The most important revelation in the WikiLeaks dump of John Podesta’s emails has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. The messages go all the way back to 2008, when Podesta served as co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. And a month before the election, the key staffing for that future administration was almost entirely in place, revealing that some of the most crucial decisions an administration can make occur well before a vote has been cast.
Michael Froman, who is now U.S. trade representative but at the time was an executive at Citigroup, wrote an email to Podesta on October 6, 2008, with the subject “Lists.” Froman used a Citigroup email address. He attached three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them. “The lists will continue to grow,” Froman wrote to Podesta, “but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.”
The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner
The media played defense for Obama/Biden for 8 years and went on offense against Trump for 5 years. As the media shifts back to defend the Democrat party, the corporate media can hardly speak truth to power when they are ALL owned by the same interests.
The same entities that pushed the Trump Putin collusion lie will be quick to tell you Obamagate isn't real or it is a diversion. The very fact that the Trump Putin collusion story is a lie leads right to the top of the Obama administration. The full story is complex and developing but recent news in the Michael Flynn case reveals quite alot.
For instance, Joe Biden was in the know about Obama targeting Flynn in the last weeks of the administration. In fact. Joe Biden unmasked Flynn's name on January 12, 2017 which is just a week shy of leaving office. It appears Joe Biden Jr. doesn't really have an answer and the MSM doesn't seem too concerned. What does legal scholar Jonathan Turley have to say?
The declassification of material from the Michael Flynn case has exposed more chilling details of an effort by prosecutors to come up with a crime to use against the former national security adviser. This week, however, a letter revealed another unsettling detail. Among over three dozen Obama administration officials seeking to “unmask” Flynn in the investigation was former Vice President Joe Biden. This revelation came less than a day after Biden denied any involvement in the investigation of Flynn. It also follows a disclosure that President Obama was aware of that investigation.
For three years, many in the media have expressed horror at the notion of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election. We know there was never credible evidence of such collusion. In recently released transcripts, a long list of Obama administration officials admitted they never saw any evidence of such Russian collusion. That included the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former White House adviser who was widely quoted by the media with her public plea for Congress to gather all of the evidence that she learned of as part of the Obama administration.
The media covered her concern that this evidence would be lost “if they found out how we knew what we knew” about Trump campaign officials “dealing with Russians.” Yet in her classified testimony under oath, she said she did not know anything. Farkas is now running for Congress in New York and highlighting her role in raising “alarm” over collusion. As much of the media blindly pushed this story, a worrying story unfolded over the use of federal power to investigate political opponents.
There is very little question that the response by the media to such a story would have been overwhelming if George Bush and his administration had targeted the Obama campaign figures with secret surveillance. That story would have been encompassing if it was learned that there was no direct evidence to justify the investigation and that the underlying allegation of Russian collusion was ultimately found to lack a credible basis.
But the motives of Obama administration officials are apparently not to be questioned. Indeed, back when candidate Donald Trump said the Obama administration placed his campaign officials under surveillance, the media universally mocked him. That statement was later proven to be true. The Obama administration used the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to conduct surveillance of Trump campaign officials.
Yet none of this matters as the media remains fully invested in the original false allegations of collusion. If Obama administration officials were to be questioned now, the coverage and judgment of the media may be placed into question, as even this latest disclosure from the investigation of the unmasking request of Biden will not alter the media narrative.
Unmasking occurs when an official asks an intelligence agency to remove anonymous designations hiding the identity of an individual. This masking is a very important protection of the privacy of American citizens who are caught up in national security surveillance. The importance of this privacy protection is being dismissed by media figures, like Andrea Mitchell, who declared the Biden story to be nothing more than gaslighting.
While unmasking is more routinely requested by intelligence officials, with a reported 10,000 such requests by the National Security Agency last year alone, it is presumably less common for figures like Biden or White House chief of staff Denis McDonough. Seeking unmasking information that was likely to reveal the name of a political opponent and possibly damage the Trump administration raises a concern. More importantly, it adds a detail of the scope of interest and involvement in an investigation that targeted Flynn without any compelling evidence of a crime or collusion.
