House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) says the Obama administration’s Justice Department has been caught red-handed trying to orchestrate the leak of committee documents related to the ongoing IRS investigation, which would have allowed Justice to comment on the documents before Republicans made them public.
Issa says he has clear evidence of this — a Justice official mistakenly called Issa’s staff directly, instead of calling a Democratic office, and asked Issa’s staff to leak the information “before the Majority” — meaning Republicans — could share it.
Hey, if it ain’t broke…
A copy of the IRS notice to Breitbart News, obtained by FoxNews.com, asked about the company’s financial information for calendar year 2012. The IRS asked for a litany of documents, including logs of its receipts and expenses, but also its partnership agreement and a “written narrative” of the business.
And still more: IRS Conducted “Secret Research Project” with Illegally Obtained Conservative Donor Lists
I guess we, and the rest of the world, are no longer surprised and shocked by Partisan IRS bureaucrats illegal conduct (Hatch Act).
Much like the inevitable homicide to resolve Islamic Violence….The US (and Canada) are sadly overdue a wholesale purge of progressives from the civil service.
Just changing governments is not enough.
The majority Harper government has been in a life and death power struggle with the civil service since….forever.
The Republicans have absolute control of the House and hence the control of spending and yet these bold shenanigans at the IRS continue.
IMHO some way must be found to attract a different element to the civil service. Much like Police attract a distinct element….think about this. Except for a minority that on retiring enter politics…very few Police enter second careers…..perhaps it’s the pensions (cash for life)…..
This is nothing less than a shakedown in the run up to the November elections… and if the IRS can shut down Breitbart on a pretext they won’t be able to air the “Obama-Nation’s(tm)” dirty laundry which will invariably cost them votes.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
“The Republicans have absolute control of the House and hence the control of spending and yet these bold shenanigans at the IRS continue.”
I’d say Republicans are in on it, myself. The Tea Party uprising is a much bigger danger to top level Republicans than it is to DemocRats, its the formerly Republican base rising up in rage.
Either that or the NSA has so much dirt on them it would be political (or actual!) suicide to go after the government’s budgets.
But whatever, I fully agree that changing parties will do nothing at all. Only a full-on chainsawing will do.
This can only be accomplished by CUTTING TAXES. If there’s no cheese the rats will all starve.
I don’t agree, Phantom. What we have seen is the emergence over the past century of a fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy in addition to judicial, legislative and executive. So quite simply, the legislative branch is now massively outnumbered and outweighed by the White House and the bureaucracy ganging up to beat it down.
In any government throughout history, by far the most powerful branch of any bureaucracy is the one in charge of revenue and taxation. The instant it becomes politicized, there is no longer a properly functioning government. And I think it’s now blatantly obvious that the IRS is not even pretending to be even-handed in it’s workings. There will be no solution to this problem short of the complete liquidation of the IRS, as you cannot “uncorrupt” a bureaucracy this powerful.
Joseph Stalin was right; the control of bureaucratic appointments is the most powerful decision-making function within any government.
“…very few Police enter second careers…..perhaps it’s the pensions (cash for life)…..”
I know enough former police officers retired on full pensions but subsequently working in full time jobs to give the lie to that assumption.
(Maybe it’s the alimony payments.)
Breitbart News Network, a California-based company which runs several conservative websites, says the IRS recently audited its 2012 financial information.
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Makes me feel a little better knowing that my wife and I are being audited by the same sons of bitches for our 2012 financial information.
Can’t wait till the day I see Obama and Holder thrown into the same jail cell with a 300 pound hairy transvestite brute named Molly Goanna Bang You..
Issa has proven time and again that he is all hat and no cattle.
Exactly. Ooooh, another strongly worded letter! That’ll chasten them, right? Even cc’d to the “Honorable” Elijah Cummings.
cgh said: “So quite simply, the legislative branch is now massively outnumbered and outweighed by the White House and the bureaucracy ganging up to beat it down.”
I’m very willing to be wrong about this, but don’t you think Republicans would be fighting them an awful lot harder and being an awful lot louder about it if it was just an IRS/White House beat down? I mean, don’t you think they’d be doing stuff like zeroing out the IRS budget? Or cutting the Holder Justice Dept. down to size? Or making DHS dinero dependent on the performance of the Border Patrol? Or even defunding Obamacare, which is both unconstitutional and disastrous?
