Photo Credit: APThe chairman of the Republican National Committee says he is open to having conservative talk radio hosts moderate 2016 GOP presidential primary debates, an expansion of his threat to boycott CNN and NBC if the networks go ahead with planned programs on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Reince Priebus, while speaking Wednesday on air with conservative radio host Andrea Tantaros, said partnering with conservative talk radio on debates was “a very good idea.”
“There’s a lot of good people out there [in talk radio] that can actually understand the base of the Republican Party, the primary voters,” Priebus said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-09 01:25:002016-04-11 11:17:28RNC Chief: GOP May Partner with Conservative Radio on 2016 Debates
House Republicans suspect election officials joined with the Internal Revenue Service in a strategy that curbed the effectiveness of conservative organizations in the 2012 election.
The allegations were revealed in a letter from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Report, which has been holding hearings and seeking evidence about the extent of the IRS targeting of conservative and Christian organizations.
Hundreds of self-described “tea party” and “patriot” organizations had applications for tax-exempt status delayed, in some cases for years. They also were subjected to invasive, improper and probably illegal queries into private matters such as the content of their prayers and how they will vote.
The committee’s letter, dated Wednesday, is addressed to Ellen Weintraub, chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission.
“Documents recently produced by the committee demonstrate that FEC personnel communicated with IRS personnel about tax-exempt groups engaged in political activities,” the letter says. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: WNDSurprise! IRS Assault on Churches Started with Holder
By Jack Minor
The seeds of the IRS targeting of conservative groups were planted by Eric Holder in 2001 when as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton he convinced incoming Attorney General John Ashcroft to seize the building of a conservative megachurch, says the church’s retired pastor.
“Our church was taken over by the IRS in 2001 based on the recommendations of Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder to incoming Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft,” said Greg Dixon, former pastor of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple.
“The church was the sacrificial lamb to pave the way for the future targeting of conservative groups. We were among the first victims of the IRS’s targeting of conservatives long before the news broke earlier this year,” he said.
Evidence that has arisen in the current IRS scandal shows the agency singled out tea party and other conservative groups for special scrutiny, including asking for the content of members’ prayers and demanding they promise not to protest outside Planned Parenthood clinics or to run for office.
While the IRS initially insisted the targeting was limited to a few rogue employees, evidence now shows orders came from the top to delay the approval of scores of tea party and conservative groups through two election cycles, including the 2012 campaign in which Barack Obama was reelected.
Photo Credit: APA veterans group alleges in a federal lawsuit that officials violated its free-speech rights when they banned a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag from a city-owned armory.
The lawsuit filed last week in federal court says New Rochelle’s action, in addition to being unconstitutional, was “unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious” and betrayed a lack of appreciation of history.
The City Council had ordered the flag down in March, citing complaints that the yellow banner with a coiled rattlesnake was making a political statement. The flag has been used as an unofficial symbol of the tea party since at least 2008 and is often seen at party rallies, tax protests and gun rights rallies.
But the lawsuit, filed by the United Veterans Memorial and Patriotic Association, offers a long history of the flag, which has been used by the U.S. military since 1776. And it says none of the veterans who raised the flag in March are tea party members.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-04 00:15:232016-04-11 11:17:48Veterans Sue City in New York that Ordered ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Flag Banned
Photo Credit: Graem JenningsAfter a tense exchange with Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel Friday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa sent a subpoena to the Treasury Department Friday demanding more documents and accusing the agency’s chief counsel’s office of being “compromised.”
Issa, R-Calif., accused the Internal Revenue Service of dragging its feet in responding to the committee’s demand for documents related to IRS targeting of conservative groups — a charge Werfel denied.
During an Oversight subcommittee hearing, an agitated Issa said the IRS is “slow-rolling us.”
“That’s not true,” Werfel countered.
But Issa persisted, saying he would go over Werfel’s head and ask his boss, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, to respond to his requests.
“I’ve asked you for information; you’re not forthcoming,” Issa told Werfel. “The office of chief counsel, a politically appointed office, has been compromised.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-03 02:49:052016-04-11 11:17:49Darrell Issa Subpoenas Treasury for More Docs on IRS Targeting (+video)
Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Jason Howerton. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh sees a “battle” for the Republican Party happening right now between “mainstream” Republicans and true conservatives who rely on principle over politics. Meanwhile, he says that President Barack Obama is “relishing the opportunity to put into play what the leftists have only dreamed about in faculty lounges for 50 to 75 years.”
