Newly uncovered emails show Lois Lerner, the key figure in the IRS scandal, was talking with the Justice Department about going after groups seeking tax-exempt status, just days before she publicly acknowledged the agency was targeting Tea Party and other organizations.

The emails, obtained by Judicial Watch and first reported by TownHall.com, are another indication the targeting may have stretched deeper into the Obama administration. Lerner, the director of the agency’s Exempt Organizations division before retiring last year, initially said the targeting was limited to agents working in the IRS’ Cincinnati field office.

However, a series of inspector general and congressional probes since the scandal broke last year appear to show the targeting of mostly conservative-leaning groups seeking tax-exempt status was orchestrated in Washington.

In a May 2013 email, Lerner responded to a Justice Department inquiry about whether tax-exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for lying about political activity.

“I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ,” Lerner reportedly wrote to the office of Steven Miller, the agency’s acting director at the time. “He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who ‘lied’ on their 1024s — saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures.

“DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS.”

Nikole C. Flax, Miller’s chief of staff, responded: “I think we should do it — also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?”

House Republicans claimed after the emails were published that they were further proof of coordination among various agencies to target conservatives.

“The release of new documents underscores the political nature of IRS Tea Party targeting and the extent to which supposed apolitical officials took direction from elected Democrats,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a statement.  “These e-mails are part of an overwhelming body of evidence that political pressure from prominent Democrats led to the targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said that if the targeting hadn’t been stopped, “Eric Holder’s politicized Justice Department would likely have been leveling trumped up criminal charges against Tea Party groups to intimidate them from exercising their Constitutional rights.”

The administration at the highest level denied the targeting, from 2010 through the 2012 presidential election cycle, was illegal or politically motivated.

President Obama told Fox News in February there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in connection with the targeting.

And last week, emails obtained by the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform show the office of the committee’s top-ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, contacted the IRS in January 2013 about True the Vote, one of the conservative groups that was targeted.

A Lerner staffer in response sent the group’s related 990 IRS forms to Cummings and his staff.

In another email, Lerner discussed with agency staffers the purpose of an upcoming, April 9 2013, hearing that also suggests the targeting went beyond the IRS.

“There are several groups of folks from the [Federal Election Commission] world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are),” she wrote.

“One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn’t feel so comfortable doing the stuff. So, don’t be fooled about how this is being articulated — it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”

About six in ten American voters think Barack Obama lies to the country on important matters some or most of the time, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

Thirty-seven percent think Obama lies “most of the time,” while another 24 percent say he lies “some of the time.” Twenty percent of voters say “only now and then” and 15 percent “never.”

Click here for the poll results.

President Obama has been accused by political opponents and media fact-checkers alike of telling falsehoods.  Frequently cited: His repeated claim that under Obamacare “If you like your plan, you can keep it” and his insistence that “the day after Benghazi happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism.”

The number of voters saying Obama lies “most of the time” includes 13 percent of Democrats.  It also includes 12 percent of blacks, 16 percent of liberals, 31 percent of unmarried women and 34 percent of those under age 30 — all key Obama constituencies.

Yet some of those groups are also among those most likely to say Obama “never” lies to the country on important matters: blacks (37 percent), Democrats (31 percent), liberals (28 percent) and women (19 percent).

The poll also asks about the trustworthiness of a few possible 2016 presidential candidates.  For comparison, about half of voters think former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton (54 percent) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (49 percent) are honest and trustworthy, while fewer think the same of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (41 percent).

On a more positive note for the White House, Obama’s overall job performance rating has improved.  The new poll finds that 42 percent of voters approve of the job he’s doing, while 51 percent disapprove.  That means he’s underwater by nine percentage points.

Last month the president was in negative territory by 13 points with a 40-53 percent rating (March 23-25).

Approval of the president is up six points among independents and now stands at 32 percent.  Obama was near record-low approval among independents last month (26 percent).  He also improved four points among Democrats and now stands at 80 percent among his party faithful.