The media portrayed both Obama and Biden as uninvolved. But now we know they both actively followed the investigation. According to former acting attorney general Sally Yates, she was surprised that Obama knew about the investigation and knew more than she did at the time. Obama called upon former FBI director James Comey to stay after a meeting to discuss the investigation. Comey had mentioned using the Logan Act to charge Flynn, even though the unconstitutional law has never been used successfully in a prosecution since the country was founded.
Biden has repeatedly denied knowledge of the investigation. Just a day before the latest disclosure, George Stephanopoulos asked Biden in an interview what he knew of the Flynn investigation. Biden was adamant that he knew nothing about “those moves” and he called it a diversion. But that is not true if he took the relatively uncommon action for a vice president of demanding the unmasking of Flynn information.
Yet none of this matters. A Democratic administration using a secret court to investigate the opposing political campaign does not matter to many in Congress or in the media anyway. An investigation continuing despite the lack of credible information supporting collusion does not matter to them either. A president and a vice president who take personal interest in the surveillance of their political opponents also does not matter.There was a time, however, when all of this did matter. There was once a time when this would be viewed as the story of the century, including the unmasking of Biden himself in this investigation. But these are not those times, and this cannot be the story. Russian collusion is the story and, as Biden stressed, the rest is just a diversion. It is up to the public to decide who has been ultimately unmasked by the Flynn investigation.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
BTW, in case you think Obama isn't involved either.
First, Obama surprised Yates with discussion of Flynn investigation.
Second, Obama's chief of staff unmasks Flynn on same day.
The Obama admin's soft coup is now a matter of public record yet the media MUST ignore that white elephant in the room since they were active participants . So many lies and leaks were required to accomplish this goal some were bound be be exposed. Lets define a soft coup.
From Wikipedia
A soft coup that manifested itself in different ways. Disguised and distorted but in full view. Watching some of it over time has been fascinating.
The Flynn documents and the 'Russia collusion' transcripts are further eye openers. The first and best hidden gem from the transcripts. There is no proof the Russians hacked the DNC servers.
A little more background on Crowdstrike and their connections to the Clinton/DNC machine.
Not only were the claims of Russia hacking the DNC never proven much more evidence indicates the DNC information was leaked.
Not only was the Russia hacking story BS, the Democrats and their media allies would continue the Clinton campaign strategy of attacking Trump on Russia but now the story would be Trump-Putin collusion. To make that connection stick Trump associates like Michael Flynn would be targeted next.
Podesta email
Target Flynn using dangerous and dirty leaks requiring top level access and authority
Yet with all of the spying, the Obama admin and the alphabet agencies really found NOTHING.
Not only was Flynn railroaded but it appears to be at the behest of Barack Obama.
Corrupt FBI agants like Peter Strzok abuse his office and the FISA process. Footsoldiers in the Flynn Flim Flam.
FBI agents with FISA court connections would help .... Even better a personal connection with Michael Flynn's judge, a daily double.
The same FBI agent Peter Strzok who made it possible for Hillary Clinton to avoid espionage charges and was placed on the Mueller probe too .....
Of course, the FBI can be a little and conveniently and curiously careless too ....
Glad tne Inspector General could find them
Along with spying and lying comes leaking. The top FBI agents helped leak and spin the story.
The Steele dossier made the FISA warrants poosible agains the Trump campaign. Making the phoney Steele dossier public was the job of CIA's John Brennan and the Democrat Senator Harry Reid.
The discredited dossier, some hacks still argue it is 'proven'
Sen. Harry Reid and Dem Leadership were in on the LIEs pushed by CIA's Brennan
The despicable GOP Senator John McCain was another peddler of lies known as FusionGPS's Steele dossier.
Consider this Cliff's Notes on the lies knows as Russia Russia Russia and the media's eagerness to parrot the anti-Trump narrative for years. Barack the abuser of power and process is not aa acceptable narrative thus paving the way for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton to continue to get a pass as well. If this is news to you you might want to change your news channel.
ATLANTA — Tom Perez, the former Labor secretary for President Barack Obama, was elected as the Democratic National Committee’s new chairman on Saturday, replacing interim chair Donna Brazile after a rollicking four-month race and a chaotic final day of voting.
