This IRS Crap Just Keeps Getting “Better and Better”
Well, it seems as if the IRS realizes it has a problem. And it released a solicitation recently – apparently this week – for contractor assistance in getting the problem fixed.
No, it’s not for help in finding Lois Lerner’s missing email.
The problem the IRS is seeking contractor assistance to solve? Destroying magnetic computer storage media and devices – including “. . . . at least 65,464 magnetic tapes, 3,225 hard drives, 5,856 floppy disks and 708 reels . . . .”
Yeah, you read that correctly. The IRS wants a contractor to help them destroy magnetic tapes and hard drives. Those are exactly the kinds of storage media on which missing email relating to the current IRS scandal was located before the items holding those missing emails supposedly “crashed” or “were reused”.
Oh, and it gets even better. Remember Lerner’s hard drive? The one that was supposedly “destroyed”, was “unrecoverable” – and took all her archived 2009-2011 email with it?
Well, it appears that IRS IT experts have indicated to House Ways and Means Committee investigators that Lerner’s hard drive was found to be only scratched, not “destroyed” – and that data from the device should have been recoverable.
House investigators found this out during recent conversations with IRS IT experts. The IRS initially refused to make these in-house experts available to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The IRS also refused to use outside experts to attempt to recover data related to this matter. Use of an outside data recovery expert was something the IRS’s own IT staff recommended.
Gee. Now, why wouldn’t the IRS want an outside expert in data recovery looking into the matter? It couldn’t be because that would be someone whose livelihood they didn’t control and might not be able to muzzle – could it?
Don’t forget: IRS officials also initially told the House Ways and Means Committee, under oath, that the device was toast. They further said that data from said device was “unrecoverable”, and that the device had been “recycled”.
But it also turns out that the agency isn’t sure precisely what happened to Lerner’s hard drive, either. And an internal memo has now come to light which appears to describe her computer as having been “recovered”.
Hmm. That’s . . . interesting.
This whole mess is now far past ridiculous and well into disgusting. “Transparent”? Well, if you mean that as a synonym for “obvious” – as in “transparent and shameless dissembling” – that certainly IMO looks like it’s the case here.
I’m thinking it’s about time to subpoena a few folks from the IRS to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee, maybe some for the second or third time. And if and when they try to plead the fifth, the committee’s lead counsel should tell the first couple of them who do that the following: “Use immunity. Now spill – or you’re going to jail tonight for contempt instead of home.”
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Crime, Legal
The Republican party has everything they need to rip this administration to shreds, yet the Repubs don’t have any party cohesion or competent leadership to exploit it. My God, would someone just step up to the plate and handle business already?
Rerun0369….”The Republican Party has everything it needs”…except balls. Why, I do not know? They could be in the drivers seat on this one and several other scandalous issues but unlike Republican Houses and Democratic Oval Offices of the past, they seem content to sit on their hands and “wish upon a star, somewhere over the rainbow”, instead of the hard work it will take to do the job before them. Personally I don’t get it, unless they are just in an “it’s all Obama’s fault” mode of thinking and we’ll wait till the elections. They may be a lot of things, none flattering, but shoulder to the wheel, nose tot he grindstone, they are not. Remember, if anyone in Washington loves golf as much as Obama, it’s John Boehner.
I agree 100%
I’d rather they have irrefutable evidence of collusion than the fustercluck that occurred with Clinton.
And don’t think for one second that everyone is sucking up what the MSM is spouting. This bit of crap is turning off people who might otherwise vote democrap next time. Better to do a thorough job and get it right, than rush through it and end up with egg on the face.
It’s simple; they’re worried about a rerun of the Clinton impeachment where the whole thing blows up in their faces.
The problem is that 95% if the MSM is doing their best to cover all this crap up, and paint Issa & company as a bunch of partisan nut-jobs. Alas, the low-information voters are lapping it all up.
That said, it shouldn’t be too hard to either force Lerner to talk by locking her up for contempt, or just offering the b***h immunity on the condition of full cooperation.
Our ancestors, shooting, yadda yadda yadda.
They were yadda, yadda, yadda.
I just get pissed because no matter how egregious the transgressions of our government, nobody seems to give a shit, provided they have their SUV, American Idol, etc.
