It’s Wednesday, May 15th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!

First up, the WSJ‘s Steve Moore details an aspect of the IRS scandal which should concern every freedom-loving American, regardless of political affiliation:

Richard Milhous Obama

The left-wing publication Pro Publica admitted Monday that it obtained from the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential tax forms from nine organizations. All of the groups whose records were improperly released were conservative.

Pro Publica says it obtained the forms from the IRS “in response to a public records request.” It then published the names of the organizations in January and accused the groups of being “controversial dark money” organizations that unlawfully engaged in “politics” rather than policy advocacy. On Monday, it again published the names of the organizations, over the repeated objections of the lawyers representing these organizations, who told ProPublica that this was an illegal act.

What is the motivation for leaking these documents? The answer is that the left is trying to dry up the money of tea party and conservative groups by intimidating donors.

Two months ago, several dozen attorneys who represent policy and political organizations on the left and right wrote a scathing letter of protest to the IRS. They complained that the “unlawful disclosures” only reinforce “the view that the IRS or its employees are biased against those [with conservative] ideologies.” To the money issue, the attorneys charged that “donors may be deterred from giving if they fear their contributions might be improperly disclosed.”

Adds Jeff Altman, an attorney at Whiteford Taylor Preston who represents conservative policy organizations, “This kind of unlawful disclosure of IRS tax forms can have a chilling effect on donors. No organization wants contributors to know their IRS applications are being help up for special review and might never be approved.”

For donors who are seeking anonymity in their giving, the fear that their names will be disclosed is a big deterrent to contributing at all. Two conservative organizations—the National Organization for Marriage and the Texas Public Policy Institute—have had their donor lists illegally leaked and the names reported by the media in recent years. Last month, the confidential donor list of the Republican Governors Association was made public. This information could have come from one of two sources: IRS officials with a political ax to grind, or the organizations themselves.

No one knows yet who leaked the IRS data. But the targeting of conservative groups suggests that the Obama administration, in Nixonian fashion, is using the leverage of government to defund political adversaries.

In a related item, courtesy of the WaPo, George Will paints a picture of a Presidency in peril:

In IRS scandal, echoes of Watergate

 

“He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to . . . cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

— Article II, Section 1, Articles of Impeachment against Richard M. Nixon, adopted by the House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but 40 years ago this week — May 17, 1973 — the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities.

This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their titles. The Post reported Monday that the IRS also targeted groups that “criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution.” Credit the IRS’s operatives with understanding who and what threatens the current regime.

Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’s behavior “inappropriate.” No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense.

It remains to be discovered whether the chief executive is guilty of more than an amazingly convenient failure to superintend the excesses of some executive-branch employees beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Meanwhile, file this under “What a tangled web we weave”:

The IRS official in charge of the division that makes politically sensitive allocations of tax-exempt status said Friday that she learned from news reports of the targeting of conservatives. But a draft report by the IRS inspector general says this official was briefed on the matter two years ago.

An emerging liberal narrative is that this tempest is all the Supreme Court’s fault: The Citizens United decision — that corporations, particularly nonprofit advocacy groups, have First Amendment rights — so burdened the IRS with making determinations about who deserves tax-exempt status that some political innocents in Cincinnati inexplicably decided to begin by rummaging through the affairs of conservatives. Ere long, presumably, they would have gotten around to groups with “progressive” in their titles.

Remember, all campaign “reform” proposals regulate political speech. And all involve the IRS in allocating speech rights.

Liberals, whose unvarying agenda is enlargement of government, suggest, with no sense of cognitive dissonance, that this IRS scandal is nothing more sinister than typical government incompetence. Five days before the IRS story broke, Obama, sermonizing 109 miles northeast of Cincinnati, warned Ohio State graduates about “creeping cynicism” and “voices” that “warn that tyranny is . . . around the corner.” Well.

He stigmatizes as the vice of cynicism what actually is the virtue of skepticism about the myth that the tentacles of the regulatory state are administered by disinterested operatives. And the voices that annoy him are those of the Founders.