How voters feel about Obama as a person closely matches his job ratings:  45 percent have a favorable opinion of him, while 51 percent have an unfavorable view.  A year ago those numbers were reversed: 52 percent favorable, 46 percent unfavorable (April 2013).

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,012 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 13-15, 2014. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

By Dana Blanton

A House committee voted Thursday to hold Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, as Republicans escalated their bid to “get to the bottom” of the former IRS official’s role in the political targeting scandal.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 21-12 to hold Lerner in contempt. The vote followed hours of heated debate on the committee.

The contempt measure would next head to the House floor. House Speaker John Boehner predicted earlier this week that unless Lerner agrees to cooperate, the full House will support contempt — from there, the case would likely head to the courts.

“This is not an action I take lightly,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said before the vote. But he said lawmakers “need Ms. Lerner’s testimony to complete our oversight work and bring truth to the American people.”

The vote comes a day after the House Ways and Means Committee voted to refer Lerner’s case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the committee claimed Lerner may have violated “one or more criminal statutes.” The Department of Justice is not obligated to take up the committee’s request.

Both committee actions divided Republicans and Democrats, who have decried the steps against Lerner as unwarranted and political.

Democrats argue that Lerner properly invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify last year, and again last month.

“Guilty or innocent, Ms. Lerner has a constitutional right to remain silent on this issue,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said. Further, she said if the committee were truly serious about pursuing this case, they would offer Lerner immunity.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said the case would “be laughed out of court.”

But Republicans, in bringing up the contempt measure, claim Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right when, during a hearing in May, she gave a voluntary statement declaring her innocence. Lerner again refused to testify last month.

“The only path to the truth is through this committee,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Thursday.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the oversight committee, has compiled a growing list of constitutional experts who say the contempt case is weak. Issa countered with a memo from the House general counsel’s office that says he followed proper procedures.

Lerner has emerged as a central figure in investigations by two congressional committees into the IRS applying extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Lerner’s lawyer, William W. Taylor III, said she has committed no crimes.

“If Lois Lerner continues to refuse to testify, then the House will hold her in contempt,” Boehner said Wednesday. “And we will continue to shine the light on the administration’s abusive actions and use every tool at our disposal to expose the truth and ensure the American people get the answers they deserve.”

Lerner is an attorney who joined the IRS in 2001. She retired last fall, ending a 34-year career in federal government, which included work at the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

A House committee voted Wednesday to formally ask the Justice Department to consider criminal prosecution against ex-IRS official Lois Lerner, the figure at the center of the political targeting scandal.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted 23-14 to send the criminal referral. The vote marked an escalation in Republicans’ push to confront Lerner over her role in the agency’s controversial practice of singling out conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny.

On another front, a separate committee will vote Thursday on whether to hold her in contempt of Congress for twice refusing to testify on the scandal.

The rare session on Wednesday to consider a criminal referral produced some partisan fireworks, as Democrats called the move against Lerner “unprecedented.”

Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., initially tried to keep the deliberations open to the public and press, triggering a dispute with the chairman as he tried to raise a “point of order.”

Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., then told Levin to “chill out.”

“I’m very chilled out,” he responded.

Despite Levin’s objections — and opposition from the rest of the Democrats on the committee — lawmakers broke into closed session to debate the measure. After returning, they quickly approved the criminal referral.

A day earlier, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee formally laid out its case for contempt in a new report.

“Lois Lerner’s testimony is critical to the committee’s investigation,” the oversight report stated. “Without her testimony, the full extent of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party applications cannot be known, and the committee will be unable to fully complete its work.”

The report repeatedly called out for Lerner for refusing to cooperate with the committee’s investigation.

During her first appearance before the committee last year, Lerner gave an opening statement and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination three times before being excused. Last month, she was before the lawmakers once more, once again exercising her Fifth Amendment rights.

Kevin Sorbo, star of the film “God’s Not Dead,” ranked fifth at the U.S. box office, says he knows he’s on a blacklist in liberal Hollywood for being independent-minded.

