Poor Richard's News

Stunning video shows massive Moore, Oklahoma tornado up close

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:40:43 -0500

This high definition video will give you an idea just how massive the storm in Oklahoma was today. Filmed by an independent tornado chasing group called Bashunters, the video shows the tornado approaching a school and a subdivision. The filmmakers hold their position as long as they can.

Here’s the video:

The photos of the devastation have left me absolutely heartbroken this evening. The staff of Poor Richard’s News sends their thoughts and prayers. If you would like to donate to recovery efforts, please consider doing so. Convoy Of Hope is an incredible disaster relief organization and one I feel comfortable recommending here.

https://donate.convoyofhope.org/okc-midwest-tornado-response

Mile-wide tornado rips through Oklahoma, hits elementary school, dozens of students feared dead

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:39:00 -0500

A massive, mile-wide tornado ripped through Oklahoma today hitting an elementary school head on. Reports say that two-dozen elementary students are possibly dead. The overwhelming devastation prompted one reporter to call it “the worst tornado damage in the history of the world.”

From CBS Houston (KFOR):

A monstrous tornado at least a half-mile wide roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods with winds up to 200 mph, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. At least 37 people were reported killed.

KFOR-TV reports that up to 24 children are believed dead at the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore and that it has turned into a search and recovery effort. The storm tore off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal. Several children were pulled alive from the rubble, however. Rescue workers passed the survivors down a human chain to a triage center in the parking lot.

At least seven of the children drowned after being found at the bottom of a pool at Plaza Towers, according to KFOR.

The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, south of the city. Block after block of the community lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.

The National Weather Service issued an initial finding that the tornado was an EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the second most-powerful type of twister.

Authorities expected the death toll to rise as emergency crews moved deeper into the hardest-hit areas. At least 60 people were reported hurt, including more than a dozen children.

Rescuers mounted a desperate rescue effort at the school, pulling children from heaps of debris and carrying them to a triage center.

Read the Rest

Please pray for this community and all those affected by this terrible tragedy. The people of the United States always seem to shine during times of crisis and I expect things to be no different this time around.

If you would like to contribute to the relief efforts, I highly recommend Convoy of Hope, an incredible organization that already has relief workers on the ground in Moore. Click here if you wish to donate.

State Department official speaks out against being made the Benghazi "scapegoat" for Hillary Clinton

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:07:41 -0500

Since the terrorist attack on September 11, only one State Department official from the Bureau of Near Easter Affairs has been placed on leave, a mid-level employee who had no authority to make security decisions for the US facility in Benghazi. His name is Raymond Maxwell, and today he’s speaking out against the State Department for making him Hillary Clinton’s scapegoat.

from Newsweek/DB:

Maxwell, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs from August 2011 until his removal last December, following tours in Iraq and Syria, spoke publicly for the first time in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast.

“The overall goal is to restore my honor,” said Maxwell, who has now filed grievances regarding his treatment with the State Department’s human resources bureau and the American Foreign Service Association, which represents the interests of foreign-service officers. The other three officials placed on leave were in the diplomatic security bureau, leaving Maxwell as the only official in the bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job.

“I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” he said.

Maxwell was removed from his job on Dec. 18, the day after the ARB report was released, and subsequently placed on administrative leave, which is meant to give the State Department time to investigate whether Maxwell should be fired or return to work. Five months later, that investigation seems stalled and Maxwell sits at home, where he continues to be paid but is not allowed to return to his job.

The State Department declined to comment on the reasons that Maxwell and the other officials were placed on administrative leave, or on what the four were told about the reasons for the decision. It did confirm that the ARB did not recommend direct disciplinary action because it didn’t find misconduct or a direct breach of duty by the officials.

read the rest

Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit points out that the person who canned Maxwell is Cheryl Mills and why that’s so important:

If that name sounds familiar, it should. Cheryl Mills is a long-trusted member of the Clintons’ inner circle and was identified by Greg Hicks in his testimony before Issa’s committee as having been very upset when she found out he’d spoken to Republican Benghazi investigators without a State Department lawyer present. Hicks claimed that was the first time in 22 years he’d received an order to bring along a legal chaperone when meeting visiting dignitaries. So Mills is the one that wanted Hicks to keep his mouth shut, and evidently she’s also the one who thought Maxwell, not a more senior person like Beth Jones who’s closer in the hierarchy to Hillary, should be placed on leave for security lapses with which he evidently had nothing to do. In fact, per the Beast, one official at State claims that Maxwell was supposed to be quietly reinstated and reassigned to another department once the spotlight on Benghazi had dimmed — which shows you how serious State is about imposing any sort of real discipline over the attack, even on its scapegoats — but that Mills eventually nixed that arrangement. Why?

