GOP Congressman Mike Kelly Receives Standing Ovation After He Rips IRS Commissioner

RealClearPolitics

REP. MIKE KELLY (R-PA): This has nothing to do with political parties. This has to do with highly targeted groups. This reconfirms everything the American public believes. This is a huge blow to the faith and trust that the American people have in their government. Is there any limit to the scope where you folks can go? Is there anything at all? Is there any way that we could ask you is there any question that you should have asked?

My goodness. How much money do you have in your wallet? Who do you get emails from? Whose sign do you put up in your front yard? This is a tax question? And you don’t think that’s intimidating? It’s sure as hell intimidating. And I don’t know that I got any answers from you today. And I don’t know that — what Mr. George said is great work — but you know what? There’s a heck of a lot more that has to come out in this. Any anybody that sat here today and listened to what you had to say, I am more concerned today than I was before, and the fact that you all can do just about anything you want to anybody?

You know, you can put anybody out of business that you want. Any time you want. I gotta tell you. You could talk about how you’re a horribly run organization, if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re not giving that excuse. And the IRS comes in, you’re not allowed to be shoddy, you’re not allowed to be run horribly, you’re not allowed to make mistakes, you’re not allowed to do one damn thing that doesn’t come in compliance, and if you do, you’re held responsible right then. I just think the American people have seen what’s going on right now in their government. This is absolutely an overreach and this is an outrage for all Americans.

The content of one’s prayers?

Congressman: IRS asked pro-life group about ‘the content of their prayers’

During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing today, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., grilled outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller about the IRS targeting a pro-life group in Iowa.

“Their question, specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers,’” Schock declared.

“Would that be an inappropriate question to a 501 c3 applicant?” asked Schock. “The content of one’s prayers?”

“It pains me to say I can’t speak to that one either,” Miller replied.

After Schock pressed him further, Miller explained that although he couldn’t comment on the specific case, it would “surprise him” if that question was asked.

The report comes from the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm for religious liberty.

“cited their education and career interests” Nothing to see here…Move Along…

Five men and two women were from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore…In a resevoir..at midnight…

Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir.

State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.

The Quabbin, in Belchertown, is one of the country’s largest man-made public water supplies. Boston’s drinking water comes from the Quabbin and the Wachusett Reservoirs.

State Police say there were no warrants or advisories on any of the individuals and “there was no evidence that the seven were committing any crime beyond the trespassing.”

All seven were allowed to leave and will be summonsed to court for trespassing. The FBI is investigating and routine checks of public water supplies have been increased following the incident.

The seven individuals currently live in Amherst, Cambridge, Sunderland, Northampton and New York City. Police have not released their names because a court date has not been set.

Who Says He’s Playin’?

Holder plays dumb

Attorney General Eric Holder was in a familiar spot yesterday: testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, dodging and weaving and otherwise doing his best imitation of Sgt. Schultz from the old TV show “Hogan’s Heroes”: I know nothing.

Scandals at the IRS? Under investigation, can’t comment. Subpoenaed phone records of Associated Press reporters? How should I know? I recused myself.

That’s not testifying — that’s obfuscating.

But it’s all in a day’s work for the Obama administration’s most visible punching bag. If the president is made of Teflon, Holder is his opposite number: Everything sticks to him.

From the Fast and Furious scandal, in which federal officials let hundreds of high-powered weapons “walk” into Mexico — where they’ve turned up at multiple crime scenes — to the latest embarrassments, Holder has become the face of the administration’s increasingly blatant corruption, incompetence or both.

Yet the man who first besmirched his reputation by advocating for Bill Clinton’s presidential pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich remains in public office, taking the hits so his boss can maintain his plausible deniability. (Does anyone really believe that Obama first learned of the IRS scandal from reading “news reports” last Friday?)

The country’s in the very best of hands…

Wait…we have terrorists in WitSec??

