The Necropolitan Sentinel

Via @SissyWillis, Catholic League spokesman Bill Donohue tells the story of how that organization got audited back in 2008. There have been times in the past when I've mocked Mr. Donohue for being somewhat humorless, but I admit that I find it hard to be very humorous about this affair.

Like Professor Anne Henderschott, Donohue had in 2008 written a couple of articles about the political alliances of leftist Catholics-in-name-only, some of whose organizations were funded with Sorosgeld. When he was invited on CNN to speak to the issue, Chris Korzen of Catholics United pitched a fit, demanding that he be replaced with a speaker representing 'real Catholicism' or that he appear with Alexia Kelley of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a Soros-funded front group whose name would have sailed through the IRS's tax-exempt vetting process that exists under the umbrella of Catholics United. Weeks after Obama won election, Donohue had been informed that the Catholic League was under IRS investigation for violating the political campaining restrictions of a 501(c)(3).

In the end, CNN didn't cave, but here's where it gets interesting: Korzen had "stupidly" let CNN know that his organization was having the IRS investigate Donohue's, and CNN passed that information along to him (leaked!). Among those who signed off on the investigation were Lois Lerner (Acting! EO of Determinations) of the now-famous Roady potted plant question and a Marsha Ramirez (Acting! Director of Exempt Organizations Examinations). Donohue states that the complaint from Korzen's outfit matches up very well with the one forwarded to the Catholic League from the IRS.

Most of the organizations-in-waiting that were squelched by the IRS (sometimes with the collusion of other bureaucracies, as in the case of Romney donor VanderSloot) that we know of were small-time operations with less than $25k on hand, and there were hundreds. But as many pundits have pointed out, Obama's campaign itself (and he is always campaigning) demonized by name 8 deep-pocketed Romney donors via the Acting! President's ridiculously 'independent' and tax-exempt OfA, insinuating that they were shadowy, behind-the-scenes neo-con lever pullers out to buy the presidency. So far, most of the recountings of IRS abuse have focused on the 2010-2012 time frame, but Donohue's case shows that almost immediately upon winning the election the incoming Obama administration found high-level functionaries within the IRS who were willing to do their bidding, perhaps even before they were sworn in. 

There are now many articles from the right arguing the 'zeitgeist' thesis, that the rot in the Obama administration starts from the head. You can add to that number John Kass's Chicago Tribune piece from yesterday, covering some familiar territory regarding his extended family's understanding of The Chicago Way, and framing in this case the IRS scandal. While I was on Twitter last night, kicking around this and other issues, a youngster leaped into my timeline to suggest I go to a Salon piece for a "reality check." That Salon piece, by Alex Seitz-Wald, is one of the most specious piles of mendoucheity I've ever read, providing in the several cases it presents of lefty organizations scrutinized by the IRS under the Bush administration no evidence at all of a systematic suppression of such organizations: a lefty church that violated campaign laws was investigated and let go; Greenpeace was ogled for three months at the behest of oil lobbyists and let go, et cetera. The piece deserves a thorough Stephen Hayes fisking.

The example of the church takes up much of the article, and it is instructive. I'm one of those people who thinks that Justice Black long ago went too far in establishing a wall between church and state, when the Constitution posits only a division. The Non-Establishment and Protection clauses of the First Amendment need to be read together. In any case, when Acting! AG Holder provides pre-election counseling to black churches only, there seem to be some equal protection issues at play . . . or, y'know, disparate impact. It is the left that is constantly vigilant to enforce the Non-Establishment clause of the First Amendment at the expense of the Protection clause, and in this case, as presented by Seitz-Wald, it seems that the church in question clearly violated the campaigning injunction as it is construed by leftists such as himself.

In none of the cases he presents do we see the IRS asking for names of boards of directors, educational materials used, names of attendees, transcripts of speeches, Facebook postings, contents of prayers, or any of the other materials that the IRS asked for in many of the cases that have been reported in the instant scandal. The equivalency argument simply doesn't wash here, nor does the 'Citizens United made me do it' defense. To paraphrase Harry Truman, there is hell to pay here, in the form of the truth.

We know that there was targeting. The IRS has already 'apologized' for it, despite the Obama administration's many deployments of 'if/then pre-emptive faux outrage.' And the bias is proveable on statistical grounds (which debunk the talking point that the IRS was handling a flood of wingnut applications), a feature missing entirely from Seitz-Wald's flimsily strung-together tapestry of anecdotes. Salon has never been profitable, despite its 'premium' subscription model, but wonders who funds Politico, which many of us hardly regard as right-wing.