When Beliefnet’s John W. Kennedy interviewed Sorbo about his role as an atheist professor in  ”God’s Not Dead,”  the actor opened up about his faith, political views, and career decisions colored by Hollywood’s antipathy toward conservatives.

“They scream for tolerance,” Sorbo said. “They scream for freedom of speech, but it you disagree at all with what they’re saying then they can blacklist you. They have the power to do that.”

These remarks came after Kennedy asked the actor if he’s experienced a backlash in Hollywood for his views and Sorbo responded:

Oh, sure. I mean I’m an independent in Hollywood. I’ve voted Democratic in my life, I’ve voted Republican in my life. I’m one of the few people I think in Hollywood who actually comes out and says, ‘Hey, you know what, I vote for who I think is the best person, period.’  I’m not a party guy. There are people on both sides of the political fence that I don’t agree with. To me, I look to see who I honestly think is going to be the best person. So, that, in itself, is enough to get me blacklisted in Hollywood …”

Sam Sorbo, the actor’s wife, says she experienced a backlash over her political views on education.

In a recent interview with The Blaze’s Dana Loesch, Sam remarked:  “As naive as I was back then, I thought, ‘Well if I write about school, that’s not political!’ But of course school is the most political, because that’s where the progressive agenda is coming out the strongest and the hardest.”

With Kevin Sorbo’s starring role in “God’s Not Dead,” the family appears to have scored points despite the alleged blacklist. The movie took first place at the box office for films that opened in 1,000 or fewer theaters.

By Havilah Steinman

Eleven-year-old Leo Tuttle is in fifth grade at an Indianapolis private school where the demanding curriculum forces him to struggle to keep up.

But it is where Leo’s mother, Erin Tuttle, wants him to be, rather than the public school or even the Catholic school he previously attended.

Mrs. Tuttle moved Leo to the private school when her home state of Indiana, along with 45 other states, agreed to follow the Common Core State Standards Initiative for all its public schools and those which are under the charter school program, such as the Catholic school. The Common Core standards are a set of guidelines for schools, initiated federally, to improve and make consistent education standards in math and English language arts.

The goal of Common Core is to “… articulate what students need to know in grades K-12 in order to be ready for college or a career after they graduate” said Mike Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, which supports and promotes the standards.

Many students and teachers saw the standards for the first time this year, as the program was being phased in nationwide. And now that they’ve seen it, many are not happy with it, and they’re joining an ever-increasing group of critics who are lining up against it.

Teachers complain the program was pushed through too fast, that there wasn’t time for schools to make the adjustment, there wasn’t additional funding available for new textbooks, and that they just weren’t included in the process when the Common Core was created.

“You forgot some of the most important people in this whole process, and that was the educator” said Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana Teacher’s Association.  “The one person who could really help make or break this was the educator and you didn’t include the educator from the very beginning in terms of building an implementation plan” she said.

In addition, a growing number of parents nationwide, including Erin Tuttle, are joining forces to eliminate the Common Core, which they claim “dumbs down” their children’s education by using inferior methods than were used in the past.

Conservatives call it an extreme abuse of federal overreach, that limits the control states and local communities have on their education programs.

Indiana is the first state to pull away from the Common Core. Oklahoma lawmakers have passed a bill repealing that state’s participation in Common Core, and there are now some 300 bills in state legislatures nationwide that would slow down, reduce, or eliminate altogether implementation of the Common Core, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

That would be a major blow to the program, which was strongly touted by the Obama administration as a way for children in the United States to be globally competitive.

“Education is an important component to the economic wellbeing of any nation” Casserly explains.  “When the united states started to look at these international comparisons and saw that we were beginning to slip behind other countries like Korea and Belgium and Singapore and Malaysia and other entities… the united states really needed to raise its academic performance.” he said.

Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder agreed. “Isn’t it important that we’re globally competitive?” he asked. “We were lagging, we were getting behind. And what the common core does, presents a set of standards that will help us get back to that globally competitive place we need to be.”

