IRS asked Conservative group to “detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers.”

 Posted by on 5/19/2013  2 Responses »
May 192013
 

I’m guessing the children over at Progress Texas, who are falsely claiming that not only were they scrutinized by the IRS “just like the Conservative and Tea Party groups”, but that they also welcomed the scrutiny, weren’t asked to provide this information.

Mostly because the IRS would have known that they are Godless Liberals, and thus do not pray.

Oh, and despite the fact that they are 100% engaged in political advocacy, they were still granted their bullshit tax exempt status (despite demanding higher taxes for thee, but not for me).

Via Althouse:

Information the IRS demanded from the Coalition for Life of Iowa. Asked if that’s an appropriate question to a 501(c)(3) applicant, IRS commissioner Steven Miller says he’s pained at his inability to answer.

What an awful witness! (And I say that after watching much of today’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.)

ADDED: To help you think about what might be an appropriate question read this(“Exemption requirements”) and this (“Exempt purposes”). Miller seemed to actively resist giving us any idea how the requested details might have been anything but harassment, even as he squirmed away from a simple denouncement of the request.

I think my friend Bob Owens is on to something here:

Not much more, Bob. Not much more.

Politicians and their butt buddies in the media would be well advised to re-read this piece and seriously consider the road they are leading us down: What I saw at the coup

Did Progress Texas Really Receive the Same Treatment from IRS as Conservative & Tea Party Groups?

 Posted by on 5/15/2013  5 Responses »
May 152013
 

The short answer? No, of course they didn’t.

But that won’t stop Matt Glazer and Phillip Martin from trying to pretend that’s true.

We know now that the IRS routinely and quickly approved liberal groups’ tax exempt status (almost as if though it were little more than a rubber stamp).

Via USA Today:

In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like “Progress” or “Progressive,” the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.

Far-left advocacy groups like Progress Texas, which is a 501(c)4.

They claim they were “scrutinized” by the IRS in much the same way that Conservative and Tea Party groups were scrutinized, and that they “appreciate” the scrutiny.

As with the Tea Party groups, the IRS sought copies of promotional materials, backgrounds of officers, meeting minutes and specifics about activities, such as get-out-the-vote drives, that the organization said it would conduct.

Ahhhh…isn’t that cute? Matt Glazer — former Executive Director of Progress Texas and former blogger at the far-left Austin-based kiddie blog Burnt Orange Report — thinks that those were the same questions and inquiries made of Conservative Groups.

That simply isn’t true.

Additionally, the Progress Texas’s routine audit request came from a California office. The targeted Conservative inquiries were all from D.C.  and Cincinnati  Ohio offices. They were not sending out the same letters of inquiry from California to Liberals as they were from Cinncy to Conservatives.

You’ll also notice this little bit of information glossed over by Glazer:

An Austin, Texas-based group, Progress Texas, received a letter from the IRS in February 2013 when it sought nonprofit status.

While the average wait for Conservative and Tea Party groups to be granted (or denied) their tax exempt status is about 3 years, Progress Texas sought tax exempt non-profit status in February.

Of this year.

You’ll notice, if you go to their site, that tax exempt status has already been granted. In less than 3 months.

Probably a lot quicker than that.

But Matt Glazer and his BFF Phillip Martin (former kiddie blogger at BOR and now Political Director at Progress Texas) would have you believe that they received the exact same scrutiny as Conservative groups.

Who are still waiting for their tax-exempt non-profit status.

But let me ask you this Matt & Phillip: If the IRS treated you just the way they treat everybody else seeking non-profit status, why did the IRS admit wrong doing in specifically targeting Conservative and Tea Party groups?

Of course, the real issue here is that any of these groups are granted a tax-free non-profit status, which allows the hyper-partisan IRS to use their power to intimidate and harass their political foes.

The answer can be found in David Burge’s (of Iowa Hawk Blog) Twitter feed today:

Specifically, #4 — this way anybody and everybody is free to form a group or org and not have to worry about the IRS playing favorites.

