation for the Obama administration regulatory policy on global warming. “The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact,” Obama said in his 2014 State of the Union Address.

“The dirty little secret is , we are now at 17 years and 8 months of no global warming,” says Roger Pilon, Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Cato Institute. “Their models have failed year in and year out, ” he says of the scientists who comprise the 97 percent consensus the administration frequently cites.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawsuit: New York’s SAFE Act Allows Police to Seize Firearms Without a Warrant

New York’s hastily-passed gun control law “mandates that law enforcement personnel seize, without a warrant, probable cause or hearing” some firearms, a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York’s Eastern District alleges.

The lawsuit was filed in March by the La Reddola, Lester & Associates law firm on behalf of Gabriel Razzano. As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the lawsuit claims the registry process is “essentially secret and results in a mandatory, warrantless Penal Law 400 gun removal visit from police.”

A memorandum of law requesting preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order in regards to the law outlines five key points:

Photo Credit: La Reddola, Lester & Associates

Photo Credit: La Reddola, Lester & Associates

Read more from this story HERE.

24-Injured In Stabbing At High School

Photo Credit: Bill Rehkop f /NewsRadio

Photo Credit: Bill Rehkop f /NewsRadio

At least 24-people have been injured in a stabbing at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville.

The attack occurred in crowded hallways just minutes before the start of school.

Westmoreland County updated the victim count late Wednesday evening, saying 24-people had been injured. (21-students stabbed, 1-security guard stabbed, and 2-others injured)

At least five students were critically wounded, including a boy who was on a ventilator after a knife pierced his liver, missing his heart and aorta by only millimeters, doctors said. An injured school officer was discharged.

A school security guard called in the stabbing at 7:13 a.m.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Employees Accused of Donning Pro-Obama Gear, Urging Callers to Vote for Him

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

IRS workers in several offices have been openly supporting President Obama, including by donning pro-Obama paraphernalia and urging callers to reelect the president in 2012, according to allegations contained in a new government watchdog report.

A report by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, released Wednesday, cited accusations that workers at a Dallas IRS office may have violated federal law by wearing pro-Obama items like shirts, stickers and buttons. The Hatch Act forbids Executive Branch workers from engaging in partisan political activity.

The report comes as two House committees move to take action against former IRS official Lois Lerner regarding the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

The report, further fueling allegations of bias at the agency, claimed that several accusations were made against the Dallas office claiming pro-Obama gear was “commonplace” there. Employees allegedly wore Obama shirts, buttons and stickers to work and had Obama screensavers on their IRS computers.

The report said it was unclear whether this activity happened before or after the 2012 election, but an advisory was issued to Dallas employees that such activity was prohibited.

Read more from this story HERE.

Veteran Tells Congress He Was Handed a ‘Death Sentence’ by VA Hospital

Photo Credit: AP Photo / David Goldman

Photo Credit: AP Photo / David Goldman

Barry Coates knows he will die soon and thus become another preventable patient death resulting from botched care at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.

In November 2010, Coates sought treatment for severe abdominal pain and rectal bleeding at a VA hospital in Hartsville, S.C.

The doctor recommended a colonoscopy to determine if his suffering resulted from early stages of colorectal cancer.

For more than a year, Coates faced delay after delay, churning through one doctor after another until finally the routine medical test was performed in December 2011.

It showed he had advanced colorectal cancer, which could have been treated more effectively if had been detected that first day.

Read more from this story HERE.

Miami Police Officer Charged with Helping Caribbean Drug Ring

Photo Credit: Andy Rain / EPA

Photo Credit: Andy Rain / EPA

A high-ranking police officer was due to appear in a federal court in Miami on Wednesday to face allegations that he led a double life as a fixer for a violent Caribbean drugs gang.

Ralph Mata, a lieutenant in the internal affairs division of the Miami-Dade police department, smoothed the passage for large quantities of cocaine to be smuggled into the US from the Dominican Republic in pallets of bananas, according to the indictment against him.

Mata, nicknamed the Milk Man by FBI investigators, provided weapons and sensitive law enforcement information to his paymasters, the complaint alleges, and received a $10,000 Rolex watch and many thousands more dollars in cash for regularly transporting drugs proceeds to and from the Caribbean.

He also came up with a plot to murder a rival gang’s leaders using hired assassins dressed in police uniforms, it is claimed, although the plan was never carried out.

Mata was due to appear before federal magistrate judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes on Wednesday afternoon to hear felony charges of aiding and abetting a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, conspiring to distribute cocaine and engaging in transactions derived from specified unlawful activity.

Read more from this story HERE.

Heartbleed: Hundreds of Thousands of Servers at Risk from Catastrophic Bug

Photo Credit: Codenomicon

Photo Credit: Codenomicon

Hundreds of thousands of web and email servers worldwide have a software flaw that lets attackers steal the cryptographic keys used to secure online commerce and web connections, experts say.

They could also leak personal information to hackers when people carry out searches or log into email.

The bug, called “Heartbleed”, affects web servers running a package called OpenSSL.

Among the systems confirmed to be affected are Imgur, OKCupid, Eventbrite, and the FBI’s website, all of which run affected versions of OpenSSL. Attacks using the vulnerability are already in the wild: one lets a hacker look at the cookies of the last person to visit an affected server, revealing personal information. Connections to Google are not vulnerable, researchers say.

SSL is the most common technology used to secure websites. Web servers that use it securely send an encryption key to the visitor; that is then used to protect all other information coming to and from the server.

Read more from this story HERE.