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Lois Lerner does about-face, will give Hill testimony on IRS scandal

Wow, I'm shocked. No evidence, so insult. Not only insult, but a generalization as well. Who would have predicted this response? :coffeepap

Oh cry me a river. It's a bitch when your own tactics are used against you isn't it.
 
Honestly, what Issa's doing does not equate to a "Kangaroo Court ". Just like your hyperbole doesn't equate to a honest definition of a House Committee's investigation.

Whether she's behind close doors or whether she's on Camera there should be no reason for her not to testify since "this is just a Kangaroo Court " and there is nothing behind any of these charges.

In fact, it would be a great opportunity for the Democrats if she shut down Issa's investigation on TV in front of God and Everyone.

Media outlets would be running it 24/7 right up to the elections.

Saying she's taking the Fifth because its a Kangaroo Court doesn't make any sense either.

Why would she want to lend credibillity to Issa's charges with 24 Consecutive 5th Ammendment Pleas ?

She's not talking because her honest testimony is highly damaging to her and the administration.

No other explanation fits her testimony or lack there of.

Recall when the Democrats had their "public lynching" of Clarence Thomas? That was on the news all day and carried live on the MSM. The MSM has been in the tank for a generation and does not serve the public interest whatsoever, as we can tell by many of these uninformed opinions.
 
Recall when the Democrats had their "public lynching" of Clarence Thomas? That was on the news all day and carried live on the MSM. The MSM has been in the tank for a generation and does not serve the public interest whatsoever, as we can tell by many of these uninformed opinions.

you can only make that arguement by deliberately not including fox news as main stream media.
 
Oh cry me a river. It's a bitch when your own tactics are used against you isn't it.

J, I do nothing of the kind. This is your tactic. And I wasn't crying. I was laughing. :lamo
 
you can only make that arguement by deliberately not including fox news as main stream media.

During the day I switch back and forth between Fox and CNN, there isn't much difference when it comes to reporting of the news. The differences come at night when they put on their political talk shows. The Dems have MSNBC and the Republicans have FOX at night.

I see it as no problem, each network, Fox and MSNBC play to their audience. I think personally CNN when it comes to cable news is probably the one with the least bias. But this is just one man's opinion. I do know however, Democrats hate Fox and Republicans hate MSNBC. I guess that is par for the course as neither side want any news reported that reflect bad on their party.
 
if you include fox as mainstream media, your argument of the media being in the tank for liberals falls flat because fox attacks liberals.

Ok, thanks for that explanation.

Fox News does not attack liberals, though some of its commentators might. There are also commentators from the left who appear regularly to counter their arguments.

But this has nothing to do with the Clarence Thomas hearings when the MSM did cover that issue live throughout most of the day, contrary to how they now cover the Lerner/IRS case. The latter is far more important than anything Anita Hill had to say, which was a shameful public lynching by the MSM.
 
It's always good to laugh.

It is good to laugh, that is most often why I engage you in our frequent back and fourths, contrary to the advise of many.

But I do wish I could get you to follow the arguments.

Oh I do just fine, but thanks for your concern...See, when I made the statement that upset you, you were talking about following "evidence", and much has been pointed out how this whole IRS thing was partisan in nature, and has failed to be investigated to satisfaction by the people that are supposed to investigate on the peoples behalf. And as investigations go, this one is almost as funny as you proclaiming that there is no evidence of wrongdoing, when all that has been done is stonewalling, and obfuscation by the administration.

This investigation is slowly creeping to a halt in dead end not because there is nothing there, but rather because liberal progressives have closed ranks, and feckless republican leadership doesn't have the fortitude to institute a joint select committee.

We know that Lerner has a track record of identical actions from when she was with the FEC. We know that leading up to this that there are some real questions out there that remain, and may never be answered. They are as follows.

1. Lois Lerner’s apology was a spontaneous reaction to an unexpected question from an unknown audience member. In fact, the question came from tax lawyer and lobbyist Celia Roady. Ms. Roady has some interesting career highlights: She was part of the 1997 ethics investigation of Newt Gingrich, but, more to the point, she was appointed to the IRS’s Advisory Council on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities by IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman. She is a longtime colleague of Lerner, who is director of tax-exempt organizations. Ms. Roady has declined to comment on whether her question was planted, but it obviously was. The IRS had contacted reporters and encouraged them beforehand to attend the otherwise un-newsworthy event, and it had an entire team of press handlers on hand. So what we have is the staged rollout of what turns out to be — given the rest of this list — a disinformation campaign.