Mills has to testify. She may be the only person, possibly apart from Hillary herself, who can explain State’s suspicious maneuverings after the attack.

From day 1, we have seen a pattern of coverup and deception regarding Benghazi, and this is just one more piece of evidence pointing to the Obama administration’s corruption.

The IRS and DOJ snooping scandals are important, but let’s not forget that people died in Benghazi. The actions of White House and State Department officials costs 4 Americans their lives, and we must get to the bottom of it and hold accountable those responsible.

DOJ search warrant of Fox News reporter's private emails listed him as a CRIMINAL suspect

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:59:25 -0500

We have officially crossed the line, America. The Obama/Holder Justice Department snooped through the private emails of a Fox News employee because he (shock!) reported the news. What’s worse, the search warrant allowing the emails actually lists James Rosen as a criminal suspect, and their justification for doing so is absolutely chilling.

from Business Insider:

Journalists are understandably alarmed by the revelation that President Barack Obama’s Justice Department targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen during a leak investigation of a State Department employee.

The news, reported by the Washington Post late Sunday night, reveals that the Obama administration will apparently stop at nothing to track down whistle-blowers who leak classified information. In Rosen’s case, that included implicating him as a “criminal co-conspirator” whose actions were punishable with up to 10 years in prison.

While it is not uncommon for the government to investigate leaks, it is unprecedented for a journalist to be accused of committing a crime for reporting on classified information.

read the rest

Take a look at the summary page of the DOJ’s warrant:

GASP! The reporter played to a government employee’s vanity? Well, that officially makes him no better than a foreign spy!

Let me reiterate here: NOTHING described in this document is illegal activity for a reporter. This is an investigative reporter doing his job, and the Obama administration is treating journalism as a crime.

This should set off massive alarm bells for anyone who cares about the Constitution and the 1st Amendment. The issue here is not that the White House pursued its own internal leaks; it’s that they’re punishing reporters and officially regarding them as criminals.

Inspector General says Justice Department leaked documents to smear Fast and Furious whistleblower

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:27:05 -0500

The White House and the Justice Department are running out of closets to hide their skeletons!

New details about the Justice Department’s bully tactics against reporters and whistleblowers are emerging. Not only did the Obama administration snoop through the private emails of reporters covering the story, the Inspector General for the DOJ said in his latest report that department officials leaked private information of Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers in order to smear them.

from Breitbart:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson.

The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to be inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.”

“We are referring to OPR our finding that Burke violated Department policy in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to a member of the media for a determination of whether Burke’s conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct for the state bars in which Burke is a member,” the IG wrote.

Burke resigned from his post as U.S. Attorney over the incident in August 2011, the first major Department of Justice official to leave his or her post in the Fast and Furious scandal. He said after the fact, in interviews with congressional investigators, that he now views leaking the document as a “mistake.”

In addition to Burke’s involvement in leaking the document, emails the IG uncovered show senior officials at the Department of Justice discussed smearing Dodson.

read the rest

Read the Inspector General’s report here.

It just keeps getting worse for Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama (yes, liberals, the Justice Department is part of the Executive Branch). Pretty soon, they’re going to have to rename the White House the House of 1,000 Scandals.

BREAKING: More Fox employees targeted after Fast and Furious reporting

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:05:00 -0500

As we recently reported, the DOJ didn’t just target the AP, it targeted Fox News reported James Rosen. But wait! There’s more! According to a recent Fox News Alert, two more Fox News employees were also targeted…after reporting on the details of the DOJ’s gun-running operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

Here’s the video:

According to the latest report, the private emails of Fox News reporter William La Jeunesse and producer Mike Levine showed up in an IG report regarding the leaks surrounding Fast and Furious. There are only two plausible explanations for how private emails showed up in the IG report:

The emails were shared with the Inspector General by the DOJ. This would mean that the DOJ’s highly controversial method of gathering information via (probably unconstitutional) subpoena would not have stopped with the AP or even James Rosen.
The emails were obtained directly by the Inspector General. I’m still unclear as to the legality here. Presumably, even an federal inspector must get a warrant to subpoena records from a private source although there have been plenty of examples of this being abused.