“I mean — there’s a battle for the [Republican] party going on,” Limbaugh told Greta Van Susteren in a rare and wide-ranging TV interview. “And sure, it — it’s — it would be a tough battle. But there’s no other option. I mean you don’t want to go third party. That’s just — that — that just ensures the Democrats are a majority party forever. You don’t want to do that.”
So what’s the solution, according to Limbaugh?
“[Y]ou have to do what you can to work within the Republican Party and take it over,” he said.
When asked about who he admires within Republican politics, Limbaugh named Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. However, he also said he respects all politicians who are “fearless and have the courage of their convictions and have no compunction about saying it.”
Limbaugh: Republicans Want a New Base Without Tea Party
By Greg Richter. The Republican Party wishes the tea party would go away, and would prefer a new base altogether, says conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
In an hourlong interview with Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren Tuesday, Limbaugh said the Republican leadership isn’t conservative.
“They’re not particularly crazy about conservatives,” he said, adding that members of the tea party can’t be controlled by the GOP leadership. In 2010, the grassroots movement rose up in opposition to President Barack Obama, but the Republican establishment didn’t embrace them.
Tea party members sensed that rejection and sat home in the 2012 presidential election, Limbaugh said, handing defeat to GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
And Limbaugh says the GOP establishment isn’t too enamored of him either. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-31 04:25:282016-04-11 11:18:01Rush Limbaugh: We Must Take the GOP Over (+video)
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Sunday the Internal Revenue Service exhibited “equal opportunity bad judgment” in the improper targeting of political groups, and there was no evidence of political pressure.
Just days after President Obama accused Washington of focusing attention on “phony scandals,” Lew said on “Fox News Sunday” mistakes were made in the IRS, but there is no evidence the White House or political officials drove the improper targeting.
“There’s no political official who condoned it or authorized it,” he said, adding that the mistakes that were made were “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable.”
The scandal broke when IRS officials apologized for improperly targeting Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status, and has led to Republican accusations the White House used the tax collecting agency to intimidate political opponents.
Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreMatt Bevin, who plans to challenge Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2014 Kentucky GOP primary, picked up a big endorsement from a national conservative group Sunday evening.
The Madison Project, a conservative fundraising group headed by former Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kan.), who once held track’s world record in the mile, will give Bevin access to donors from around the country. Ryun’s son, Drew, a former deputy political director at the Republican National Committee, is also involved.
The group praised Bevin’s candidacy in a letter to activists and donors as someone poised to storm “the decaying castle of the GOP establishment for millions of conservatives.”
“As a self-made successful businessman, Matt Bevin understands that the failed leadership in the Republican Party cannot be fixed with the very elements that precipitated its failure,” they wrote.
The letter touts Bevin’s accomplishments in the private sector, such as building two investment companies and being named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009. One of those funds, Integrity Asset Management, grew to $1.8 billion in assets.
Photo Credit: RedStateIn 2014, several prominent Republicans in the House and Senate are going to be challenged by people more conservative than the incumbents in area where a more conservative person can still win. Leading up to these challenges, conservatives must beware of the Hatch Effect.
In 2012, many conservatives in print, radio, and television came out quickly and endorsed Orrin Hatch against Dan Liljenquist. Hatch had been a conservative warrior for a long time, he sounded conservative, and we’d need him in the fight against amnesty. He made the rounds on television, radio, and had references in various op-ed columns. Outside groups went to work for Orrin Hatch.
Those who fretted that Hatch might return to the ways of Ted Kennedy’s best friend on the right were drowned out by a near unified conservative front — one that did not include RedState.
In a debate against Dan Liljenquist, Hatch hit all the right notes on immigration.
[W]e won’t be able to solve these problems until we secure the borders, and we have to do that. Every other large nation in the world knows how to secure their borders, why can’t we secure ours? And second, we can no longer grant amnesty. I fought against the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill because they granted amnesty to 3 million people. They should have to get in line like anybody else if they want to come into this country and do it legally.
Photo Credit: CNNThe Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, president of the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND), a conservative nonprofit, made some contentious statements on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Thursday. In addition to lambasting Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for inserting race into Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s subsequent trial, he called the 17-year-old shooting victim a “thug.”