Party members landed on a decision on who should be in charge of Democrats’ official party apparatus after two rounds of balloting. With 218 votes necessary to win, the final tally was 235 votes for Perez and 200 votes for Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison.
Immediately after taking over, Perez moved to name Ellison his deputy chairman, aiming to unify a divided party.
Ellison supporters got the participation trophy under the guise of unity:
When Perez won, Ellison backers erupted in anger, chanting “Party of the people, not big money!” But that fury turned to relief and big smiles as Ellison took the deputy chair title.
The Democratic Party is split so who are the two candidates. First, Tom Perez is the race-hustling, TPP backing, BIG BANK loving, Clinton supporting, Bernie back stabbing neo-liberal corporate globalist hack that gets to lead the DNC. Perez in screenshots:
In an effort to unite the party, Perez selected Ellison as his deputy chairman. Who is Keith X Ellison? Keith X is the Hamas' terror front group CAIR and Muslim brotherhood backed MN Congressman that has ties to the hate group Nation of Islam which is led by Louis Farrakhan. Keith X's troublesome ties from his past and present raise concerns among most if not all average Americans. That is why Keith X prefers to hide behind the progressive label and backed Bernie Sanders, the 'democratic socialist'. Whether it is ties to Islamic terror front groups, the communist party USA and their affiliates Keith X has it covered. How will the two factions really get along, even against a common enemy named Donald J. Trump is really anyones guess. Here is a little bit more about Keith X and his backers such as Hamas' Council on American-Islamic Realstions (CAIR) and the Muslim Brotherhood in screenshots and video.
A little more insight into the 'progressive' Democratic Party. The green and the red unite ...
The Democratic Party of this century is no place for an independent or 'liberal' voter.
The false narrative of the Russians and Trump continue in the Media in many variations. The only thing they have in common besides Russophobia/Neo-McCarthyism is there is never any real evidence. The amount of network time dedicated to the Trump and Russian nonsense is astounding. Yet, the questions of the motivation of the 'sources' won't be explored since there is no script to follow.
Yet, I have a simple question to ask. Why did the Obama Administration intelligence apparatus not leak the fact that the Hillary campaign was meeting with the Chinese communists during the election, yet President's Trump's calls to Mexico and Australia were leaked while General Michael Flynn's call to the Russian Ambassador were leaked in a way to continue the false Trump & Russia connection? Connecting Trump and Putin "bromance" was a Clinton campaign strategy that was helped along by the Obama administration and the Intelligence community.
Are the Chinese communists actions in the Pacific any less of a threat than Russia? No, if fact they are more of a threat. Read the Clinton/China emails for yourself.
Notice the CC: Podesta, Sullivan and more ...
The Obama administration and his intelligence community needs to be investigated and prosecuted along with the Hillary campaign and the Clinton Foundation as well.
Barack Obama's foreign policy has been described as willful ignorance at best and the battle against the terrorists called ISIS is just one example. An excerpt from The Hill proves that this president is just going through the political motions as commander in chief to present optics to the public as he winds down his second term in office and the media is all too eager to provide cover for the failure in chief.
President Obama is making a rare trip to the Pentagon on Monday, to meet with his top national security advisers to discuss the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
But don't expect any serious reevaluation of the current strategy against ISIS, the White House said Friday.
"At this point ... it is an update," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.
However, the last time the president went to get such an update at the Pentagon in July, it led to adecision to send about 50 U.S. special operations forces into Syria, among other steps to intensify the campaign.
During that meeting, the president "reaffirmed to all of us in the room that he was willing to hear all options of doing more in Iraq and Syria, as long as they would produce strategic success vice just tactical success," a senior defense official told Pentagon reporters during a background briefing on Oct. 30, after the White House announced the new steps.
"We went about taking a very hard look at what was working, what wasn't working, in both Iraq and Syria, and what we thought might help us enhance our campaign," she said.
Other steps included striking different kinds of oil infrastructure used by ISIS to finance its operations, and delivering ammunition to Syrian opposition rebels. The Pentagon announced about a month later that about 200 more special operations forces would deploy to the region to conduct raids in Iraq and Syria.