White House Insider — “CIA Source Says Another Shoe To Drop On Obama”

 Posted by on 5/14/2013  1 Response »
May 142013
 
Corrupt to the core

They forgot to add Fast & Furious to the list.

Of course, this isn’t the fourth shoe (Benghazi, IRS, AP phone records being the other three) that people keep counting. Because Fast & Furious is still a scandal that needs further investigation and answers.

But yeah…the schadenfreude of  watching Jay Carney twist and squirm in front of a suddenly-awakened White House Press Corps has been delightful:

“I already told you it’s the CIA’s turn next and it looks like that part is about to develop.  Now here’s the thing about CIA.  Those boys don’t play nice.  You sh*t on them, they shove a size 12 so far up your ass you can tie the laces with your teeth.

CIA source says still one more shoe to drop. Yes, four shoes. Dead ambassador, tapped phones, IRS probes. Will it be worse? Can it be?!

According to Drudge editor and Washington Times columnist Joseph Curl, the pouring rain ain’t over yet. He says a CIA source revealed another shoe could drop.

Benghazi, AP, IRS and one more scandal? That’s a lot of shoes, and we’re not even counting all the footwear planted firmly in President Obama’s mouth. LINK

The most corrupt administration ever.

The interesting part is that it took having the White House take a shit all over the rights of the media (in this case, having the Justice Department illegally obtain the personal and business phone records of AP reporters) to wake them up and make them start reporting on this corrupt regime.

I’m guessing the CIA has enough shit on Obama/Hillary/Holder to bury them. Which is why it’s a bad idea to piss off the CIA by constantly throwing them under the bus for your own failures.

Great comment from the Ulster Report:

This is the part where AP (and all MSM) realize they’re expendable in this Marxist Utopia they’ve helped create.

They went to bed “journalists,” but woke up yesterday demoted to “useful idiots.”

The Most Criminally Corrupt Administration in US History

 Posted by on 5/13/2013  3 Responses »
May 132013
 

If only Obama were as competent at creating jobs as he is at creating unconstitutional and impeachable scandals.

  • Fast & Furious — Eric Holder’s Justice Department sold guns to Mexican drug cartels and then watched them walk across the border and disappear. These guns were then used to kill hundreds of Mexican citizens and at least one US citizen, US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Obama and Eric Holder have refused to cooperate with investigations, have lied about what they knew and who was in charge of this operation.  Holder and Obama lied, and people really did die.
  • Benghazi — Hillary’s State Department refused repeated requests from Ambassador Chris Stevens for more security for the US Consulate in #Benghazi. Then, once they were under attack by terrorists, Obama and Hillary did everything they could to NOT send help. 7 hours later, while Obama slept peacefully in his bed, 4 Americans were dead, including Ambassador Stevens.  Hillary and Barry then colluded to intentionally deceive the American people about what happened and who was responsible. For weeks after the attack, they both continued to throw out the lie that the attacks were a spontaneous response to an obscure internet video, even though they both knew it was a lie from the moment the attacks started. Hillary and Obama lied; four brave Americans died. (Michael Barone: Did Clinton and Obama believe their Benghazi baloney?) Meanwhile, filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail.
  • The IRS — In 2009, Obama joked that he would use the IRS to audit his foes and enemies. In 2013, we found out that he wasn’t joking. In an effort to distract from the imploding Benghazi narrative, Obama released a report where the IRS admits to targeting Conservative and Tea Party groups for audits and harassment from the most powerful bureaucratic federal agency. But, to be fair, the IRS did apologize.

And single one of these unconstitutional scandals should be enough to topple any corrupt administration. And one of them would have been enough to topple a corrupt Republican administration.

But taken together? We are just one step away, I believe, from the American people marching — with fully loaded muskets, pitchforks, tar, feathers, and fire — on Washington D.C. and invoking the last recourse provided by the Declaration of Independence.

The Washington Post, writing about the IRS scandal notes:

A bedrock principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends.