Time was, progressives like the president 100 years ago, Woodrow Wilson, had the virtue of candor: He explicitly rejected the Founders’ fears of government. Modern enlightenment, he said, made it safe to concentrate power in Washington, and especially in disinterested executive-branch agencies run by autonomous, high-minded experts. Today, however, progressivism’s insinuation is that Americans must be minutely regulated because they are so dimwitted they will swallow nonsense. Such as: There was no political motive in the IRS targeting political conservatives.

Episodes like this separate the meritorious liberals from the meretricious. The day after the IRS story broke, The Post led the paper with it, and, with an institutional memory of Watergate, published a blistering editorial demanding an Obama apology. The New York Times consigned the story to page 10 (its front-page lead was the umpteenth story about the end of the world being nigh because of global warming). Through Monday, the Times had expressed no editorial thoughts about the IRS. The Times’s Monday headline on the matter was: “IRS Focus on Conservatives Gives GOP an Issue to Seize On.” So that is the danger.

If Republicans had controlled both houses of Congress in 1973, Nixon would have completed his term. If Democrats controlled both today, the Obama administration’s lawlessness would go uninvestigated. Not even divided government is safe government, but it beats the alternative.

All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but all play, no work, an absolute lack of any semblance of leadership or responsibility and a total disdain for the rule of law…

…is no way to run a country; but it certainly explains how this Administration got to where it is.

Think about it: Solyndra; Fast & Furious; offering of an administration position to a 2010 Senate candidate; repeated national-security leaks, including several from The Obamao himself; White House’s links to MediaMatters; Big Sis giving work permits to some illegal aliens; purposely impacting air travel.  And now, in rapid succession, the Benghazi, IRS and AP scandals.

This isn’t a presidential Administration…

…it’s an ongoing criminal enterprise!

Meanwhile, Commentary Magazine‘s John Steele Gordon asks what inquiring minds want to know:

Are Obama’s Scandals Reaching Critical Mass?

 

Last week was one of the worst for Obama in his presidency. This week looks no better. Indeed, it may be a long, hot summer for the White House. As Jonathan has pointed out, the IRS scandal is growing bigger, seemingly by the minute. The Benghazi scandal is continuing to percolate.

Now, the brand-new AP scandal has erupted. This one, because the victims are newsmen, is likely to have a powerful effect on the mainstream media. If the Justice Department has been going after the phone records of AP reporters, what other reporters are having their privacy violated? Even the New York Times, which thought page 11 was just fine for the IRS scandal, put this one on page 1, above the fold. The White House is “dodging and weaving” today according to the Times.

But wait, there’s more, as the TV commercials have it.

The Washington Post is reporting that Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is comparing Kathleen Sebelius’s attempt to raise money from private organizations to help implement ObamaCare to Iran-Contra. Alexander says,

This is arguably an even bigger issue because, in Iran-Contra, you had $30 million that was spent by Oliver North through private organizations for a purpose congress refused to authorize, in support of the rebels. Here, you’re wanting to spend millions more in support of private organizations to do something that Congress has refused.

And now the Washington Examiner is reporting that the EPA routinely waives the fees for FOIA requests made by liberal organizations and media outlets, but does not for those from conservative ones.

Let’s consider a few things here.

One is that separate scandals, such as IRS and Benghazi, tend to have synergistic effects on each other even though they are dissimilar. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Another is that scandals such as the IRS and EPA that are similar inevitably produce a hunt for an overall pattern. Where else has the federal government under Obama been stiffing conservatives and giving liberals a pass?

A third is that reports of abuse produce more and more reports of abuse, as people and organizations realize that what happened to them was part of a pattern. John Podhoretz’s tale of COMMENTARY magazine’s woe at the hands of the IRS is very unlikely to be the only one to come out.

Finally, as the separate scandals begin to grow and, worse for Obama, begin to coalesce, even a media that has been an army of water-carriers for the Obama administration up until now will, despite themselves, smell the blood in the water and their instincts as journalists will kick in. Off they will go on the hunt for scoops. Undoubtedly they will find them.