While education levels in many parts of the country need improvement, critics concede, a one-size-fits-all approach to education is not the solution.

“Settling for a status quo of mediocrity for every state certainly shouldn’t be the answer,” said Tuttle. “We should be striving for something much higher than that, something that is internationally competitive, something that will allow our children to be competitive in a global economy.” But, Tuttle adds, “the common core simply won’t do that”.

Common Core supporters claim all the criticism is based on misinformation, that it’s not federal overreach because the program is voluntary. Indiana was able to back out without any penalty. The standards are more of a concept.

“The Common Core State standards are not a curriculum, they’re not a textbook, they’re not a set of lesson plans,” said Casserly. And they weren’t created in a vacuum, he said. While the standards were being created “some 10,000 comments” were submitted by parents and educators.

Now that Indiana has backed away from Common Core, Erin Tuttle may move her son back to his old school, but first she wants to see how far her state will stray from the federal standards, and whether it will go back to what she claims were the higher standards the state followed before Common Core.

“People across the country will be watching to see what Indiana does next,” she said.

Charles Krauthammer dismissed the 7.1 million number of Obamacare enrollees touted by the Obama administration yesterday as a “so-called” and “phony number.”

“It’s meaningless,” Krauthammer said on “Special Report” on  Fox News, “because … we don’t know how many of them have paid, so it’s an enrollment number that’s not enrollment.”

“The more important [number] is how many were previously uninsured,” he added.

by Katrina Trinko

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has sworn off running again for elected office, but Americans have certainly heard that one before.

Speculation that Romney might run again has largely been stoked by the reunion he planned to host last month in Park City, Utah, for members of his 2012 campaign and debate teams and a string of recent public appearances.

He has appeared on TV news shows 12 times in the past six months. That’s essentially on pace with Michigan GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, who led all national politicians last year with 26 appearances over 12 months.

Romney has repeatedly said he won’t run again, saying infamously in the Netflix movie “Mitt” about a nominee who loses a White House bid: “They become a loser. It’s over.”

And a few weeks ago, he gave CBS “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer a flat out “no.”

Still, no potential 2016 presidential candidate has yet to say whether he or she will run, including presumptive Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who up until last year also said she was done with public office.

“He very well could [run again,] but it doesn’t seem likely,” Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said of Romney. “You’ll likely find that he’ll be most effective using his political and business savvy on the outside, rather than the inside.”

One possible exception, Bonjean argues, is Romney getting a Cabinet post should Republicans win the White House in 2016. “He’d be a prime candidate for Treasury secretary,” he said.

Top 2012 Romney advisers Kevin Madden, Eric Fehrnstrom and Stuart Stevens also have stayed mum, not responding earlier this week to requests for comment by FoxNews.com.

Surveys by the group pollingreport.com found Romney’s favorability among Americans has climbed steadily since his November 2012 loss to President Obama, with his February 14 rating at 47 percent.

Beyond just tallying Romney’s increasing public appearances, including one last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, political observers point out that Republicans have no clear frontrunner, like the Democrats have with Clinton, especially since perhaps their best hope, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, has been hurt by the so-called “Bridgegate scandal.”

Washington Republicans have turned to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but his measured response has only added to the speculation about Romney.

In addition, observers say Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, is certainly talking like somebody mounting a comeback fight.

“There’s no question [about] the president’s naiveté with regards to Russia,” he also told CBS. “And his faulty judgment about Russia’s intentions and objectives has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face.”

By Joseph Weber

For those of you who just allowed yet another deadline to pass for signing up for ObamaCare, or who have lost your Health Care Insurance due to ObamaCare, or have suffered an increase in your premiums due to ObamaCare, don’t worry–Obama promises that won’t happen.

The left has made its political career on promising something that sounds great to a majority of the people, only to switch it at delivery time for something that hurts almost everybody. They did it in the Soviet Union, in China, in Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, and on and on.