That’s the key thing right there — our government is granted the powers that they have only by a the “voluntary cooperation” of its citizens. We are this close to revoking our voluntary cooperation.

In all three of these scandals, people should  be in jail (well, people other than some obscure film maker). In all three scandals, the stench and corruption reaches to the very top — Obama. Who should not only  be impeached, but should be in prison.

State Senators Taking My Money to Feed Your Children Are Not Heroes

 Posted by on 5/8/2013  5 Responses »
May 082013
 

From Twitter earlier…

It started with this guy calling a couple of Democrat state Senators “heroes” — a term I found not befitting of anybody in the Texas Lege.

And I said as much:

And the rest:

I wasn’t able to get back to Jason right away — my lovely wife is out of town on business, and I’m on solo-parent duty this week. Which means I had to feed and bath the boy, read him a few books, and then put him to bed.

(that last one should have read “It is NOT and should not be the role of government to feed your children”)

I’ll update if Jason has some brilliant rebuttal as to explain how a politican who takes my money and gives it to somebody else is a “hero.”

Mark Sanford Wins S.C. Special Election Over Stephen Colbert’s Sister

 Posted by on 5/8/2013  8 Responses »
May 082013
 

While I’m not a fan of Sanford (or any man who cheats on his wife and family) and wish the GOP in South Carolina  would have found a better candidate, the truth is that the candidate they had was good enough to beat the extreme Liberal mostly known for being the sister of an unfunny Liberal comedian.

And why’d he win?

But the lesson of South Carolina’s special election Tuesday night is actually simpler than all that — some areas of the country just hate liberals.

Those areas are easy to identify — they love America, embrace traditional family values, don’t shirk from hard work or personal responsibility, and the idea of something for nothing is as foreign to them as John Kerry’s billionaire wife.

Meanwhile, Liberals on Twitter are (predictably) melting down:

Mark Sanford appears to be cruising to an easy victory over Elizabeth Colbert Busch in South Carolina District 1?s special congressional election.  Though the district is a Republican stronghold, Democrats considered the race winnable because of Sanford’s marital woes. Liberals aren’t happy, and some of them are taking it out on South Carolina voters.

To wit:

Uh huh. But now faux moral outrage from Liberals when they re-elected Jesse Jackson Jr. to Congress, despite spending campaign money on vacations, Rolex watches, hooker, and blow — all while being AWOL in drug rehab for months.

Actually, Keith, Democrats already proved that you can put a D beside the name of a murderer and he’d still get elected in a Democrat district. His name is Ted Kennedy.

We’d All Be Better Off Had the Crooks, Cheats, and Incompetents of the 83rd #TXLege Simply Stayed Home

 Posted by on 4/24/2013  No Responses »
Apr 242013
 

As Empower Texans‘ Michael Quinn Sullivan noted, the completely failed legislative leadership (looking you square in your wormy little eyeballs, Speaker Joe Straus) means that “conservative House members are preparing to go home in 34 days with no wins, no fights and not much of a record. It’s quite a campaign slogan the House leadership is asking them to adopt: “I did nothing I promised, and we attempted even less!”

Two sessions squandered – one with a super-majority, the other with a near-super-majority – and not much of a substantive set of reforms to show for it.

Whether it is protecting religious liberties or defending life, reforming the budget or cutting taxes, this Texas House is doing nothing. If they could do less, they probably would.

This is by design, folks. Mostly because Joe Straus 1) is not a Conservative, but he is 2) a coward. If his hair was on fire, I’d piss all over his leg.

And the Texas Monthly‘s Paul Burka agrees:

I do not believe this is happening by chance. It is the strategy of the leadership. The last thing the Straus team wants is a lot of vigorous debate between R’s and D’s and long lines at the back microphone, nor do they want want (sic) to give the tea party members anything to get riled up about. So the calendars will continue to be boring and innocuous under the watchful eye of Calendars chair Todd Hunter. I’m not guessing about this; I aired my suspicions to a Straus insider and got an affirmative answer. No long calendars. No contentious bills that could blow up the session. No chance for the tea party freshmen to do their thing. Let’s just get the hell out of Dodge. That’s the plan, man.

