Ray Manzarek Dead at 74 RIP

Posted by: andy at 02:32 PM | Comments (3)
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Wait, so changing a report in order to advance your political interests is now a bad thing?

The attack is based on a very small error -- an error made because the Administration did not permit House investigators to copy the emails, only to view them and take notes.

Apparently one (1) single error was found in their notes-- and from that, we get this Doctored Emails Spin.

Breathtaking.

Obama is Nixon?

That may appear looking like a charitable description.

Posted by: Ace at 04:17 PM | Comments (173)
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Embedded below. Horrible.

A KFOR tornado reporter called it "the worst tornado damage in the history of the world". more...

Posted by: JohnE. at 01:44 PM | Comments (264)
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Interesting.

According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.

The White House lists the IRS union leaderÂ’s visit this way:

Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30

In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”

The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:

April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.

I'm a little skeptical that things unfolded that quickly. I also have in mind that the IG Report redacted a February 25, 2010 incident as the event that began the whole process -- and February 25, 2010, while close in time to March 31, 2010, isn't the same date.

Nevertheless, this is extremely interesting. Think about what could be accomplished by such a scheme.

Suppose you're a president. A hypothetical one. Let's call this hypothetical president President Tee.

Suppose he wishes a federal agency to pursue a certain policy but does not want this policy traceable back to himself. He does not want a published order.

Let's say a union friendly to him, which actually endorsed him in the election, controls the agency concerned. We'll call this hypothetical union Union N, and we'll call the agency it controls Agency I.

It would seem that President Tee could choose to go outside the normal chain of command to issue an illegal order by simply telling the head of Union N to inform the union members she leads to pursue the policy, rather than issuing a formal order to the head of the IRS.

I don't think this meeting is a smoking gun, as I said; I think the actual incident which kicked this all off happened on February 25, 2010. It's a scandal in itself that this important information is being kept from us; we paid for the IG Report.

But it is terribly interesting that a hypothetical President Tee -- say a president with a history of "community organizing" -- could simply ignore the normal chain of command and normal channels for issuing his orders by delivering his policy directives not to his actual inferior executive officers, but to a big-wig union leader who then relay the command to the troops.

Is This Crazy? I'm not necessarily sold on this -- I'm not sure it could or would work, or that it has any benefits over simply sitting down with someone you know who's "on your side" and giving him the order off-the-record.

But it is, I think, a possible avenue. And I think it's important to think about the Government Interest in all these things-- that is, the interest of the Government Bureaucracy itself, which has its own agenda and has its own favored political policies.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (194)
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The White House sees no reason to believe the woman who oversaw the tax-exempt division during the scandal did anything wrong.

They fake-fired Steve Miller quickly enough, and he wasn't even in charge at the time.

But the woman in charge, promoted and showered with taxpayer-paid bonuses? She's worth defending.

Gee, I wonder why.

Critics of the administration expect many more heads to roll as the true scope and intent of the IRS actions come to light, but Mr. Pfeiffer on Sunday strongly defended Ms. Ingram.

“No one has suggested that she did anything wrong yet,” Mr. Pfeiffer said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Before everyone in this town convicts this person in the court of public opinion with no evidence, let’s actually get the facts and make decisions after that. There’s nothing that suggests she did anything wrong,” he said.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (179)
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I am speechless.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (450)
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Conspiracy.

As I mentioned below, Megyn Kelly reported the reason for making the claim that these men were "co-conspirators" in a crime was to take advantage of the legal provision that co-conspirators do not have to be advised that a probe has begun against them-- that is, if you allege they're co-conspirators, you do not have to inform the targets, they do not get to send a lawyer to the hearing to plead their side, and the whole investigation is kept a State Secret.

Here's my question:

If James Rosen, William La Jeunesse, and Mike Levine are "co-conspirators" -- officially designated as such by the apparatus of the State -- for talking to a government source, which reporters in Washington are NOT also "co-conspirators"?