As Caroline Glick points out, the [scandal-plagued Obama] administration's demonization tactics are not limited to domestic-issue targets, either.

UPDATE: Also via Sissy, Kathy Kiely and Diana Jean Schemo at the WaPo that IRS recalcitrance is hindering investigative journalism by independent organizations (ProPublica excepted). And that's a shame, because the Acting! President gets his news the way we do.

UPDATEx2: We noted here the NY Times revelation that Huma Abedin, NY mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner's wife and close confidante of Hillary Clinton, had not disclosed consulting payments she'd earned while still apparently employed as Acting! Deputy Chief of Staff. Last night on Twitter, @slublog asked the salient question whether Ms. Abedin still had a security clearance when she donned the role of consultant. Michele Bachman came in for a lot of grief from certain members of her own party when she took to the floor to point out Abedin's familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, but as Walid Shoebat points out, the plot is thickening thanks to another Times disclosure.

UPDATEx3: I'm not going to devote a separate column for this, but, as some of you know, I call Milwaukee my hometown. Here's a look into one zip code. In the 1980s, Wisconsin officials discovered that Illinois welfare department officials were advising Chicagoans receiving benefits to move to Milwaukee, going so far as to defray their bus tickets, even as Mrs. Obama was later employed to send patients away from the University of Chicago to less expensive and less competent neighborhood clinics. Last night, CBS's 48 Hours began a special report on "The War in Chicago." 

UPDATEx4: 'Not Evil' Google has some tax troubles, thanks to a whistleblower. I've complained on some occasions about their search results regarding prog-unhelpful topics. William Jacobson has noticed the same.

UPDATEx5: Podhoretz's very good quick take on Scandalpalooza.

in spreadsheet form, is an informative, nostalgic frolic through one aspect of our federal government's politically weaponized domestic bureaucracy. Doug's takeaways:

 1. Steve Miller lied to Congress
  2. Lois Lerner lied to Congress
  3. Barack Obama lied to the American people


This scandal has Axelrod/Jarrett/Chicago Machine fingerprints all over it.


This is fascism on the part of the IRS and the White House. It is fascism, straight up.


Or, as I call the IRS: Organizing for Revenue.

Enjoy.

From a few day ago via Breitbart:

I must have missed that, but if that's the way ABC's reporting, I guess that we can now add "engulfed" to "scandal plagued."

Even while the public becomes aware of the administration's enormous and obvious pattern of lies, that Jack Lew is trying to go on offense for the administration, insisting that the debt limit be raised, because incompetence and corruption must be rewarded. It's all about the money with these guys. There are lots of lackeys and special constituents who need paying off.

Nice Deb pings back, saying among other things:

Holder's on the way out. Obama is finished.

It's over.

Now, that may be. I certainly hope it is. What I'll say, though, is that if we thought that Obama and Co. were nasty about trying to make the Sequester as painful to other people as possible, by way of tantrum, we haven't seen anything, yet. Certainly the most vicious administration of my lifetime, and very likely of any other American's.

Big Ol' Lib Randy Newman explains:

I was yammering about this just a couple of weeks ago, but Steyn is masterful on the topic, with the emphasis on the IRS (via @cutiepi2u):

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. . . . The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Miss Strassel wrote that on April 26, 2012. Five weeks later, one of the named individuals, Frank VanderSloot, was informed by the IRS that he and his wife were being audited. In July, he was told by the Department of Labor of an additional audit over the guest workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho. In September, he was notified that one of his other businesses was to be audited. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never previously been audited, attracted three in the four months after being publicly named by el Presidente. More to the point he attracted that triple audit even though Miss Strassel explicitly predicted in America’s biggest-selling newspaper that this was exactly what the Obama enforcers were going to do. The “separate, sinister entity” of the government of the United States went ahead anyway. What do they care? If some lippy broad in the papers won’t quit her yapping about it, they can always audit her, too — as they did to Miss Strassel’s sometime colleague Anne Hendershott, a sociology professor who got rather too interested in Obamacare and wrote about it in the Journal and various small Catholic publications. The IRS summoned Professor Hendershott to account for herself, and forbade her husband from accompanying her, even though they filed jointly. She ceased her political writing.

