Oops: Lerner may have blown her invocation of the fifth

In case you missed it, here's a hilarious moment from yesterday's IRS hearings:

Asked why he visited WH 118 times, Former IRS Commish Doug Shulman, cited the Easter Egg Roll as one reason.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 22, 2013

See my Twitter feed for some amusing responses to that absurdly irrelevant, unhelpful, wilfully stupid non-answer.

Lois Lerner, the person who was in charge of the IRS's Department of Sticking It to Conservative Groups, or whatever they call it, seems to have blown her attempt to get out of testifying before Congress. See Andy McCarthy, then Fred Thompson, then McCarthy again.

Via Politico, Issa is indeed going to order her to testify:

Instead of simply taking the scorn of lawmakers for a day, repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination, and then moving on, she chose defiance.

Her bravado has prompted House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to say she has waived her constitutional right to not comment.

Now, he plans to haul the director of the IRS’s tax-exempt department back to the committee for questioning.

“When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn and Michael Graham don't understand how Lerner can invoke the fifth and at the same time retain her IRS job. She's gotta go, right? (Steyn's part in the podcast begins at one hour in, lasts about 20 minutes, and is well worth a listen.)

Another thing brought up by Mark in the podcast: the private White House meeting in which selected liberal media members receive their talking points straight from their minders:

Ezra Klein and Josh Marshall, Who Got a VIP Briefing at the White House Yesterday, Are Curiously on the Same Page Today 

They've reached the same conclusion as Steyn, but through a slightly different process.

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Issa on Shulman's testimony: ‘If I Had a Nickel For Each Time’ Shulman Said ‘I Don’t Remember’ . . . 

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"There's definitely been an intrusion into my computer system."

. . . and other quotable comments on the Obama scandal cascade:

"Liberals used to love to quote the (apparently apocryphal) line from a Sinclair Lewis character 'When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and waving a cross.'
Wonder if they’re reflecting on that this week?" Mona Charen

"Isn’t it weird that right around the same time the libs started crowing that the Tea Party was over, the IRS started targeting Tea Partiers? I mean, what’s the connection? Why would people be reluctant to express their dissent against the powers that be, just because the IRS was going after them? We may never know." Jim Treacher

". . . to America’s shame this is now a land in which there are laws against everything — or, at any rate, regulations (we’re way beyond laws at this stage) — and any one of us is in non-compliance with something or other any hour of the day. So, if they’re serious about getting you on something, anything, eventually they will. And they’ll take as much time as they want: The process is the punishment." Mark Steyn

"It's like Saul Alinsky is running the country." Rachel Alexander

"Where Was President Waldo During Attack?" IBD

"I consider myself to be rather cynical about the government and its motives, but I’m just not cynical enough. Nor am I cynical enough about the MSM. I continue to be amazed at the IRS’s brazen falsehoods, and I continue to be amazed that 'elite' press outlets swallow that spin whole." David French

"I think when one adds up Benghazi, the AP mess, the IRS scandal, the politically correct laxity about domestic terrorism and radical Islam, the deliberate leaking of classified documents to preapproved in-house reporters, and what Kathleen Sebelius is trying to do, the impression given is Nixonian to the core . . ." Victor Davis Hanson

'So now not only are your books and Facebook posts legitimate tax issues but so is your hernia, and your prostate, and your erectile dysfunction. Next time round, the IRS will be able to leak your incontinence pads to George Soros." Mark Steyn

"Thomas Friedman is famous for musing that he wishes America could be China for a day. It turns out we've been China for a while." James Taranto

"There's definitely been an intrusion into my computer system." Sharyl Attkisson



Then there's that hyena, Howard Dean: "Benghazi is a laughable joke."

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Updated to add:

I am disappointed that none of my writings on Obamacare triggered an IRS audit. #NeedToStepUpMyGame
— Michael New (@Michael_J_New) May 21, 2013

And the headline of the day, via Jim Geraghty's Campaign Spot: Washington Post Forced to Begin Using Its Strategic Pinocchio Reserves


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IRS scandal "smoking gun"?

