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IRS Victims to Testify Before Congress

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irs_victimsConservative groups who claim they were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service are getting their say on Capitol Hill as hearings on the growing agency scandals continue Tuesday.The hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee will feature leaders of groups allegedly targeted by the IRS, including several Tea Party groups and an anti-gay marriage organization that has claimed its donor details were inappropriately released.

Several of the six groups scheduled to testify say their applications for tax-exempt status were delayed while agents asked intrusive questions that the IRS has since acknowledged were inappropriate.

At a hearing Monday, the watchdog who exposed the IRS’ targeting testified nobody in the Ohio office being blamed for the scandal would tell his investigators who directed the program, as the new IRS chief vowed to “get to the bottom” of that growing question.

Nearly a month after the scandal broke, the issue of who directed agents in Cincinnati to single out Tea Party and other groups is perhaps the most glaring unanswered question. Inspector General J. Russell George, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, revealed Monday that his audit of the agency tried — unsuccessfully — to get to the root of the targeting.

“We did pose that question and no one would acknowledge who, if anyone, provided that direction,” he said.

Danny Werfel, testifying for the first time in his new role as acting IRS commissioner, acknowledged: “We have to get to the bottom of it.” However, he also said he has not yet asked who ordered the program.

George later testified that the scandal itself is “unprecedented.” He cited past attempts by the Nixon administration to use the IRS for inappropriate purposes, but said this program was unprecedented.

The two officials testified as Republican lawmakers voiced skepticism that the program started and ended with a few low-level staffers in Cincinnati. Fueling the skepticism, partial transcripts released over the weekend of an interview with an IRS field agent in that division showed the agent claiming Washington guided the program.

Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said “we will not rest” until they find out who is responsible.

Though George has been repeatedly pressed by Democrats to say that higher-ups were not involved, he stressed Monday that the issue of political appointees’ involvement was “not the focus of our audit.” George said there’s no evidence of White House involvement, but added “I cannot say that” about the possibility of IRS appointee involvement.

The IRS is now under fire for a pair of controversies — the targeting program, but also a forthcoming inspector general report expected to show the agency spent roughly $50 million on conferences from 2010 to 2012.

Republican leaders of the appropriations subcommittee holding Monday’s hearing made clear that the two scandals will result in the agency’s budget being put under the microscope.

Rogers said the committee might even consider placing “conditions” on the agency’s budget allowing Congress to monitor its spending. He said he’s “absolutely appalled” by the conference spending.

Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., head of the subcommittee hosting the hearing, said Congress will “have to think very carefully about the amount of money that we provide to the IRS.”

He noted that the agency has requested $12.9 billion for 2014 — or $1 billion more than it got for 2013.

“We cannot in good conscience continue to provide hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars and have them use those funds to abuse the rights of American citizens,” he said.

Werfel acknowledged that the public trust “has been violated,” and said he is committed to restoring it.

Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano, though, cautioned against cutting funding to the IRS. The New York lawmaker said doing so is “asking for more trouble,” though he blasted the IRS program as inappropriate.

Meanwhile, the White House on Monday stood by claims that administration officials were not involved in the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday the administration is “concerned” about both the conference spending and the targeting program. But he defended the administration following claims by an unnamed IRS employee that the targeting program was directed by Washington.

The inspector general, Carney said, “both in testimony and in his report, found no evidence that outsiders — those outside the IRS — influenced the behavior that took place there.”

He said: “That is the conclusion of the independent inspector general. And we certainly have seen no other evidence to contradict that.”

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., on Sunday called Carney a “paid liar” as he discussed the IRS situation. Carney, though, said Monday he’s “not going to get into a back-and-forth with” Issa.

Published June 04, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report

Top Obama Picks Using Secret Email Accounts

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Kathleen SebeliusSome of President Obama’s political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year’s disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged — but often happens anyway — due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

“What happens when that person doesn’t work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years,” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. “Who’s going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn’t happening.”

Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.

The AP couldn’t independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.

Google can’t find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.

Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency’s FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer.

The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees — except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius’ email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.

The AP decided to publish the secret address for Sebelius — KGS2@hhs.gov — over the government’s objections because the secretary is a high-ranking civil servant who oversees not only major agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but also the implementation of Obama’s signature health care law. Her public email address is Kathleen.Sebelius@hhs.gov.

At least two other senior HHS officials — including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing health insurance reform — also have secret government email addresses, according to the records obtained by the AP.

The Interior Department gave the AP a list of about 100 government email addresses for political appointees who work there but none for the interior secretary at the time, Ken Salazar, who has since resigned. Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said Salazar maintained only one email address while serving as secretary but she would not disclose it. She said the AP should ask for it under the Freedom of Information Act, which would take months longer.

The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month’s work. But under the department’s own FOIA rules — which it cited in its letter to the AP — it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.

