Tag Archives: IRS

Jedi Mind Trick Fail

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Ranking Member of the House Government and Oversight Committee tried to channel his inner-Alec Guinness the other day, but he failed spectacularly.

Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat, tried to pull one over on the American people earlier this week. Here is how the Wall Street Journal’s John McKinnon put it:

“Earlier this week, the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), said he’s ready to drop the matter, following an interview on Thursday of an employee in the Cincinnati office that oversees handling of tax-exempt applications. The employee, who was a manager at the time, said the scrutiny started in early 2010 with an agent who noticed a single tea-party application come in, and flagged it for closer review. The manager “agreed that the case should be forwarded up the chain to technical officials in… Continue reading →

Obama on the Ropes

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Over the past few weeks I’ve been writing like Grandma Moses painted: Sooooo very sweet.

Well, that’s over. So as Bette Davis (as Margo Channing) said in “All About Eve” in 1950: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night”

The IRS is going to be the death of the Obama Administration. NOBODY LIKES THE IRS. I’m not saying all IRS employees are bad people, but neither are all meter maids bad people – we just don’t like to see them sniffing around our stuff.

Actually the IRS is not Obama’s biggest strategic problem.

James Rosen is. Continue reading →

It’s Getting Weird

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I think it is kind of weird that a high official in the Internal Revenue Service decided to take the 5th Amendment to avoid answering questions of a Senate Committee investigating IRS political shenanigans.

The 5th Amendment says: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Continue reading →

It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Cover-Up

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The three scandals currently on the table are: Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservative taxpayers, and the Department of Justice looking at the phone records of Associated Press reporters.

There is an old saying in Washington: “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up” that does the damage.

The Nixon Administration attempted to dismiss the June 17, 1972 break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex as “a third rate burglary” which it more-or-less was.

1972 was an election year and despite the wailing of Democrats about the seriousness of the campaign probably having ordered the break-in, Nixon beat Democratic Senator George McGovern 49 states to one that Fall. Continue reading →

The Whipping Boy

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

According to Wikipedia: “A whipping boy was a young boy who was assigned to a young prince and was punished when the prince misbehaved or fell behind in his schooling. Whipping boys were established in the English court during the monarchies of the 15th century and 16th centuries. They were created because of the idea of the divine right of kings, which stated that kings were appointed by God, and implied that no one but the king was worthy of punishing the king’s son. Since the king was rarely around to punish his son when necessary, tutors to the young prince found it extremely difficult to enforce rules or learning.” Continue reading →

Obama, King Henry II, the Power of Suggestion

BY WILLIAM F. GAVIN

As we reach the end of Phase One of the IRS scandals, the situation looks roughly like this (I say roughly because things change quickly): a bi-partisan majority condemns the IRS, and President Obama has stated his own condemnation. The White House, through spokesman Jay Carney, says that neither the President nor any White House official knew anything about the persecution of conservatives while it was going on. The IRS says the wrongdoing was not partisan in nature, but the result of carelessness, incompetence, and lack of supervision by superiors.

I think that last point is going to be key to Phase Two, when investigations start to take place. If indeed this possible (and I think very probable) violation of civil rights was not directed by administration officials, then what we have here (so goes the argument), awful as it is, cannot be blamed on the administration or specifically on the President. Continue reading →

Scandal is Big Government

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published in The Hill

Twenty-nine years before the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., John Dean, then the White House counsel, sent a list of names to IRS Commissioner Johnnie Walters. On the list were names of enemies of the Nixon campaign that were to be investigated and audited and generally harassed by the tax-collecting agency.

That was among the revelations that came from the Watergate investigation, which eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon.

Some 40 years later, the Internal Revenue Service is once again in the news for targeting political enemies of the president. I would bet my bottom dollar that there is no evidence that the current president is involved directly in this latest scandal. Continue reading →