While the steps were welcomed by critics of the president's strategy, it did not quell calls for him to do more to wipe out the terrorist group.
And the president has been under increasing pressure to do more, especially after terrorist attacks across Paris on Nov. 13 that killed 130, and a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., earlier this month that killed 14.
The White House acknowledged those calls, but said that "those who are most frequent in voicing those calls, do not themselves have alternative solutions that they have put on the table."
Earnest specifically pointed to a tweet by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, which said, "If I'm elected president, we won’t weaken ISIS. We won’t degrade ISIS. We will utterly destroy ISIS."
"Just to cite one example, I know that after the president delivered his address to the nation from the oval office, that — that Senator Cruz, in the thoughtful medium known as Twitter, suggested that if he were president of the United States, he would order the Department of Defense to destroy ISIL," Earnest said, using another acronym for ISIS.
"This, of course, is the mandate that the president has given for our entire national security team, and all of our allies and partners in the coalition since September of 2014," Earnest said.
As Obama goes to the Pentagon to be briefed with cooked intel to reinforce more of his false narratives and delusional foreign policy. Americans should wonder if Obama was projecting when he called ISIS the jayvee team.
The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency states the fact that Obama is to blame for ISIS and his re-election was much more important than peace in the middle east or the security of the Untied States and its allies. Obama's failed Arab spring includes the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya and arming Al Qaeda, ISIS and their affiliates in Syria via the rat line from Benghazi, Libya. This excerpt from CNN's Jake Tapper as follows"
Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama's former top military intelligence official said Tuesday that the White House ignored reports prefacing the rise of ISIS in 2011 and 2012 because they did not fit its re-election "narrative."
"I think that they did not meet a narrative the White House needed. And I'll be very candid with you, they just didn't," retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead."
Flynn, who has been critical of both Obama's and former President George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq War and involvement in the Middle East, said that Obama was served poorly by a small circle of advisers who were worried about his re-election prospects at the time.
The story they needed to tell, he said, was that pulling troops from Iraq would not leave the region vulnerable to the rise of a radical Islamic group like ISIS.
"I think the narrative was that al Qaeda was on the run, and (Osama) bin Laden was dead. ... They're dead and these guys are, we've beaten them," Flynn said -- but the problem was that no matter how many terrorist leaders they killed, they "continue to just multiply."
Obama has been criticized by opponents for referring to ISIS as the "JV squad" and apparently underestimating the group's threat. The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating complaints that top intelligence officials manipulated reports to make the threat of ISIS look minimal.
Conveniently hidden under the headline at TheHill.com is the fact that 347,000 convicted illegal immigrant criminals roam our streets, even though the Obama administration says it deports criminals. Somehow they are are deported while hundreds of leftist run cities passed sanctuary city ordinances that somehow supersede Federal law to prevent such deportations.
More than 1,400 immigrants on the path to deportation who have been released by the federal government have gone on to be convicted of new crimes ranging from sexual assault to burglary, according to federal data.
Additionally, there are more than 347,000 convicted criminal immigrants in the country illegally who have been released onto the streets. About half of those are currently in removal proceedings, and the rest have received orders to be removed from the country but are still roaming free.
The new data released by the House Judiciary Committee, which received it from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is sure to rile conservative critics of the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement policy.
The Democrats Promise, but NEVER secure the border
The news comes on the heels of a woman’s killing in a popular San Francisco waterfront that authorities say was committed by an undocumented immigrant who had been convicted of a felony and had been deported from the country five times.
“Despite DHS’s [the Department of Homeland Security] pledge to prioritize the removal of serious criminal aliens, in the last year the number of administrative arrests of criminal aliens has fallen by a third and the department continues to release thousands of such aliens onto our streets,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said during a hearing with department Secretary Jeh Johnson on Tuesday.
“This effectively releases criminal aliens onto the streets, with all too tragic results,” he added.
In the wake of the San Francisco killing, conservatives have jumped on the chance to blast“sanctuary cities” that ignore federal immigration orders, and accuse the administration of letting them get away with it.