Fillichio later acknowledged that the $1.03 million bill was a mistake and provided the AP with email addresses for the agency’s Senate-confirmed appointees, including three addresses for Harris, the acting secretary. His secret address was harris.sd@dol.gov. His other accounts were one for use with labor employees and the public, and another to send mass emails to the entire Labor Department, outside groups and the public. The Labor Department said it did not object to the AP publishing any of Harris’ email addresses.

In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn’t provide such emails without undergoing “an extensive and elongated department-wide search.” He also said there were “no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS.”

Late last year, the EPA’s critics — including Republicans in Congress — accused former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of using an email account under the name “Richard Windsor” to sidestep disclosure rules. The EPA said emails Jackson sent using her Windsor alias were turned over under open records requests. The agency’s inspector general is investigating the use of such accounts, after being asked to do so by Congress.

An EPA spokeswoman described Jackson’s alternate email address as “an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials.” It was later determined that Jackson also used the email address to correspond sometimes with environmentalists outside government and at least in some cases did not correct a misperception among outsiders they were corresponding with a government employee named Richard Windsor.

Although the EPA’s inspector general is investigating the agency’s use of secret email accounts, it is not reviewing whether emails from Jackson’s secret account were released as required under the Freedom of Information Act.

The EPA’s secret email accounts were revealed last fall by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that was tipped off about Jackson’s alias by an insider and later noticed it in documents it obtained the FOIA. The EPA said its policy was to disclose in such documents that “Richard Windsor” was actually the EPA administrator.

Courts have consistently set a high bar for the government to withhold public officials’ records under the federal privacy rules. A federal judge, Marilyn Hall Patel of California, said in August 2010 that “persons who have placed themselves in the public light” — such as through politics or voluntarily participation in the public arena — have a “significantly diminished privacy interest than others.” Her ruling was part of a case in which a journalist sought FBI records, but was denied.

“We’re talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private,” said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He said that’s different than, for example, confidential information, such as a Social Security number.

Under the law, citizens and foreigners may use the FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.

Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation’s signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be “administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

Published June 04, 2013 / Associated Press

Socialism vs Capitalism

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socialismThere is a growing divide in the United States, as there is throughout the world, regarding the role of governments in economies.

Following the phenomenal success of “The American Experiment” of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the world saw the rise of socialism in the early part of the Twentieth Century, when the economies of China and Russia were usurped by the mass murder of many millions of their citizens who owned or produced more than the bare minimum.

This “redistribution” of wealth was sold to the common people as “fairness,” and the Red Army was simultaneously forgiven its atrocities as the blood of millions stained the Eastern Hemisphere.

After World War II, less militaristic forms of socialism spread to the west, first in Europe, then to Banana Republics where dictators quickly rose to power on the backs of local revolutionaries they slew once “independence” was gained.

To understand Socialism, we should contrast it with its opposing economic system—Capitalism. Capitalism is a system where individuality reigns supreme, and independent persons utilize whatever resources they can develop, individually or in a voluntary aggregate, to generate the production of goods and services, which are sold to others who need them as an unhampered market requires. This is the system that catapulted America to world leadership in mere decades.

Socialism, on the other hand, is a system where government officials dictate every aspect of economic production and distribution. Government bureaucrats ascertain and determine what products will be produced, which services will be required, and which people will provide them. Socialism decries individualism, citing the accumulation of economic and social power into the hands of a few as a natural result of unbridled performance.

Socialism was proved a flawed system when those nations who had adopted it collapsed under their own weight, or as in the case of China, moved toward capitalism to save their faltering economies. The social impact on the citizens of those countries was much worse than the economic difficulties created by centralized control, however. The concentration of wealth and power under capitalism was eclipsed under socialism, where a mere handful dictated terms of life to the masses and lived like potentates compared with the working class.

Leftists in the U.S. have long eyed the wealth produced by America’s economic engine and have waged a hundred year war to siphon its prosperity off to socialistic programs. Indeed, power has shifted from the individual American to state and federal bureaucracies as individual liberties have been subordinated to government institutions through burdensome taxation and regulation. This loss of individual liberties has been accomplished in the name of “fairness” by the same methods employed in China and the U.S.S.R., only on a slower course.

socialism_white_housePresident Barack Hussein Obama outlines in his own autobiographies his affinity with socialism, and his disdain for what he terms colonialists (essentially, America’s founders). He has surrounded himself with socialists and communists his entire life, including during his presidency. His open agenda has been to subordinate and nationalize large portions of the American economy, and his insatiable appetite for spending the money of his fellow Americans, present and future, knows no practical bounds.

Obama, and all of those on the left who fantasize about a socialistic utopia covering our once-great land, should take some lessons in reality from history—recent at that. Lacking the wisdom to do that, they should reconsider the sage words of U.K.’s former Prime Minister:

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” ― Margaret Thatcher

PUBLIUS

Kerry Says US Will Sign UN Arms Treaty

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UN_gunsSecretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the Obama administration would sign a controversial U.N. treaty on arms regulation, despite bipartisan resistance in Congress from members concerned it could lead to new gun control measures in the U.S.