Either one of these scenarios looks terrible for the administration as it paints them as aggressors looking to punish those who may have exposed its failures.

Furthermore, any objective person already knew that there was more (perhaps devastating) information surrounding Fast and Furious than the administration would have had you believe. If this hadn’t been the case, Obama would never have claimed executive privilege to prevent classified Fast and Furious documents from being subpoenaed by Congress. But to hear the DOJ talk, Fast and Furious was nothing more than a witch hunt by Republicans to expose a program that was started under the Bush administration. According to them, they had been fully compliant by turning over all relevant documents to the oversight committee. If this is the case, however, why target Fox News for reporting on Fast and Furious? Why try to find out its sources? The only rational explanation, of course, is that the administration has simply been lying about Fast and Furious (among other things).

As the story rapidly unfolds it is looking more likely that the DOJ is responsible for subpoenaing and leaking the emails.

Great. Now the Obama administration is leaking Israel's national security secrets too

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:45:46 -0500

The Obama administration reportedly apologized this weekend for leaking crucial Israeli defense secrets to the press earlier this month.

from the Blaze:

Now, the Obama administration has reportedly apologized to Israel for another leak of classified information to the media, one that occurred earlier this month and which Israeli officials are concerned could place Israeli lives at risk.

Israel Radio’s diplomatic correspondent Chico Menashe reported Sunday morning (via the Jerusalem Post):

American officials apologized to their Israeli counterparts for confirming that Israel was behind the airstrikes on the Damascus airport earlier this month, Israel Radio reported on Sunday.

The confirmation reportedly came from the lower ranks at the Pentagon, and the reasons for the leak are being investigated.

Menashe tweeted: “The U.S. has apologized to Israel for leaking details of the attack in Syria. Senior administration officials said to their [Israeli] counterparts that they are examining the issue and that low-level [officials] were responsible for the leak.”

Menashe also wrote, “US officials told that they [will] review the matter. The leak forced Assad to react harshly.”

read the rest

I wonder which press outfit the Justice Department will punish for reporting this leak…

INSANITY. D.C. hero to pay $1,000 fine after saving boy's life with unregistered gun

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:34:52 -0500

This makes me want to beat my head against a wall. A heroic man saved a little boy from a pitbull attack, and now he faces a $1,000 fine for having an unregistered firearm.

from Washington Times:

Authorities last week made an agreement not to prosecute a Northwest D.C. man who used his unregistered handgun to kill a pit bull in order to stop it from mauling a child in his neighborhood.

As part of the agreement, Benjamin Srigley, 39, was required to pay a $1,000 fine but will not have criminal charges filed against him for the three unregistered firearms and the ammunition that investigators found in his possession, said Ted Gest, a spokesman for the office of the attorney general.

“We took it into account that he saved this boy’s life,” Mr. Gest said.

Possession of an unregistered firearm or ammunition in the District is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, and prosecutors said Mr. Srigley could have faced up to seven criminal charges in the case.

“In our recent memory this is a unique charge because of the unusual circumstances of this case,” said Mr. Gest, whose office generally prosecutes low-level crime in the District.

read the rest

Oh, how benevolent of the DC attorney general for not filing criminal charges against this hero!

Hey, pal, thanks for saving this boy’s life; now pay up!

GLOBAL WARMING ALERT! Global Climate has been at a "standstill" since 1998

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:46:00 -0500

Al Gore would be angry, but he’s already struck it richer than Mitt Romney off of his global warming scaremongering. Scientists are being forced to step back from the ledge in their predictions, as the global climate hasn’t changed all that much since 1998.

from BBC:

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast.

But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.

An international team of researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term climate response.

read the rest (h/t WZ)

I love it. They can’t even predict the short-term, but they say is shouldn’t effect their long-term predictions. And that’s how climate “science” works, kids. Data be damned! Full speed ahead!