A year after he was named to the Obama Dishonor Roll, the feds have found nothing on Mr. VanderSloot, but they have caused him to rack up 80 grand in legal bills. This is what IRS defenders (of whom there are more than there ought to be) mean when they assure us that the system worked: Yes, some rich guy had to blow through the best part of six figures fending off the bureaucrats, but it’s not like his body was found in a trunk at the airport or anything, if you know what I mean, Kimmy baby.  

Mr. VanderSloot is big enough, just about, to see off the most powerful government on the planet. Most of those who’ve caught the eye of the IRS share nothing in common with him other than his political preferences. They’re nobodies — ordinary American citizens guilty of no crime except that of disagreeing with the ruling party. Yet they were asked, under “penalty of perjury,” to disclose the names of books they were reading and provide the names and addresses of relatives who might be planning to run for public office — a kind of pre-enemies list.

It really is, as he says, an abomination. Obama's administration made various powerful agencies of the federal government punitive instruments directed against those who oppose his policies by practicing free speech and community organizing.

Gallup poll on whether Americans are paying attention to these scandals and how they feel about them.

In case you were wondering, yes, Bob Woodward did compare Benghazi to Watergate, leaving out the little matter of the IRS and other agencies weaponized by Obama's scandal-plagued administration.

UPDATE: Gingrich, in the course of surveying Obama's 4-ring scandal circus:

Speaking of abuses of power, the White House also says it was unaware the Department of Justice secretly obtained two months worth of phone records for more than 100 Associated Press reporters, many of whom cover the Obama administration.

The DOJ is trying to discover the source of unauthorized and damaging national security leaks which informed an AP story on al Qaeda last year.

That is in contrast with the damaging national security leaks which supported the President’s reelection last year: they have not shown much interest in discovering who told the New York Times about President Obama’s “kill list” or his administration’s work on the Stuxnet virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program, or who granted Hollywood filmmakers unprecedented access to officials who divulged details of the bin Laden raid.

Of course, two months worth of phone records are likely to reveal communications with AP sources on hundreds of other stories about the administration in that period of time. But the White House says it is not involved.

Meanwhile, Carney keeps on referring to the limited modified hang-out IRS investigator’s report as “leaked,” to justify the White House claim that it knew nothing of the contents until they heard about it on TV. Complete BS.

Via Barracuda Brigade:

Look! Geller!

Credit where due, I guess.

In case you missed it, Stacy's piece on Dzhokhar the TIT (teen idol terrorist).

Via Donald Douglas, this is a terrific panel, with Schoen, Jedediah Bila, and Stephen Hayes, who's done stellar work on the talking points.

There's a lot of interesting material here, but the most novel information is from Schoen, who asserts that National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has been leaking to the press in a quid pro quo to keep his own name out of the discussion. If that's true, and Schoen seems positive that it is, calling him a "leaker par excellence," the administration must be aware of it. So, when we compile a list of key people that the administration is evidently trying to protect from scruitiny, badly in some cases, we have to include Donilon with Hillary and with Sarah Hall Ingram, the last in the IRS scandal. Hillary, as we know, was never interviewed in the Mullen-Pickering report, and Issa has now subpoenaed both Mullen and Pickering to appear before his committee and explain the alleged deficiencies of their report. In his testimony before Issa's committee, Mark Thompson stressed that it was very unusual from his perspective that the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) should not have been activated under the circumstances (whether or not they could have reached Benghazi quickly enough to save anyone), and that in essence they were cut out of the decision-making loop. This week we have learned that their division, established under Bush the Younger, had been demoted de facto under the Obama administration. The Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG), was never convened on the evening of 9-11-12, although it is supposed to play a central coordinating role under exactly the circumstances presented by the Benghazi attacks. Whether the recalcitrance was the result of a general administration disdain for Bush-era policies or the usual half-assed hubris, or both, we don't yet know.

Donilon was Executive Vice President for Law and Policy at Fannie Mae from 1999-2005. Here are his foreign policy creds from his Wikipedia entry:

Donilon worked as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1993 to 1996, and served as the Clinton administration's Secretary of State's chief of staff. Although he has no military experience and worked as a lobbyist, Donilon was "intimately involved in many major foreign policy issues, including negotiating the Bosnian peace agreement and the expansion of NATO".^[3]

Donilon figures prominently during formulation of strategy for Afghanistan and associated discussions in Bob Woodward's 2010 book, "Obama's Wars."^[9]

Donilon was 'criticized' by General Jones, who once disparaged Donilon, for his lack of overseas experience, telling him that as a result: "You have no credibility with the military", according to Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars". Jones said that Donilon was not good in his dealings with his staff at the National Security Council, displaying "too little feel for the people who work day and night….". Donilon did visit Afghanistan March 2010 during President Obama's six-hour late-night visit to the country.^[10]

Donilon was the National Security Advisor during the assassination of Osama bin Laden, and was criticized in the 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty for delaying that assassination.