Kerry, releasing a written statement as the U.N. treaty opened for signature Monday, said the U.S. “welcomes” the next phase for the treaty, which the U.N. General Assembly approved on April 2.

“We look forward to signing it as soon as the process of conforming the official translations is completed satisfactorily,” he said. Kerry called the treaty “an important contribution to efforts to stem the illicit trade in conventional weapons, which fuels conflict, empowers violent extremists, and contributes to violations of human rights.”

The treaty would require countries that ratify it to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and components and to regulate arms brokers, but it will not explicitly control the domestic use of weapons in any country.

Still, gun-rights supporters on Capitol Hill warn the treaty could be used as the basis for additional gun regulations inside the U.S. and have threatened not to ratify.

Last week, 130 members of Congress signed a letter to Obama and Kerry urging them to reject the measure for this and other reasons.

“As your review of the treaty continues, we strongly encourage your administration to recognize its textual, inherent and procedural flaws, to uphold our country’s constitutional protections of civilian firearms ownership, and to defend the sovereignty of the United States, and thus to decide not to sign this treaty,” the lawmakers wrote.

The chance of adoption by the U.S. is slim, even if Obama goes ahead and signs it — as early as Monday, or possibly months down the road. A majority of Senate members have come out against the treaty. A two-thirds majority would be needed in the Senate to ratify.

What impact the treaty will have in curbing the estimated $60 billion global arms trade remains to be seen. The U.N. treaty will take effect after 50 countries ratify it, and a lot will depend on which ones ratify and which ones don’t, and how stringently it is implemented.

The United Nations has organized a high-level signing ceremony at U.N. headquarters on Monday — a sign of the treaty’s global importance — and several dozen countries are expected to sign, the first step to ratification.

The Control Arms Coalition, which includes hundreds of non-governmental organizations in more than 100 countries that promoted an Arms Trade Treaty, said it expects many of the world’s top arms exporters — including Britain, Germany and France — to sign alongside emerging exporters such as Brazil and Mexico. It said the United States is expected to sign later this year.

The coalition noted that more than 500,000 people are killed by armed violence every year and predicted that “history will be made” when many U.N. members sign the treaty, which it says is designed “to protect millions living in daily fear of armed violence and at risk of rape, assault, displacement and death.”

Many violence-wracked countries, including Congo and South Sudan, are also expected to sign. The coalition said their signature — and ratification — will make it more difficult for illicit arms to cross borders.

The treaty covers battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, and small arms and light weapons.

It prohibits states that ratify it from transferring conventional weapons if they violate arms embargoes or if they promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. The treaty also prohibits the export of conventional arms if they could be used in attacks on civilians or civilian buildings such as schools and hospitals.

In addition, the treaty requires countries to take measures to prevent the diversion of conventional weapons to the illicit market. This is among the provisions that gun-rights supporters in Congress are concerned about.

Published June 03, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

100,000 Christians Killed Annually Over Faith

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christians_killedA staggering 100,000 Christians are killed annually because of their faith, according to the Vatican — and several human rights groups claim such anti-Christian violence is on the rise in countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt.

“Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year,” Vatican spokesman Monsieur Silvano Maria Tomassi said Tuesday in a radio address to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“Other Christians and other believers are subjected to forced displacement, to the destruction of their places of worship, to rape and to the abduction of their leaders, as it recently happened in the case of Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji, in Aleppo [Syria],” Tomassi said.

While several human rights groups could not comment specifically on the Vatican’s number, organizations, like Persecution.Org, said the persecutions of Christians have been on the rise in places like Africa and the Middle East over the last decade.

“Two-hundred million Christians currently live under persecution. It’s absolutely on the rise,” Jeff King, the group’s president, told FoxNews.com.

“It’s easing in the old Communist world and it’s rising in the Islamic world,” King said, noting in particular countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria. King said that the first major killing spree in recent years happened between 1998 and 2003, when he claims 10,000 Christians were murdered in Indonesia alone during those years.

Last March, a Nigerian Christian leader was killed when suspected Muslim militants burst into his home and shot him. Two members of Islamic militant group Boko Haram shot Faye Pama Mysa, a Pentecostal pastor and secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, in his home Wednesday, according to multiple reports. The killing happened just after President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency because of ongoing attacks in Africa’s most populous nation.

King spoke of another example in which young Christian girls were forced into sex slavery in Bangladesh. More than 140 children were rescued from Islamic training centers over the last year — with the majority of girls being targeted because of their religion, according to King.

“Two-hundred million Christians currently live under persecution. It’s absolutely on the rise.” – Jeff King, president of Persecution.Org

John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International, has raised grave concerns over what he calls “religious cleansing” in Syria.

egyptian-christians-killed“Religious minorities are under constant threat in Syria,” Eibner told FoxNews.com. “If things continue as they have been for the past two years in Syria, with an increase in religious cleansing, it’s reasonable to think that there will be no more Christian communities or other religious minorities in the near future.”

“Anti-Christian violence is on the increase throughout the world, especially throughout North Africa and the Middle East,” he added. “It’s hard for me to say with precision what the numbers are, but without doubt anti-Christian violence is on the increase.”

