We understand how this controversy plays into the paranoia that is so rife in certain parts of the rightwing, and we understand how they will behave like chattering howler monkeys over it until they squeeze every last bit of Obama-hate from it and leave it on the cage floor to wither and rot.
Here is the Wall Street Journal:
Internal Emails Indicate IRS Targeting Designed By Low-Level Staffers
SAHIL KAPUR 9:27 AM EDT, THURSDAY MAY 23, 2013
Internal IRS emails analyzed by the Wall Street Journal indicate -- albeit not conclusively -- that the agency's targeting of conservative groups was designed by low-level employees in the Cincinnati office.
[House Oversight] Committee staff on Wednesday released several documents related to the matter—including the IRS emails and a 2012 statement by Ms. Lerner—that helped provide a clearer picture of what happened. The criteria were developed by an IRS screening group in Cincinnati "based on cases they were seeing," Cindy Thomas, a supervisor in the Cincinnati office, wrote in a June 2011 email to an official in Washington.
"When the screening group starts seeing new type cases that have similar issues, they meet and come up with criteria to identify 'emerging issue' and elevate information," she wrote.
In another email from June 2011, a screening manager in Cincinnati, John Shafer, outlined the criteria the group was using to select applications for extra review. They included references in the case file to "tea party," "patriots" or "9/12 Project"; issues such as government spending, debt and taxes; advocacy or legislative activity to "make America a better place to live"; and "statements in the case file that are critical of…how the country is being run."
The Journal notes that the emails don't rule out involvement by high-level officials but they also don't contain any evidence that the targeting scheme was developed by anyone other than low-level staffers.
This bit of information will disappoint many people who ardently hope to prove that President Obama himself is involved.
GOP overreaching on display (h/t ThinkProgress):
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday morning, panelist John Heilemann got into a heated argument with GOP Chairman Reince Priebus over President Obama’s role in the targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)4 status. Priebus offered a series of comments trying to tie Obama to the scandal — which Republicans have attempted to frame the IRS scandal as Obama’s ‘Watergate’ moment — leading Heilemann to shout “that’s an assertion that’s not actually borne out by any of the facts”:
HEILEMANN: Okay. You used two phrases just now saying we have to wait for the facts but I’m entitled to my opinion and before we have the facts just wait. You then said it’s lawlessness and guerrilla warfare and Obama is in the middle of. You say we need to have all of the facts before we can determine whether President Obama is in the middle of it and now you’re asserting the fact he’s in the middle of it. That is your public tweet.
PRIEBUS: I would say it is consistent. When I start out an investigation and say it’s low level employees in Cincinnati and then you find out there are senior level people in Washington. Then Pfeiffer goes on five Sunday morning shows and says the White House didn’t know anything about this and two days later you figure out that the chief of staff actually knew about it. You have a hundred and, what? 15 visits from Shulman to the White House and 132 Democratic senators pleading with the IRS to investigate this. And the Chief of Staff of the White House is now involved or at least knew about it when — two days earlier Pfeiffer said they didn’t know about it.
HEILEMANN: I thought you said you have the facts you need. If you don’t have the facts you need why are you saying he’s in the middle of it?
PRIEBUS: I would say it is consistent. When I start out an investigation and say it’s low level employees in Cincinnati and then you find out there are senior level people in Washington. Then Pfeiffer goes on five Sunday morning shows and says the White House didn’t know anything about this and two days later you figure out that the chief of staff actually knew about it. You have a hundred and, what? 15 visits from Shulman to the White House and 132 Democratic senators pleading with the IRS to investigate this. And the Chief of Staff of the White House is now involved or at least knew about it when — two days earlier Pfeiffer said they didn’t know about it.
HEILEMANN: I thought you said you have the facts you need. If you don’t have the facts you need why are you saying he’s in the middle of it?
20 comments:
yes, the broonz will send sather and crew packing.
maybe torts will end up with the canucks?
Obama did not know about this because in his own words, he learned of it from the news. For the sake of the country he cannot be impeached because having no clue of what is going on is not an impeachable offense.
Beside as bad as BHO is, obiden is worse. I guess the president being clueless is fine with you as long as he is a democrat.
I read this evening that Lois Lerner has now been placed on administrative leave.
Let's see what's next.
The dust hasn't yet settled. Really.
And the strategy of plausible deniability -- a strategy used by high level politicians of all stripes -- could well be in play.
I have to say it seems damning that Shulman paid 118 visits to the White House, yet claims that he never discussed the matter of IRS scrutiny with the White House. Frankly, that lack of discussion is not plausible. Really. Think about it.
Also, Shulman's wise crack about the White House Easter Egg Roll was flip -- and not well received.
