Lois Lerner wanted to audit Charles Grassley after “accidentally” receiving a communication addressed to him
According to this story Lois Lerner accidentally received a communication which was supposed to go to Charles Grassley. This communication apparently invited his wife to attend a fundraiser and Lois Lerner’s first reaction was to ask whether an audit was in order.
Here is more:
The event organizer apparently offered to pay for Grassley’s wife to attend the event. In an email to another IRS official, Lerner suggests referring the matter for an audit, saying it might be inappropriate for the group to pay for his wife.
Lerner quipped, “Perhaps we should refer to exam?” in response. As the reimbursement would fall to Grassley to report as income, it’s thought she would have been referring to audit him and not the event organizer.
How about a little bit of good news for a change? Consider this the feel-good story of the day.
Today the Supreme Court, in a rare unanimous decision, ruled that police must obtain a search warrant before they can look through a person’s cell phone, extending the fourth amendment right to include these devices.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot go snooping through people’s cell phones without a warrant, in a unanimous decision that amounts to a major statement in favor of privacy rights.
Police agencies had argued that searching through the data on cell phones was no different than asking someone to turn out his pockets, but the justices rejected that, saying a cell phone is more fundamental.
The ruling amounts to a 21st century update to legal understanding of privacy rights.
“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the unanimous court.
“Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple— get a warrant.”
To me this was a no-brainer, and I think the unanimous decision confirms this, but the truth is since the individual mandate was ruled Constitutional I simply no longer know what to expect from the Supreme Court.
Thankfully they got this one right.
The IRS agrees to pay $50,000 for illegally leaking tax return before the 2012 election
The IRS targeting scandal may be making all the headlines in recent days but this is not the only scandal the corrupt agency has been embroiled in. The agency was also being sued by the National Organization for Marriage for illegally leaking that organization’s tax records to a political opponent in the middle of the 2012 election campaign.
In February 2012, the Human Rights Campaign posted on its web site NOM’s 2008 tax return and the names and contact information of the marriage group’s major donors, including soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. That information then was published by the Huffington Post and other liberal-leaning news sites.
Yesterday the IRS admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay the National Organization for Marriage $50,000. Here is part of what NOM Chairman John Eastman had to say:
“In the beginning, the government claimed that the IRS had done nothing wrong and that NOM itself must have released our confidential information,” read a statement from NOM Chairman John D. Eastman. “Thanks to a lot of hard work, we’ve forced the IRS to admit that they in fact were the ones to break the law and wrongfully released this confidential information.”
A top United States archivist claims the IRS broke the law by not reporting Lois Lerner’s lost emails
Despite IRS Commissioner John Koskinen’s claim to the contrary the top United States archivist, David Ferriero, stated in sworn testimony today that the IRS did in fact break the law by not reporting the loss of Lois Lerner’s emails in a timely fashion.
Here is more:
According to this story John Boehner is nearing a decision on whether or not to file a lawsuit against Barack Obama’s use of the Executive Order to circumvent the Congress.
Here is more:
Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, told Republicans Tuesday he could have an announcement within days on whether the House will file a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, challenging the executive actions that have become the keystone of the administration.
The lawsuit could set up a significant test of constitutional checks and balances, with the legislative branch suing the executive branch for ignoring its mandates, and the judiciary branch deciding the outcome.
Boehner told the House Republican Conference during a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning that he has been consulting with legal scholars and plans to unveil his next steps this week or next, according to sources in the room.
We all know that the 14th amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean that all children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally are citizens of the United States. And we also know that thousands of unaccompanied minors are flooding over the border to be reunited with their parents.
If these minors are to be reunited with legal immigrants this policy could be justified, however in sworn testimony today Jeh Johnson admitted this is not always the case. In many instances the children are being reunited with parents who are also in the United States illegally.
Arizona Veterans Affairs Office is accused of trying to hide the number of veteran deaths
The Phoenix Veterans Affairs Office is at the heart of the secret waiting list scandal for it is there that this story first came to light. Since that time it has spread to other offices across the nation but now it returns once again to Arizona.
There is only one thing worse than long waiting lists and that is a long list of veterans who have died while waiting for treatment so now according to this story a whistleblower is claiming the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Office is trying to hide the number of deaths related to this scandal by adding the names of dead veterans back onto the waiting list.
Putting aside, once again, the fallacy that all of Lois Lerner’s emails were on her crashed hard drive and not stored in servers; even if this is true it turns out the IRS did indeed have six months worth of backed up emails but apparently made no attempt to retrieve them.
This was admitted during sworn testimony by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen:
Koskinen: Yes, it’s actually a disaster recovery system and it backs up for six months in case the entire system goes down.
C: And that was in place in 2011?
K: That was the rule in 2011. Policy.
C: So when Lois Lerner figured out on June 13th that her computer crashed, and there have been emails showing that she was going to great lengths to try to get that recovered, why didn’t they just go to that six month tape?
K: Because that six month tape is a disaster recovery tape that has all of the emails on it and is a very complicated tape to actually extract emails for, but I have not seen any emails to explain why they didn’t do it, so it would be difficult, but I don’t know why.
When pressed further this is what he had to say:
All I know about that is that the backup tapes are disaster recovery tapes that put everything in one lump and extracting individual emails out of that is very costly and difficult. And that was not the policy at the time.
Costly? Really? Since when is the Federal government worried about spending money? Unless he means politically costly and not monetarily.
Benghazi: Ed Klein claims Hillary Clinton tried to warn Barack Obama the video excuse would not hold up
Ed Klein has a new book coming out entitled ‘Blood Feud’ which is supposed to chronicle the bad blood which has existed between the Clinton’s and the Obama’s since the soon to be president played the race card against the Clinton’s in the South Carolina primary in 2008.
In this book, and in this article, by Ed Klein he claims that Hillary Clinton knew the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and was shocked when Barack Obama called her and told her to blame the now infamous youtube video.
Regular readers of America’s Watchtower know that I have been hard on Scott Brown since he carpetbagged his way into my state to run for political office but today he got one right so it is time to give credit where credit is due.
Senator Shaheen is one of the Democrats who signed a letter which was addressed to Lois Lerner asking her to investigate some groups applying for 501 C (4) status. Of course these groups all just happened to be conservative groups and the rest is history.
Today the Brown campaign is calling on Senator Shaheen to her to release all communications she had with Lois Lerner.
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