Democrats and their Leftist allies in the racial grievance industry have long claimed that efforts to require identification in order to vote, a measure meant to protect the integrity of elections, were really meant to suppress minority voters, even equating them with Jim Crow laws.

We all know this is noxious nonsense, of course, but what if there really was an effort to suppress a particular group’s votes, and what if that effort were carried out not by modern-day descendants of Bull Conner with whips and dogs, but by an arm of the US government using bureaucracy to discourage people from participating in the political process?

And what if it was the IRS?

NRO’s John Fund, who’s written extensively on election integrity matters, explains:

But it now turns out there may have suppression of the vote after all. “It looks like a lot of tea-party groups were less active or never got off the ground because of the IRS actions,” Wisconsin governor Scott Walker told me. “Sure seems like people were discouraged by it.”

Indeed, several conservative groups I talked with said they were directly impacted by having their non-profit status delayed by either IRS inaction or burdensome and intrusive questioning. At least two donors told me they didn’t contribute to True the Vote, a group formed to combat voter fraud, because after three years of waiting the group still didn’t have its status granted at the time of the 2012 election. (While many of the targeted tea-party groups were seeking to become 501(c)(4)s, donations to which are not tax-deductible, True the Vote sought to become a 501(c)(3).) This week, True the Vote sued the IRS in federal court, asking a judge to enjoin the agency from targeting anyone in the future.

Cleta Mitchell, True the Vote’s lawyer, says we’ll never know just how much political activity was curtailed by the IRS targeting. She has one client who wanted to promote reading of the Constitution, but who didn’t even hear back from the IRS for three years – until last Monday, when the IRS informed this client that some questions would be sent.

“I was about to file with the IRS when other tea-party groups started to get harassed,” Pennsylvania activist Jennifer Stefano told Time magazine. “I remember checking with the IRS to see if they wanted the group [Facebook] page or my personal page, and they said ‘All of it.’”

Even if this wasn’t enough to throw the 2012 election Obama’s way (although White voter turnout was way down from 2008 to 2012), Fund makes it clear that many activist groups had their efforts hampered, some to the point of giving up altogether, by the IRS harassment. And the effect of that on get-out-the-vote and voter-education efforts could be substantial.

It’s one of the issues Congress has to address while dealing with this scandal: in addition to targeting Americans for holding “unapproved” political opinions and trampling on their rights of free speech, the IRS’ actions threaten public confidence in the integrity of our elections, themselves.

It’s the Chicago Way taken nationwide.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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”Read all about it!”

The deadly tornado in Oklahoma and the various scandals that comprise Obama’s “Scandalpalooza” have understandably been the MSM’s main focus this week so I wanted to link up to some interesting stories you might have missed as a result of that in the meantime.  Please feel free to use this as an open thread.

—— Journolist Part Deux? The Washington Free Beacon reports that MSM journalists and Human Rights Watch group caught trashing Israel in a secret Facebook group. I know, shocking, right?

—– One Doctor’s View: Well, I suspect this is more than just Dr. Charles Willey’s point of view on ObamaCare but all the same it’s worth reading. Excerpt:

Unfortunately, the greatest barrier to this goal is government intervention into my professional judgment, my office management and my patient care. This has been increasingly true long before enactment of the onerous Affordable Care Act (ACA), but it’s especially true now.

ObamaCare is being increasingly recognized as a “train wreck.” Trust me: it is demoralizing doctors, distracting providers toward bureaucracy and away from patient care. It is disrupting quality and access, and damaging health.

Let’s hope Dr. Willey isn’t the IRS’ next target …

—– And speaking of doctors make sure you read this amazing story – via USA Today – about how University of Michigan doctors were able to use a 3-D printer to create a life-saving implant for a baby suffering from a rare lung disorder.  When medical researchers aren’t pushing the use of embryonic stem cells, they do incredible work.  This is awesome!

—– On the flip side of that, read an insider’s sobering view into China’s one-child policy. Warning: It’s even more brutal than you think.  Please pray for the women of China and their future unborn children, and make sure to ask a NOW/NARAL/Planned Parenthood “feminist” next time you talk to one when was the last time they spoke out against this horrific practice.