Dinah Pokempner, general counsel for Human Rights Watch, was not able to independently verify the Vatican’s figure, but said, “I think there’s little doubt that every week, every day, someone in the world is being persecuted – even to the point of losing their life – based on their religion.”

“Persecution is a daily event on the basis of religion,” Pokempner said. “This persecution affects Christians just as it does Muslims, Jews, Bahá’ís and people of other faiths.”

A spokesman with the Vatican could not be immediately reached for comment.

Jane Zimmerman, the U.S. State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, said in a statement that: “While I’m unfamiliar with the methodology that was used to reach that number, we have certainly followed numerous cases in recent years in which Christians and others of many faiths have been attacked or killed on account of their religious beliefs.”

“Whatever the numbers, no one should die for professing or practicing their faith, whatever that faith is,” Zimmerman told FoxNews.com. “The United States firmly supports the freedom to profess and practice one’s faith, to believe or not to believe, and to change one’s beliefs. As Secretary Kerry said on May 20, religious freedom ‘is a birthright of every human being.'”

By Cristina Corbin / Published June 02, 2013 / FoxNews.com

IRS Conference Spending Under Fire

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Lawmakers Trying To Avert Fiscal Cliff To Prevent Short-Term Shock To The EconomyA government watchdog has found that the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, a House committee said Sunday.

The chairman of that committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also released excerpts of congressional investigators’ interviews with employees of the IRS office in Cincinnati. Issa said the interviews indicated the employees were directed by Washington to subject tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to tough scrutiny.

The excerpts provided no direct evidence that Washington had ordered that screening. The top Democrat on that panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, contested that, saying none of the employees interviewed have so far identified any IRS officials in Washington as ordering that targeting.

The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about “leadership through art,” the House committee said.

The report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general, set to be released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted tea party and other conservative groups.

Agency officials and the Obama administration have said that treatment was inappropriate, but the political tempest is showing no signs of ebbing and has put the White House on the defensive.

Three congressional committees are investigating, a Justice Department criminal investigation is under way, President Barack Obama has replaced the IRS’ acting commissioner and two other top officials have stepped aside.

The Treasury Department released a statement Sunday saying the administration “has already taken aggressive and dramatic action to reduce conference spending.”

IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Sunday that spending on large agency conferences with 50 or more participants fell from $37.6 million in the 2010 budget year to $4.9 million in 2012. The government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1 the previous calendar year.

On Friday, the new acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, released a statement on the forthcoming report criticizing the Anaheim meeting.

“This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era,” Werfel said. “While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred.”

Issa’s committee also released excerpts from interviews congressional investigators conducted last week with two IRS employees from the agency’s Cincinnati office. The excerpts omitted the names of those interviewed and provided no specifics about individuals in Washington who may have been involved.

One of the IRS employees said in an excerpt that they were told by a supervisor that the need to collect the reports came from Washington, and said that in early 2010 the Cincinnati office had sent copies of seven of the cases to Washington.

The other said “all my direction” came from an official the transcript said was in Washington.

One of the workers also expressed skepticism that the Cincinnati office originated the screening without direction from Washington, according to the excerpts.

Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Issa said this conflicted with White House comments that have referred to misconduct by IRS workers in Cincinnati. Without naming White House spokesman Jay Carney, Issa said the administration’s “paid liar, their spokesperson” is “still making up things about what happens in calling this local rogue.”

He added, “This is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we’re getting to proving it.”

In briefings with reporters, Carney has not referred to the Cincinnati IRS office as “rogue.”

“He’s good at throwing out outlandish charges but it’s unclear what he’s saying he lied about,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said of Issa’s remark.

Cummings said Issa’s comments conflicted with a Treasury inspector general’s report that provided no evidence that the Cincinnati office received orders on targeting from anyone else.

“Rather than lobbing unsubstantiated conclusions on national television for political reasons, we need to work in a bipartisan way to follow the facts where they lead,” Cummings said.

The interviews with IRS employees were conducted by Republican and Democratic aides on Issa’s committee and also involved aides from both parties from the House Ways and Means Committee.

One of the employees was a lower-level worker while the other was higher-ranked, said one congressional aide, but the committee did not release their names or titles.

The IRS Cincinnati office handles applications from around the country for tax-exempt status. A Treasury inspector general’s report in May said employees there began searching for applications from tea party and conservative groups in their hunt for organizations that primarily do work related to election campaigns.

That May report blamed “ineffective management” for letting that screening occur for more than 18 months between 2010 and 2012. But that report — and three hearings by congressional committees — have produced no specific evidence that the Cincinnati workers were ordered by anyone in Washington to target conservatives.

The latest report on IRS conferences will be the subject of a hearing Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Karen Kraushaar, spokeswoman for the inspector general’s office, said public discussion of a report before it is released “serves no purpose and should generally be avoided.”

