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Could the Obama Administration’s Next Scandal be Brewing at the EPA? (+video)

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Photo Credit: Free Enterprise

With the continued Benghazi investigation, IRS political targeting and DOJ press surveillance, could a scandal at the EPA be the next shoe to droop for the Obama administration?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) been closely following the EPA’s misuse of private communication to conduct public business, and fees the agency has placed on conservative groups seeking information that they usual waive for media and watchdog groups. After successfully gaining access to former EPA Chief Lisa Jackson’s emails, CEI is now suing to gain access to the text messages of Gina McCarthy, the senior EPA official the President has nominated to now run the agency.

Read more from this story HERE.

AP, NY Times Snub Obama Administration, Refuse to Attend Off-Record Briefing

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The Associated Press says it will not attend this week’s off-the-record meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department decides to change its mind and conduct the meeting on the record.

“We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter,” AP spokesperson Erin Madigan said in a statement sent to POLITICO. “We would expect AP attorneys to be included in any planned meetings between the Attorney General’s office and media lawyers on the legal specifics.”

The AP’s decision comes over an hour after The New York Times announced that it would not be attending the meeting, citing concerns about the DOJ’s off-the-record provision.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Commissioner Had Far More Visits to White House than any Cabinet Member

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.

Shulman’s extensive access to the White House first came to light during his testimony last week before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Shulman gave assorted answers when asked why he had visited the White House 118 times during the period that the IRS was targeting tea party and conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny and delays on their tax-exempt applications.

By contrast, Shulman’s predecessor Mark Everson only visited the White House once during four years of service in the George W. Bush administration and compared the IRS’s remoteness from the president to “Siberia.” But the scope of Shulman’s White House visits — which strongly suggests coordination by White House officials in the campaign against the president’s political opponents — is even more striking in comparison to the publicly recorded access of cabinet members.

An analysis by The Daily Caller of the White House’s public “visitor access records” showed that every current and former member of President Obama’s Cabinet would have had to rack up at least 60 more public visits to the president’s home to catch up with “Douglas Shulman.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Former NSA Official: US Now Living Under Soft Tyranny

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller The Obama administration’s targeting of journalists and their sources is an assault on the First Amendment, a former National Security Agency official and prominent whistleblower says.

“[R]eporters have shared with me privately that some of their most trusted sources within government are increasingly afraid to speak with them, even off-the-record, for fear that they will be monitored and surveilled,” Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the National Security Agency and a whistleblower who was prosecuted by the Obama administration, told The Daily Caller in an exclusive interview.

“That’s self-censorship,” he said.

Drake explained to TheDC that he sees a “soft tyranny” enveloping the United States through the federal government’s targeting of journalists and their sources.

Such a fear of speaking to the press, he said, interferes with the freedom of association — recognized in the First Amendment as an essential component of free speech.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Assassinated Four Americans in Drone Strikes

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Photo Credit: APFour American citizens have been killed in counter-terrorism drone strikes since 2009, the Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday.

Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed the previously classified information in a letter to a top senator that also included the names of those killed and the revelation that only one was directly targeted in the strikes that began in 2009. He did not specifically call them drone strikes – rather, he referred to “counterterrorism operations” – but most of the individuals he mentioned are known to have died in drone strikes.

The targeted individual, Anwar al-Awlaki, was a radical Muslim cleric whom U.S. officials said was involved in planning Al Qaeda operations and terror attacks. He was killed in September 2011 in Yemen.

The acknowledgement came ahead of a major counterterrorism policy speech by President Obama scheduled for Thursday.

Holder said in the letter that the Obama administration is “aware” of three other U.S. citizens killed in such counter-terrorism operations besides al-Awlaki: Samir Khan, Jude Kennan Mohammed and Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, Holder said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Yes, the Obama Administration’s Actions Amount to Tyranny

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What the Obama Administration has done with the IRS is nothing short of tyranny.