You might not like THIS SOURCE for some of the contents of my comment, but take a look at the video.
I know, I know: Shulman was a Bush appointee. Nonetheless, the IRS Commissioner serves a term of 5 years, and such a term length frequently spans time of two different White House administrations.
skudrunner said...
"Obama did not know about this because in his own words, he learned of it from the news. For the sake of the country he cannot be impeached because having no clue of what is going on is not an impeachable offense."
With all due respect, skudrunner, you are totally ignorant on this matter.
Go educate yourself on it.
Please.
But here. I'll help you since you're either too lazy to do so or too ignorant:
"Then comes the Wall Street Journal with the coup de grace: because the White House kept itself scrupulously distant from the IG report, there is, apparently, no accountability in government:
Alexander Hamilton and America’s Founders designed the unitary executive for the purpose of political accountability. It is one of the Constitution’s main virtues. Unlike grunts in Cincinnati, Presidents must face the voters. That accountability was designed to extend not only to the President’s inner circle but over the entire branch of government whose leaders he chooses and whose policies bear his signature.
What you immediately notice is that under this scenario, Obama cannot win.
If he had interfered with the IG investigation, we would have a shit-storm of major proportions as he would be accused of unethically and improperly meddling in an investigation designed to be independent. Yes, the president runs the executive branch including, say, the Justice Department and the IRS. But his political relationship to those ideally neutral bodies is rightly constrained. And how could the president have intervened before the facts were fully known and weighed by an independent investigation anyway? He’s damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Which is why his legal counsel was well advised to maintain that wall before the evidence was fully known.
This then becomes, in the eyes of the Washington Post, “shielding” Obama, as if this affair were about plausible deniability, as opposed to ethical government. The very attempt not to interfere is described as some kind of illicit political interference. In the pincer movement from Fox and the WaPo, there is no way Obama himself can come out shining.
I don’t get it. But then I am not working from a conclusion to a premise. I do not believe that the Obama administration is some kind of terrifying left-wing tyranny, exercising lethal political powers to punish its opponents, rifle through their tax returns, and take away everyone’s guns. But for some, all this is a given. Michelle Malkin knew all of this as far back as 2010, when she published her tract, “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.” If you point out that the first Obama term had a historically minuscule numbers of “scandals”, they will presumably just reply that it’s because they are so brilliant at never getting caught.
The paranoid style is not new in America. But it finds its locus in exactly those populations who feel marginalized by the tectonic cultural and social and economic shifts in the Obama era. And the syndrome is not new. Here’s a passage from Richard Hofstadter’s classic definition of the pseudo-conservative in America:
The restlessness, suspicion and fear manifested in various phases of the pseudo-conservative revolt give evidence of the real suffering which the pseudo-conservative experiences in his capacity as a citizen. He believes himself to be living in a world in which he is spied upon, plotted against, betrayed, and very likely destined for total ruin. He feels that his liberties have been arbitrarily and outrageously invaded. He is opposed to almost everything that has happened in American politics for the past twenty years. He hates the very thought of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is disturbed deeply by American participation in the United Nations, which he can see only as a sinister organization. He sees his own country as being so weak that it is constantly about to fall victim to subversion; and yet he feels that it is so all-powerful that any failure it may experience in getting its way in the world — for instance, in the Orient — cannot possibly be due to its limitations but must be attributed to its having been betrayed."
"Fox News has made pseudo-conservatism very lucrative, and as I watched the pure cynicism of Bill O’Reilly, making even more millions from yet another “book”, and wrily winking that he knows this is all paranoid bullshit, but, hey, it’s what he gets paid for, I felt little but nausea.
Let’s keep the government honest. Let’s get to the bottom of it. But let us not descend into the pseudo-conservative mindset that assumes Watergate-style malevolence purely because it feels good and makes money."
You've turned into a nattering tool for the wingers, skudrunner.
Shame.
What is most enjoyable is the creative and descriptive writing. Perhaps, sometime in the future American politics will take a turn towards constructive dialog and sanity.
Anybody holding their breath?
So Holder OK'd the surveillance and tapping of news reporters
Indeed.
Anonymous @ 12:09 AM,
You might be interested in THIS FLASHBACK.
To Anonymous again,
Also see THIS: "Holder Lied To Congress On His Role in Investigating News Reporters."
Now, will Obama fire Holder? Thus far, Obama has declared that he stands by Holder.
AOW,
The headline you posted says this:
"Holder Lied To Congress On His Role in Investigating News Reporters"
and it is from "Gateway Pundit," a blogger who has the dubious honor of being labeled "The Dumbest Man on the Internet." Jim Hoft (I think that's his name) is a far right rabid and unreliable hysteric. So I put no value in his work.