Werfel is scheduled to make his first congressional appearance as acting commissioner Monday when he appears before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

According to congressional aides briefed by the inspector general’s office, the IRS did not formally seek competitive bids for the city where the agency’s 2010 conference was held, for the event planner who assisted the agency, or for the speakers.

The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a confidential congressional briefing, said other benefits given to some attendees at the Anaheim IRS conference included vouchers for free drinks and some tickets to attend Angels baseball games.

Two videos produced by the IRS were shown at the Anaheim conference. In one, agency employees did a parody of “Star Trek” while dressed like the TV show’s characters; the second shows more than a dozen IRS workers dancing on a stage. The two videos cost the agency more than $50,000 to make, aides said.

The lecturer who spoke about leadership through art produced six paintings of subjects that included Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, the rock singer Bono and the Statue of Liberty, the aides said.

Published June 02, 2013 / Associated Press

IRS Agent Says Order to Flag Tea Party Came From DC

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irs_official_pleasds_fifthInterviews with a regional IRS agent involved in the agency targeting Tea Party groups for additional vetting appear to contradict the White House assertion that rogue agents, not the administration, were behind the effort, according to partial transcripts released Sunday by the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee.

The agent in the Cincinnati office, where the targeting took place, told congressional investigators that he or she was told in March 2010 by a supervisor to search for Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status and that “Washington, D.C., wanted some cases.”

The agent said that by April the office had held up roughly 40 cases and at least seven were sent to Washington. In addition, the agent said, a second IRS employee asked for information on two other specific applicants in which Washington was interested.

When asked by congressional investigators about allegations and press reports about two agents in Cincinnati essentially being responsible for the targeting, the agent responded: “It’s impossible. As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen. … They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.”

The administration has denied involvement in the scandal, repeatedly saying it was limited to only the two Cincinnati agents.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has appeared to give conflicting statements on the scandal, including whether top White House officials knew only of the inspector general’s probe into the targeting of politically conservative groups or if they were told about the bombshell findings when briefed in late April.

Carney also said the top officials decided not to tell President Obama to avoid any possibility of the White House interfering in the investigation.

On Sunday, California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affair Committee, accused Carney of being untruthful about the scandal.

“Their paid liar, their spokesperson … he’s still making up things about what happened and calling this a local rogue,” Issa said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The congressman also provided the network with a copy of the transcript in which the agent said he or she followed directions from Washington. However, when asked if the Tea Party scrutiny came directly from Washington, the agency said “I believe so.”

Officials have also said the targeting was not politically motivated, though it appeared to last until nearly the end of the 2012 election cycle and did not appear to target liberal-leaning political groups.

At least three congressional committees are already investigating the scandal, which widened last week to include revelations about the agency spending roughly $60,000 on team-building videos that spoofed the TV shows “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island.” New IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has vowed to conduct a full investigation.

In addition, the Treasury Department’s inspector general released a preliminary report this weekend that shows the IRS spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees from 2010 to 2012, according to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, with the full report to be released later this week.

Steve Miller, the acting IRS director when the scandal broke, resigned May 15 after Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked for his resignation.

Holder Faces Probe Over Testimony

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holder_congressThe chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Sunday his panel is investigating remarks Attorney General Eric Holder made under oath regarding the Justice Department accessing a Fox News reporter’s phone logs and emails.

“It’s fair to say we’re investigating the conflict in his remarks, those remarks were made under oath,” Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told “Fox News Sunday.”

However, he did not say the committee is investigating Holder for perjury.

Goodlatte said the committee has sent Holder a letter asking him to explain why his remarks before Congress in May seem to conflict with the language of an affidavit he signed in 2010 asking a judge to give investigators access to Fox reporter James Rosen’s communications and movement within State Department headquarters.

“We also think it’s very important that the attorney general be afforded the opportunity to respond, so we will wait to pass judgment on that until we receive his response,” the congressman said.

At issue is Holder signing the 2010 affidavit that refers to Rosen as a “potential criminal liability” for seeking classified information from a State Department contract employee and states investigators had probable cause to believe Rosen committed a crime by conspiring with the employee or by aiding and abetting the purported leak.

Holder then told Congress on May 15 that prosecuting the press was “not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.”

On Sunday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told Fox that Holder’s testimony and his actions in 2010 are consistent because the government had probable cause to believe Rosen violated the Espionage Act of 1917.

“But that doesn’t mean the Justice Department ever intended to prosecute Rosen,” said Van Hollen, an attorney. “There are no false allegations in this affidavit that I know of.”

The House committee sent the letter to Holder on May 29 and gave him until Wednesday to respond.

Published June 02, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Top Staffer for Florida Dem. Rep. Garcia Resigns Amid Voting Fraud Probe

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joe_garciaThe top staffer for Florida Democratic Rep. Joe Garcia resigned this weekend after being implicated in a voting-fraud scheme.

Chief of Staff Jeffrey Garcia resigned Friday after taking responsibility for the plot and being asked by the congressman for his resignation.

A “well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout” – Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Fla.

The congressman said Saturday he thinks the plot was a “well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout” and that the system is “prone to fraud.”