—– The human impact of Monday’s deadly tornado in Moore, OK has been devastating on many levels, but please don’t forget in the midst of such tragedies that there are pets who hope to be reunited with their owners.  News Channel 4 in Oklahoma has pictures of pets who were found in the aftermath of the tornado who I’m sure desperately want to be back in the loving homes they came from.  Please pass the link along to everyone you know in hopes they can help get cats and dogs returned to their “moms and dads.”   And make sure tokeep this link of resources from Dana Loesch on how to help tornado victims and the town of Moore in rebuilding efforts in  handy and also pass it along to family and friends.  The President, btw, is expected to visit Oklahoma on Sunday.

—— In which the NYT defends Fox News & slams Obama over leakgate. Yes, this happened.

—– The gruesome headline says it all: Suspected Muslim terrorists hack man to death on busy London street. Per Twitter, many Londoners are out on the streets protesting as I write this.  The murdered man is believed to be a British soldier, and the “motivation” for the perps is allegedly because of the war in Afghanistan. And moral relativists saying we should “listen” to the sick, twisted killers are out in full force.  Sigh.

—– Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, President Obama’s nominee for Transportation Secretary, had a ‘smooth’ confirmation hearing today before a Senate panel.  Foxx, an Obama crony, was praised by both NC Senators (Burr-R and Hagan-D) and is expected to be easily confirmed by the full Senate in a few weeks once he is approved by today’s Senate committee.

—- Disgraced NY politico Anthony Weiner announced his entry (pun-intended) in into the NYC mayoral race officially today. What with equally-disgraced former SC governor-turned-Congressman Mark Sanford winning his special election earlier this month, could this be the year for “redeeming” politicos who have fallen from grace?

—- Last but not least, NJ Gov. Christie put on his tourism cap today by encouraging tourists to start visiting his state again this summer as “boardwalks are opening.” Many of Jerseys boardwalks were destroyed during Hurricane Sandy. Many of us have strong political disagreements with Christie, but we can all agree that it’s great to see New Jersey get back on its feet again.  Oh, and best of luck with the weight loss, Governor.

The post Around the Web: Headlines You Might Have Missed appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

It’s kind of hard to “go rogue” when you’re only doing what your superiors in Washington, D.C., are telling you to do:

From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, according to both IRS sources and the inspector general’s report released in mid May.

Officials in the Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office played an integral role in determining how the targeted applications were treated, provided general guidelines to Cincinnati case workers, briefed other agency employees on the status of the special cases, and reviewed all those intrusive requests demanding “more information” from tea-party groups. At times, the Technical Unit lawyers seemed to exercise tight control over these applications, creating both a backlog in application processing and frustration among Cincinnati agents waiting for direction.

An IRS employee who asked not to be identified tells National Review Online that all members of the agency’s Technical Unit are based in Washington, D.C. A current list of Technical Unit managers provided by another IRS employee shows that all such managers are based at the agency’s headquarters on Constitution Avenue in the District of Columbia, and the IRS confirmed, in a testy exchange with National Review Online, that the Technical Unit is “based in Washington.”

It seems that this Washington-based unit (1) exercised very tight control over those “rogue” agents, demanding to review the letters requesting additional information before they were sent out:

The IG report indicates this became a source of frustration, and specialists in Cincinnati pressed for a streamlined approach. “Why does the Technical Unit need to review every additional information request letter when a template letter could be approved and used on all the cases?” they asked via e-mail. The Washington unit rejected this approach and, in February 2011, was developing individualized letters itself. According to the IG report, an update from the Technical Unit acting manager to the Determinations Unit manager indicated, “Letters were being developed and would be reviewed shortly.”

We now know that such letters asked for lists of groups’ reading materials and volunteers, copies of fliers, and printouts of Facebook pages.

In other words, these “rogue agents” had leashes on them that stretched all the way from Cincinnati to the District of Columbia. If you ran a Tea Party group and wanted 501(c) status, those annoying questions about your personal life  and the lives of your friends, relatives, and members, and the infuriating delays they caused, weren’t coming from flunkies in Ohio, but high-powered lawyers back at the home office.

