Holder will never do anything that smacks of saving the nation from constitutional overreach by his tyrannical boss so other strategies have to be tried which will/may work.
This law suit against be the opener to the IRS can of worms.
Bureaucrats, because of the power they command, live in a world divorced from reality. After a while lying becomes like a protective blanket, This has nothing to do with political parties but it does have a lot to do with and say about agency leadership and directives from the top of government.
Obama has set the tone and whether he is directly up to his arm pits in the various scandals that are rocking his administration and our nation the buck begins and stops with him!
Once again, my contention that the courts will save us from Obama is proving to have merit. (See 1 below.)
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THE UN is Out of Touch and Out of Line
At best we could say that the UN is just ineffective. At worst hypocritical and biased. There seem to few real issue that the UN has managed to deal with effectively since its establishment in 1945 as a replacement for the (also ineffective) League of Nations. Perhaps, the UN, with all of its far reaching branches, has a hard time dealing with controversial information and may, at times, prefer to ignore it or come to terms with it in an oversimplified way.
There is one issue that the UN was very successful in carrying out, and, as far as I’m concerned, that may be a way to justify its existence. In 1947 the UN almost unanimously approved resolution 181 which called for the creation of a Jewish state. And it’s been tormenting that same Jewish state ever since.
Why we continue to fund most of the U.N is beyond me. Some of their agencies do a respectable job and we should fund them. However, blind funding, with disregard for any return on our investment and The U.N.'s consistent failure to speak out against human rights violations by its many members, is unconscionable.
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I now would like to discuss how the Clinton's are able to perpetuate their canard about professing to be for the little guy as they legally launder money through their foundation to support their political ambitions.
Hillary's claim of poverty after leaving the White House has placed her every fee for speaking engagements under a microscope.
She has been offered to speak at a college the munificent fee of $225,000. This fee is being paid by an individual or entity that will receive a tax deduction because it goes to The Clinton's Charitable Foundation.
As a result the university can rightly claim the fee is not coming from university sources and Hillary can receive a large speaking fee which cuts the cost to the donor by using tax benefits.
I now would like to discuss how the Clinton's are able to perpetuate their canard about professing to be for the little guy as they legally launder money through their foundation to support their political ambitions.
Hillary's claim of poverty after leaving the White House has placed her every fee for speaking engagements under a microscope.
She has been offered to speak at a college the munificent fee of $225,000. This fee is being paid by an individual or entity that will receive a tax deduction because it goes to The Clinton's Charitable Foundation.
As a result the university can rightly claim the fee is not coming from university sources and Hillary can receive a large speaking fee which cuts the cost to the donor by using tax benefits.
One can argue it is simply money laundering made legal for political proposes.
The Clinton Foundation pays salaries and expenses to support the Clinton's in their various political endeavors and allows them to live high on the hog while flying around the country in private jets and enjoying
other comforts making speeches about how they feel the pain of their fellow citizens.
Now please understand I am not saying anything they are doing is illegal. It is simply disingenuous and hypocritical but then that has been what The Clinton's have done all their political life.
Of course when Romney spends his own money and gives heavily to charity he is accused by the Far Left of being rich and uncaring.
It is a tactic liberals have perfected and president Obama has honed it and brought it to another level. Witness his comments of the past few days that Republicans are simply out to get him and there is no smidgen of corruption in all the nefarious scandals. It is simply Republicans and those who believe in Constitutonal governance playing the race card again.
Talk about crony capitalism - that too is another canard because we allow it, because we are indifferent and uninformed.
We have a Republic if we can keep it. As I see it, it is slipping away!
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Dick
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1) The sleeper case that could bust open the IRS scandals
By Thomas Lifson
In the absence of a special prosecutor, the best opportunity for piercing the veil of secrecy and evasion that surrounds the IRS handling of groups perceived as enemies of the Obama administration lies in civil litigation. The National Organization for Marriage has just obtained a $50,000 settlement from the IRS for its criminal release of confidential donor information to an opposition group. But so far Eric Holder’s Justice Department is not pursuing inquiries into who feloniously released that information.