Several hours before the resignation, law-enforcement investigators raided the homes of Giancarlo Sopo, the congressman’s communications director, and John Estes, his 2012 campaign manager.

Authorities are investigating a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests.

Garcia won the primary and later defeated incumbent Republican David Rivera in the general election.

That primary resulted in a separate, federal corruption investigation into whether Rivera had ties to the illegally funded primary campaign of one of Garcia’s opponents. Rivera has denied any wrongdoing.

Published June 02, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Arizona Mom Freed From Mexican Jail

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mormon_mother_mexicoAn Arizona mother imprisoned in Mexico on a drug-smuggling charge was released from prison late Thursday, a family spokesman tells Fox News.

Yanira Maldonado walked out of the jail late Thursday night, after court officials reviewed security footage that showed her and her husband boarding a bus in Mexico with only blankets, bottles of water and her purse in hand.

Maldonado hugged her husband Gary and was greeted by well-wishers after she left the lockup and officials closed the jail doors behind her.

She spoke briefly, thanking U.S. state department officials, her husband, her lawyers and prison workers who made her stay comfortable.

“Many thanks to everyone, especially my God who let me go free, my family, my children, who with their help, I was able to survive this test,” she said.

The family’s lawyer in Nogales, Jose Francisco Benitez Paz, said a judge determined Thursday that she was no longer a suspect and all allegations against her were dropped. The couple planned to immediately return to Arizona, he said.

“She lived through a nightmare,” he said after her release.

Maldonado’s release came hours after court officials reviewed security footage that showed the couple boarding a commercial bus traveling from Mexico to Phoenix with only blankets, bottles of water and her purse in hand.

U.S. politicians portrayed her as a victim of a corrupt judicial system and demanded her release.

The judge had until late Friday to decide whether to free her or send her to another prison in Mexico while state officials continued to build their case. Prosecutors could appeal the ruling.

Maldonado was arrested by the Mexican military last week after they found nearly 12 pounds (5.4 kilograms) of pot under her seat during a security checkpoint.

Benitez noted that it was a fairly sophisticated smuggling effort that included packets of drugs attached to the seat bottoms with metal hooks — a task that would have been impossible for a passenger. He said witness testimony and the surveillance video showed Yanira Maldonado was innocent.

“There is justice in this country,” he said.

Gary Maldonado said he was originally arrested after the pot was found under his wife’s bus seat, but after Yanira Maldonado begged the soldiers to allow her to come along to serve as a translator, the military officials decided to release him and arrest her instead. He said authorities originally demanded $5,000 for his wife’s release, but the bribe fell through.

“Here, we are guilty until you are proven innocent,” he said after the court hearing.

Arizona_Mom_FreedThe Maldonados were traveling home to the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear after attending her aunt’s funeral in the city of Los Mochis when they were arrested.

The bus passed through at least two checkpoints on the way to the border without incident. In the town of Querobabi in the border state of Sonora, all the passengers were ordered off the bus and a soldier searched the interior as they waited. The soldier exited and told his superiors that packets of drugs had been found under seat 39, Yanira Maldonado’s, and another seat, number 42. Her husband was in seat 40.

Gary Maldonado said a man sitting behind them on the bus fled during the inspection. He said the man might have been the true owner of the drugs.

About 40 people were on the bus before the inspection, but Gary Maldonado said he was the only passenger who appeared American.

Mexican officials provided local media with photos that they said were of the packages Maldonado is accused of smuggling. Each was about 5 inches high and 20 inches wide, roughly the width of a bus seat. The marijuana was packed into plastic bags and wrapped in tan packing tape.

The couple had previously traveled on commercial buses through Mexico because they felt it was safer than driving a personal vehicle.

Yanira Maldonado is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, her family said. The couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary while she was jailed.

Drug traffickers have increasingly been using passenger buses to move U.S.-bound drugs through Mexico. Federal agents and soldiers have set up checkpoints along Mexico’s main highways and have routinely seized cocaine, marijuana, heroin and more from buses.

Mexico’s justice system is carried out largely in secret, with proceedings done almost entirely in writing.

Four years ago, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, but it still has stiff penalties for drug trafficking.

Mexican law doesn’t specify a minimum or maximum sentence in drug crimes and leaves it up to the judge to decide how long the sentence should be, said Jose Luis Manjarrez, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Mexico.

On Wednesday, an army lieutenant, a private and another sergeant were supposed to appear in court but they did not show up. The army did not explain why, the couple’s lawyer said.

A search of court records in Arizona didn’t turn up any drug-related charges against Yanira or Gary Maldonado.

The Maldonados said they will likely avoid future trips to Mexico.

“Maybe in time,” she said.

Published May 31, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

IRS Chief Shulman Visited White House 157 Times During Tea Party Scrutinizing

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irs_visit_white_houseThe former head of the IRS visited the White House more times than any Cabinet member, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller, raising questions about the nature of those visits — particularly around the time the agency was targeting conservative groups.

The Caller analysis of White House visitor logs showed former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times under the Obama administration.