BOOM! Treasury Employees Union chief Colleen Kelley met with Obama the DAY BEFORE the IRS targeting started

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:26:00 -0500

This is it folks. Jeffrey Lord over at the American Spectator has found the proverbial “smoking gun” tying the President directly to the IRS targeting scandal. The head of the Treasury Employees Union met with President Obama in the White House the day before the targeting started.

from American Spectator:

According to the White House Visitors Log,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.

read the rest

Last week I wrote that the question was not whether or not the IRS’s illegal behavior started with the White House, it’s whether or not you could find a paper trail indicating it. Here it is.

Uh Oh! Obama's DOJ targeted Fox News reporter too

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:11:52 -0500

We’re learning that the Obama administration’s invasive snooping on reporters isn’t just limited to the Associated Press. It’s now being reported that the DOJ searched the private emails Fox News reporter James Rosen.

from WaPo:

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.

read the rest

Let me remind you. James Rosen did not commit a crime by reporting on a leak from the White House. There’s a little something called 1st Amendment that protects reporters and allows them to keep their sources confidential.

No, what the Obama administration is doing is targeting journalists instead of the leakers on their team. If they want to read somebody’s private emails, they should start with their own offices, not the offices of reporters.

4th grader embarrasses New York City's DOE with hidden camera documentary about their dishonest lunch program

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:28:00 -0500

I love this kid. He has the smarts to become a great investigative journalist.

Zachary Maxwell is his name, and he’s a whiz. He decided to document the dishonesty of New York City’s Department of Education about their school lunch program. His findings are both disgusting and hilarious.

Here’s a clip from his film:

from Zachary’s website:

Zachary is a fourth grader at a large New York City public elementary school. Each day he reads the Department of Education lunch menu online to see what is being served. The menu describes delicious and nutritious cuisine that reads as if it came from the finest restaurants. However, when Zachary gets to school, he finds a very different reality. Armed with a concealed video camera and a healthy dose of rebellious courage, Zachary embarks on a six month covert mission to collect video footage of his lunch and expose the truth about the City’s school food service program.

This short documentary provides a fun and spirited insider’s perspective on the elementary school lunch room.

read the rest

Zachary, I hope that you read this. What you’ve documented here is big government corruption, and it won’t be the last time you see it in your lifetime. See, government always promises to make things better, and sometimes they even use famous celebrities to sell their ideas to the public. It always sounds nice… Yummy gourmet school lunches! Free healthcare for everybody! Shovel ready jobs!

In the end, the results are always the same: greater cost to the taxpayer and results that are just as bad as (if not worse than) what things were before.

Please take this lesson about government to heart, Zachary. Think about it: if your parents didn’t have to pay higher taxes for you to get these “delicious, nutritious school lunches,” they could afford to pack an incredible lunch for you to take to school every day. Sadly, as things are right now, if you bring your own lunch, you’re actually paying twice! And that’s how big government always works. Always.

Surprise! CBO estimates Obama's budget would add $5.2 Trillion to the deficit!

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:18:00 -0500

Anytime you hear some stooge of this administration claim that President Obama has “reduced the deficit,” know that it’s utter poppycock. The CBO estimates that if President Obama’s budget passed and became law, it would add $5.2 Trillion to the deficit.

from the Hill:

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office on Friday said President Obama’s 2014 budget proposal would add $5.2 trillion in deficits over 10 years.

The agency said that compared to its baseline scenario, the Obama budget would reduce projected deficits by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. The White House had claimed $1.8 trillion in savings using its own analysis.

The CBO’s baseline assumes that automatic sequestration cuts remain in place for nine years, whereas the White House assumes they are eliminated.

While it uses a different budget baseline than the White House, the analysis of individual proposals are broadly consistent with what Obama officials projected. The CBO reports $3 billion more in spending than the White House claimed and $79 billion more in revenue over 10 years.

The office said the Obama blueprint would increase the deficit this year by $27 billion, to $669 billion, and by $115 billion in 2014, to a total of $615 billion.

read the rest

And all of that assumed that sequestration stays in place! Can you imagine?

Once again, let me remind you of the source here. It’s the supposedly-non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the liberal’s gold standard for accounting. You see what they did with Obamacare, right? They were 100% off, and now Obamacare is going to cost twice what they first estimated!

If that precedent were to hold, you shouldn’t be surprised if Obama’s budget adds $10 Trillion to the deficit.

