Category Archives: The State

UPDATED: Obama Dissociative Disorder (The Slumbering New Yorker Awakens)

Barack Obama, Government, Journalism, Liberty, Media, The State

Obama has a lot of brazen habits. One of them is to discuss government as though he somehow were not a central part of it; as though the president were not the filthy fulcrum on which everything pivots.

“President Obama, responding to mounting criticism of his Justice Department’s seizure of reporter records, said for the first time Thursday that the administration would be reviewing its guidelines in response to the controversy. Obama said he’s ‘troubled’ by the developments and that journalists should not be ‘at legal risk’ for doing their jobs.”

(Via Fox News.)

“Attorney General Eric Holder,” reports The Huffington Post, “personally signed off on the warrant that allowed the Justice Department to search Fox News reporter James Rosen’s personal email, NBC News’ Michael Isikoff reported Thursday.”

UPDATE (5/24): The Slumbering New Yorker Awakens: “Obama Denies Role in Government.”

Sarah Hall Ingram’s Secret Admirer In the Halls of Power

Government, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Political Economy, Politics, Taxation, The State

Someone quite influential thought very highly of “Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment” (Washington Examiner).

Hall Ingram “got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.”

The 2010, 2011 and 2012 bonuses were awarded during the period when IRS harassment of the conservative groups was most intense. … Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., described the Ingram awards as “stunning, just stunning.”

“Bonuses as large as those awarded to Ingram typically require presidential approval, according to federal personnel regulations.”

All government-controlled systems (healthcare, for example) are pits of perverse incentives. It’s hard to get kinkier than to make failure tantamount to success. On the other hand, Hall Ingram is a political success; she has served her political masters well and will be rewarded forever after.

If forced to retire, Sarah Hall Ingram will probably get press with the president, as Hillary Clinton did before she slunk away from her post at Foggy Bottom, due to her dereliction in Benghazi.

WorldNetDaily’s 1997 Lawsuit Exposed The IRS’s Targeted Audits

Journalism, Media, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Taxation, The State

A libertarian journalist once called him “ornery.” The truth is that Joseph Farah is a fearless and visionary newsman (he has published this writer uncensored for over a decade). I was reminded of the qualities that have made WND a media powerhouse, as I listened to the Mark Levin Show in my GTI, en route to a run.

Brian Sussman was filling in for Levin. Twice did Sussman excerpt this WND news item dated April 30, 1999. Sussman went on to laud Joseph Farah’s Western Journalism Center (a parent company of WorldNetDaily) for presaging the flaccid mainstream, to proceed boldly against the Internal Revenue Service, as early as 1997.

The IRS had “infringed [the journalists’] First and Fourth Amendment rights during the 1996 audit. The journalists further alleg[ed] that the audit was politically motivated and quot[ed] the IRS agent who was directing the audit, Thomas Cederquist, who said that the audit was a ‘political case’ and that ‘the decisions were being made at the national level.’”

There is nothing new about what the BHO-directed agency of thieves is doing these days.

Posted by Sussman, the article is entitled “JOURNALISTS FIGHT IRS IN NEW FOIA SUIT: Agency failed to produce requested documents, April 30, 1999.”

An excerpt:

On the heels of their civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, journalists for the Western Journalism Center, parent company of WorldNetDaily, filed another lawsuit against the agency after the agency refused to disclose all the documents requested by the journalists in their Freedom of Information
Act request.The journalists initially filed their FOIA request on July 18, 1997,
in an effort to obtain IRS documents concerning the audit of the Western
Journalism Center in 1996. On October 20, 1997, the IRS responded to the journalists’ request, but they failed to turn over all the documents
that were requested. The attorney for the journalists is Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman. Klayman’s Judicial Watch is a legal watchdog that currently has five lawsuits against the White House for such affairs as Chinagate and Filegate. Klayman said that it is his intention to ask the Court to order the IRS to conduct an immediate turnover of the Center’s entire file to the journalists. He commented that the IRS has no legal authority to detain any of the Center’s files and believes that the journalists will get the files
that were requested. In a related lawsuit against the IRS, Landmark Legal Foundation and its president, Mark Levin, filed a FOIA suit against the IRS in their investigation of politically-motivated audits such as the audit of the Western Journalism Center. A survey done by the Western Journalism Center revealed that at least 20 non-profit organizations “unfriendly” to the Clinton administration had faced IRS audits since 1993. Although Landmark has been stonewalled in their efforts to obtain IRS files leading to the names of those individuals responsible for the political audits, Klayman said the Western Journalism Center case should go forward because the journalists are asking for information on behalf of themselves. They aren’t asking for third party information, as is the case in the Landmark suit. Once the journalists have possession of their files, Klayman said that he will be able to show that the audit the journalists endured is the worst-case scenario of all the people and entities that were audited for political reasons. Speaking about the new suit against the IRS, Klayman said, “This case goes hand-in-hand with the other case that the Western Journalism Center filed against the IRS for civil rights violations.” The “other case” that Klayman is referring to is the civil case filed against the IRS during May of last year in which the journalists allege
that the IRS infringed on their First and Fourth rights during the 1996 audit. The journalists further allege that the audit was politically motivated and quote the IRS agent who was directing the audit, Thomas Cederquist, who said that the audit was a “political case” and that “the decisions were being made at the national level.” The journalist’s civil case is currently in the process of appeals. Although the IRS has tried to conjure up various legal reasons as to why they can’t hand over all of the documents that the journalists are requesting in the FOIA suit, Klayman said that, in reality, they’re trying to cover something up.

MORE.

From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA

Barack Obama, Intelligence, Journalism, Law, Technology, The State

“From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“…A pesky detail has eluded all those invincibly stupid special interests who’re piping up for the privacy of the press, as opposed to fighting for the privacy of all Americans.

Have the various tele-lawyers, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and protesting members of the House Judiciary Committee forgotten the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, whose provisions were extended until December 31, 2017, by the people’s representatives?

There is nothing new about warrantless wiretapping—other than that the American people haven’t been particularly exercised about them. They’ve trusted Uncle Sam to go about this activity judiciously.

Peeping Sam had promised, after all, that covert surveillance would never be executed against ‘United States persons.’ Were a “United States person” to fall under suspicion, he or she would not be subjected to surveillance without ‘judicial and congressional oversight,’ puled the same perverts. …

…The incontinent coverage of the AP outrage has a delusional quality. Contra those whose job it is to feign indignation on TV—America is not a free country. Media convulsions notwithstanding, the government is reading over your shoulder—has been doing so for some time. It can spy on Americans without breaking the law.

It is perfectly permissible for the state to monitor you, me or The Other Guy, without a ‘perfunctory nod to due process and legal restraint.’ In other words, without a court order. …”

Read the complete column, “From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA,” now on WND.

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