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (320)
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Update: This is bad. Megyn Kelly just reported that Rosen was named as a criminal co-conspirator because when you so name a reporter, the rules say that you do not have to inform the target, and he is not entitled to have his side of things heard by the court.

This allegation makes it an ex parte hearing with only the government and, most likely, one of its favorite judges, in the room.

...

This is scary.

What scares me is what Obama will do in reaction to investigations to what he's already done.

Meanwhile, Nice Deb recaps Dan Pfieffer's appearance on five Sunday shows yesterday. Apparently his goal was to use the word "irrelevant" in as many ways as possible.

Chris Wallace wanted to know what Obama was doing the night of the Benghazi attack.

Pfieffer's answer? It's irrelevant.

Carney Press Conference: At Foxnews. It's almost over. Sorry.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (371)
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This woman has a story to tell.

In July 2010, Catherine filed with the IRS seeking tax-exempt status for her organizations. Shortly after, the troubles began.

That winter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation came knocking with questions about a person who had attended a King Street Patriots event once. Based on sign-in sheets, the organization discovered that the individual in question had attended an event, but “it was a come-and-go thing,” and they had no further information on hand about him. Nevertheless, the FBI also made inquiries about the person to the office manager, who was a volunteer.

The King Street Patriots werenÂ’t the only ones under scrutiny. On January 11, the IRS visited the EngelbrechtsÂ’ shop and conducted an on-site audit of both their business and their personal returns, Catherine says.

Two months later, the IRS initiated the first round of questions for True the Vote. Catherine painstakingly answered them, knowing that nonprofit status would help with the organization’s credibility, donors, and grant applications. In October, the IRS requested additional information. And whenever Catherine followed up with IRS agents about the status of True the Vote’s application, “there was always a delay that our application was going to be up next, and it was just around the corner,” she says,

As this was occurring, the FBI continued to phone King Street Patriots. In May 2011, agents phoned wondering “how they were doing.” The FBI made further inquiries in June, November, and December asking whether there was anything to report.

The situation escalated in 2012. That February, True the Vote received a third request for information from the IRS, which also sent its first questionnaire to King Street Patriots. Catherine says the IRS had “hundreds of questions — hundreds and hundreds of questions.” The IRS requested every Facebook post and Tweet she had ever written. She received questions about her family, whether she’d ever run for political office, and which organizations she had spoken to.

...

On the same day they received the questions from the IRS, Catherine says, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) launched an unscheduled audit of their machine shop, forcing the Engelbrechts to drop everything planned for that day.

...

That was in February. In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid a visit to Engelbrecht Manufacturing while Bryan, Catherine, and their children were out of town. The OSHA inspector talked with the managerial staff and employees, inspecting the premises minutely. But Bryan says the agent found only “little Mickey Mouse stuff, like, ‘You have safety glasses on, but not the right kind; the forklift has a seatbelt, but not the right kind.’” Yet Catherine and Bryan said the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it.

Not long after, the tab arrived. OSHA was imposing $25,000 in fines on Engelbrecht Manufacturing. They eventually worked it down to $17,500, and Bryan says they may have tried to contest the fines to drive them even lower, but “we didn’t want to make any more waves, because we don’t know [how much further] OSHA could reach.”

I don't know what to say.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (545)
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In an article at the Washington Post, linked at Hot Air:

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security badge access records to track the reporterÂ’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporterÂ’s personal e-mails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.

It's a little worse than that-- an FBI report named Rosen as a criminal accessory for reporting the news. I imagine this was done as part of a justification for getting his personal emails.

[FBI Agent Reginald] Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”

The claim is made that Rosen employed "covert communication" techniques to speak with his source... sort of like Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat in parking structures late at night.

In other words: The very fact that he used any sort of technique for protecting his source becomes evidence of a crime against the State.

Shocking.

Thanks to the Obsidan Owl for the headline joke.

Posted by: Ace at 08:51 AM | Comments (242)
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