By Michael Synder
Does Barack Obama have any idea what is going on in the government that he is supposedly running? Scandals are erupting all around him, and he supposedly was not aware that any wrongdoing had taken place in any of those instances. It is almost as if every major government agency has gone rogue and Obama has no idea what the heck they are doing. According to Obama, he often doesn’t Read More »
By David Catron
The “news” media once again demonstrate their talent for fiction.
There’s a scene in the 1993 film, The Fugitive, in which Harrison Ford outruns a derailed locomotive in order to avoid being killed. In the real world, of course, he would have been crushed like a bug. Thus, one is required to suspend one’s disbelief in order to enjoy it. But it was, after all, fiction. In this respect, it has Read More »
By Peter Wilson
Forty-five states have adopted the Common Core State Standards, including the New York State Education Department, which publishes a document titled, “Grades 6-8 English Language Arts Curriculum Map.” Four texts are specified for each year, or 12 books.
The idea of a core curriculum is appealing to conservatives, who imagine replacing the current multicultural smorgasbord with a great books course that communicates the adventure and drama of human experience. In Read More »
Mr. Obama and His Scandals: It’s Showtime at Last in the Mainstream Media – Washington Times “With each developing scandal, the picture of an arrogant administration abusing its power grows clearer. The Justice Department leaks documents to attack a whistleblower on the Fast and Furious case. The Internal Revenue Service begins targeting conservative political and religious groups a day after an officer of the union representing IRS employees meets with President Obama. The Justice Department, it now turns out, hasn’t limited its snooping to The Associated Press, but has included Fox News, the administration’s archnemesis in the electronic media.”
“Each blockbuster revelation builds upon the previous in a story so compelling that even the most servile lapdogs in the Washington press begins to stir from a five-year slumber and return to their proper role as watchdogs. … When the luminaries of the left ask the right questions, Republicans need not add much to the debate. Republican politicians must choose their words with moderation and give the scandals some room to develop on their own.”
Why You Can’t Trust the White House (Even If Nobody’s Lying) – National Review “Shifting stories cast doubts on answer to core question: Did Team Obama know about IRS abuse in real time? … But Pfeiffer is part of an institution that has demonstrated an inability and/or unwillingness to tell the full truth about the IRS scandal and a spate of other controversies. The White House can’t be trusted.”
“And yet the revelations cost the Obama White House some measure of credibility. In politics, as in life, when you constantly change your story, even on small matters, you sow doubt about your credibility and competence. In different ways, each of the so-called Obama scandals revolve around the issue of trust. The president’s greatest asset is his credibility. If this pattern of spinning and shifting stories continues, it could become a liability.”
Unions Turn on Obamacare: Labor Leader: President’s Claims about Keeping Insurance ‘Simply Not True’ – Washington Free Beacon “Three unions that spent more than $18 million to help Democrats during the 2012 campaign expressed concerns that Obamacare’s implementation will threaten worker benefits, with one group even calling for its repeal, according to the Hill.”
“‘You can’t have the same quality healthcare that you had before, despite what the president said,’ Hansen told the Hill. ‘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.’ Hansen also warned that if workers see their healthcare benefits recede, the Democrats could pay the price in 2014.”
Hatch Demands 41 Answers as Noose Tightens Around IRS - Newsmax “Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch turned up the heat on the under-fire Internal Revenue Service on Monday demanding it turns over reams of documents that would show the extent of its targeting of conservative groups. Hatch, the ranking member of the Senate’s Finance Committee joined Democratic chairman Sen. Max Baucus with a list of 41 demands to acting IRS director Steven Miller.”
“The senators want to know why the IRS failed to tell them about the targeting, even after Hatch and others repeatedly asked them about it first in March last year and then again in June. ‘Targeting for tax-exempt status using political labels threatens to undermine the public’s trust in the IRS,’ Baucus and Hatch write, ‘Lack of candor in advising the Senate of this practice is equally troubling.’”
White House Response to IRS Scandal Making the Situation Worse – Huffington Post “So far, voters don’t seem to be abandoning President Barack Obama over controversies gripping the Beltway world. But White House aides are tempting fate with their reluctant, piecemeal and contradictory disclosures of what they knew and when they knew it, especially about a report on the Internal Revenue Service’s 18-month effort to target tea party and other conservative groups for special scrutiny.”
“The aides either have forgetten or are unable to implement the basic lesson of scandal control in Washington: Get the full story out — all of it — as fast as you can before your critics accuse you of a cover-up or worse.”
Labor Union Chief Calls Immigration Bill Dangerous, Sees Agency as ‘Approval Machine’ – Washington Times “The Senate’s immigration bill will raise national security risks and the Obama administration will do little more than ‘rubber-stamp’ illegal immigrants into the program, endangering Americans, says the labor union representing the 12,000 employees who will have to approve the applications.”
“His statement goes well beyond the current debate, portraying an agency intent on approving as many illegal immigrants as possible. ‘The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any applications,’ his remarks say. ‘USCIS has been turned into an ‘approval machine.’”