By the way, who gave those lawyers their direction? Note the date at the start of Eliana Johnson’s article: March, 2010, which just happens to be the time when the very anti-Tea Party head of the Treasury employees union, which covers IRS employees, was meeting with President Obama, who was looking ahead to crucial midterm elections.

And, just like that, the Technical Unit in D.C. all but formally takes over the applications from conservative groups.

Odd coincidence, that.

via Jim Geraghty.

RELATED: Channel 19 in Cincinnati has a good report on those rogue front-line agents and their chain of command, and who the manager is who ties them all together.

Footnote:
(1) Funny. I never knew Washington was a suburb of Cincinnati.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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Labor unions are breaking with President Obama on ObamaCare.

Months after the president’s reelection, a variety of unions are publicly balking at how the administration plans to implement the landmark law. They warn that unless there are changes, the results could be catastrophic.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) — a 1.3 million-member labor group that twice endorsed Obama for president — is very worried about how the reform law will affect its members’ healthcare plans.

Last month, the president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers released a statement calling “for repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act.”

UNITE HERE, a prominent hotel workers’ union, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are also pushing for changes.

In a new op-ed published in The Hill, UFCW President Joe Hansen homed in on the president’s speech at the 2009 AFL-CIO convention. Obama at the time said union members could keep their insurance under the law, but Hansen writes “that the president’s statement to labor in 2009 is simply not true for millions of workers.”

Republicans have long attacked Obama’s promise that “nothing in this plan will require you to change your coverage or your doctor.” But the fact that unions are now noting it as well is a clear sign that supporters of the law are growing anxious about the law’s implementation.

[...]

Hansen, who is also the head of the Change to Win labor federation, told The Hill that his members often negotiate with their employers to receive better healthcare services instead of higher wages. Those bargaining gains could be wiped away because some employers won’t have the incentive to keep their workers’ multi-employer plans without tax subsidies.

“You can’t have the same quality healthcare that you had before, despite what the president said,” Hansen said. “Now what’s going to happen is everybody is going to have to go to private for-profit insurance companies. We just don’t think that’s right. … We just want to keep what we already have and what we bought at tremendous cost.”

 

Wish I could say I felt sorry for these union leaders grumbling about themselves and members possibly not being able to keep their health coverage plans/physicians under ObamaCare, but I won’t.  They were warned. Over and over. In advance.  But because they gave so much $$$ to the President and Congressional Democrats, and because they’ve been catered to for decades by equally greedy left wing politicians, they thought their seemingly beholden politicos would keep their promises to them that their health coverage plans would be exempted from this law while most of the rest of us – mainly those not in the President’s back pocket – would just have to “grin and bear it.”

Suckers. Too bad they won’t learn from their mistakes, as most probably will turn around and pull the lever for Democrats again when it comes time for the next round of elections.   And then again after that. You know what they say: You can lead a horse to water, but …

(Altered) photo via mises.org.

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I know. Shocking, right?

To be clear, I’m not saying there’s not a time to discuss whether offsets should be demanded, or to discuss whether or not politicos have supposedly been “hypocritical” when it comes to aid packages, but is it really now? They’re still searching for bodies in the rubble and all some in the media can latch onto barely 24 hours later is alleged GOP double standards when it comes to natural disasters. “Shameful” doesn’t even begin to cover this bunch.

While some politically motivated media types aren’t being very helpful, you can be. Many who don’t live at or near where the deadly tornado struck yesterday are wondering how they can aid and support the victims from afar.  Conservative commentator and radio talk show host Dana Loesch has compiled a great list of useful links people who want to do their part to in helping the impacted areas recover and rebuild can use.  Make sure to bookmark it and pass it along to any family members and/or friends you know who also want to lend a much-needed hand to our fellow citizens in our nation’s heartland.

And, as always. Pray.

MOORE, OK- MAY 20: A Goodwill donation station is surrounded by debris after a powerful tornado ripped through the area on May 20, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma.
(Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images)

The post #HeadlineWatch: 24 hours after #OKtornado, MSM springs into full bias mode appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

But, really, this is all just some wingnut fantasy aiming to destroy the fourth-greatest president ever.

Which is why Lois Lerner is invoking her right not to incriminate herself:

A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif. The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Taylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm of Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year.