The entry continues that his brother Mike is Counselor to Vice-President Joe Biden (where Jay Carney was Communications Director before his current stint). Given the Clinton ties, it's interesting that Doug Schoen, even though he is a notable PUMA, would point the finger at Donilon so directly.

Another lawyer tasked with intelligence duties under Obama is current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NTCT) Matthew Olsen, who has worked closely with Eric Holder on the Guantanamo Bay Task Force, looking for a way to shut that facility down, whose nomination ran into trouble a couple of years ago when he was accused of lying to Congress, but who was approved anyway.

Earlier this month, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.,who represents the district where the center is located, wrote to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, objecting to the nomination. Wolf said he believes Olsen, general counsel for the National Security Agency, under White House pressure downgraded the threat level of some potentially dangerous detainees to allow for their expeditious release to unstable countries like Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan as part of the administration's failed effort to shut the facility.

Wolf also wrote that Olsen misled him about the status of detainee transfers to the U.S. during an April 2009 meeting. At that meeting, Olsen chose only to discuss the process and not the decisions that he had already made, Wolf contended.

Michelle Malkin published yesterday on some of the repercussions of detainee release, including regarding a possible terror participant at Benghazi.

Yesterday, I pointed you towards Hayes's important piece on how the Cairo material ended up in the talking points. Hayes posits on the basis of the evidence that he's been able to gather, including the released internal WH communications from noon 9-14 ff, that intelligence included the Cairo mention initially as an ass-covering measure to say, "Hey, we gave another Maghreb embassy a heads up regarding possible attacks covered by a ginned-up video protest, so it's not as though we haven't been paying attention to embassy security in the region." That had virtually nothing to do with Benghazi, but provided the opportunity for the genius partners in the "inter-agency deliberative process" to strip out all the relevant information regarding warnings, terrorism and al Qaeda, and to shape a very tangentially related matter into a full-blown fiction regarding what had happened, with all the ramifications and consequences that we have seen. 

Yesterday, too, discredited White House Mouth of Sauron Jay Carney feigned umbrage over the suggestion that Benghazi-gate (in particular) was a scandal, claiming that it had been "concocted" by the GOP. Ezra Klein duly weighed in, saying that the "concocted" scandals were falling apart. In a poignant conversation with Candy Crowley, imbecile Ashley Banfield parroted the administration's new line that it is stupid but not evil, saying:

Quite. So everything's normal.

Related: For an overview of some of the laws that may have been violated by the IRS, see this post.

UPDATE: So many shoes dropping on the IRS scandal, it sounds like a millipede undressing. Nice Deb (via Bad Blue):

Dr. James Dobson was a guest on the Hannity show Friday night to talk about the run-around his Christian, pro-family, group,Family Talk Action got from the IRS when they applied for a 501(c)(4), a process he said “went on and on and on” for 19 months.

When his lawyer called the IRS to find out what the problem was, an IRS rep named Medley told him, “we don’t think we’re going to approve your application.” And when he asked, “why not? She answered, because you’re a right wing organization, and you’re political, and you’ve been critical of the President and we don’t think you give other people an opportunity to express their views, and besides that – you’re not educational.” An answer Dr. Dobson took great umbrage at.

“Do you want to rewrite your application and resubmit it?” she asked.  He answered, “no, we’ll just have to litigate”, and about eight days later they gave them their 501(c)(4).

UPDATEx2: Via @CindyCoops, Andrew McCarthy on Benghazi:

So if I were investigating Benghazi, I’d be homing in on that 10 p.m. phone call. That’s the one between President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the one that’s gotten close to zero attention.

RTWT.

WaPo piece on the Cincinnati office of the IRS, in the Style section:

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.” [emphasis added]

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review.

Yeah, well that's not where the "inconsistency" was, is it? A former tax-estate lawyer from the division, Ronald Ran, goes on to say that they're not political, division isn't staffed by "flaming liberals." Everybody's surprised at the brouhaha. Moronic conclusion:

In a way, Washington wasn’t meddling enough.

And this allowed middle managers in Cincinnati to make some bad calls.

So, you see, all the directives came from the top, but the middle managers were at fault, because they didn't get enough direction from the top.