As has been stated previously, America will survive Obama. It won’t survive the idiots who put him into office.
NHSparky…A saying I heard years ago becomes more true every day. “All of the world in watching America and all of America is watching…TV.” Sad commentary but ever more true. When voters can’t tell you the names of their Governor or State Senators but they can name every member of the Kardashian family and all the guys they’ve screwed over the years (which are by now countless) it makes me truly want to enact strict voter reform. Folks, don’t ever let me become Emperor of the United States. It would be a very different place. As my grandfather would say when someone spouted off, “it takes all kinds to make the world go round”, his reply was, “no, we got all kinds and there’s a lot we can do without”.
Here’s why we have so many idiots who vote, you need some form of ID for any of the following activities…
1. Alcohol
2. Cigarettes
3. Opening a bank account
4. Apply for food stamps
5. Apply for welfare
6. Apply for Medicaid/Social Security
7. Apply for unemployment or a job
8. Rent/buy a house, apply for a mortgage
9. Drive/buy/rent a car
10. Get on an airplane
11. Get married
12. Purchase a gun
13. Adopt a pet
14. Rent a hotel room
15. Apply for a hunting license
16. Apply for a fishing license
17. Buy a cell phone
18. Visit a casino
19. Pick up a prescription
20. Hold a rally or protest
21. Blood donations
22. Buy an “M” rated video game
23. Purchase nail polish at CVS
24. Purchase certain cold medicines
25. ID and Permit required for Tag Sale in Springfield Massachusetts
But no ID required to vote?
Right there with you on this one..How does having to show an ID to prove you are who you say you are and a check to make sure you haven’t already voted prevent people from voting. Maybe we should go with the purple die on the finger thing third world countries have to do.
outfuckingstanding!! Unfortunately with the current occupants of 1600 and Justice, there is no way she or anyone else there will truly be held accountable.
On a side note, I do know that our hard drives where I work are als orecycled, but all information is backed up elsewhere. Long before a hard drive can fail…and we certainly do not only locally store e-mails if at all.
Well, gee whiz, this makes Nixon’s 18 missing minutes on a Dictaphone tape cassette look like someone just put his hand over the microphone or even turned it off while the tape kept running. But, seriously, they were just ordering pizzas with extra pepperoni and extra cheese.
Has anyone seen my thumbscrews lately? And why have firing squads gone out of fashion?
Yep. Nixon found out he was wrong, too.
The hard way.
You haven’t answered my question about firing squads, Hondo.
Can’t really answer that, DT. But they’re not used for Federal capital crimes any more – not even military capital crimes. Lethal injection is the prescribed method.
I would guess it’s because of the “cruelty” aspect. Well, tough. The Constitutional standard is “cruel AND unusual”. Both must be the case, and I personally don’t see hanging as excessively cruel if properly done; breaking the neck almost always kills pretty damn quickly. Ditto the gas chamber. (The electric chair does have some issues, and IMO maybe that method should be retired permanently.) I have no issue with capital punishment itself.
As I recall, the firing squad is still legally allowable; I believe Utah still uses the firing squad for state capital crimes. But I think they also give the condemned the choice between that and the needle.
I personally have heartburn with a firing squad for a common criminal. That IMO is a reasonably dignified, military execution. A common murderer or child-rapist in my book doesn’t deserve that type of dignified execution. For such scum, hanging has always seemed about right to me – problems be damned.
Addendum: it turns out that Utah formally eliminated the firing squad in 2004 – with one caveat.
For crimes committed since 2004, those receiving a death sentence in Utah will be executed via lethal injection. Those awaiting execution for pre-2004 crimes may still opt to be executed via firing squad.
Rapists of all descriptions should go by impalement.
Wasn’t it Gary Gilmore who chose the firing squad?
The one absolute fact about capital punishment – the number of people who commit further crimes after execution is very, very low.
Yes, that was Gary Gilmore.
My objection to the needle/lethal dose for capital punishment is the two most recent episodes of botched executions.
This one was yesterday.
http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/arizona-attorney-general-says-death-row-inmate-is-dead?gt1=51501
Excuse me, but 2 effing hours to die? My veterinarian can do it in 7 seconds. If this is NOT cruel and unusual punishment, then please define that term more clearly, because this guy would have been better off with a firing squad.
Thanks.
