House Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday that it’ll take more than firings to clear up the IRS scandal — it’ll take someone ending up serving jail time.

“My question is, who’s going to jail over this scandal?”  the Ohio Republican said at a press conference with Republicans Wednesday morning. (link)

(more…)

……Obama said this:  “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.  Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works; they’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

Now Consider: (more…)

You know when the President sends out an official announcement at 8:30pm that a  general sense of the pending sh!tstorm is looming far closer than the horizon.

So close in fact it is quite possible the nucleus of the scandal will be tracked to the West Wing of 1600.

Earlier yesterday, prior to the official Inspector General report release,  ABC Newser Trey Hardin directly asked White House Spokesman Jay Carney:

Trey Hardin: “I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it. It simply just does not happen at an agency level like that without political advisers likely in the West Wing certainly connected to the president’s ongoing campaign organization.”  (link)

Notably, Jay Carney never disputed this assertion.   Bad sign. (more…)

The DOJ having the authority to do warrantless wiretaps without presenting justification to a judge is alarming. The DOJ having the authority to do such wiretapping against reporters in the media, who provide the fourth estate to protect -and check- the balance of power, is well beyond alarming.

It was only fair that Associated Press reporter Jim Kuhnhenn got the first question to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at Tuesday’s press briefing. Coming just one day after news broke that the Department Of Justice had secretly seized two months worth of phone records from AP reporters, Kuhnhenn used his question to tie the AP scandal together with the other troubling news stories of the week for the Obama administration.

“For fear of stating the obvious,” Kuhnhenn began, “the White House right now is confronting a confluence of issues: Benghazi talking points, IRS reviews of political groups, Justice Department’s review of journalists’ phone records, and in every instance either the president or you have placed the burden of responsibility someplace else… But it is the president’s administration, so I wonder, doesn’t responsibility for setting tone, for setting direction ultimately rest with the president on these matters?” (more…)

Listen to what Jay Carney is stating here in regard to the White House knowledge of the issues surrounding the targeting of Tea Party and Conservative groups.

Last Friday the same original media sources (the reporters on the phone conference with the IRS official who apologized) said the report was to be released within the next day.  As a result of the admission the media story quickly took off.

Now The White House is saying:  We’ll defer comment, and “wait for the report” etc.

You know this “report” has not only been scrutinized at length by the protectors, but has been re-written more than a few times as the points are critiqued by all the concentric circles that compromise the White House and Cabinet political machine. Revisions, revisions, revisions…..

WASHINGTON DC – Republicans are training their attacks on acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller amid new revelations that he and the agency’s former top official knew employees were targeting conservative groups but failed to notify Congress despite repeated requests.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, and 10 other GOP lawmakers wrote to then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman on June 18, 2012 demanding answers about why the agency requested donor information from groups seeking nonprofit status.

By the time this letter was sent, Shulman and Miller, who was the deputy IRS commissioner at the time, were aware of the extent of the targeting program for about a month. (more…)

First “his” point:

Then “her” counter point: (more…)

WASHINGTON DC – Senator Ted Cruz says the IRS scandal “harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon,” and proves that President Obama keeps an “enemies list.”

“This is part of a distressing pattern of the Obama administration of being less than honest with the American people and using the machinery of government to target their political opponents,” Cruz tells National Review in an interview.

“It harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon and maintaining a political enemies list and treating the federal government as a tool to exact the administration’s retribution,” he adds. (more…)

Update 2:  The White House Reponds –  (Politico) — The White House has “no knowledge” of the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

“Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP,” he said in a statement.  (link)

Update 1 :  Eric Holder personally approved of wiretapping reporters – On Monday afternoon, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had “secretly obtained two months of telephone records” from 20 phone lines assigned to reporters and editors from the global news organization. The shocking revelation comes on top of news that the IRS targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny. It will be harder for President Obama to pin the DOJ’s action on lower level bureaucrats, however, because requests to subpoena news organization records require the approval of Attorney General Eric Holder.  (link)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news. (more…)

….. and we’re not JUST talking about the 12 version “talking points”, but the epicenter of the actual White House response – or, lack thereof.

Perhaps now the media has accepted the fact that the “talking points” were highly manipulated, they will turn their investigative eye onto the origin, and subsequently on to something we outlined earlier:

Back in January  we posted a discussion around a newly released photo from the White House. The picture was taken in the oval office on Sept 11th 2012, the date of the Benghazi attack.

At the time we thought the picture was worth a thousand words.  After research, and with the hindsight of the latest revelations, it appears we were correct. Yet again, it provides more sunlight into the events surrounding the Benghazi, Libya events and who made the critical decisions in those moments of crisis.

At 5pm, according to the White House and media reports, President Obama was set for a prior scheduled meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey.   It was just prior to this meeting that White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon tells President Obama of the attack and the fire at the main villa…

…..how long the meeting took is unknown, but we do know by 6:30pm President Obama and Joe Biden were on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (more…)