2. This was the work of low-level grunts in Cincinnati. In truth, very senior people within the IRS, including its top lawyer, were aware of the situation, and had been since at least 2011. The home office in Washington was very much involved in the process.

3. Lerner says that the situation came to her attention through allegations from tea-party groups carried in media reports. In fact, the matter has been under both internal and external investigation for some time.

4. Lerner says she put an end to the practice as soon as she found out about it. In fact, the IRS continued to do precisely the same thing, only monkeying a little bit with the language: Instead of targeting “tea party” groups explicitly, it targeted those groups with an interest in such esoterica as limited government, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, etc.

5. She says that the commissioner of the IRS didn’t know about the targeting project. While the targeting was going on, Ms. Lerner’s boss was being asked some very pointed questions by Congress on the subject of targeting tea-party groups. He enthusiastically denied that any such thing was going on, in direct contravention of the facts. Ms. Lerner says he didn’t know about the situation, because it was confined to those aforementioned plebs in Cincinnati. But given that this was not the case, her explaining away the commissioner’s untrue statements to Congress is a lie based on another lie — a compound lie, if you will. And acting commissioner Steven Miller was briefed on the situation in May of 2012 — and then declined to share his knowledge of it with Congress when asked about it during a hearing in July 2013.

6. Lerner says she came forward with her apology unprompted by any special consideration. In fact, an inspector general’s report was about to be released, making the matter public.

7. When Congress was investigating complaints from conservative groups, Lerner told them that she could not release information about organizations with pending applications. But her group was in fact releasing such information — to the left-leaning news organization ProPublica, rather than to congressional investigators. (during an election campaign)

8. Lerner says that there was no political pressure to investigate tea-party groups. In fact, Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) repeatedly pressed the agency to investigate conservative groups falling under Lerner’s jurisdiction. What we have, then, is this: Under a Democratic administration, the IRS was under pressure from Democratic elected officials to investigate political enemies of the Democratic party. The agency did so. Its commissioner lied to Congress about its doing so. When the inspector general’s report was about to make these abuses public, the agency staged a classic Washington Friday news rollout at a sleepy American Bar Association tax-law conference, hoping to minimize the bad publicity. Lerner lied to the public about the nature, scope, and extent of the IRS intimidation campaign.

The Nine Lies of Lois Lerner | National Review Online

Now you may not like the facts Joe, but as I see it, if this were any Republican President in office we were talking about, at the very least Fitzgerald would have been told to dust off his wingtips, and get out there in front of the camera in a snap....Obama gets to slide? why?
 
Which is meaningless. Evidence should still be the criteria and not anyone's belief. Without conclusive evidence, only a fool has no room for doubt.

Only a fool believes that "taking the fifth" isn't an admission of guilt. And a governing director of a public institution paid by taxpayers dollars shouldn't be allowed to do so.

Obama used the IRS as a weapon against his political opponents, and Lerner wants no part of admitting this. It's painfully obvious that this is the case.
 
Only a fool believes that "taking the fifth" isn't an admission of guilt. And a governing director of a public institution paid by taxpayers dollars shouldn't be allowed to do so.

Obama used the IRS as a weapon against his political opponents, and Lerner wants no part of admitting this. It's painfully obvious that this is the case.

These sorts of thoughtless posts are akin to people defending NSA spying by saying if you haven't got anything to hide, you shouldn't mind people looking through your stuff. After all, what's the point of the 4th amendment? Only guilty people are concerned with government surveillance.

And since you're obviously concerned with privacy you must be guilty. Heck, we don't even need a trial.
 
These sorts of thoughtless posts are akin to people defending NSA spying by saying if you haven't got anything to hide, you shouldn't mind people looking through your stuff. After all, what's the point of the 4th amendment? Only guilty people are concerned with government surveillance.

And since you're obviously concerned with privacy you must be guilty. Heck, we don't even need a trial.

This isn't you or me. This is a person with NSA-like access to yours and my private information, who runs a GOVERNMENT agency that taxes you and me with the threat of prison time if we don't pay.