When and if that happens, the scandals will have reached critical mass and the Obama presidency will be in mortal danger. The beating up of Jay Carney at the White House daily news briefing last Friday by the media generally was not a good sign.

If Obama loses the media, what does he have left? A record of accomplishment at home and abroad? Not exactly.

Moving on, we turn to NRO‘s The Corner, where Charles Cooke records…

NARAL’s Peculiar Reaction to Gosnell’s Conviction

 

Kermit Gosnell deserves to die; but at least he didn’t couch his heinous beliefs in code, hiding his infanticidal intentions behind the smokescreen of “women’s medical care”.  Given the choice between Gosnell and NARAL, we’d be hard-pressed to determine the sicker of the two.

Next up, another sordid story ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter, as…

New Orleans police identify suspect in Mother’s Day parade shooting

 

New Orleans police and federal authorities were searching early Tuesday for a young man who is suspected of opening fire at a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans, wounding 19. Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas identified the suspect late Monday as Akein Scott, 19, of New Orleans. Referring to blurry surveillance camera images of the mass shooting, Serpas said police have “multiple identifications of Akein Scott as the shooter” seen in the film.

Serpas said officers would be searching all night and into Tuesday for Scott, whom he called “no stranger to the criminal justice system.” He urged the teen, who has previous arrests on firearms and drug charges, to give himself up.

“We would like to remind the community and Akein Scott that the time has come for him to turn himself in,” Serpas said at a news conference outside police headquarters. A photo of Scott hung from a podium in front of the police chief. “We know more about you than you think we know,” he said. (Everytin’ ‘cept ware he at!)

…A police news release says Scott has previously been arrested for illegal carrying of a weapon, illegal possession of a stolen firearm, resisting an officer, contraband to jail, illegal carrying of a weapon while in possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession of heroin. It was not immediately clear whether Scott, who was arrested this past March, had been convicted on any of those charges.

“Illegal carrying of a weapon”…”illegal possession of a stolen firearm”…”illegal carrying of a weapon while in possession of a controlled dangerous substance”; is anyone else detecting a pattern here?!?  Yet the Left would have us believe further restrictions on the rights of law-abiding gun owners will somehow serve to curb the criminal proclivities of individuals like Akein Scott.

Yeah…

And in today’s Environmental Moment, the cause of anthropogenic global warming takes another hit to the midsection:

Mexico’s ‘Popo’ volcano spews ash, molten rock

 

This one minor volcanic eruption just put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the sum total of every Environazi effort at reduction to date.

In another bit of environmental news, courtesy of Jeff Foutch, as the AP reports, the IRS isn’t the only federal bureaucracy giving The Obamao’s favorites a pass:

Wind farms get pass on eagle deaths

 

It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America’s green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm’s spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground.

Killing these iconic birds is not just an irreplaceable loss for a vulnerable species. It’s also a federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines.

But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly. Instead, the government is shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WIND_ENERGY_EAGLE_DEATHS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-05-14-07-57-59

“I am shocked…SHOCKED…to find there’s political cronyism going on here!”

On the Lighter Side…

Finally, we’ll call it a day with “Money Can’t Buy Happiness…But It Apparently Can Get You To The Front Of The Line” segment, courtesy of Bill Meisen, the New York Post…and some encumbered entrepreneurs:

Rich Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides so kids can cut lines at Disney World

 

They are 1 percenters who are 100 percent despicable. Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned. The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.” The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

Disney allows each guest who needs a wheelchair or motorized scooter to bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.”The Florida entertainment mecca warns that there “may be a waiting period before boarding.” But the consensus among upper-crust moms who have used the illicit handicap tactic is that the trick is well worth the cost.

Not only is their “black-market tour guide” more efficient than Disney World’s VIP Tours, it’s cheaper, too. Disney Tours offers a VIP guide and fast passes for $310 to $380 per hour.

Disney did not return repeated requests for comment.

We couldn’t disagree with the Post‘s assessment more.  Disney’s set the precedent; the rest is free-market capitalism at its finest.

Magoo