Even Attorney General Eric Holder, one of Obama’s closest allies, visited only 62 times according to the records.

The records may not reflect every single visit, as some officials do not have to sign in every time they come to the White House.

But they could lend weight to concerns voiced by lawmakers at a hearing last week about the frequency of Shulman’s White House contact. During the time period when the IRS was singling out Tea Party and other groups for extra vetting — as they applied for tax-exempt status — Shulman visited the White House 118 times.

Asked to explain the visits, Shulman gave lawmakers a list of possible reasons.

“The Easter Egg roll with my kids … questions about the administratibility of tax policy … our budget, us helping the Department of Education streamline application processes for financial aid,” he said.

According to the Caller analysis, no other top official logged more than 100 visits.

The official with the next-highest number of visits — close to 90 — was Rebecca Blank, former deputy secretary and now acting secretary of the Commerce Department. Next in line was Thomas Perez, a top Justice Department official who has since been nominated to lead the Labor Department.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner each logged fewer than 50 visits.

Former IRS officials have testified that the scrutiny of conservative groups, while inappropriate, was not politically motivated.

Published May 30, 2013 / FoxNews.com

VOTER FRAUD – 25 PERCENT OF OHIO VOTERS DON’T EXIST?

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voter-fraudIn the eight months since Human Events and The Columbus Dispatch reported that several counties in the major Swing State have voter rolls that boast literally 110 percent voter registration, the Obama-Holder Justice Department has yet to investigate the widespread voter fraud that is occurring in particularly Left-leaning districts.

Human Events reported:

“In two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the voting age population: Northwestern Ohio’s Wood County shows 109 registered voters for every 100 eligible, while in Lawrence County along the Ohio River it’s a mere 104 registered per 100 eligible.”

Human Events also said that, an additional “31 more counties report over 90 percent voter registration, which is a good 20 percent higher than the national average.” 

Furthermore, the Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, said that he sent Attorney General Holder a letter in February of 2012, which warned him that “Common sense says that the odds of voter fraud increase the longer these ineligible voters are allowed to populate our rolls… I simply cannot accept that.”

Holder, nor anyone under his command, got back to the Secretary of State before the state turned Obama-Blue in November of 2012.  The Justice Department still has yet to respond.

john hustedMeanwhile, voter fraud continues to be a major issue in Ohio and around the country as a whole.

Human Events said that nationally, “The Pew Center for the States estimates about 24 million ineligible voter registrations, including more than 1.8 million dead people listed as voters; about 2.75 million with voter registrations in more than one state; and about 12 million voter records with incorrect addresses.”

While these numbers are staggering, what is even more shocking is that despite the Justice Department being made aware of these facts, Eric Holder still opposes a national requirement for voters to show ID in order to cast their ballot.

People have to present ID to cash a check, buy a beer, test drive a car, and sign their children out when they get picked up for day care.

Why does Eric Holder think casting a ballot to elect local, state, and national leaders is so much less significant?

By Joe Calandra Jr.

Arizona LDS Mom Says She Has ‘Nothing to Hide’

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mormon_mother_mexicoAn Arizona mother accused of trying to smuggle 12 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. from Mexico says she has “nothing to hide” and expects to be released soon.

Yanira Maldonado, 42, of Goodyear, Ariz. was arrested by the Mexican military after they found nearly 12 pounds of pot under her bus seat last week. In an exclusive jailhouse interview, the mother of seven told ABC15.com she had nothing to do with the marijuana packages — packed in plastic bags and wrapped in tan packing tape — found under her seat.

“I’m going to be free; I’m not guilty,” Maldonado said. “I have nothing to hide.”

Maldonado, a devout Mormon, credited her faith as her source of strength while behind bars for nearly a week in a Mexican jail in Nogales.

“I was nervous before, but now I feel a little better,” she told ABC15.com. “This is a trial that I have to go through. It’s going to make us stronger.”

Still, Maldonado said she’s eagerly anticipating her freedom.

“This is a nightmare,” she said. “I need to be out.”

Jose Francisco Benitez Paz, Maldonado’s attorney, told a judge during a court hearing on Wednesday that she should be released from prison, noting that it was a fairly sophisticated smuggling effort that included packets of drugs attached to the seat bottoms with metal hooks — a task that would have been impossible for someone like Maldonado.

“It was very well prepared,” he said. “It wasn’t something quick. It was very well done.”

Maldonado and her husband, Gary, said they were returning from the funeral of her aunt last Wednesday when the passenger bus they were on was stopped at a Mexican military checkpoint about 90 miles from the U.S. border. Authorities ordered everyone off, searched the bus and then claimed to have found the marijuana under her seat.

“It’s looking promising, like our case is solid and theirs looks weak.” – Gary Maldonado, husband of woman accused of pot smuggling

“We just had our witnesses testify, I did my declaration,” Gary Maldonado, her husband, told MyFoxPhoenix.com by phone. “Yanira did hers yesterday. It’s looking promising, like our case is solid and theirs looks weak.”