EDITOR’S COMMENT: Here again is another example of well-done investigative reporting by Jeffrey Lord for The American Spectator, which is a follow-up to yesterday’s article entitled “The Liberal Union Behind the IRS” Today’s commentary postulates whether this meeting of the anti-Tea-Party IRS union chief and President Obama at the White House on the day before the IRS agency started targeting the Tea Party and others, actually discussed and implemented their political Read More »
As the daily drama of the Obama scandals continues to develop and worsen for him, meaning we are finally learning the real truth, here is today’s commentary from the London Daily Mail concerning the late news about the Fox News reporters being targeted.
The Fox News Channel is outraged over new revelations that three of its reporting staffers were targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice in criminal investigations Read More »
For three more weeks, the Senate Judiciary Committee will debate the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744. During the 45 years I’ve studied Washington politics, including 25 years of editorializing on the dreary subject, I can say without hesitation that no more anti-American legislation has ever been introduced.
I’ve watched most of the committee’s hearings and listened to its members as well as its supporters lie—sorry, no Read More »
The White House’s Shifting IRS Account – Politico “The White House on Monday once again added to the list of people who knew about the IRS investigation into its targeting of conservative groups — saying White House chief of staff Denis McDonough had been informed about a month ago. Press secretary Jay Carney said again that no one had told President Barack Obama ahead of the first news reports: not his top aide McDonough, nor his chief counsel Kathy Ruemmler, nor anyone from the Treasury Department.”
“Monday’s revelation amounts to the fifth iteration of the Obama administration’s account of events, after initially saying that the White House had first learned of the controversy from the press. Republicans said they were on the lookout for the next installment in the White House’s ever-shifting narrative.”
COMMENT: Apparently, the White House still can’t get its story straight on any of this, as they need to constantly twist and tweak the real facts to their supposed advantage to try and limit the damage. When they’re done, it will still be one big spin and another in a series of untruths!
A Bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner – Washington Post “In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner,the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.”
“In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.”
Chief IRS Counsel Got Jeremiah Wright’s Church out of IRS Probe Before Joining Agency – Breitbart “News reports from the time indicate the now-chief counsel of the IRS, William Wilkins, helped a church connected to President Barack Obama’s friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright get out of an IRS probe in 2008 while working as a private attorney.”
“The IRS initiated an investigation early this year after a speech by Obama at a 50th anniversary celebration of the church last June. It was a reference by Obama to his presidential candidacy in a talk otherwise focused on faith that caught the agency’s attention. Tax laws prohibit non-profits–including churches–from engaging in political speech or promoting candidates. The IRS can withdraw an organization’s tax-free status if the organization is found to violate the rule.”
Susan Rice, Likely NSC Head, Had String of Failures in Africa before Benghazi – Daily Caller “U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, reportedly the leading contender to be President Barack Obama’s next national security adviser, failed during the 1990s to prevent unnecessary deaths in Rwanda, provide adequate security prior to the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or deal effectively with the Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship in Zimbabwe.”
“A former State Department military adviser to Africa thought Rice’s ‘inexperience’ caused President Bill Clinton’s feckless response to the Rwandan genocide when she served as National Security Council director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping. And documents sent to The Daily Caller from the National Legal and Policy Center show Rice failed to take seriously repeated Islamist threats against the U.S. embassies in the prelude to deadly bomb attacks.”
Strange Goings-On at the White House – National Review “A tight-knit inner circle plays all politics, all the time, while Obama remains disengaged. The recent spate of Washington scandals has some liberals finally confessing in public what many of them have said privately for a long time. The Obama administration is arrogant, insular, prone to intimidation of adversaries, and slovenly when it comes to seeing that rules are followed. Indeed, the Obama White House is a strange place, and it’s good that its operational model is now likely to be finally dissected by the media.”
“Dana Milbank of the Washington Post tars him as a President Passerby who ‘seems to want no control over the actions of his administration.’ Milbank warns that ‘he’s creating a power vacuum in which lower officials behave as though anything goes.’ Comedian Jon Stewart says Obama’s government lacks real ‘managerial competence’ and that the president is either Nixonian if he knew about the scandals in advance or a Mr. Magoo–style incompetent if he didn’t.”
Watching Obamacare Unravel – Defining Ideas “The ‘Affordable Care Act’ is becoming an unsustainable mess. It’s time to scrap it entirely. … This recent drop in popularity is not a function of some detailed analysis of the ACA’s key provisions. Rather, the public seems to feel that the sheer complexity of the program makes it highly unlikely that it will be able to take effect in any form by its ostensible January 1, 2014 start date.”
“In this sorry state of the world, the only short-term mechanism that could stop the general blood-letting is a much-needed reversal that pushes back all the key dates for running the plan. The respite in question should not be used only to iron out the difficulties in securing the needed coverage. It should be used to update the information base to decide whether the ACA, on which billions have already been squandered, is so unsustainable that it should be scrapped in its entirety.”