Killing Pro-2nd Amendment Legislation

There have been few hotter national topics than gun control this year. As our Federal government and Democrat-led states around the nation have sought stricter gun control laws, many other states’ legislative bodies have fought back by expanding gun rights.

Texans are fervently pro-gun and pro-second amendment, so the GOP-majority Texas Lege has the full support — nay the expectation — from their constituents to pass meaningful and long-awaited pro-second amendment legislation this session. Especially campus carry and open carry laws.

But Speaker Straus had different plans. A plan to kill that legislation without ever allowing it to come before the house for a full vote (where it would have passed). That plan involved appointing anti-gun Democrats to key Committee Chairmanships, where Straus knew these bills would be assigned. And knowing that these Democrat Chairmen would make sure these bills died pending in committee.

This is why Rep. Joseph Pickett (D) was picked by Straus to chair the House Committee on Homeland Security & Public Safety, which is where HB-700 (open carry) went to die.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Sen. John Whitmire (D), the chairman of the Criminal Justice committee, assured us that he had killed any hopes of campus carry coming out of his committee in the Senate.

The Texas Tribune has a hand Gun Legislation tracking app, where you can go watch 100 gun-related bills die. I imagine the 100% Liberal Tribune staff cheers loudly (and openly) every time another pro-second amendment bill is left pending in committee.

Continue reading »

RIP: Margaret Thatcher

 Posted by on 4/8/2013  37 Responses »
Apr 082013
 

What a remarkable woman. What a remarkable life.

Via the Telegraph:

Baroness Thatcher, Britain’s greatest post-war prime minister, has died at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, her family has announced.

[snip]

She will go down in history not only as Britain’s first female prime minister, but as the woman who transformed Britain’s economy in addition to being a formidable rival on the international stage.

Lady Thatcher was the only British prime minister to leave behind a set of ideas about the role of the state which other leaders and nations strove to copy and apply.

Many features of the modern globalised economy – monetarism, privatisation, deregulation, small government, lower taxes and free trade – were all promoted as a result of policies she employed to reverse Britain’s economic decline.

Above all, in America and in Eastern Europe she was regarded, alongside her friend Ronald Reagan, as one of the two great architects of the West’s victory in the Cold War.

All of which means that the ghoulish Left is already dancing on her grave and rejoicing in her death:

There’s just no accounting for stupidity, is there?

Now, these gentlemen, on the other hand, get it. The best way to remember a woman as great as the Iron Lady, is in her own words:

Obama the Magnanimous — In a Show of Solidarity with the Little People Gives Back 5% of His Salary

 Posted by on 4/4/2013  3 Responses »
Apr 042013
 

His annual salary is $400K. Which means he’s giving back about $20K. Or about twice as much as Joe Biden will donate to charity over the course of his lifetime.

What a huge, totally meaningless gesture from our Dear Leader.

As Glenn Reynolds calls it, a “token gesture by an out-of-touch millionaire golfer.”

The man who gave us a $17 trillion debt. The man who closed the White House to school children’s tours, yet hosts Jay-Z and Rhianna at a rockstar-studded gala at the “closed to the public” White House. The man who has a $billion dollar annual vacation budget. The man who has played more golf than Tiger Woods over the last 5 years. The man who has zero day-to-day living expenses?

This man wants to pretend that this $20K “donation” to the treasury actually means something? You’d have to be a Liberal to believe this is anything other than kabuki theater.

See this chart to understand how Obama’s “sacrifice” compares to what we tax payers spend on him and his ungrateful family.

If Barry really wanted to save the tax payers a few extra pennies, how about he and Michelle actually fly on the same airplane when they travel to their latest monthly lavish vacation? Taking separate planes probably costs us upwards of a million dollars per vacation.

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