But first, the news...in beer...

Third world problems are once again plaguing first world countries...

Although this happens to me every spring, I'm sure the media will blame global warming climate change or ozone depletion.
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:49 AM | Comments (136)
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It occurred to me while we were doing the podcast this week that we could all use a refresher on how one goes about holding an executive branch official in contempt of Congress. As you may recall, House Oversight will vote on a contempt citation for Lois Lerner next week and Speaker Boehner has said that the full House will vote on it thereafter.

I wrote this explainer on contempt of Congress way, way back in 2008 during the end of the U.S. attorneys firing scandal. The issue then, like now, was getting information out of reluctant executive branch officials. Lois Lerner is on the second track I describe below. AG Holder is on the fourth track. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:03 PM | Comments (245)
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Happy Thursday.

An egregious lie about Sen. McConnell and by implication the GOP made the rounds in the lefty media yesterday, which took all day to correct itself.

The Ready for Hillary super PAC has raised $5.75 million for the undeclared 2016 candidate.

AG Holder had a sad yesterday speaking to Al Sharpton's annual convention: "You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee — has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"

The two doctors who received the largest Medicare reimbursements just happen to be large Democratic donors trying to defend themselves from charges that they made fraudulent Medicare claims. Our old pals Dr. Melgen and Sen. Menendez make appearances. Oh, and the only reason we know it is because the Wall Street Journal sued after HHS rejected its FOIA requests.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (415)
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We had a word for them once - the ettins.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:42 PM | Comments (749)
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Mike sent em to me on time, I'm the guy who's late.

1 Gmac Gmac's Expert Bracket 91
2 Jim KentuckyMoron 86
3 Reagan Reagan's Glorious Bracket 84
4 Ted SCOAMF's picks 81
5 Christopher Love Breaker Morant's Bracket 80

Many thanks to @MikeTalley73 for the round up. The open thread's still open, I just needed to sneak these in here.

Also, Obama ate a dog.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:04 PM | Comments (63)
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We're doing it early tonight, so I'll just put up a quickie.

Apparently people are only going to quote you guys anyway, So.

@comradearthur clips this from Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt.

And here now this picture of a frog with an umbrella.

Incidentally, that frog is racist and pays female prostitutes 71 cents for each dollar he pays male prostitutes. So. Sympatico.

Posted by: Ace at 03:32 PM | Comments (320)
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"While you're on your knees..."

'You're on your knees in that photo. What's up with that, Garrett?' Alec Baldwin said of this photo on ex-Romney aide Garrett Jackson's Twitter page.

Jackson then mentioned the scandal surrounding Baldwin that cost him his job in November at MSNBC for allegedly using an anti-gay slur towards a paparazzo.
"Come on! Being a homophob has gotten you in enough trouble," Jackson told the actor.

"While you're on your knees, you can polish my Emmys," Baldwin added in another snide remark.

Alec Baldwin continues channelling Andrew Dice Clay's... diet.

As usual, I have to say that I think this Zero Tolerance regime for anything borderline offensive is ridiculous.

But that's the world Alec Baldwin promotes, so he should be the first to live by its absurd rules.

Thanks to The Third Pugg.

Posted by: Ace at 01:46 PM | Comments (185)
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None dare call it political repression.

Read the whole thing. I would quote it, but you'd think my quote was everything, and it's not.

Also, read this.

In a letter signed by his five subcommittee chairmen, Issa raises the possibility that Cummings coordinated with the IRS by “surreptitiously” contacting the agency to request information about True the Vote.

E-mails unearthed in the course of IssaÂ’s investigation into the IRSÂ’s inappropriate targeting of right-leaning groups show that in August 2012, a member of CummingsÂ’s staff contacted the IRS asking for any publicly available information on True the Vote. The matter was discussed by IRS officials that included Lois Lerner, the former exempt-organizations chief who retired in the wake of the targeting scandal. One of LernerÂ’s deputies, Holly Paz, subsequently sent the organizationÂ’s 990 forms to Cummings and his staff. The correspondence does not indicate, however, whether the action the IRS took with relation to True the Vote was prompted by the request from CummingsÂ’s office.

Nonetheless, EngelbrechtÂ’s True the Vote received a letter from the IRS with inquiries that agency officials have testified were unprecedented in scope. CummingsÂ’s letter contained questions that closely mirrored those posed by the IRS, and Issa details them in his letter, strongly implying that one was modeled on the other.

Somewhat extraordinary is that Issa is now demanding answers-- from Elijah Cummings.