The absence of any official judicial inquiry into the inner workings of the IRS processes is why it is so important to note that yesterday saw the beginning of the discovery phase in the lawsuit by Z-Street a pro-Israel organization that was told its application for tax exempt status was being delayed because:
…these cases are being sent to a special unit in the DC office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.
Z-Street’s lawsuit alleges unlawful viewpoint discrimination, a First Amendment claim. The IRS tried several arguments to dismiss Z-Street’s lawsuit, all of which were dismissed by Washington, DC federal district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, an Obama appointee. She noted that Z-Street was not suing to gain tax exempt status, but rather over the viewpoint discrimination evidenced by what it was told by IRS agent Diane Gentry about contradicting administration policies – the process by which the IRS made the determination on tax exempt status. In the words of theJerusalem Post:
The Z Street case may be what forces the IRS to pull aside its carefully constructed curtain and reveal how it made decisions regarding organizations deemed out of step with the current US administration.
Judge Jackson gave the IRS until June 26 to respond to Z-Street. That deadline has now passed, so the case enters discovery. This means that Z-Street can subpoena IRS officials, place them under oath, and ask them questions about how they acted, and cross examine them closely. They can also subpoena documents and require their production. This is much different than a House committee hearing in which members have only a few minutes to ask questions, and when friendly Democrats have their opportunity to apologize for the impertinence of daring to ask questions of our IRS masters. Depositions taken under oath can last many hours and involve detailed questions.
What makes the Z-Street case unique and potentially extremely damaging is that its lawsuit was filed in August 2010. That filing placed the IRS under legal obligation to preserve records. The Wall Street Journal’s Review and Outlook column explains:
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and legal precedent, once the suit was filed the IRS was required to preserve all evidence relevant to the viewpoint-discrimination charge. That means that no matter what dog ate Lois Lerner's hard drive or what the IRS habit was of recycling the tapes used to back up its email records of taxpayer information, it had a legal duty not to destroy the evidence in ongoing litigation.
In private white-collar cases, companies facing a lawsuit routinely operate under what is known as a "litigation hold," instructing employees to affirmatively retain all documents related to the potential litigation. A failure to do that and any resulting document loss amounts to what is called "willful spoliation," or deliberate destruction of evidence if any of the destroyed documents were potentially relevant to the litigation.
At the IRS, that requirement applied to all correspondence regarding Z Street, as well as to information related to the vetting of conservative groups whose applications for tax-exempt status were delayed during an election season. Instead, and incredibly, the IRS cancelled its contract with email-archiving firm Sonasoft shortly after Ms. Lerner's computer "crash" in June 2011.
In the federal District of Columbia circuit where Z Street's case is now pending, the operating legal obligation is that "negligent or reckless spoliation of evidence is an independent and actionable tort." In a 2011 case a D.C. district court also noted that "Once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a 'litigation hold' to ensure the preservation of relevant documents."
The government's duty is equally pressing. "When the United States comes into court as a party in a civil suit, it is subject to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as any other litigant," the Court of Federal Claims ruled in 2007. The responsibility to preserve evidence should have been a topic of conversation between the IRS chief counsel's office and the Justice Department lawyers assigned to handle the Z Street case.
The potential destruction of evidence, by becoming a separate tort, opens the door for judicial inquiry into the IRS destruction of evidence. Armed with subpoenas and able to examine and cross examine people under oath, Z-Street has the potential to bust open what really went on at the IRS.
Strangely enough no major media outlet covered the opening of the discovery phase of this case. Only Gretchen Carlson of Fox News had the wit to notice, and interviewed Lori Lowenthal Marcus, head of Z-Street (and an AT contributor):
In the absence of a special prosecutor, the best opportunity for piercing the veil of secrecy and evasion that surrounds the IRS handling of groups perceived as enemies of the Obama administration lies in civil litigation. The National Organization for Marriage has just obtained a $50,000 settlement from the IRS for its criminal release of confidential donor information to an opposition group. But so far Eric Holder’s Justice Department is not pursuing inquiries into who feloniously released that information.