The rest of the blog post said this:
"If this information at NBC News is accurate then Eric Holder lied to the Judiciary Committee last week under oath. Karl Rove pointed this out tonight on FOX News. This is a very serious development."
IF THIS INFORMATION ...IS ACCURATE.
So the person posting this isn't even sure the information is ACCURATE--those are his words, BUT the headline is definitive that Holder LIED.
That's a contradiction.
Also, I put no value in Karl Rove or FAUX NOOZ's reporting. It would be like me proving a point against a Republican by quoting an opinion from Michael Moore and MSNBC.
Would you put any trust in that?
All the facts are NOT in on this story. But hysterics are sort of certain that Holder is guilty?
The prudent thing to do, I believe, is wait and see what the facts are before believing anything Hoft or Rove spreads as truth.
Regardless of Gateway Pundit's IQ and political leanings, I think that he has a point with this statement:
If this information at NBC News is accurate then Eric Holder lied to the Judiciary Committee last week under oath. Karl Rove pointed this out tonight on FOX News. This is a very serious development.
I am no disciple of Karl Rove, either.
But trusting the source is not the issue here. The issue is whether or not Eric Holder lied about the matter.
I also find THIS as possibly a conflict-of-interest issue: "Obama Orders DOJ Review of Leak Investigations." Should a department be conducting a sole review of such important matters of abridgement of the First Amendment? It seems to me that an independent investigation should be the way to go -- if only for appearances' sake.
BTW, I'm not trying to prove any point other than rushing to defend the President could well backfire on the defenders, nor am I trying to harass you at your own web site.
I remember the Watergate Era, and you may also. I'm sure that you catch my drift.
"The issue is whether or not Eric Holder lied about the matter."
Yes, I read that, too. But also in the article is the fact that no one knows that yet. So one could speculate that the issue could be that he didn't lie.
Shaw,
But is it not also speculation to say that the highest levels of the Obama administration are not involved in something weasel-like? Just sayin'.
You have repeatedly said that you believe in Obama. That's fine.
But even people that we believe in can do horrible things. The lure of power and all that.
The MAIN THING as far as I'm concerned is that the truth comes out -- whatever it is.
Compromise of the First Amendment and the use of agency power to befoul the election process must never stand! Neither should a lie about a film maker as scapegoat for the murders of four Americans remain unexposed if the lie was indeed the case! I rather imagine that we can agree on those matters -- regardless of government "sins" of the past.
AOW: "Shaw,
But is it not also speculation to say that the highest levels of the Obama administration are not involved in something weasel-like? Just sayin'."
I like to think of it as believing in someone's innocence until proven guilty. It's an American thing.
But coming back to a previous administration, do you not still admire President Reagan, despite the scandals and the marine barrack bombings and broken promise of not withdrawing? I'm guessing those did not diminish your admiration for him.
If we come to an issue with our favorable feelings toward the people involved, I'm guessing we will still hold those favorable feelings, no matter what, and by rationalizing the circumstances.
There are people today, FT comes to mind, that believe Richard Nixon was a stand-up guy who was railroaded by an overzealous media.
Shaw,
But coming back to a previous administration, do you not still admire President Reagan, despite the scandals and the marine barrack bombings and broken promise of not withdrawing? I'm guessing those did not diminish your admiration for him.
Admiring Reagan for what I believe is the good that he did (I realize that you and I fundamentally disagree in ideology) is not to say that I believe that the man was perfect and may well have tempered my admiration of the man.
You mentioned the bombing of the Marine barracks. If I recall correctly, there is no way that Congress or the American people would have tolerated another armed conflict so soon after the Vietnam War ended.
I've already told you what I now know about Iran-Contra. It took a long time for that information to be available to the public -- shadow government and all that.
I like to think of it as believing in someone's innocence until proven guilty. It's an American thing.
I'm not thinking of all these "scandals" as crimes, but rather as political malfeasance. As I have mentioned before, I never believe the best about any politician. Okay, I am a cynic (or "a realist" may be a better term) about politics -- and some other matters as well.
Oh, BTW, I did not vote for Reagan with a great deal of enthusiasm. I DID enthusiastically vote for Carter. Live and learn!
Shaw,
Was Nixon railroaded?
To a certain extent, IMO. The media never liked him. But, in the end, Nixon finished himself off via the coverup (or apparent coverup, in the eyes of some).
Today, it seems to me that the media love Obama. If he were not someone that the media people liked, the media would be all over themselves trying to dig up dirt.
Shaw,
Possibly of interest.
Post a Comment