Let’s begin by stating the obvious. If government were a business, and subject to economic realities and the consequences of its ignoring them, it would have been liquidated long ago — its remaining assets of value would have been reclaimed by its creditors and shareholders (both of which are the American taxpayer), and its market share of consumers (also the American taxpayer, and those they are gracious enough to financially support) would be sought by other, more efficient businesses.

But let’s pretend for a moment that it is a business. And let’s pretend that this business had engaged not only in unethical practices, but illegal practices, completely betraying the trust of its shareholders and customers and and disavowing the very foundational principles upon which its business is predicated.

The IRS, an agency under the control of this government that Obama assures youngsters is no threat to liberty whatsoever, has done exactly that. They have apologized for selectively harassing, excessively scrutinizing, and denying benefits to conservative groups these last years.

Of particular note, the Treasury Department’s inspector general J. Russell George disclosed on Friday that the Obama administration officials were well aware of his auditing the IRS for its political screening policies in June 2012. Convenient as the IRS’s targeting of Democrats’ enemies was, the Obama administration chose not to reveal any of this knowledge to the public in the 2012 election year, yet it now feigns shock and indignation at the prospect that the IRS could have acted irresponsibly and illegally…

Obama is reasonably implicated in this crime, and this crime is nothing short of tyranny.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Apparently has Another National Security Leak

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Photo Credit: Channel 2 NewsThe Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press reporters’ phone records was reportedly one element of a “sweeping” federal investigation to find out who leaked classified information about a failed Al-Qaeda plot to bomb an American airliner.

Now, the Obama administration has reportedly apologized to Israel for another leak of classified information to the media, one that occurred earlier this month and which Israeli officials are concerned could place Israeli lives at risk.

Israel Radio’s diplomatic correspondent Chico Menashe reported Sunday morning (via the Jerusalem Post):

American officials apologized to their Israeli counterparts for confirming that Israel was behind the airstrikes on the Damascus airport earlier this month, Israel Radio reported on Sunday.

The confirmation reportedly came from the lower ranks at the Pentagon, and the reasons for the leak are being investigated.

Read more from this story HERE.

CBS’ Bob Schieffer Unleashes on White House Official: ‘Why Are You Here Today?’

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Photo Credit: APVeteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer on Sunday morning unloaded on a top White House official, comparing the Obama administration’s handling of the ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal to former President Richard Nixon’s initial strategy for dealing with Watergate.

The assertion came after White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said the president will continue with his objectives and will not become bogged down by the IRS debacle, the Benghazi affair or other missteps.

“I don’t want to compare this in any way to Watergate … but I have to tell you, that is exactly the approach the Nixon administration took. You’re taking exactly the same line,” Mr. Schieffer said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cornel West: “You Can Get Killed Out Here Trying to Tell the Truth!”

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Photo Credit: APAs big banks and corporations grab more power and government heightens control and surveillance, confronting those at the top is getting to be a dangerous proposition. As Cornel West put it bluntly, “You can get killed out here trying to tell the truth.”

For the last year, a partnership between the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), a New York–based think tank, and Union Theological Seminary (UTS) has produced a series of rich conversations about economics, society and the human spirit. Tuesday night, West and INET Executive Director Robert Johnson sat down together in a packed chapel at UTS in New York to talk about the pain caused by financial predators and the frightening trend of creeping authoritarianism. Union Theological Seminary president Dr. Serene Jones moderated a discussion which ranged from love to finance to the economics of Jesus.

Johnson, who had recently led a meeting of major financial executives in London, noted that the Big Boys are aware that they are no longer gods in the public view, but demons. “They are scared,” said Johnson. But that doesn’t seem to have curbed much of their predatory behavior, so the question of how to change their ways remains urgent. “Do you create institutions to constrain sinful, greedy, avaricious and delusional individuals?” asked the economist. “Or do you, like the Buddhists suggest, seek to change that greedy, aggressive, delusion character …?” West and Jones quickly answered “both,” but Johnson said he’s leaning toward the Buddhists on this one. Multinational corporations, he warned, are so “large, sophisticated, and capable” that the regulators simply can’t keep up. You have to “get inside the hearts” of these leaders, he argued, and somehow create a sense of moral accountability — a process that Johnson believed would be both difficult and painful. He likened it to the shattering soul-searching of a blues musician. (Johnson, in addition to being an economist, has worked in the music industry.)