Although you have previously denied that your staff made inquiries to the IRS about conservative organization True the Vote that may have led to additional agency scrutiny, communication records between your staff and IRS officials – which you did not disclose to Majority Members or staff – indicates otherwise...

"As the Committee is scheduled to consider a resolution holding Ms. Lerner, a participant in responding to your communications that you failed to disclose, in contempt of Congress, you have an obligation to fully explain your staff’s undisclosed contacts with the IRS.”

Exit question: Re: Cummings's staffers' request for information (derogatory, one assumes) on True the Vote -- Did we find anything?

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (276)
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Gee, I wonder if she'll wind up realizing her dream.

More at that @kerpen account, and more from Dave Camp.

I made a mistake earlier in claiming that the House Oversight Committee had referred Lerner to the DoJ for possible criminal investigation. It appears it was the Ways and Means Committee.

But here is the House Oversight Committee's report on the IRS scandal. (Footnotes and citations omitted; emphases added.)

On June 24, 2013, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel asserted during a conference call with reporters that the IRS’s misconduct was broader than just conservative applicants. Werfel told reporters that “[t]here was a wide-ranging set of categories and cases that spanned a broad spectrum.” Although Mr. Werfel refused to discuss details about the “inappropriate criteria that was [sic] in use,” the IRS produced to Congress hundreds of pages of self-selected documents that supported his assertion.

The IRS prioritized producing these documents over other material, producing them when the Committee had received less than 2,000 total pages of IRS material. Congressional Democrats had no qualms in putting these self-selected documents
to use. Virtually simultaneous with Mr. WerfelÂ’s conference call, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee trumpeted the assertion that the IRS targeted liberal groups similarly to conservative organizations.

However, the report says that this was false:

Democrats in Congress and the Administration argue that the IRS treated “progressive” groups in a manner similar to Tea Party applicants. Because the IRS BOLO list had an entry for "progressives,” Democrats allege that “progressive groups were singled out for scrutiny in the same manner as conservative groups,” and that “the progressive groups were targeted side by
side with their tea party counterpart groups.”

Again, the evidence available to the Committee does not support these Democratic assertions. Rather, the evidence clearly shows that the IRS did not subject “progressive” groups to the same type of systematic scrutiny and delay as
conservative applicants. Perhaps the most significant difference between the IRS’s treatment of Tea Party applicants and “progressive” groups is reflected in the IRS BOLO lists. The Tea Party entry was located on the tab labeled, “Emerging Issues,” meaning that the IRS was actively screening for similar cases. The “progressive” entry, however, was located on a tab labeled “TAG historical,” meaning that the IRS interest in those cases was dormant. Cindy Thomas, the
manager of the IRS Cincinnati office, explained this difference during a transcribed interview with Committee staff.

She told the Committee that unlike the systematic scrutiny given to the conservative-oriented applications as a result of the BOLO, “progressive” cases were never automatically elevated to the Washington office as a whole. She testified:

Q Ms. Thomas, is this an example of the BOLO from looks like November
2010?

A I don’t know if it was from November of 2010, but –

Q This is an example of the BOLO, though?

A Yes.

Q Okay. And, maÂ’am, under what has been labeled as tab 2, TAG Historical?

A Yes.

***

Q LetÂ’s turn to page 1354.

A Okay.

Q Do you see that, it says -- the entry says progressive?

A Yes.

Q This is under TAG Historical, is that right?

A Yes.

Q So this is an issue that hadnÂ’t come up for a while, is that right?

A Right.

Q And it doesnÂ’t note that these were referred anywhere, is that correct?
What happened with these cases?

A This would have been on our group as – because of – remember I was
saying it was consistency-type cases, so itÂ’s not necessarily a potential
fraud or abuse or terrorist issue, but any cases that were dealing with these
types of issues would have been worked by our TAG group.

Q Okay. And were they worked any different from any other cases that
EO Determinations had?

A No. They would have just been worked consistently by one group of
agents.

Q Okay. And were they cases sent to Washington?

A I’m not – I don’t know.

Q Not that you are aware?

A IÂ’m not aware of that.

Q As the head of the Cincinnati office you were never aware that these cases
were sent to Washington?

A There could be cases that are transferred to the Washington office according to, like, our [Internal Revenue Manual] section. I mean, thereÂ’s a lot of cases that are processed, and I donÂ’t know what happens to every one of them.

Q Sure. But these cases identified as progressive as a whole were never sent to Washington?