You see? Just a bunch of nothing. In fact, all these questions about all these cooked-up “scandals” are nothing more than the new birtherism.

Between this and Roger Simon teasing us with the prospect of new Benghazi whistleblowers, I may have to double my reserves of popcorn for all the hearings.

via a gazillion people on Twitter

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

The post Nothing to see here, move along: #IRS official to plead the 5th over targeting scandal appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

Hmmm… Maybe FOX’s James Rosen and the AP aren’t the only targets of the White House’s ire? Here’s a radio interview CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson did with WPHT’s Chris Stigall in which she mentions unknown parties have accessed her home and work computers since February, 2011:

You’ll recall that both my blog-buddy ST and I have mentioned Attkisson several times on our blogs for being one of the few remaining MSM reporters actually willing to hold the administration to account for their actions, Fast & Furious and Benghazi being the most notable. She so got under their skin that, as Allahpundit reminds us, a DoJ official screamed and cursed at her over the phone. Attkisson herself has recently said that she has been shut out by her White House sources. There have been rumors (1) that David Rhodes, president of CBS News  and brother of Ben Rhodes, a would-be fiction writer and now an Obama national security deeply involved in Benghazi, might fire Attkisson for being too aggressive in her coverage of the White House… where his brother works.

Keep in mind that the DoJ got access to James Rosen’s GMail account by affirming to a judge that they believed he was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, and then got a court order forbidding Google from telling Rosen of the access. And now we hear that somebody has been accessing Attkisson’s computers.

What was going on in February 2011? The Fast and Furious scandal, having been rumored for months, was finally breaking into the mainstream news, and Attkisson was filing stories that weren’t settling for administration spin.

And about that same time, she gets hacked.

What. A. Coincidence.

Footnote:
(1) Attkisson has said there has been no pressure from any CBS News executive regarding her Benghazi reporting.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

The post #WarOnJournalism: Who’s been snooping in Sharyl Attkisson’s computers? appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

A Fox News correspondent was accused in a Justice Department affidavit of being a possible criminal “co-conspirator” for his alleged role in publishing sensitive security information — in a leak case that takes the highly unusual step of claiming a journalist broke the law.

According to court documents, the Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about Fox News’ James Rosen’s conversations and visits to the State Department. This included a search warrant for his personal emails. 

The effort follows that by the department to secretly obtain two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a separate leak probe. The department in this case, though, went a step further — as an FBI agent claimed there’s evidence the Fox News correspondent broke the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” 

[...]

The case has also caught the attention of Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in a statement Monday he was “very concerned” about the reports of “possible criminal prosecution for doing what appears to be normal news-gathering protected by the First Amendment.”

He added: “The sort of reporting by James Rosen detailed in the report is the same sort of reporting that helped Mr. Rosen aggressively pursue questions about the Administration’s handling of Benghazi. National security leaks are criminal and put American lives on the line, and federal prosecutors should, of course, vigorously investigate. But we expect that they do so within the bounds of the law, and that the investigations focus on the leakers within the government — not on media organizations that have First Amendment protections and serve vital function in our democracy.” 

In the case involving Rosen, a government adviser was accused of leaking information after a 2009 story was published online which said North Korea planned to respond to looming U.N. sanctions with another nuclear test.

Fox News, of course, vows to strongly stand behind Rosen as he battles the feds in the latest scandal to shake up the Obama administration.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker breaks it down:

DOJ obtained Rosen’s email records by obtaining a search warrant that it then served on Google. Along with the search warrant, DOJ also apparently procured a court order barring Google from telling Rosen that his gmail account had been accessed by the government. DOJ obtained the search warrant by submitting a 41-page affidavit by FBI agent Reginald Reyes. You can read the affidavit in its entirety here.

Reyes justified issuance of a search warrant by alleging that there was probable cause to believe that James Rosen had committed a crime–specifically, that he had violated 18 US Code Section 793, which is part of the Espionage Act. In particular, Reyes’s affidavit recites, “there is probable cause to believe that the Reporter [Rosen] has committed or is committing a violation of section 793(d), as an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator, to which the materials relate.”