The exchange began with Peterson claiming that race played no role in the highly-publicized tragedy.
“This case was not about race at all and what happened – you have the race-hustlers and poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and others who turned it into a race issue in order to gain power and wealth,” he charged.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-20 04:13:052016-04-11 11:18:50Another Conservative Black Pastor Weighs in on Zimmerman, Calls Jackson and Sharpton ‘Race Hustlers, Poverty Pimps’ and Says Trayvon Martin was a Thug (+video)
By Wall Street Journal. We’re starting to understand why Lois Lerner took the Fifth about her role in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. The testimony of at least three more employees in the IRS Washington office is now making clear that Ms. Lerner and other Washington IRS officials had a direct hand in slow rolling the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups in an election season.
The House Oversight Committee holds another hearing Thursday that will showcase some of these witnesses. According to Washington IRS tax law specialist Carter Hull, his supervisor Ronald Shoemaker and Manager of Exempt Organizations Technical Michael Seto, tea party applications were intentionally singled out for extra layers of review and put through an unusual process.
Mr. Hull told House investigators that normally his judgment about applications would have been enough to approve or deny their tax-exempt status. Instead of sending those applications through the normal channel, however, conservative applications were sent through Ms. Lerner’s office for review, and also directed to the IRS chief counsel. That process was highly unusual and created a vetting system in which applications were interminably delayed.
According to Mr. Hull, starting in April 2010, he was told by a supervisor to give extra attention to some tea party applications as a trial run for how the agency might handle such cases going forward. As part of that process, he was instructed to send the applications through Ms. Lerner’s office and the office of IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins for additional scrutiny.
Once he delivered them, however, the process stalled… Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsHow high did it go? Republicans to step up pressure on IRS at scandal hearing
By Fox News. House Republicans plan to ratchet up scrutiny of the IRS during a hearing Thursday morning where agency workers are expected to discuss the involvement of high-level officials in slowing down applications from Tea Party groups.
For the first time, the House oversight committee has invited two key agency officials to testify. Republican leaders of the committee claimed Wednesday that one of them recently revealed that the IRS chief counsel’s office — led by a political appointee — played a role, along with embattled IRS official Lois Lerner, in scrutinizing conservative groups. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Daily CallerIRS lawyer says scandal was overseen by D.C., names names
By Patrick Howley. Top IRS officials in Washington, D.C. planned and oversaw the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups, according to the 72-year old retiring IRS lawyer who will testify Thursday before the House Oversight Committee.
Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull implicated the IRS Chief Counsel’s office, headed by Obama appointee William J. Wilkins, and Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS’ exempt organizations office, in the IRS targeting scandal and made clear that the targeting started in Washington, according to leaked interviews that Hull granted to the Oversight Committee in advance of Thursday’s hearing.
Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George will return to Republican chairman Darrell Issa’s committee Thursday along with two central characters in the IRS saga: Hull and Cincinnati-based IRS employee Elizabeth Hofacre, who previously gave Hull’s name to congressional investigators, fingering him as her Washington-based supervisor. Read more from this story HERE.
By Bob Unruh. The IRS, which has been in trouble for weeks now for targeting conservative, Christian and Jewish organizations seeking tax-exempt status with invasive and probably illegal questions, still is stalling, charges a legal team in the battle.
The federal tax agency had offered an “expedited review” if the groups would agree to “an arbitrary 60/40 standard” requiring them to devote 60 percent of their time and expenditures to activities promoting social welfare and limit their political activity to 40 percent or less.
“The IRS created this standard out of thin air in an effort to placate Americans who have been unlawfully and unconstitutionally targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice.
“This so-called solution is deeply flawed and does nothing to address and correct the real problem at the IRS: a pervasive and systematic assault on conservative organizations. The IRS remains an agency incapable of self-governance or self-correction. Our federal lawsuit is moving forward to stop this abusive targeting scheme and to hold those responsible for this disturbing conduct accountable,” he said.
The IRS discrimination has been well-documented. One IRS official pleaded the Fifth and declined to respond to questions from Congress, but others in the agency have admitted to cases cited by conservative groups who were told, for example, they had to reveal the content of members’ prayers or make promises about what they would or would not say. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-18 03:06:142016-04-11 11:18:58Now We Know Why Ms. Lerner Took the Fifth: the Tax Exempt Applications Literally Went Through Her Office (+video)