Then, evidence shows that that power was used to intimidate and alter the election process, and you think she should be allowed to just clam up?
 
This isn't you or me. This is a person with NSA-like access to yours and my private information, who runs a GOVERNMENT agency that taxes you and me with the threat of prison time if we don't pay.

Then, evidence shows that that power was used to intimidate and alter the election process, and you think she should be allowed to just clam up?

There's no difference between you not trusting the government to honestly and competently spy on your data and someone not trusting Issa to honestly and competently listen to their testimony. Taking the 5th doesn't imply any more guilt than taking the 4th. The reasons an innocent person would not want their data to be collected are the exact same reasons an innocent person might not want to testify. The 5th protects more than just guilty people. The 5th also protects innocent people against unethical prosecutors.

Lets be honest. If she testifies, Issa is going to ask if she directed people to investigate the political activity of politically active 501c4 groups. Just like the IG report, these questions are going to be phrased ONLY in terms of the investigation into conservative groups; even though the actual effort targeted political groups. Lerner would be insane to testify before someone like Issa.
 
I think Lerner's taking the Fifth does suggest guilt on her part.
 
There's no difference between you not trusting the government to honestly and competently spy on your data and someone not trusting Issa to honestly and competently listen to their testimony. Taking the 5th doesn't imply any more guilt than taking the 4th. The reasons an innocent person would not want their data to be collected are the exact same reasons an innocent person might not want to testify. The 5th protects more than just guilty people. The 5th also protects innocent people against unethical prosecutors.

Lets be honest. If she testifies, Issa is going to ask if she directed people to investigate the political activity of politically active 501c4 groups. Just like the IG report, these questions are going to be phrased ONLY in terms of the investigation into conservative groups; even though the actual effort targeted political groups. Lerner would be insane to testify before someone like Issa.

So in effect, the government can do whatever it wants to without fear of recourse whatsoever. I mean, who are we going to get to do something about it?

That's called institutional authoritarianism.
 
Interesting to note that no one has brought up the fact that Lerner has already been interviewed by the friendly Obama partisans in the DOJ.

Former IRS Official Lerner Gave Interview to DOJ - Washington Wire - WSJ

Let's see if we can sketch this out a bit.
  1. So Lerner tells all to the DOJ
  2. DOJ realizes there's serious problems
  3. DOJ investigation stops right there
  4. DOJ tells Obama
  5. Decision is made to stonewall it until it goes away
  6. Lerner is told she can have her taxpayer 6 figure retirement if she keeps taking the 5th and not spill the beans
  7. Lerner stonewalls congress with the 5th
  8. Congressional investigation effectively stonewalled
  9. Issa smells that there's something (or maybe he already has something but can't enter it as proper evidence?) and he won't let it go
So we are at a Mexican standoff. Neither side is going to give in. The stakes are high for each side.



I wonder if congress could subpoena the DOJ's investigative team ask them questions about what the DOJ found out from Lerner?

Naa, that'd swing the power too much to the legislative branch.



I believe there may be precedent for that with the Watergate committee and the Warren Commission where DOJ people were called.

The results of that very plausible scenario however does not in any way mean the investigation is stonewalled, just delayed. We have to believe the Republican politicians are as, well, political as the White House and it leads, as all roads do, to quo bono, "who benefits". Does the White House win with that delay or the Republicans?

Presumably, the White House is playing the Clinton, making it fade with charisma game. It may be a very dangerous game; they have no idea of what else the majority side has in its arsenal. If is nothing then this may be a grand gesture of justice but political idiocy.

With the summer coming attention to all things political fades to near zero. However, should the majority side have a lot of little bombs, or one big one, it will at least loom as a headline where at least soft support can be generated to the ballot box in November.

Having said that, I have never given the modern Republican party a lot of credit for having political savvy.
 
So in effect, the government can do whatever it wants to without fear of recourse whatsoever. I mean, who are we going to get to do something about it?

That's called institutional authoritarianism.
????

Lerner takes the 5th.
You say that implies that she is guilty.
I say that there are reasons why innocent people take the 5th, just like there are reasons why innocent people want the 4th.