Located by Jeffrey Lord in the White House Visitors Log:

Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?

Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?

The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts.

March 31, 2010.

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 leader’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.

In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.

The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates.

Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party and conservative groups around the country.

The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White House.

I'm having trouble getting anything past page two to load, but it appears Lord goes deeply into the powerful NTEU and the president's enhancement of its powers through executive orders.

The timeline logically points to the logical originator of the IRS persecution of conservative groups, just as the 10 PM phone call between President Obama and Secretary Clinton on the night of the Benghazi attack points logically to the origin of the phony video story. 

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Sinatra time: Sydney, 1961

Judging from these YouTube clips, Sinatra's 1961 concert in Sydney might have been his best ever. This is just wow:


(Cole Porter)

More greats:

I'll Be Seeing You
(Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal)

I Concentrate On You
(Cole Porter)

The Second Time Around
(Cahn and Van Heusen)

You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You
(Russ Morgan, Larry Stock, and James Cavanaugh)

Come Fly With Me
(Cahn and Van Heusen)

Day In, Day Out
(Rube Bloom and Johnny Mercer)

And this Gershwin beauty:



Lots more here. Enjoy.

Bonus: From Strange Herring, have another.

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"Gee, what do you suppose Obama and Clinton talked about in that 10 p.m. call?"

Who cooked up the lie that the attack on our consulate in Benghazi was provoked by a YouTube video? After reading Andrew C. McCarthy's The 10 P.M. Phone Call, my money is on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:

At about 9 p.m. Washington time, Hicks learned from the Libyan prime minister that Stevens was dead. Hicks said he relayed all significant developments on to Washington as the evening progressed — although he did not speak directly to Secretary Clinton again after the 8 p.m. briefing.

That is the context of the 10 p.m. phone call between the president and the secretary of state.

We do not have a recording of this call, and neither Clinton nor the White House has described it beyond noting that it happened. But we do know that, just a few minutes after Obama called Clinton, the Washington press began reporting that the State Department had issued a statement by Clinton regarding the Benghazi attack. In it, she asserted:

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.

Gee, what do you suppose Obama and Clinton talked about in that 10 p.m. call?

Interestingly, CNS News asked Carney whether, in that 10 p.m. phone call, the president and Secretary Clinton discussed the statement that Clinton was about to issue, and, specifically, whether they discussed “the issue of inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”

Carney declined to answer.

So no, I no longer believe Obama was lounging around watching ESPN or getting his pre-Vegas beauty sleep as the attack progressed. He may be remote, lazy, and self-absorbed, but he was intent on getting re-elected. There's no doubt he was involved in concocting the spin and the lies. As Mr. McCarthy points out:

Enterprises take their cues from the top. Criminal enterprises are no different: The capos do not carry out the policy of the button-men — it’s the other way around.

Undeniably true. Read the whole thing.

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Still-practicing "#TexasGosnell" abortionist faces investigations

Thanks to an offer of a $25,000 reward from Operation Rescue, some assistance from Abby Johnson's And Then There Were None organization, and this video interview from LifeDynamics, an investigation has begun (again -- one was previously dropped by the Texas Medical Board) into the hair-raising alleged crimes of abortionist Douglas Karpen, who, at this writing, is apparently still in business at three Texas locations.

Take a look at what I believe is Karpen's website, which you can find at Texas Abortion Information dot com. I'd rather not link to it. But here are some screen shots:

"Serving Texas & Our Nation For Over 30 Years" -- by allegedly murdering born-alive infants using a variety of means not outlined in flowery cursive on the website: an index finger inserted into the windpipe, Gosnell-style severing of the spinal cord, the plunging of surgical scissors into the baby's skull's soft spot, or into his stomach, or, when the spirit moved him, "twisting the head off the neck."

For the times when the, er, procedure doesn't go so smoothly, there's always the time-honored method of ripping the child apart limb from limb:

“He does a lot of huge abortions. A lot of the times, we would bring the big fetus that were over age, we would re-open the bag and just look at it and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so big,” the abortion clinic staffer adds. “Sometimes he couldn’t get the fetus out. He would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize. And I’m talking about the whole floor dirty. I’m talking about me drenched in blood.”