“The clear answer to this problem is for DHS to mandate compliance with detainers and for this administration to defend the mandatory nature of detainers in federal court,” Goodlatte railed on Tuesday.
"The last time I looked we had a supremacy clause [in the Constitution], so federal law trumps state law, and God knows it trumps the law in San Francisco," echoed Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).
Johnson refuted the criticism.
While he encouraged cities to abide by federal orders, he said that they should not be forced to do so.
“I do not think we should mandate the conduct of state and local law enforcement though legislation,” Johnson said.
Instead, “the most effective way” to get jurisdictions to abide by its orders “is through a cooperative effort with a program that removes the legal and political controversy," he said.
This administration and the Democrats have no desire to secure the border. In fact, their open embrace of lawlessness starts at the top with Barack Obama. He admitted that his executive action on immigration would be illegal yet he did it anyway.
Then again, the Democrats have always lied about 'immigration reform'
Judicial Watch puts some more pieces of the IRS scandal into place. The Obama administration's extensive effort to target his political opponents starting before the 2010 elections using the alphabet agencies of government is obvious.
Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity.
The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit social 501(c)(4) welfare groups – or nearly every 501(c)(4) in the United States – as part of its prosecution effort. According to a letter from then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, “This revelation likely means that the IRS – including possibly Lois Lerner – violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department.”
Judicial Watch continues.
The new IRSdocuments include a October 11, 2010 “DOJ Recap” memo sent by IRS Exempt Organizations Tax Law Specialist Siri Buller to Lerner and other top IRS officials explaining an October 8 meeting with representatives from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and “one representative from the FBI” to discuss the possible criminal prosecution of nonprofit organizations for alleged political activity:
On October 8, 2010, Lois Lerner, Joe Urban [IRS Technical Advisor, TEGE], Judy Kindell [top aide to Lerner], Justin Lowe [Technical Advisor to the Commissioner of Tax-Exempt and Government Entities], and Siri Buller met with the section chief and other attorneys from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, and one representative from the FBI, to discuss recent attention to the political activity of exempt organizations.
The section’s attorneys expressed concern that certain section 501(c) organizations are actually political committees “posing” as if they are not subject to FEC law, and therefore may be subject to criminal liability. The attorneys mentioned several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law. In response, Lois and Judy eloquently explained the following points:
Under section 7805(b), we may only revoke or modify an organization’s exemption retroactively if it omitted or misstated a material fact or operated in a manner materially different from that originally represented.
If we do not have these misrepresentations, the organization may rely on our determination it is exempt. However, the likelihood of revocation is diminished by the fact that section 501(c)(4)-(c)(6) organizations are not required to apply for recognition of exemption.
We discussed the hypothetical situation of a section 501(c)(4) organization that declares itself exempt as a social welfare organization, but at the end of the taxable year has in fact functioned as a political organization. Judy explained that such an organization, in order to be in compliance, would simply file Form 1120-POL and paying tax at the highest corporate rate.
Lois stated that although we do not believe that organizations which are subject to a civil audit subsequently receive any type of immunity from a criminal investigation, she will refer them to individuals from CI who can better answer that question. She explained that we are legally required to separate the civil and criminal aspects of any examination and that while we do not have EO law experts in CI, our FIU agents are experienced in coordinating with CI.
The attorneys asked whether a change in the law is necessary, and whether a three-way partnership among DOJ, the FEC, and the IRS is possible to prevent prohibited activity by these organizations. Lois listed a number of obstacles to the attorneys’ theories:
[REDACTED]
She pointed to Revenue Ruling 2004-6, which was drafted in light of the electioneering communication rules before they were litigated.
Just prior this meeting, the IRS began the process of providing the FBI confidential taxpayer information on nonprofit groups. An IRS document confirms the IRS supplied the FBI with 21 disks containing 1.25 million pages of taxpayer records:
The coordination of the agencies with the administration and the Democrats in Congress is really no surprise, but does pose a final question.
