Category Archives: The State

Shaping The News By Omission; Passing The Buck For Barack

Barack Obama, Ethics, Journalism, Media, The State

CNN, as you know, often veers into the business of shaping the news, rather than simply reporting it. It does so both by commission and by omission.

Thus has CNN steered clear of the scandals that have enveloped The Beloved, Barack Hussein Obama.

Over the past few days you were able to relive the manhunt for Bin Laden and the Boston bombers; watch the neurotic network doctor hype his latest health scare, hear about the collapse of a bridge in Skagit County, in my neck of the woods, learn of a baby born during the tornado; cry to “Emotional Stories of Survival,” “Examine Sexual Assault in the Military,” marvel at the audacity of Jodi Arias, hackers, but never BHO.

Look at the “CNN Transcripts for the entire day of May 24, 2013” (a service I appreciate). Buried in the links is a small notice, “IRS Non-Profit Chief Placed On Leave.” I was unable to find a fleshed-out report.

The “CNN Transcripts for May 23, 2013” are not much better.

Finally today, May 25, the network editorial board must have determined that it was time to mentions that “the Justice Department’s decision to seek a warrant to search a FOX News reporter’s private e-mail went all the way to the top. A Justice official tells CNN that Attorney General Eric Holder vetted the application himself and then the application was approved by a federal magistrate.”

CNN was likely shamed into news reportage by MSNBC, which is generally the worst offender, but seemed to have decided that indicting a journalist for doing his job was where passing the buck for Obama would stop, at least for a now.

Never know when the guy will sic his zealots on me.

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.

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