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Administration Getting Caught in its Own Tangled Web of Deceit – the White House Been Lying Through its Teeth

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Photo Credit: Irish CentralJournalist Bernie Goldberg, a newsman with CBS for 28 years, wrote a book that best describes the Obama administrations treatment by the main stream media. The title, “A Slobbering Love Affair,” describes how the media has fawned over President Obama.

An excerpt from the book jacket best describes it:

“From the day Barack Obama announced his candidacy to the moment he took the oath of office, the mainstream media fawned over him like love-struck school girls. Even worse, this time they went beyond media bias to media activism.”

But this week saw a chink in that journalistic love affair as one scandal after another descended upon the White House. There was no place for the media to run, no place to hide, as facts behind these scandals descended upon them…..They had to start looking into the swamp that was enveloping the White House and they didn’t like what they found.

For eight months, the main stream media pretty much ignored the attack on our Benghazi consulate and basically reported the “facts” about the travesty as conveyed to them by White House press spokesman, Jay Carney and UN Ambassador Susan Rice.

But explosive testimony from eyewitnesses last week in front of Congress, as well as revelations of previously undisclosed emails, show that Carney was brazenly lying through his teeth about material facts relating to the attack. See: Jay Carney Benghazi untruths. It also revealed what Ambassador Susan Rice told the American public was a compete falsehood. See Rice loses credibility

The media got a huge slap in the face with these revelations and started to report on the many unanswered questions still remaining on this unfolding Benghazi scandal.

But to add insult to injury, three other scandals were revealed to the media that cut to their heart.

It was revealed the Justice Dept had been looking at the phone records of many Associated Press reporters and even had seized records from the Congressional cloakroom. This gives the Justice Dept. access to journalist’s source of information inside the Congress and elsewhere and has a chilling effect on the right of a free press. Anyone that was giving the Associated Press inside information on the Obama administrations malfeasance by phone has now been outed.

When Attorney General Holder was asked about this huge violation of the 1st Amendment, he did his usual bob and weave and said “I know nothing of the facts” and he had “recused” himself from the case. Although, he doesn’t recall exactly when he did “recuse” and there is no paper evidence of it. See Holder denies knowledge in AP scandal

At about the same time another bombshell of scandal erupted on the White House steps when it was revealed the IRS had been specifically targeting right leaning organizations and donors, probably one of the worst abuses a government can do to its citizens. Of course when President Obama was asked directly about his knowledge of this scandal his answer was, he learned about it in the news. See Obama answer to IRS abuse in the article in PJ Media.

But facts are starting to add up that the White House knew long ago about this IRS targeting of conservatives, possibly as far back as 2010.

But even more abuse of power by the administration was revealed this week, which should have made headline news, but was suppressed by other emerging scandals. In the House Wednesday the Environmental Protection Agency, was accused of exempting left-leaning political groups and green energy producers from various fees and fines that it routinely assesses to right-learning groups.

According to Congressman Whitfield who chairs the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Energy & Power,: “The EPA has a pattern of conduct in which this administration rewards its friends and punishes its opponents.” See the excellent story on this in The Hill.

There is much more emerging almost on a daily basis that points to an administration that holds itself above the very law it has sworn to uphold. It is also evident that it is used to getting away with it because a systematic lack of journalistic curiosity by the media has allowed them to. A lazy media who found it easier to accept at face value the explanation of the Whitehouse talking points, rather than digging in to fact check.

If they had bothered to pay attention, many of these scandals were already simmering, just waiting to bubble to the surface if a curious reporter had bothered to check.

Perhaps these and other unfolding scandals will finally wake up the main stream press.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.