They’re not doing anything like that. They’re going along to get along, even while being illegally and blatantly harassed by IRS.
This leads me to believe Mr. Issa is all smoke and mirrors, and that these IRS shenanigans are targeting enemies mutual to the top Republicans and the DemocRats. Breitbart for example is as hard on the Party of Stupid as they are on the Dems.
Again, I could be wrong but I fear I’m not.
I like your solution though. Dissolving the IRS would make America one big boom town.
Do you think that IRS has hired “experts” on this kind of activity from the former KGB, Stasi other such fine organizations?
I remember, (although was very young at that time, though fully interested in politics), in a socialist country run by communists, this kind of thing went on by a variety of “people’s” organs of the state.
It eventually ended up in killing of the whole government except one minister. It is known as show trials.
Read a book transcripts of the trials. 23 or so years later read another book explaining how the trials were scripted. If the accused went off the script, the trial was interrupted and in the “law chambers”, the accused was instructed to stick to the script. If not he will immediately disappear never to be seen or heard of again.
So far there is still much democracy in the US, it may be still difficult to start that kind of process. Though never fear, Harry Read and company is working on silence.
No doubt they have the Harvard “experts” working on the proper syntax, so as not to wake up the dreaming population.
The American democracy is disappearing little bit, by little bit, by little bit, under the regime of the current ruler.
By the time the plebeians catch on it may be later that they think.
Don’t think it can happen?
Who would think the Berlin wall would come down?
Who would think the Soviet Union would fall apart?
Who would thing that the President of the United States has no strategy, has no idea of virtually anything if it was not in written the paper that he reads?
Interesting points, Phantom. Here’s my take on it. The Republicans are NOT unified. Like every legislator regardless of party, they compete among themselves for various bits of government largesse. They fight furiously over which military base gets closed for example, and they scramble vigorously over new ‘bridges to nowhere’.
Second, there’s a large ideological divide within the Republicans. The libertarians fundamentally can’t stand the social conservatives, and vice versa. We know this from the various discussions on SDA. Want to start a fight? Just bring up the name Charles Darwin and the fur flies worse than it does with the watermelons.
There’s a huge division over foreign affairs, interventionists vs. isolationists. And there’s a huge division over how big government should be. For many Republicans, the problem with big government is not that it’s too big. The problem for them is that it’s in the hands of the wrong guy, an extreme, race-baiting leftie Democrat. And bridging these divides is becoming an impossible task as the last Presidential election showed.
The Roman Republic faced these exact same problems. For centuries it resisted having any kind of bureaucracy for exactly the kind of reasons stated above. Problem was, the Empire became unmanageable as it grew. The Late Republic is a textbook example of corruption on a colossal scale, generals paying for their own armies, individuals getting the state to prosecute and proscribe their political enemies. In the end, the benign tyranny of Augustus was the only way through, short of completely abandoning the Empire and going back to being just a city state. But it did manage a few renewals, mostly by completely overhauling the entire apparatus of government.
It should be remembered that in human history, the natural governing condition is one of some form of autocracy. Democracy is and has been inherently unstable, and usually demonstrating extreme vulnerability to external threats. It remains to be seen whether our versions of democracy will have significantly more longevity than the democracy of Athens or the oligarchic rule of Republican Rome.
Lev, great analysis of what is happening.
cgh, “The instant it (the bureaucracy) becomes politicized, there is no longer a properly functioning government.” And also, great comparisons with Stalin and Rome, and your talking about the divisions on the right.
Phantom’s views, “… these IRS shenanigans are targeting enemies mutual to the top Republicans and the DemocRats”. Exactly! RINOs and Tea Partiers are like the 1917 Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
sasquatch, “The majority Harper government has been in a life and death power struggle with the civil service since….forever.” Oh, but if you only knew how right you are from my observations during the thirty-four years of my local municipal experience.
A bunch of great analysis here tonight.
Goes to show who is not in control, namely “the public”.
As they say it’s a slippery slope to tyranny, and there’s really not allot to tell the American sheeple from here on in – enjoy the slavery.