Part of me wants to bid on that contract, I’ll take all that stuff off your hands for you, dirt cheep. Of course I’ls teun around and submit it to either Congress or the lead councils in the law suits.
About that elephant who is NOT standing in the room, where the hell is the DOJ? This is not work for Congress, this is work for the FBI and DOJ.
Where the hell is DOJ?
You child! They’re in Obama’s pocket, silly.
Richard: what you say is correct. But considering who currently runs DoJ – and what happened in the NBPP Philadelphia voter intimidation case from 2008, plus a plethora of other cases and incidents – what you say is also irrelevant for at least the next couple of years.
What frosts me is how pretty much all of the media buys this fraud about Lois Lerner’s emails being physically located solely on the hard drive of her assigned workstation or laptop. Email systems don’t work that way.
Systems may place a copy of emails on the workstation disk to make it faster to work with email or let you work “offline” from the company network but after making changes the local inbox, sent emails and folders are replicated to the email server in the datacenter.
Why in the frick isn’t someone in Congress, in the media, somewhere, anywhere CALL BS on the statement that the emails are lost because her workstation hard drive crashed.
Sorry for the rant. Makes my head hurt when I see or hear this.
P.S. – Maybe the IRS contracted for a custom email system that only uses workstation disks? If so, the IT managers responsible should be made to physically destroy those magnetic tapes and hard drives by zeroing out each individual bit with a very small magnetic screwdriver.
As with the decline of the Roman Empire we have our own panem et circenses.
Even if the system was set to download emails to local drives, unless the platter was impacted by the drive head across the entire platter the drive can be disassembled and placed on a spindle in a clean room and spun up to retrieve whatever useful bits (and un-useful) bits of data were on the drive. Wherever there was contact that data will be corrupted, but there will be entire blocks of data that would be retrievable if anyone had bothered to do so.
It’s not rocket science to retrieve this data, it’s why the police are so good at catching people using their computers, most of the data will be intact even after a crash or a re-format unless you low level format the entire disk with 1s and 0s. You need to break the disk with a 3lb sledge to make sure there is no platter to spin up.
10 pound sledge head slap?
Even then the data on the platters may be able to retrieved. Expensive yes, but not gone forever as some would like you to believe.
I guess they found some back-up tapes:
Fox news: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/23/tale-tapes-irs-head-confirms-investigators-have-found-backup-tapes-in-lerner/
“IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, testifying before a House oversight subcommittee, stressed that he does not know “how they found them” or “whether there’s anything on them or not.” But he said the inspector general’s office advised him the investigators are reviewing tapes to see if they contain any “recoverable” material.”
My response: Yeah when it looked like this wasn’t going away and TWO federal judges weren’t buying the hard drive crash story. Its no surprised they found some tapes.
Just wait for that 18-minute gap…
We already have a 24+ month gap. Let’s see how much of it – if any – this new “discovery of tapes” fills.
Considering the debacle with Clinton’s impeachment and how they still couldn’t get rid of him, would you rather they did another hasty job and screwed it up, or did it so thoroughly the democraps can’t weasel out of it?
I’d like to point out that some 40 years later, Richard Nixon is still the poster child for government coverups, and the legislation that was passed during his administration which did some good has been forgotten. See if you can dig it up.
I’d like to see this turn into the same 40-years-later crappy recall as that. If this goes as wide and as deep as I think it does, those arrogant asses in the administration are doing a truly wonderful job of screwing themselves and their party three ways to Sunday. I enjoy watching smug, arrogant idiots take a well-deserved pounding. Don’t you?
On a side note, in New Jersey there has been for some time an investigation underway in regard to misbehavior by the Newark police back at the time McCarthy (now head of the Chicago Police Dept.) was in charge of the Newark police. He left one week before that investigation started. By a curious coincidence, Chicago’s red light traffic cameras are being investigated for false ticketing over the past six months. No signs of malfunctioning have been found, so what’s left? Ah! Yes! Human intervention. And what has risen in volume in Chicago since McCarthy took over? Violent street crime. He can try to manipulate the numbers all he wants to, but when it moves into neighborhoods where it never used to be, and he’s at the helm, I blame him for it.
Just sayin’: there’s no coincidence in either the missing IRS e-mails or the traffic cameras issuing invalid tickets.