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ACLJ Chief Counsel: Very Possible IRS Targeting Impacted 2012 Election (+video)

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Photo Credit: APBy Tony Lee.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice, said it was “very well possible” that the IRS’s targeting and harassment of conservatives and Tea Party groups impacted the 2012 presidential election between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Testifying before a House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs hearing Thursday to discuss the IRS’s targeting of conservatives, Sekulow, whose organization is representing some Tea Party groups that were targeted, was asked by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) whether he felt that the targeting changed or impacted the 2012 election.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Not a Smidgen of Corruption? Cleta Mitchell Rattles Off A Litany Of IRS Criminal Offenses

By Debra Heine.

As I was watching the explosive IRS targeting hearing, this morning, I was reminded of Speaker Boehner’s words from eight and a half months ago. “My question isn’t about who is going to resign. My question is who’s going to jail over this scandal?”

Since then, the Obama administration has gone from an initial “outrage” phase to a “phony scandal” phase, to the current old news/”what difference does it make” phase in which they think enough time has passed that they can push IRS rules on 501 (C) (4) groups that codify into law the what the IRS did to target Obama’s political opponents. And now the president feels comfortable enough to say, there’s not “a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS scandal that targeted his political opponents. That a president would say such a thing while there is an ongoing DOJ investigation, (albeit a sham investigation) should set anyone’s spidey sense a-tingling, I don’t care who you are.

“This scandal is not over,” said Washington Attorney Cleta Mitchell, who’s representing about a dozen of the targeted tea party groups. She rattled off a number of criminal offenses that have been committed in what she called, “this very ugly episode”:

“The lying has not stopped. There are lies upon lies in this ugly episode. The Commissioner of the IRS lied to Congress in March 2012 when he said there was absolutely no targeting, Mitchell declared, making sure to note that, “lying to Congress is a crime.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: CNS News Witness at IRS Hearing: ‘I Will Not Retreat; I Will Not Surrender’

By Melanie Hunter.

King Street Patriots founder Catherine Engelbrecht, one of many conservatives who claim they were unfairly targeted by the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status, told Congress Thursday that she is “more determined ever than before to stand before you and to all of America and say that I will not retreat.”

“Know this,” she said, “my experiences at the hands of this government in the last five years have made me more determined ever than before to stand before you and to all of America and say that I will not retreat. I will not surrender. I will not be intimidated, and I will not ask for permission to exercise my constitutional rights.”

Engelbrecht said shortly after founding and leading True to Vote and King Street Patriots, she was visited by law enforcement agencies and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), even though outside of filing their tax returns, she and her husband never dealt with any government agency in nearly two decades of running their small business.

“We had never been audited. We had never been investigated, but all that changed upon submitting applications for the non-profit statuses of True the Vote and King Street,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Targeted Tea Party Groups in 2012 Election, Now Apologizes (+video)

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Photo Credit: APBy BYRON TAU, LAUREN FRENCH and TARINI PARTI. The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday to conservative political groups for giving their tax documents extra scrutiny — validating the worst fears of Republican activists who have long accused the Obama administration of politicizing the process.

Roughly 75 groups were singled out using words like “tea party” or “patriot” in tax documents, Lois Lerner, who is responsible for overseeing tax-exempt groups, said on a hastily arranged conference call Friday afternoon.

The White House said Friday that the IRS inspector general is investigating the matter.

“What we know about this is of concern,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said, emphasizing that the IRS is an independent agency with only two political appointees. The agency is technically a division of the Treasury Department.

“It certainly does seem to be based on what we’ve seen to be inappropriate action that we would want to see thoroughly investigated,” Carney said. Read more from this story HERE.
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Obama’s spokesperson actually had the gall to blame the illegal targeting on a Bush IRS appointee:


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GOP blitzes Obama administration after IRS admits targeting tea party groups during election

By Alexis Levinson. Republican lawmakers are calling for a full investigation into the Internal Revenue Service after a top official revealed Friday that the agency specifically flagged tea party and conservative groups for review to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

Several Republicans voiced suspicion last year that the IRS was unduly focused on conservative groups, after several groups reported that they had been asked to fill out extensive amounts of paper work and go to great lengths to prove they were not violating their tax-exempt status.

Earlier today, ahead of a report by the inspector general for tax administration, the IRS admitted that it had targeted conservative groups for additional reviews, with an eye toward catching violations of tax-exempt status. Groups were singled out based on keywords such as “patriot” and “tea party” in their tax-exempt status applications, according to Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to the inspector general in June 2012 asking that the committee be provided with “periodic updates” on the investigation into whether the IRS was applying an inappropriate level of scrutiny to such groups.

“The Committee will aggressively follow up on the IG report and hold responsible officials accountable for this political retaliation,” reads a new statement on the oversight committee’s web site. A representative from the committee confirmed to The Daily Caller that this would include hearings, but did not give a time or schedule. Read more from this story HERE.

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‘I’m not good at math’: The IRS’ public relations disaster

By Aaron Blake. About a half-hour into a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon, senior Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner said something she will regret.

“I’m not good at math,” she confessed as she tried to summon a statistic.

Lerner clarified that she is a lawyer and not an accountant (a fair defense) but the remark instantly blew up on Twitter — an IRS official being bad at math!? — and wound up punctuating what was a torturous response to the IRS’ admission that it inappropriately targeted tea party groups.

A skeptical press corps peppered Lerner with questions, many of which she and her staff were unable or unwilling to answer. Read more from this story HERE.