The Justice Department failed to provide the names of some terrorists in the witness protection program to the center that maintains the government’s watch list used to keep dangerous people off airline flights, the department’s inspector general said in a report Thursday.

As a result of the department’s failure to properly share information, some in the witness protection program who were on the “no-fly” list were allowed to travel on commercial flights, the federal watchdog said.

“It was possible for known or suspected terrorists to fly on commercial airplanes in or over the United States and evade one of the government’s primary means of identifying and tracking terrorists’ movements and actions,” the report said.

To help protect witnesses from the people and organizations against whom they testify, the U.S. Marshals Service provides cooperating witnesses with new names and identities.

“We found that the department was not authorizing the disclosure to the Terrorist Screening Center of the new identities provided to known or suspects terrorists” in the federal Witness Security Program, known officially as WitSec.

IRS to Pro Life Group: Don’t Protest Planned Parenthood

IndependentJournal

It was a low-blow by the IRS, but it seems they are capable of stooping much, much lower. The Thomas More Society (a non-profit, public interest law firm) is reporting that the IRS also engaged in blatant bias against pro-life groups.

In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent “Ms. Richards” told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved. After a series of letters following a request for more invasive information, Thomas More Society special counsel Sally Wagenmaker sent a letter to the IRS demanding the tax exempt status be issued immediately.

That’s right – the IRS demanded this pro-life organization promise to refrain from protesting Planned Parenthood (the nation’s largest abortion provider) before they could receive their tax exempt status.

In another case the IRS withheld 501(c)(3) approval from an organization called Christian Voices for Life because of concerns about their connections to other pro-life groups. The Thomas More Society has full documentation on both cases.

Not only is the IRS engaging in blatant partisanship, they are also creating a de facto firewall against conservative organizations by making the process of applying for a 501(c)(3) so complicated and arduous that many groups cannot afford the time or the money to navigate the maze of procedure.

Why French Kids Don’t Have ADHD

PsychologyToday

In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?

French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children’s focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child’s brain but in the child’s social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child’s brain.

To the extent that French clinicians are successful at finding and repairing what has gone awry in the child’s social context, fewer children qualify for the ADHD diagnosis. Moreover, the definition of ADHD is not as broad as in the American system, which, in my view, tends to “pathologize” much of what is normal childhood behavior. The DSM specifically does not consider underlying causes. It thus leads clinicians to give the ADHD diagnosis to a much larger number of symptomatic children, while also encouraging them to treat those children with pharmaceuticals.

The French holistic, psycho-social approach also allows for considering nutritional causes for ADHD-type symptoms—specifically the fact that the behavior of some children is worsened after eating foods with artificial colors, certain preservatives, and/or allergens. Clinicians who work with troubled children in this country—not to mention parents of many ADHD kids—are well aware that dietary interventions can sometimes help a child’s problem. In the United States, the strict focus on pharmaceutical treatment of ADHD, however, encourages clinicians to ignore the influence of dietary factors on children’s behavior.

Flashback: President Obama Targeted Gibson Guitars, Boeing on Ideological Grounds

Breitbart

Even mainstream media outlets are running story upon story about President Barack Obama’s possible ties to the government grabbing a wire service’s phone records and the IRS bullying conservative groups.

Those who have been paying attention to the New Media shouldn’t be surprised by these headlines. In fact, here are two examples where the Obama administration appeared to use an ideological cudgel to bash both conservatives and free market principles.

On Aug. 24, 2011, the Department of Justice sent armed agents into the Gibson Guitar factor in Memphis “confiscating half a million dollars worth of guitar making material is an alleged violation of environmental standards.”

 

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz is a conservative, and his company eventually settled rather than take matters to court.

Nashville-based Gibson agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty, forfeit claims to about $262,000 worth of wood seized by federal agents and contribute $50,000 to theNational Fish and Wildlife Foundation to promote the conservation of protected tree species.