Not politically motivated? IRS hid investigation until after the election

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:08:09 -0500

The Obama administration’s claim that the IRS targets of conservative groups were somehow not politically motivated are growing more and more absurd. As it turns out, the IRS sat on the investigation until after the election, and top Obama administration officials knew about it back in June of last year.

from Weekly Standard:

The Internal Revenue Service’s watchdog told top Treasury officials around June 2012 he was investigating allegations the tax agency had targeted conservative groups, for the first time indicating that Obama administration officials were aware of the explosive matter in the midst of the president’s re-election campaign.

The disclosure to the Treasury general counsel and the deputy secretary was a cursory one, according to J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. He said he didn’t reveal conclusions of the probe, which was in its early stages, and his disclosure came as part of a routine update to Treasury leaders. At the time, Republican lawmakers were complaining publicly about alleged IRS targeting of tea-party groups.

The revelation nonetheless raised a fresh set of questions about who was aware of the problem within the Obama administration. It was one of several new details that emerged during a contentious four-hour House committee hearing Friday, held one week after an IRS official revealed at a legal conference that the agency had taken “absolutely inappropriate” actions in targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for often heavy-handed scrutiny.

read the rest

Not only did they know, the misled Congress about it. Watch this exchange between IRS Commissioner Steven Miller and Paul Ryan yesterday:

The IRS also hid the scandal from Freedom of Information Act requests (something that could very well turn out to be a crime in and of itself).

No, there’s nothing political about hiding a massive scandal until after an election. It’s just horrible customer service!

It keeps getting worse: IRS demanded back-end access to conservative group websites!

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:09:44 -0500

The sordid details about what the IRS demanded from Conservative groups grows more and more astounding. The IRS demanded that groups provide logins and back-end access to their websites.

Listen to this audio discussion from Texas 912 President Maria Acosta (via Gateway Pundit):

It didn’t just happen to one group either. Here’s a copy of the letter showing the demand to the Richmond Tea Party:

If you think this is bad, earlier today we found out that the IRS demanded to know the content of a Christian pro-life group’s prayers! This is far beyond the Democrat softball talking point of “bad management” or “horrible customer service.” This kind of harassment is unconstitutional and criminal.

People need to be in handcuffs over this.

Rep. Darrell Issa subpoenas uncooperative Benghazi auditor Thomas Pickering

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:16:35 -0500

I told you in last night’s News Dump about how former Ambassador Thomas Pickering wasn’t cooperating with the Congressional investigation into Benghazi. Well, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa has had enough, and today he served Pickering with a subpoena ordering him to appear before Congress on Thursday.

from the Hill:

The lawmaker leading the charge to investigate the Benghazi, Libya, terror attack on Friday subpoenaed the co-author of a report that slammed the State Department but didn’t interview Hillary Clinton.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) formally demanded that retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering submit to being deposed by the committee next Thursday.

The subpoena comes in the wake of a series of acrimonious public exchanges this week between the two men. Issa didn’t issue a subpoena to former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, who co-authored the Benghazi report with Pickering.

Pickering has said he would testify before Issa’s panel about last year’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) report on the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Pickering and Mullen have refused, however, to submit to a transcribed interview with Issa and his staff, calling the closed-door proceeding an “inappropriate precondition” to their testimony.

read the rest

We’ve had a lot of discussion about the Obama administration’s response to the terrorist attack in Benghazi, but we still don’t know what was happening there in the first place. Was the Obama administration using enhanced interrogation on CIA detainees? Were they illegally dealing arms to Syria?

Four people needlessly died, and we need to know what they were there for.

WOW! CNN's Piers Morgan admits gun advocates are right, Federal government IS tyrannical

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:38:00 -0500

I looked outside to see if pigs were flying because I never though I’d see this. Today, Piers Morgan (who has been a constant on-air advocate for strict gun control) admitted that after seeing the Obama administration’s scandals, he believes gun activists have a legitimate concern about government tyranny.

Here’s the video:

from Hot Air:

Vaguely?