Even With 70% of Hispanic Vote, Romney Still Would Have Lost

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Photo Credit: APAfter six months of mulling over November’s election results, many Republicans remain convinced that the party’s only path to future victory is to improve the GOP’s appeal to Hispanic voters. But how many Hispanic voters do Republicans need to attract before the party can again win the White House?

A lot. Start with the 2012 exit polls. The New York Times’ Nate Silver has created an interactive tool in which one can look at the presidential election results and calculate what would have happened if the racial and ethnic mix of voters had been different. The tool also allows one to project future results based on any number of scenarios in which the country’s demographic profile and voting patterns change.

In 2012, President Obama famously won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote to Mitt Romney’s 27 percent. If all other factors remained the same, how large a percentage of the Hispanic vote would Romney have had to win to capture the White House?

What if Romney had won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, the high-water mark for Republicans achieved by George W. Bush in 2004? As it turns out, if Romney had hit that Bush mark, he still would have lost, with 240 electoral votes to 298 for Obama.

But what if Romney had been able to make history and attract 50 percent of Hispanic voters? What then? He still would have been beaten, 283 electoral votes to 255.

Read more from this story HERE.

RNC to Revamp GOTV Operations

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Photo Credit: Chris Maddaloni

The Republican National Committee is moving forward with a comprehensive overhaul of its antiquated voter turnout operation, including a focus on fixing a collection of broken state parties, CQ Roll Call confirmed Friday.

The effort will be directed by the RNC’s political department, under the supervision of political director Chris McNulty and a full-time state party director — a new committee position created as part of the get-out-the-vote overhaul. The modernized national field operation will focus on improving voter registration, identification and turnout through a “bottom-up” approach that reinvigorates the party organization at the precinct, congressional district and state levels.

Under this strategy, the RNC plans to immediately reform its training program for grass-roots activists to encompass the committee’s new attention on data gathering, technology and analytics with a complete revamp of its political education department slated to conclude by May 1. Similar to President Barack Obama’s successful formula, the RNC wants to transform its GOTV into an ongoing national program that relies on “peer-to-peer” contact where people live, work, worship, learn and buy their coffee.

“This is a big initiative in which we will be simultaneously revamping our grass-roots organizing infrastructure and voter contact programs from top to bottom while integrating a minority engagement structure to work in unison toward the goal of electing more Republicans,” McNulty told CQ Roll Call. “The key to the entire grass-roots infrastructure will be working with state and county parties toward a new and exciting bottom-up precinct team structure. All of this will be driven by the new and improved data infrastructure and analytics at the RNC.”

Overhauling the RNC’s field operation was one of several recommendations included in an autopsy report of the 2012 elections that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is scheduled to unveil Monday.

Read more from this story HERE.

National Poll: Obama Approval Sinks After Reelection

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Photo Credit: John Althouse CohenFebruary 8, 2013 – Hillary Clinton Is Most Popular National Figure, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Obama Approval Sinks After Reelection.

President Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, but today the former Senator and Secretary of State is more popular, with a 61 – 34 percent favorability rating among American voters, compared to the president’s 51 – 46 percent favorability, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

President Obama has a split 46 – 45 percent job approval, according to the independent Quinnipiac (KWUIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll, down from 53 – 40 percent approval among registered voters in December, a month after his re-election. Today’s figure is closer to the president’s negative 45 – 49 percent job approval in July, in the middle of his reelection campaign, and similar to his job score for much of his first term.

Ms. Clinton’s favorability is higher than those measured for other national figures:
46 – 41 percent for Vice President Joseph Biden;
25 – 29 percent for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, with 45 percent who don’t know enough about him to form an opinion;
20 – 42 percent for House Speaker John Boehner;
27 – 15 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, with 57 percent who don’t know enough;
34 – 36 percent for U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan;
43 – 33 percent for new Secretary of State John Kerry;
14 – 18 percent for Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, with 67 percent who don’t know enough about him.

“Hillary Clinton ends her term as Secretary of State and the bruising inquiry into the Benghazi murders as easily the most popular actor on the American political stage today,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Read more from this story HERE.

Republicans Allowed Karl Rove to Mislead Them Again

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The crime: Mitt Romney’s inexplicable defeat. The suspects: everybody in the world, except the people who really deserve it.

The first obvious target, of course, is Mitt Romney himself, who managed to lose to a president with one of the worst economic records in memory. Then eyes turned to Romney’s campaign staff, which somehow could not turn a vibrant, brilliant, Cary Grant–in–the–making into the next president of the United States. Perhaps the fault lies with President Obama, who only pretended that nobody in America liked him. Or it was those tricky young people, who somehow managed to vote when everyone assumed they were too lazy to bother. Perhaps it was Nate Silver and his crazy belief in “theory” and “science.” Or the latest suspects: Martha Raddatz and Candy Crowley in the conservatory with the lead pipe.

Personally I love scapegoating as much as the next guy—was Jar Jar Binks really the only reason the Star Wars prequels were terrible?—but I can’t let them pin this one on Martha and Candy. Nor can I allow Republicans to pull an O.J.—stopping at nothing until they find the “real killers” of the 2012 campaign.

We know where they are. We know who they are. We’ve been here before. Years ago, as an escapee of the George W. Bush administration, I wrote a whole book about it. The only question is whether or not enough Republicans want to do anything to solve the problem.

This is not the first election cycle in which Republicans have been shell-shocked by reality. Six years earlier, Republicans across the country believed they would retain control of the House and Senate. That’s because Karl Rove and his acolytes in the Bush administration and the Republican Party told us so.

Read more from this article HERE.