And this is your conclusion? It makes no sense. The 5th is a restriction AGAINST the government. Calling the support of the 5th institutional authoritarianism is crazy 1984 right is wrong logic.


If you want conspiracy, consider this; who benefits the most by this scandal? Who benefits the most by NOT getting to the bottom of anything? It isn't the Obama administration. The idea that forcing 20 tea party groups in red states to fill out a questionnaire somehow influenced the result of the 2012 election is ludicrous. The people who benefit the most by this are people like the Koch brothers who have networks of hidden 501c4 organizations to anonymous influence elections. This "scandal" makes it harder to police abuses by these groups. It also keeps a portion of the republican party infuriated; so that they are more interesting with bringing down Obama and less interested in pursuing policies which would help the struggling middle class.

Basically, this "scandal" is a giant distraction campaign which serve to allow special interests to keep the taxes of the the ultra rich ultra low, and to curb efforts to reign in abuses by big banks and big oil.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If people want to influence elections, then they should be willing to put their names on it. If a solar panel company spends millions producing ads for Obama, then we have a right to know that they're doing it. These groups are not 501c4's, they're 527's.
 
????

Lerner takes the 5th.
You say that implies that she is guilty.
I say that there are reasons why innocent people take the 5th, just like there are reasons why innocent people want the 4th.

And this is your conclusion? It makes no sense. The 5th is a restriction AGAINST the government. Calling the support of the 5th institutional authoritarianism is crazy 1984 right is wrong logic.


If you want conspiracy, consider this; who benefits the most by this scandal? Who benefits the most by NOT getting to the bottom of anything? It isn't the Obama administration. The idea that forcing 20 tea party groups in red states to fill out a questionnaire somehow influenced the result of the 2012 election is ludicrous. The people who benefit the most by this are people like the Koch brothers who have networks of hidden 501c4 organizations to anonymous influence elections. This "scandal" makes it harder to police abuses by these groups. It also keeps a portion of the republican party infuriated; so that they are more interesting with bringing down Obama and less interested in pursuing policies which would help the struggling middle class.

Basically, this "scandal" is a giant distraction campaign which serve to allow special interests to keep the taxes of the the ultra rich ultra low, and to curb efforts to reign in abuses by big banks and big oil.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If people want to influence elections, then they should be willing to put their names on it. If a solar panel company spends millions producing ads for Obama, then we have a right to know that they're doing it. These groups are not 501c4's, they're 527's.

Nice reduction. If that's all this was about, she wouldn't be pleading the 5th.
 
It is good to laugh, that is most often why I engage you in our frequent back and fourths, contrary to the advise of many.



Oh I do just fine, but thanks for your concern...See, when I made the statement that upset you, you were talking about following "evidence", and much has been pointed out how this whole IRS thing was partisan in nature, and has failed to be investigated to satisfaction by the people that are supposed to investigate on the peoples behalf. And as investigations go, this one is almost as funny as you proclaiming that there is no evidence of wrongdoing, when all that has been done is stonewalling, and obfuscation by the administration.

This investigation is slowly creeping to a halt in dead end not because there is nothing there, but rather because liberal progressives have closed ranks, and feckless republican leadership doesn't have the fortitude to institute a joint select committee.

We know that Lerner has a track record of identical actions from when she was with the FEC. We know that leading up to this that there are some real questions out there that remain, and may never be answered. They are as follows.

1. Lois Lerner’s apology was a spontaneous reaction to an unexpected question from an unknown audience member. In fact, the question came from tax lawyer and lobbyist Celia Roady. Ms. Roady has some interesting career highlights: She was part of the 1997 ethics investigation of Newt Gingrich, but, more to the point, she was appointed to the IRS’s Advisory Council on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities by IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman. She is a longtime colleague of Lerner, who is director of tax-exempt organizations. Ms. Roady has declined to comment on whether her question was planted, but it obviously was. The IRS had contacted reporters and encouraged them beforehand to attend the otherwise un-newsworthy event, and it had an entire team of press handlers on hand. So what we have is the staged rollout of what turns out to be — given the rest of this list — a disinformation campaign.

2. This was the work of low-level grunts in Cincinnati. In truth, very senior people within the IRS, including its top lawyer, were aware of the situation, and had been since at least 2011. The home office in Washington was very much involved in the process.