In case your memory is short, let us share with you a few of Obama’s Greatest Hits:

State elections officials in North Carolina are investigating hundreds of cases of potential voter fraud after identifying thousands of registered voters with personal information matching those of voters who voted in other states in 2012.

Elections Director Kim Strach told state lawmakers at an oversight hearing Wednesday that her staff has identified 765 registered North Carolina voters who appear to have cast ballots in two states during the 2012 presidential election.

Strach said the first names, last names, birthdates and last four digits of their Social Security numbers appear to match information for voters in another state. Each case will now be investigated to determine whether voter fraud occurred.

“Could it be voter fraud? Sure, it could be voter fraud,” Strach said. “Could it be an error on the part of a precinct person choosing the wrong person’s name in the first place? It could be. We’re looking at each of these individual cases.”

WRAL.com reported that 81 residents who died before election day were recorded as casting a ballot. While about 30 of those voters appear to have legally cast ballots before election day, Strach said “there are between 40 and 50 [voters] who had died at a time that that’s not possible.”

“We have the ‘Walking Dead,’ and now we’ve got the ‘Voting Dead,'” said state Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg. “I guess the reason there’s no proof of voter fraud is because we weren’t looking for it.”

Strach cautioned, however, that in several past cases, instances of so-called zombie voters turned out to be the result of clerical errors.

“We’re in the process of looking at each of these to see,” Strach said. “That means either a poll or precinct worker made a mistake and marked the wrong person, or someone voted for them. That’s something we can’t determine until we look into each case.”

A law passed last year by the Republican-dominated state legislature required elections staff to check information for North Carolina’s more than 6.5 million voters against a database containing information for 101 million voters in 28 states.

The cross-check found listings for 35,570 North Carolina voters whose first names, last names and dates of birth match those of voters who voted in other states. However, in those cases middle names and Social Security numbers were not matched.

The analysis also found 155,692 registered North Carolina voters whose information matched voters registered in other states but who most recently registered or voted elsewhere. Strach said those were most likely voters who moved out of state without notifying their local boards of elections.

Republicans leaders immediately touted the preliminary report as evidence they were justified in approving sweeping elections changes last year that include requiring voters to present photo ID at the polls, cutting days from the period for early voting and ending a popular civics program that encouraged high school students to pre-register to vote in advance of their 18th birthdays.

“That is outrageous. That is criminal. That is wrong, and it shouldn’t be allowed to go any further without substantial investigations from our local district attorneys who are the ones charged with enforcing these laws,” state Sen. Thom Goolsby, R-Wilmington, told the Charlotte Observer.

State House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, and Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, issued a joint statement Wednesday on what they termed as the “alarming evidence.”

“While we are alarmed to hear evidence of widespread voter error and fraud, we are encouraged to see the common-sense law passed to ensure voters are who they say they are is working,” said the statement. “These findings should put to rest ill-informed claims that problems don’t exist and help restore the integrity of our elections process.”

However, other states using the cross-check system have yielded relatively few criminal prosecutions for voter fraud once the cases were thoroughly investigated.

Only 11 people were prosecuted on allegations of double-voting as a result of the 15 states that performed similar database checks following the 2010 elections, according to data compiled by elections officials in Kansas, where the cross-check program originated.

Bob Hall, director of the non-profit group Democracy North Carolina, cautioned officials not to jump to conclusions based on the preliminary database check.

“I know there is more than one Bob Hall with my birth date who lives among the 28 states researched,” Hall said. “There may be cases of fraud, but the true scale and conspiracy involved need to be examined more closely before those with political agendas claim they’ve proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Voting rights advocate Bob Phillips of Common Cause NC told WRAL.com that while he is concerned about the report, it still doesn’t justify requiring voters to present photo ID at the polls.

“I think a lot of [lawmakers] are saying, ‘Aha, this proves what we did,'” Phillips said. “But if I have an ID, how is that going to stop me from voting in North Carolina if I’ve already voted in Florida?”