Section 793 is the provision that we referred to when, during the Bush administration, we urged that reporters for the New York Times be criminally prosecuted for publishing leaked information about Bush’s anti-terror strategies, in particular NSA’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance and the SWIFT program that tracked the financing of terrorist groups. Does that mean that, for the sake of consistency, we must approve the Obama administration’s covert seizure of James Rosen’s email account?

No. The Espionage Act does not criminalize all publication of classified information. It is specifically limited to information, the publication of which will be damaging to the United States. And that is a good thing, since pretty much everyone agrees that a lot of information is classified improperly.   This is the relevant language of Section 793(d) that is quoted in Reyes’s affidavit:

Whoever, lawfully having possession of…information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates…the same to any person not entitled to receive it…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years or both.

During the Bush administration, we had no doubt that the information published by news organs like the New York Times would, indeed, harm the United States. If terrorists knew that the NSA was intercepting their cell phone communications, they would stop using such phones or devise ways of circumventing the surveillance. Likewise, if they knew that the U.S. government was able to trace bank transfers that wound up in terrorists’ hands, they could stop using those banks and rely on cruder, but less detectable, means of transferring money. Is the same true of the information that, according to the affidavit, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim leaked to Rosen, and that Fox News published?

Here’s Rosen’s article.  It is a SERIOUS legal stretch to think he’d be guilty of violation of the Espionage Act, as Hinderaker goeson to explain:

Would that report damage American interests? It would tell Kim Jong-Il that our intelligence agencies have at least one highly-placed source inside his government, who had knowledge of Kim’s plans in the event of another U.N. Security Council resolution condemning North Korea’s nuclear program. But as long as the news story didn’t point a finger toward any particular individuals, it is hard to see how American interests could be damaged. Rosen specifically noted, in his news article, that Fox was not divulging intelligence sources or methods:

[...]

This obviously distinguishes the Kim/Rosen leak from the ones that we criticized during the Bush administration, the whole point of which was to expose U.S. intelligence-gathering and anti-terror techniques to public view.

Absolutely. Unfortunately, Rosen wasn’t the only Fox reporter the DOJ went after, either. Chilling. Speaking of, WaPo’s Ryan Lizza documented perhaps the most chilling of all from the DOJ’s warrant application against Rosen. The Twitchy Team crew have much more.

Final word from Daily Beast’s Eli Lake:

There’s no telling which journalist we’ll hear about next. Stay tuned.

Email privacy? What email privacy?
(Screencap via Mediaite)

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Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.

Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn’t cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit.

Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing. Employers could still face other penalties they anticipate would be far less costly.

It is unclear how many employers will adopt the strategy, but a handful of companies have signed on and an industry is sprouting around the tactic. More than a dozen brokers and benefit-administrators in 10 states said they were discussing the strategy with their clients.

“There had to be a way out” of the penalty for employers with low-wage workers, said Todd Dorton, a consultant and broker for Gallagher Benefit Services Inc., a unit of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., who has enrolled several employers in the limited plans.

Pan-American Life Insurance Group Inc. has promoted a package including bare-bones plans, according to brokers in California, Kansas and other states and company documents. Carlo Mulvenna, an executive at New Orleans-based Pan-American, confirmed the firm is developing these types of products, and said it would adjust them as regulators clarify the law.

The idea that such plans would be allowable under the law has emerged only recently. Some benefits advisers still feel they could face regulatory uncertainty. The law requires employers with 50 or more workers to offer coverage to their workers or pay a penalty. Many employers and benefits experts have understood the rules to require robust insurance, covering a list of “essential” benefits such as mental-health services and a high percentage of workers’ overall costs. Many employers, particularly in low-wage industries, worry about whether they—or their workers—can afford it.

But a close reading of the rules makes it clear that those mandates affect only plans sponsored by insurers that are sold to small businesses and individuals, federal officials confirm. That affects only about 30 million of the more than 160 million people with private insurance, including 19 million people covered by employers, according to a Citigroup Inc. report. Larger employers, generally with more than 50 workers, need cover only preventive services, without a lifetime or annual dollar-value limit, in order to avoid the across-the-workforce penalty.