We felt compelled to settle as the costs of proving our case at trial would have cost millions of dollars and taken a very long time to resolve,” CEO Henry Juszkiewicz said in a statement late Monday night….

“We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted, and a matter that could have been addressed with a simple contact a caring human being representing the government,” he said in his statement.

Just a few weeks later, the Obama administration squared off against Boeing for daring to set roots in a “right to work” state.

In a faltering economy, the aerospace titan opened a $750 million factory in South Carolina and hired thousands of workers to build the world’s most fuel-efficient commercial jet…. the National Labor Relations Board has accused Boeing of opening its South Carolina shop in a “right-to-work” state to retaliate against union worker strikes at its main manufacturing base in the Seattle area.

An Obama appointee is now asking a judge to order Boeing to relocate all 787 Dreamliner production to Washington state — a move that’s feeding the GOP narrative that Obama’s Big Government is meddling with job creation, just as the first plane nears its first commercial flight.

The NLRB complaint against Boeing was eventually dropped, but not before the union got a pretty compensation package as a parting gift.

Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates called it a prime example of regulatory overreach by the Obama administration, arguing that federal officials should not be telling companies where they can or cannot build factories. Congress held hearings and demanded thousands of pages of documents.

Two More Schools Join Rankings Hall of Shame

TaxProf

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research for U.S. News & World Report), Updates to 2 Schools’ 2013 Best Colleges Ranks:

Two schools – University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and York College of Pennsylvania – recently advised U.S. News that they submitted inflated data that were used in the 2013 Best Colleges rankings, resulting in their numerical ranks being higher than they otherwise might have been. In both cases, the same incorrect data were also reported to many other parties including the U.S. Department of Education.

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, a Texas school in the Regional Universities (West) rankings category, advised U.S. News that it reported an acceptance rate (which accounts for 1.5% of the overall ranking) of 27.4%, rather than the actual 89.1% rate.

York College, a Pennsylvania school in the Regional Universities (North) rankings category, advised U.S. News that it reported average SAT scores (which account for 7.5% of the overall ranking) of 545 (math) and 532 (critical reading), rather than the actual 527 (math) and 516 (critical reading) SAT scores. York College admitted that it has been misreporting SAT scores for more than a decade.

Other members of the Rankings Hall of Shame:  Bucknell, Claremont McKenna, Emory, George Washington, Illinois, Tulane, and Villanova.

Did The IRS Try To Swing Election To Obama?

IBO

The inspector general’s report on the IRS targeting of conservatives makes it seem like a case of bureaucratic bumbling. But the more we learn, the more it looks like a concerted effort to hobble Obama’s political foes.

‘Inappropriate criteria,” “insufficient oversight” and “lack of managerial review.” That’s what led the IRS to target hundreds of conservative groups for intrusive, costly and lengthy scrutiny during their application for tax-exempt status, according to the IG report released on Tuesday.

In other words, it wasn’t a politically motivated attack on conservative groups during a presidential campaign. It was just a case of some bad wording and a lack of good bosses.

Except that, as details of the IRS scandal emerge, it’s increasingly giving the appearance of a wide-scale effort to tilt the playing field against conservative activist groups who might have been helpful to Republican candidates in the 2012 election, while at the same time coddling liberal groups helpful to Obama.

Consider what we now know the IRS did:

• Gave preferential treatment to liberal groups. On Tuesday, USA Today reported that while the IRS was hounding conservative groups and holding up their applications for tax-exempt status, it was quickly ushering liberal groups with names like “Progress Florida” and “Missourians Organizing for Reform” through the process.

Made unusual document requests. Not only did the IRS target conservative groups for extra scrutiny, it also asked for massive amounts of information that it couldn’t possibly need to determine tax-exempt status.Among them: donor names, blog posts, transcripts of radio interviews, resumes of top officers, board minutes and summaries of material passed out at meetings.

Some groups were asked about connections to other conservative groups or individuals.