The DOJ documents also include a July 16, 2013, email from an undisclosed Justice Department official to a lawyer for IRS employees asking that the Obama administration get information from congressional witnesses before Congress does:
One last issue. If any of your clients have documents they are providing to Congress that you can (or would like to) provide to us before their testimony, we would be pleased to receive them. We are 6103 authorized and I can connect you with TIGTA to confirm; we would like the unredacted documents.
“These new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”
*Obama's IRS also illegally leaked confidential tax documents of their political opponents to the liberal press during the 2012 election cycle.
The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.
The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.
In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public.
ALL 9 of the groups are not only conservative, but one of the illegally leaked applications was for the Karl Rove lead Crossroads GPS, the largest and most hated group among them. Smaller and lesser known conservative groups confidential applications were also illegally leaked as Propublica reuports:
Applications were sent to ProPublica from five other social welfare groups that had told the IRS that they wouldn’t spend money to sway elections. The other groups ended up spending more than $5 million related to the election, mainly to support Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Much of that money was spent by the Arizona groupAmericans for Responsible Leadership. The remaining four groups that told the IRS they wouldn’t engage in political spending were Freedom Path, Rightchange.com II, America Is Not Stupid and A Better America Now.
The IRS also sent ProPublica the applications of three small conservative groups that told the agency that they would spend some money on politics: Citizen Awareness Project, the YG Network and SecureAmericaNow.org. (No unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.)
That is right, NONE of the unapproved applications for liberal groups were leaked. The public and the press were eager to dismiss the targeting of conservatives by the Obama administration, BIG government and the Democrat party.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday defended his decision to single out a key GOP group in a 2010 letter to the IRS.
Obama's IRS Targets Conservative Groups-Leaks Info
IRS cases were referred to ‘Group 7822’
The Internal Revenue Service diverted applications for tax-exempt status from tea party and like-minded organizations to a special track known as Group 7822 for special scrutiny, according to transcripts of an interview by congressional interrogators with a key IRS official.
A conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, said it obtained an email chain from the Internal Revenue Service in which the department provided confidential tax information to the Federal Election Commission.
The watchdog group obtained the exchange from a freedom of information request made shortly after congressional investigators began prodding the agency on whether it inappropriately shared confidential tax information about a conservative group applying for tax-exempt status.
Lois Lerner Warned IRS Employees to Hide Information from Congress
A newly released email from former IRS employee Lois G. Lerner, sent just as the tea party targeting scandal was erupting, warned colleagues to “be cautious” about what information they put in emails because it could be turned over to Congress.
Targeting Conservatives: An IRS Political Timeline
President Obama spent months in 2010 warning Americans about the 'threat' to democracy posed by conservative groups, right at the time the IRS began targeting these groups.
U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad might still harbor some chemical weapons and could use them in an attempt to prevent his ouster, the Wall Street Journal reports.
While Assad was supposed to relinquish all of his chemical weapons as part of a 2013 deal brokered by the United States and Russia, intelligence officials say he might have retained small amounts of deadly nerve agents. His regime has also launched dozens of attacks with chlorine, an industrial chemical that can be lethal when weaponized.
The Journal reports:
Last year, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad let international inspectors oversee the removal of what President Barack Obama called the regime’s most deadly chemical weapons. The deal averted U.S. airstrikes that would have come in retaliation for an Aug. 21, 2013, sarin-gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people.
Since then, the U.S. officials said, the Assad regime has developed and deployed a new type of chemical bomb filled with chlorine, which Mr. Assad could now decide to use on a larger scale in key areas. U.S. officials also suspect the regime may have squirreled away at least a small reserve of the chemical precursors needed to make nerve agents sarin or VX. Use of those chemicals would raise greater international concerns because they are more deadly than chlorine and were supposed to have been eliminated.
The intelligence is “being taken very seriously because he’s getting desperate” and because of doubts within the U.S. intelligence community that Mr. Assad gave up all of his deadliest chemical weapons, a senior U.S. official said. […]
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the British army’s chemical-weapons unit, said: “Even if the regime had only one ton of VX left, that would be enough to kill thousands of people.”
The Assad regime now reportedly controls only about one-fourth of Syria amid victories for the Islamic State, other terrorist groups, and U.S.-backed rebels.