A Not as a whole.

The difference in where the entries appeared in the BOLO list resulted in disparate treatment of Tea Party and “progressive” groups. Unlike the systematic scrutiny given to Tea Party applicants, “progressive” cases were never similarly scrutinized.

The House Ways and Means Committee, with statutory authority to review confidential taxpayer information, concluded that the IRS treated conservative tax-exempt applicants differently than “progressive” groups. The Ways and Means Committee’s review found that while the IRS approved only 45 percent of conservative applicants, it approved 100 percent of groups with “progressive” in their name.

Likewise, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel testified before the Way and Means Committee:

Mr. REICHERT. Mr. Werfel, isnÂ’t it true that 100 percent of tea party applications were flagged for extra scrutiny?

Mr. WERFEL. I think that – yes. The framework from the BOLO. It’s my understanding, the way the process worked is if there’s “tea party” in the application it was automatically moved into -- into this area of further review, yes.

Mr. REICHERT. OK, and you – you know how many progressive groups
were flagged?

Mr. WERFEL. I do not have that number.

Mr. REICHERT. I do.

Mr. WERFEL. OK.

Mr. REICHERT. Our investigation shows that there were seven flagged. Do
you know how many were approved?

Mr. WERFEL. I do not have that number at my fingertips.

Mr. REICHERT. All of those applications were approved.

The IRS’s independent inspector general has repeatedly confirmed the Ways and Means Committee’s assessment. During the Oversight Committee’s July 2013 hearing, TIGTA J. Russell George told Members that “progressive” groups were not subjected to the same systematic treatment as Tea Party applicants. He testified:

With respect to the 298 cases that the IRS selected for political review, as of the
end of May 2012, three have the word “progressive” in the organization’s name;
another four were used—are used, “progress,” none of the 298 cases selected by
the IRS, as of May 2012, used the name “Occupy.”

Mr. George also informed Congress that at least 14 organizations with “progressive” in their name were not held up and scrutinized by the IRS. “In total,” Mr. George wrote, “30 percent of the organizations we identified with the words 'progress’ or ‘progressive’ in their names were process as potential political cases. In comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential political cases during the timeframe of our audit.”

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (325)
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Ugh.

Well, first of all, if you want to see a partially naked woman, who shows you a discreet amount of topbutt, you can click on the Daily Caller.

I'm annoyed, generally, by the Nudity Gambit -- do these allegedly "artistic" types have no other bullets in their ammo belts as far as buzzworthy shots? -- and more annoyed that what is on her back is not the Constitution, but rather "The Constitution, As Imagined By Ignoramuses, Dummies, and Other Rolling Stone Editors."

At the bottom of her plastic temporary tattoo is the large signature of one John Hancock. You know, John Hancock, famous signatory of the Constitution... except he didn't sign the Constitution at all.

He signed the Declaration of Independence. Most people knew this, long ago. I guess they don't now.

What I'm guessing this is is the Declaration of Independence, but with "We the People" from the Constitution appended at its top... or, more likely (now that I look at the top of the tattoo) part of the Constitution with the end of the Declaration of Independence at its bottom.

Oh well, no one ever accused Rolling Stone or artistic types of sweating the details of the American legacy.

So here's what probably happened:

Someone at Rolling Stone was surprised, when making this tattoo, to not see John Hancock's name at the bottom of it, as he expected.

Then he realized "Oh crap, the Declaration of Independence is a completely different document!!!"

Then he realized, "Gee willickers, much of the American population (and most of the readership of Rolling Stone) is as historically illiterate as I am, and if they don't see 'John Hancock' at the bottom of our 'Constitution,' they'll think we made an error. So we'd better put that at the bottom of the tattoo, or else a bunch of dummies won't know this is the Constitution at all."

Thus, we have to introduce an error to get the dummies to come to the correct conclusion.

And...

What's most annoying is that they're probably right.

I don't know what this means but it's funny: There's a major #WarOnWomen going on in the comments, because a lot of neanderthals have chosen to sexualize Ms. Louis-Dreyfus merely because she chose to sexualize herself.

How dare they.

This has led to questions about where the Bill of Rights might be tattooed. The possibilities, as I understand them, are:

"Freedom Flaps" and "Coinslot". Nuff said.

Thanks to "Nip Sip." The actual references are by "Something" and "weft-cut loop," respectively.

Rolling Stone

The magazine for smart, educated, socially-aware young Americans who are over 60 years old and who are also as dumb as a box of chicken farts.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (533)
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