What.a.surprise. Not. Hate to say “Toldjah So” but in this instance its well-worth reminding people. Heck, most of us “Toldjah So” with respect to this law long before it passed via lots of strong-arming and the backroom arm twisting and political promises that candidate Obama, when first running for the highest office in the land, told us he couldn’t stand – tactics he would seek to “change.” Riiiight.

All that glitters is not gold and, in fact, you didn’t even have to read the fine print in the “Affordable Care Act” to figure out what a monstrous, disastrous, unhealthy law this was for our nation and its people.  Hours are being cut, full time employee status types are changing to part time, jobs are being lost, employer plan coverages all across the country are changing to either being unaffordable or worthless to the average workaday Jane and Joe, and no in many instances people have NOT been able to KEEP THEIR PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIANS as a result of the passage of this law – one of the biggest whoppers told about this bill early on by its proponents.  Employer health plan offerings as we know them are changing – and not for the better.  This is, of course, in keeping with our President and his party’s ultimate goal: single payer health care coverage.

You got what you asked for, 51%. Too bad the rest of us have to suffer long-term for your woefully ill-informed decision to not only vote our celebrity President in the first time, but also for being clueless enough to turn around and do it again.

Will they ever learn?

Beware.

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A mile-wide tornado churned through Oklahoma City’s suburbs Monday afternoon, causing significant property damage for the second day in a row, as part of a severe weather outbreak that was expected to spread in other parts of the Plains and Midwest.

Television footage on Monday afternoon showed homes and buildings that had been reduced to rubble in Moore, Okla., south of Oklahoma City. Footage also showed vehicles littering roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City.

Gary Knight with the Oklahoma City Police Department also said and elementary school in Moore suffered “extensive damage.” There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The National Weather Service said the tornado was on the ground for nearly 40 minutes, with the first tornado warning coming 16 minutes before it touched down.

Search and rescue crews are now staging at the Warren Theaer in Moore to look for anyone who may be trapped in the rubble, Fox 25 reports. Aerial flyovers showed crowds of residents picking through debris.

[...]

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman had predicted a major outbreak of severe weather Monday in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. The National Weather Service has also issued tornado watches and warnings for counties in Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

On Sunday, at least two people were killed and 29 were injured in Oklahoma as a severe storm system generated several tornadoes in Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa, leveling neighborhoods and

Unconfirmed reports say today’s twister took at 12 mile path.    Of course, this story is still developing so for the latest, make sure to stay tuned to one of the 24 hour networks,  the Weather Channel, your local news if you live at or near the affected areas, and to social media platforms which update constantly.   There are tornado watches in other parts of OK and TX right now, so it’s REALLY important to stay informed about this for those potentially in the path of the storm.  BE SAFE.

It looks really, really bad there.  Praying hard for all impacted.

Fire breaks out amid the destruction after a tornado touched down near Oklahoma City on Monday. – Photo via NBC.

The post Devastation in Oklahoma as “mile-wide” “200 mph” tornado hits near #OKC appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

It could be a coincidence: a meeting between a very union-friendly president and the head of the union that includes IRS employees, a union described as very “anti-Tea Party,” and then the very next day the IRS begins targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups, stalling their applications for non-profit status.

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.

I’m not yet ready to call this a “smoking gun,” but I do think Ms. Kelley should be hauled before the Ways and Means committee and made to answer some very pointed questions about their conversation and just what, if any, instructions or “encouragements” were given to her union members.

But I’m sure this is all one big coincidence.

via Jim Hoft.

RELATED: John Fund on “Three signs there’s a cover-up.”

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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Photo of a recent Concord, NC sunrise. Taken by ST.

The post Weekend Open Thread appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

A number of people have sought to explain the IRS targeting of Tea Party, patriot, and 9/12 group applications — as well as those from other conservative groups — for “specialist team” treatment (mainly delays and excessive and inappropriate questions) in 2010 by pointing to the Citizens United decision that year allowing for unlimited, undisclosed fundraising by such groups. That’s the explanation IRS official Lois Lerner gave a week ago when she first revealed that the agency had improperly handled a slew of applications — the political shorthand was a mistaken attempt to deal with a surge in applications.

[...]