The absence of any official judicial inquiry into the inner workings of the IRS processes is why it is so important to note that yesterday saw the beginning of the discovery phase in the lawsuit by Z-Street a pro-Israel organization that was told its application for tax exempt status was being delayed because:
…these cases are being sent to a special unit in the DC office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.
Z-Street’s lawsuit alleges unlawful viewpoint discrimination, a First Amendment claim. The IRS tried several arguments to dismiss Z-Street’s lawsuit, all of which were dismissed by Washington, DC federal district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, an Obama appointee. She noted that Z-Street was not suing to gain tax exempt status, but rather over the viewpoint discrimination evidenced by what it was told by IRS agent Diane Gentry about contradicting administration policies – the process by which the IRS made the determination on tax exempt status. In the words of theJerusalem Post:
The Z Street case may be what forces the IRS to pull aside its carefully constructed curtain and reveal how it made decisions regarding organizations deemed out of step with the current US administration.
Judge Jackson gave the IRS until June 26 to respond to Z-Street. That deadline has now passed, so the case enters discovery. This means that Z-Street can subpoena IRS officials, place them under oath, and ask them questions about how they acted, and cross examine them closely. They can also subpoena documents and require their production. This is much different than a House committee hearing in which members have only a few minutes to ask questions, and when friendly Democrats have their opportunity to apologize for the impertinence of daring to ask questions of our IRS masters. Depositions taken under oath can last many hours and involve detailed questions.
What makes the Z-Street case unique and potentially extremely damaging is that its lawsuit was filed in August 2010. That filing placed the IRS under legal obligation to preserve records. The Wall Street Journal’s Review and Outlook column explains:
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and legal precedent, once the suit was filed the IRS was required to preserve all evidence relevant to the viewpoint-discrimination charge. That means that no matter what dog ate Lois Lerner's hard drive or what the IRS habit was of recycling the tapes used to back up its email records of taxpayer information, it had a legal duty not to destroy the evidence in ongoing litigation.
In private white-collar cases, companies facing a lawsuit routinely operate under what is known as a "litigation hold," instructing employees to affirmatively retain all documents related to the potential litigation. A failure to do that and any resulting document loss amounts to what is called "willful spoliation," or deliberate destruction of evidence if any of the destroyed documents were potentially relevant to the litigation.
At the IRS, that requirement applied to all correspondence regarding Z Street, as well as to information related to the vetting of conservative groups whose applications for tax-exempt status were delayed during an election season. Instead, and incredibly, the IRS cancelled its contract with email-archiving firm Sonasoft shortly after Ms. Lerner's computer "crash" in June 2011.
In the federal District of Columbia circuit where Z Street's case is now pending, the operating legal obligation is that "negligent or reckless spoliation of evidence is an independent and actionable tort." In a 2011 case a D.C. district court also noted that "Once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a 'litigation hold' to ensure the preservation of relevant documents."
The government's duty is equally pressing. "When the United States comes into court as a party in a civil suit, it is subject to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as any other litigant," the Court of Federal Claims ruled in 2007. The responsibility to preserve evidence should have been a topic of conversation between the IRS chief counsel's office and the Justice Department lawyers assigned to handle the Z Street case.
The potential destruction of evidence, by becoming a separate tort, opens the door for judicial inquiry into the IRS destruction of evidence. Armed with subpoenas and able to examine and cross examine people under oath, Z-Street has the potential to bust open what really went on at the IRS.
Strangely enough no major media outlet covered the opening of the discovery phase of this case. Only Gretchen Carlson of Fox News had the wit to notice, and interviewed Lori Lowenthal Marcus, head of Z-Street (and an AT contributor):
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