The woman who does most of the talking in the video worked as Karpen's "surgical assistant" for fifteen years. Unfathomable and horrifying.

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Update: New website: Texas Gosnell: Who Is Douglas Karpen?

 In addition to the accounts of the illegal late-term abortions, other abuses Edge witnessed included:

Falsification of ultrasounds to produce younger fetal ages of babies over the legal limit or older fetal ages to extract more money out of women.

Fraudulent billing practices.

Surgical equipment not properly sterilized.

Reuse of disposable instruments.

Unqualified workers drawing and administering drugs.

Late-term abortions done at 28 weeks and later. (Texas law permits only to 24 weeks.)

Lack of adequate nursing staff.

Concealing poorly kept logs from inspectors to prevent deficiency citations.

Hiring nurses through a temp agency to work only on days when inspections are scheduled.

Mistreating heavy women and inappropriately touching attractive women while under sedation.

Sexual harassment.

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Podcast: Mark and Milt [Updated!]

Renowned radio interviewer Milt Rosenberg has a new daily podcast and he kicks it off right with #1 guest Mark Steyn. Click and listen, or download for later. (47 minutes.) 

(I tried to link to Prof. Rosenberg's great interview with Mark (touched upon here, here, and here) from March of 2011 but alas, the old WGN link no longer works. I'm hoping the old interviews will be archived on the new site.)

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Update: I'm so busy these days that it took me this long to get to the very end of the podcast. (Husband caught me asleep with my tablet blaring in my lap yesterday and threatened to tell Mark, who is, of course, never boring -- I was just tired!)

Anyway, do not miss the last few minutes. That's where the optimism is, along with a kind reference to yours truly. It's my greatest media moment since this happened.

If time permitted I'd say something more about Mark's contention that "life is a romance." So true.

Related: Have heart

Back to original post --

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Bonus: A minute and a half more of Steyn. Fortuitous, isn't it, that Texas is such a large state? All that wide open space may come in handy when the bottom finally falls out. Dennis Miller and Mark Steyn, courtesy of Jeff Poor of the Daily Caller:

“If I ever do flee, don’t think fleeing has to involve you going over to Alice Springs or something,” Miller said. “I’m going to Texas because that’ll be the first place that pushes back. They’re not going down the tubes with this country if this country decides to go down the tubes. I really think I’d head for Texas.”

Steyn, author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” took it even further and said that the pushback could go beyond just Texas, because he was doubtful the entire country would go along with it.

“I think you’re right there,” Steyn said. “The idea that all 50 states are going to be content to slide off the cliff in a kind of haze and a drone of sort of soporific princess fluffy-bunny socialism is completely false. I mean, there will be — you’re going to have serious secession movements if some of this stuff isn’t turned around, and not just in Texas.”

There's a little more audio here.
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Reports emerge of another Gosnell-esque monster in Texas

Read this, but think before you look at the photos.

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Gosnell chooses life

For himself, that is:

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Clarity

The relationship between American citizens and their government is becoming clearer with each passing day:

At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.

I know it's not funny, but I laughed outloud when I heard that on the radio, it was so perfect.

But never fear, America: We've been assured that was just the work of some local, rogue, low-level IRS employees. Oh, wait:

Knowledge of the practice went at least all the way to the top of the IRS:

Don't blame Doug Powers if he gets a wee bit confused by it all:

How far beyond the top of the IRS this goes remains to be seen. Jay Carney said the White House was unaware of any of this until recently. Carney also said that the IRS’s actions, though inexcusable, weren’t planned in advance and might have been motivated by a YouTube video. Wait, I got that mixed up with something else. Never mind.

Read the rest.

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Also this: Reporter claims IRS harassment after tough Obama interview

And this: HHS Secretary Sebelius to health industry: How about you make a  donation to help implement Obamacare?

And this: AP stunned as DOJ seizes journalists' records

Video: These IRS and DOJ scandals are among the worst excesses I’ve seen, says … Andrea Mitchell

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