The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency on Sunday described President Obama's Middle East policy as one of "willful ignorance," saying the administration needs a clearer strategy for dealing with conflicts emerging across the region.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said during an interview on "Fox News Sunday" that recent developments in the Middle East are moving in a bad direction for the United States, with Iran "clearly on the march" to influence events in a "regional sectarian war."
Critics of the administration have pointed out that the United States appears to be siding with Iranian-backed rebels against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria but opposing such fighters in Yemen.
“At the end of the day, we have just this incredible policy confusion — never mind what our strategy is to execute that policy," Flynn said. "We have to stop what we’re doing and take a hard look at everything going on the Middle East because it’s not going in the right direction."
A former Google officer is the president’s chief technology adviser. Google employees contributed more to President Obama’s re-election than did employees of any other company except Microsoft. Google lobbyists met with Obama White House officials 230 times. By comparison, lobbyists from rival Comcast have been admitted to the inner sanctum a mere 20 or so times in the same period
Oh, and on Election Night 2012, guess where Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt was? Working for the president. In the president’s campaign office. On a voter-turnout system designed to help the president get re-elected.
Obama lieutenant David Plouffe boasts: “On Election Night [Schmidt] was in our boiler room in Chicago,” he told Bloomberg News, in a story that revealed that for the campaign Schmidt “helped recruit talent, choose technology and coach the campaign manager, Jim Messina, on the finer points of leading a large organization.”
Schmidt was especially fond of a madcap corner of the Obama campaign office known as “the Cave,” where, at 4:30 every day, staffers would dance madly under a disco ball to the tune of a mashup of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” and an automated campaign phone call made to prospective voters.
Favors beget favors. And hey, presto, the FTC, in 2012, ignored the recommendations of its own staffers, which accused Google of abusive trade practices for burying competitors in their search results and recommended a lawsuit.
Instead, the FTC dropped its inquiry. Google enjoys 67 percent market share, 83 percent in mobile. No biggie, declared the FTC.
Google lobbyists have been pushing for implementation of “net neutrality” regulations, particularly a “Title II” provision that would benefit Google. President Obama helpfully came out in support of the plan, including Title II, which was slightly embarrassing because Obama’s FCC chair, Tom Wheeler, had favored a different approach. Wheeler promptly reversed course and backed the Obama-Google plan.
Right before the FCC report was due, but before it was made public, the FCC pulled another odd reversal, removing 15 pages of policy Google apparently found out about but didn’t like.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said that the changes came about after “a last-minute submission from a major California based company.” I wonder which company he’s talking about. In-N-Out Burger?
It’s not like Google is ungrateful for all of this special attention. When the newly launched ObamaCare website was plagued by evil spirits, guess which company sent them? Google’s proton packs helped kill off the ObamaCare site’s goblins, but the country got slimed.
Still, all of this is easily forgiven compared to what’s coming next: politically filtered information.
Google says that in the future, its determinations about what is true and what is untrue will play a role in how search-engine rankings are configured.
Google has the power to bump an article it doesn’t like off the table and under the rug. Even moving information off the first page of search results would effectively neutralize it: According to a 2013 study, 91.5 percent of Google search users click through on a first-page result.
To put it mildly, your idea of whether Fox News or MSNBC is a more reliable purveyor of “truth” might differ substantially from your neighbor’s.
Google’s idea of ranking results based on truth is an excellent one that it should implement just as soon as it comes up with an absolutely, unbiased and objective system of determining truth.
I’m not sure the company whose employees ranked second in all of corporate America in campaign donations to Obama can be termed neutral. I’m not sure the nation’s most impartial arbiter is a guy who partied to the sounds of an Obama campaign robocall.
Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes refused multiple times to say whether she voted for President Obama during a Thursday interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal editorial board.
"You know, this election isn't about the president," she said in response to a question on whether she voted for the president in 2008 and 2012.
"It's about making sure we get Kentuckians back to work," she went on to say before being interrupted by the interviewer.
The Democrat party machine has reason to target the Senate Minority Leader in this election. Their candidate of choice is evasive and intellectually dishonest, at a minimum. The voters of Kentucky are being deceived and should NOT vote for Alison Lundergan Grimes.
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