“Two Rogue Employees”, Eh?
Originally the current Administration blamed the ever-expanding IRS scandal on the actions of “two rogue employees”. Well, that number now appears to be just a little bit low.
CNN is reporting that the true number might well be much higher. Apparently the IRS has identified 88 employees who may have documents relevant to the unlawful selective targeting of conservative political groups based on ideological grounds. The IRS has advised these employees to preserve all such documents for investigative purposes. Disposition of such documents now will violate Federal records laws and could constitute obstruction of justice.
How many of these 88 employees were active participants in the conspiracy and how many may have merely received documents relating to same is not yet known. However, the sheer number of persons potentially involved – nearly 90 IRS employees, with perhaps more yet to be uncovered – is a strong indication that the original Administration position that the scandal was the result of the actions of “two rogue employees” is an utter canard.
The large scope of document collection efforts is now cited by the IRS as the reason for delay in turning over relevant documents concerning the scandal to the House Ways and Means Committee. The original deadline set by the Committee was May 21.
Stay tuned. This could get even more interesting.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Crime, Politics
Anonymous logic: did anyone actually ‘see’ Obama giving the IRS Union Chief orders? Did anyone actually ‘hear’ Obama giving the IRS bosses orders? Does anyone actually have Obama’s hand-written directives?
In American law, being an eye and/or ear witness does not suffice. For every handwriting analyst that could verify Obama’s writing there is another one who will swear Obama can’t write. The attempt to dismiss evidence as merely circumstantial is a half-step away from ‘the only evidence is Obama is African-American, and that’s what this is all about.’
The lawyers who read this may disagree, but in terms of evidence, is what we’re seeing Scots Law: two or more pieces of evidence that corroborate each other?
@48 It is like people close their eyes and put their fingers in their ears and say “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.” Like someone Hondo and Ex-Ph2 said, 40 years ago the press would have been unbias and competent. I think one of the only reasons we are hearing so much about it now is that Obama pi$$ed off his “friends” in the press with wiretaps and subpeonas.
If this was a Republican, you can bet impeachment precedings would have already started. This administration hasn’t even frickin fired anyone. The two women Lerner and (forgive me forgot the other ladies name right now) were actually promoted. The one person who resigned was leaving in June anyways, so it was all a smoke screen. I love how Democrats screeched conspiracy for eight years during Bush, and now want all of us to moderate & wait for proof. How much more proof do we need? When do we get a special prosecutor? This all brings to mind the Orwell quote:
Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible..
One more thing…what does it mean, exactly when people in power say, “We will hold those responsible accountable?”
Does it mean…
Demand resignation of a temp director who was leaving in a couple of weeks anyway? With full retirement benefits paid for by John Q. Taxpayer?
Grant paid administrative leave to the tune of $175k per year?
A promotion to area tax supervisor as in the case of Stephen Seok?
Promotion from head of tax empt orgs to IRS implementation division for the Affordable Care Act?
What on earth do these people take us for? Rubes? Apparently, as long as people like Anonymous would rather wait for “evidence” of wrongdoing, that must be it.
Again- my “How many f***s given” meter for the tax exempt groups pegged at zero point zero right now. I want to see serious tax reform that starts with the entire rotten agency itself. Blathering on about needing to address reform the code governing tax exemptions of groups is not seeing the forest for the trees.
melle1228: sadly, lady – the media was hardly fair r unbiased 40 years ago. Rather, they were biased as hell then towards the liberal POV even then. They’ve simply gotten more biased since.
The media was out to get Nixon any way they could, for whatever reason they could. They had been since the Alger Hiss hearings in 1948. They actively hated Nixon.
With Watergate, Nixon was simply stupid enough to give the media a huge club with which they could justifiably beat him. Nixon deserved what he got – but he got anything but unbiased coverage from the media.
Peggy Noonan argues that this scandal is different:
In previous IRS scandals it was the powerful abusing the powerful—a White House moving against prominent financial or journalistic figures who, because of their own particular status or the machineries at their disposal, could pretty much take care of themselves. A scandal erupts, there are headlines, and then people go on their way. The dreadful thing about this scandal, what makes it ominous, is that this is the elites versus regular citizens. It’s the mighty versus normal people. It’s the all-powerful directors of the administrative state training their eyes and moving on uppity and relatively undefended Americans.
http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/05/31/why-this-scandal-is-different/?mod=WSJBlog
Hondo–without a doubt the MSM was biased even 40 years ago. It’s just since probably the Clinton years they’ve given up any pretense of hiding their bias. They figured the average sheeple who watch the network evening news don’t care about bias or what they’re being fed.
And you know what? They’re right.
“I admit I haven’t followed this too closely”
The low information American.
Hondo, even I don’t remember the Alger Hiss stuff any more and I vaguely recall a discussion about it in high school.
I doubt that that stuff has much to do with liberal bias by the media. I’d bet it has more to do with being whiny spoiled children than anything else.
@54– That is sad.. Maybe 40 years ago they gave the illusion of being unbais; now they don’t hide it at all. I guess I could see where the bias might be. Figures like McCarthy was crucified in the media despite being right about certain figures in government, and Kronkite went after the Vietnam war because he was personally against it.
Ex-PH2: Nixon’s role in nailing Hiss doesn’t have much impact today. But it was indeed a media “cause celebre” in the 1950s and 1960s when Nixon was a major political figure.
The leftists in the media never forgave Nixon for “persecuting” Hiss. That remained true even after Hiss was rather conclusively proven to have perjured himself and almost certainly been a Soviet agent.
They did the same thing in regard to the Rosenbergs, you know.
So this has really all been a sort of ‘trickle down’ effect? Do you think the media will ever get themselves out of the snit they’ve been in for so long?
And is it even remotely possible that the media might completely turn on their very own ‘media darling’ and tear him to shreds?
@61, Ex, if the media were to turn on Baracka, it would only be because he got caught at using the taxing power of the government to go after his enemies. He failed the liberals, because he caused people to question the media and liberals.