I’d guess that these scandals have put an end to any notion of reviving gun control in this session of Congress. In light of the revelations at the IRS and the Department of Justice over the last few days, which red-state Senators of either party are going to sign up to expand federal oversight of guns? Obama and his team couldn’t get a gun-control bill out of the Senate, let alone the House, even with the media not just cheerleading every step of the way but conducting its own full-court press on behalf of Obama. With the media irate over the raid on the Associated Press (and asking tough questions about the IRS), I doubt that the White House is going to be able to put the band back together for a long time, if ever.

read the rest

I think that Ed Morrissey’s analysis here is a little more optimistic than I am, but it speaks to a larger point I want to make. These scandals should (in a just world) take down the Obama Presidency. They should. I’m not saying they will, but Benghazi by itself is far worse than Watergate.

But putting the screws on Obama shouldn’t be the only focus here. Conservatives also need to use this potentially pivotal moment to teach the American people just how dangerous the Federal government can be. As Rep. Mike Kelley said earlier today, the Federal government can essentially do anything it wants to, and nothing is holding them accountable.

Big government is by nature tyrannical. It always has been, and it always will be. It’s time to chose: do we move forward with tyranny, or do we stop and take a stand for liberty?

Rep Mike Kelley DESTROYS IRS Commissioner Steven Miller and gets standing ovation

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:43:05 -0500

And boom goes the dynamite! Rep. Mike Kelley ripped outgoing IRS Commission Steven Miller to shreds today during his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. At the end of his questioning, Kelley got a standing ovation from the gallery audience.

here’s the video:

Mike Kelley isn’t finished either. He’s continuing to connect the dots with the Obama administration. Remember how hundreds of Chevy dealerships got shut down after the auto bailout? A huge percentage of them were Republican donors. Kelley wants to know if that was politically motivated too.

Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) issued the following statement today regarding a letter he authored and submitted to U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew inquiring about possible political motivation involved in the nationwide post-bailout closures of auto dealerships in 2008 and 2009. The letter was co-signed by Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH) and Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA).

“The IRS’s now-confirmed targeting of conservative groups is a frightening reminder that no branch or department of the federal government is immune from overstepping legal and ethical boundaries. Oftentimes holding government accountable means having to dig for the truth, which is exactly what this letter is about. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General report from the aftermath of the auto bailouts indicated that ‘little or no documentation of the decision-making process to terminate or retain dealerships’ exists, making it ‘impossible in many cases’ to determine if decisions deviated from ‘supposedly objective criteria.’ In light of the department’s unthinkable breaches of public trust still being revealed by the IRS scandal, my colleagues and I have a duty to examine whether auto dealers across the country saw their businesses close as a result of similar political profiling.”

Bravo to Rep Kelley for demanding answers of this corrupt administration. He’s exactly right: we are not surprised but we are outraged.

Scandal? Sequester? Time for another star-studded party at the White House!

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:03:54 -0500

A party is a great way to blow off a little steam…and a lot of the taxpayer’s money. Naturally, that’s exactly what President Obama plans to do at the White House later this month.

from Daily Caller:

Amid sequester and scandal in Washington, the White House announced Friday that the president and first lady will be hosting another concert as part of their “In Performance at the White House” series later this month.

The event will be held in the East Room of the White House and honor singer and songwriter Carole King, who will be awarded the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. King will be the first woman to receive the award, the White House noted in their announcement.

The program — to be streamed on the White House website and broadcast on PBS stations the evening of May 28 — will also feature performances by Gloria Estefan, Billy Joel, Jesse McCartney, Emeli Sandé, James Taylor, Trisha Yearwood and King herself.

In 2002, Carole King sang “You’ve Got a Friend” for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro at a warming-relations dinner in Havana.

read the rest

Oh, and if it rains, President Obama can totally have the Marines hold umbrellas over their celebrity guests heads!

Unreal: IRS requested the content of a Christian group's prayers

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:33:00 -0500

Now that the dam has broken, the stories of IRS abuse is everywhere. And the stories are really quite amazing. None so much as this one, however. Apparently the IRS requested that a Christian group disclose the content of its prayers so it could decided if it should be tax exempt. Umm, what?

Here’s the video:

Now that it’s out there, expect more stories like this to come out. And because many groups don’t have the necessary funding to fight the IRS, Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ has suggested that he might represent many of these targeted groups pro bono. If you are a freedom-loving lawyer, I encourage you to do the same. After all, it is completely unacceptable for any arm of the government to target any individual or group for any reason other than law-breaking.