3. Lerner says that the situation came to her attention through allegations from tea-party groups carried in media reports. In fact, the matter has been under both internal and external investigation for some time.

4. Lerner says she put an end to the practice as soon as she found out about it. In fact, the IRS continued to do precisely the same thing, only monkeying a little bit with the language: Instead of targeting “tea party” groups explicitly, it targeted those groups with an interest in such esoterica as limited government, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, etc.

5. She says that the commissioner of the IRS didn’t know about the targeting project. While the targeting was going on, Ms. Lerner’s boss was being asked some very pointed questions by Congress on the subject of targeting tea-party groups. He enthusiastically denied that any such thing was going on, in direct contravention of the facts. Ms. Lerner says he didn’t know about the situation, because it was confined to those aforementioned plebs in Cincinnati. But given that this was not the case, her explaining away the commissioner’s untrue statements to Congress is a lie based on another lie — a compound lie, if you will. And acting commissioner Steven Miller was briefed on the situation in May of 2012 — and then declined to share his knowledge of it with Congress when asked about it during a hearing in July 2013.

6. Lerner says she came forward with her apology unprompted by any special consideration. In fact, an inspector general’s report was about to be released, making the matter public.

7. When Congress was investigating complaints from conservative groups, Lerner told them that she could not release information about organizations with pending applications. But her group was in fact releasing such information — to the left-leaning news organization ProPublica, rather than to congressional investigators. (during an election campaign)

8. Lerner says that there was no political pressure to investigate tea-party groups. In fact, Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) repeatedly pressed the agency to investigate conservative groups falling under Lerner’s jurisdiction. What we have, then, is this: Under a Democratic administration, the IRS was under pressure from Democratic elected officials to investigate political enemies of the Democratic party. The agency did so. Its commissioner lied to Congress about its doing so. When the inspector general’s report was about to make these abuses public, the agency staged a classic Washington Friday news rollout at a sleepy American Bar Association tax-law conference, hoping to minimize the bad publicity. Lerner lied to the public about the nature, scope, and extent of the IRS intimidation campaign.

The Nine Lies of Lois Lerner | National Review Online

Now you may not like the facts Joe, but as I see it, if this were any Republican President in office we were talking about, at the very least Fitzgerald would have been told to dust off his wingtips, and get out there in front of the camera in a snap....Obama gets to slide? why?

NRO shocking.

There is no real conclusion from that, but things but out in a partisan way. it will impress one set of partisans and not another. Too often this is how we do pretend discourse today. Any thing like the NRO or The Nation or Fox or MSNBC or any of these partisan nonsense things should ever really be used. They're just singing spin to the choir. The trouble for the a partisan is that they see anything not singing to the choir as biased. The partisan pretends there is nothing possible but the rancor they feed themselves. And are blind to any other possibility.

I know it's just terrible that anyone would see this as a problem. The Bastard. But, I do. Sorry.
 
Only a fool believes that "taking the fifth" isn't an admission of guilt. And a governing director of a public institution paid by taxpayers dollars shouldn't be allowed to do so.

Obama used the IRS as a weapon against his political opponents, and Lerner wants no part of admitting this. It's painfully obvious that this is the case.

Only a fool believe that proves anything. And even if we were so illogical as you state here, it would only be the guilt of the person taking the fifth, and not anyone else. I know you want more, and are willing to believe anything bad regardless of evidence, but it really should be evidence that convinces and not or biases.
 
Only a fool believe that proves anything. And even if we were so illogical as you state here, it would only be the guilt of the person taking the fifth, and not anyone else. I know you want more, and are willing to believe anything bad regardless of evidence, but it really should be evidence that convinces and not or biases.

Depends on the truth of the testimony, doesn't it?

Your blind partisanship is so deep that you don't find this to be worthy of answers. You know where this originated in your gut, and you're with Lerner, willing to do anything to protect your chosen one.

I would hang a conservative out to dry in a second if they did something like this. Our Constitution was written precisely to prevent government from being used like this.

And the evidence isn't weak. That's just wishful thinking on your part, and if it was, Lerner and her ilk wouldn't be running from it. Same goes for Holder and the DoJ, the NSA, Benghazi, and the other umpteen scandals that have rocked these past six years. It makes Nixon look like he forgot to tie his shoes.
 
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