But Todd Young, a Republican congressman from Indiana, pointed out at Friday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing with former acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George that this was not the case, according to the very data the IRS provided to the Treasury IG’s office.

There were, he noted, actually fewer applications for tax-exempt status by groups seeking to be recognized as social-welfare organizations that year than the previous one, according to this IRS data. The real surge in applications did not come until 2012 — the year the IRS stopped the practice of treating the Tea Party class of groups differently from others.

Worse still? This –> IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

Keep writing your House and Senate reps to demand answers.  The mainstream media and leftist politicos want this scandal to die, but we can’t let it.

They’ll be overseeing ObamaCare, too. Frightening.

The post Shock: IRS’ own data shows there was no 2010 “surge” in tax-exempt apps appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

“Oops! Our bad.”

You know it’s bad when pleading stupidity is the best you can come up with.

Via Sharyl Attkisson at CBS:

Obama administration officials who were in key positions on Sept. 11, 2012 acknowledge that a range of mistakes were made the night of the attacks on the U.S. missions in Benghazi, and in messaging to Congress and the public in the aftermath.

The officials spoke to CBS News in a series of interviews and communications under the condition of anonymity so that they could be more frank in their assessments. They do not all agree on the list of mistakes and it’s important to note that they universally claim that any errors or missteps did not cost lives and reflect “incompetence rather than malice or cover up.” Nonetheless, in the eight months since the attacks, this is the most sweeping and detailed discussion by key players of what might have been done differently.

“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots,” said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. “It’s actually closer to us being idiots.”

My first observation is that “lying” and “idiots” are not mutually exclusive terms. In fact I suspect the former came about trying to cover for the latter.

The article addresses several questions, among them: Why wasn’t the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) activated? Why was the Counterterrorism Security Group, described as…

an interagency task force (…) to be convened when emergency terrorist events are suspected. According to a public military document, it’s part of a plan to “synchronize the efforts of all the government agencies that have a role to play in the Global War on Terrorism.” 

…not convened? Where was the “in extremis” (emergency rescue) force?

The answers are, well, “special.” Things along the lines of (paraphrasing) “we didn’t think that was their mission” (FEST); they had been made “lower level” (CSG) and senior people were dealing with it; and “they were off on a training mission (because we didn’t notice the significance of the 9/11 anniversary) and they couldn’t be recalled in time.” Like I said, pleading incompetence.

Read the whole thing, it’s worth your time. You’ll notice that not really touched on is the issue of security for Benghazi prior to the attack on the consulate. I suppose they got tired of saying “We’re idiots” over and over.

Like I said above, one can be both a liar and incompetent at the same time, when the lying is used to cover the incompetence, particularly Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s; she had screwed up our Libya policy big-time, and the commander in chief needed his beauty sleep to be ready for his big fundraiser in Vegas the next day. These underlings weren’t just furiously trading emails and holding meetings to fight a blame war between State and the CIA, they were figuring out how best to cover their bosses’ arses and not damage his reelection campaign and her 2016 run.

And, in the process, lying to the American people, Congress, and the families of the victims.

There is “malicious”, and there is “idiot.”

And then there are “malicious idiots.”

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

The post New administration defense on #Benghazi: “We’re not evil, just idiots.” appeared first on Sister Toldjah.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a resolution condemning the Internal Revenue Service for trampling the Constitutional rights of Americans. (For example) It didn’t get very far:

Today, Senate Democrats placed a hold on Sen. Rand Paul’s recent resolution that condemns the targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and calls for an investigation into this practice.

“This resolution is not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal. It is about arrogant and unrestrained government vs. the rule of law. The First Amendment cannot and should not be renegotiated depending on which party holds power,” Sen. Paul said. ”Each senator took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, yet Senate Democrats chose to block my resolution and thus refused to condemn the IRS for trampling on our First Amendment rights. I am incredibly disappointed in Washington’s party politics and I am determined to hold the IRS accountable for these unjust acts.”

I’m not sure why anyone would find this surprising: as the party of arrogant, unrestrained government, the leaders of which think the Constitution is obsolete, well, of course they would shoot this resolution down.

It threatens their very reason for existence, after all.

via Stephen Green.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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