Gary Maldonado said an attorney told them they could pay off the judge, so he had family members wire him $5,000 for the bribe. But he says though the money was offered, it was not accepted. He also said the Mexican legal system is a far cry from the judicial process in the U.S.

“What they do is they gather up all the testimonies and then the judge will have her secretary-lawyer type all the stuff up and then she’ll give a recommendation of what she thinks to the judge,” he said. “The judge will decide the case from reading all the evidence, who weighs more in evidence.”

Benitez said that he was hired Friday and represented Maldonado in hearings on Monday and Tuesday. He presented testimony from her and from two relatives who accompanied the couple to the Los Mochis bus station, and two fellow passengers on the bus. All four testified that she had not been carrying any drugs.

He described her as depressed, but said she had not been abused of mistreated.

“She doesn’t accept any of the accusations that are being made,” he said. “She is sad because of the situation, in which she’s being accused of a crime she didn’t commit.”

Brandon Klippel, Yanira Maldonado’s brother-in-law, told MyFoxPhoenix.com that four members of Maldonado’s family testified in court Tuesday, including a relative who dropped them off at the bus station. Klippel said witnesses testified that the Maldonados entered the bus “without anything with them” and that documentation exists confirming that the funeral took place.

“Our greatest fear right now is that our sister will be lost,’’ Klippel told Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday. “One of the things the attorney said to us right in the beginning is that once you’re in the federal prison system (in Mexico), they move you around without keeping good records. In fact, she was lost for the first day in the prison system when this first started. “If she’s moved and transported around, we may never see our sister again, and that’s something that would just be devastating to our family.”

Anna Soto, one of Maldonado’s daughters, said she’s innocent and should be allowed to return to Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix.

“Just let her come home,” Soto said. “Let her come home. She is innocent.”

Soto said she hopes her mother will be home by Friday.

“[I] keep praying, that’s all I can really do,” she told MyFoxPhoenix.com.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement Tuesday that Yanira Maldonado’s “rights to a defense counsel and due process are being observed.” The embassy didn’t respond to allegations she was framed.

Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy spokesman for the U.S. State Department in Mexico, confirmed Maldonado’s arrest but referred all questions to her attorney and Mexican authorities. But on Wednesday, a State Department spokesperson said U.S. diplomats have been in touch with both the Maldonados and Mexican authorities regarding the incident.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., “is personally monitoring the situation and he has had multiple conversations with the deputy Mexican ambassador,” his office said in a statement.

Published May 30, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tea Party Groups Sue Over Targeting

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Lerner_IRS_FifthWASHINGTON –  A Washington advocacy group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the IRS and top Obama administration officials on behalf of 25 Tea Party-related groups, marking the biggest lawsuit to date over the tax agency’s practice of targeting conservatives for additional scrutiny.

The 29-page lawsuit named Attorney General Eric Holder, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and several IRS officials — including Lois Lerner, the division director who refused to testify before Congress last week. The suit claims the constitutional rights of 25 Tea Party and other conservative groups were violated when tax workers singled them out for a drawn-out vetting process.

The American Center for Law and Justice is arguing that the Obama administration overstepped its authority and violated the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act as well as the IRS’ own rules and regulations.

“The whole timeline and the whole narrative that the White House has put forth does not hold up to the truth,” ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow told Fox News on Wednesday.

In its suit, the ACLJ wants the government to admit wrongdoing. The suit also seeks to protect the groups from future IRS retaliation as well as compensatory and punitive monetary damages.

“The IRS and the federal government are not going to get away with this unlawful targeting of conservative groups,” Sekulow said later in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “As this unconstitutional scheme continues even today, the only way to stop this flagrant and arrogant abuse of our clients’ rights is to file a federal lawsuit, which we have done.”

Sekulow says the suit is intended to “send a very powerful message to the IRS and the Obama administration.”

Emails to the White House and IRS for comment were not immediately returned. Administration officials have said that while the additional scrutiny was inappropriate it was not partisan and therefore no laws were broken.

Allegations that the IRS had been targeting conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status date back years but a government watchdog report released this month backed up the claims.

The White House has spent most of the last two weeks trying to contain the fallout from the scandal. Multiple congressional panels are currently investigating the allegations. The Justice Department has also launched its own investigation into whether the IRS broke the rules.

By last Friday, two of the agency’s top tax officials had been ousted from the agency. One was outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, who was named in the suit. Another official, Lerner, the director of the division that singled out the conservative groups, was placed on leave — apparently after she refused to resign. She, too, was named in the suit.

Lerner last week invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify.

Separately, last week two other Tea Party-related groups filed lawsuits against the IRS.

On May 20, the NorCal Tea Party Patriots filed the first federal suit against the national tax agency. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Cincinnati, seeks group status for “all conservative and libertarian groups targeted for additional scrutiny” between March 2010 and May 2013. It’s also seeking unspecified monetary damages for the alleged violation of its constitutional rights and the costs associated with trying to comply with IRS demands.

The lawsuit is being backed by Citizens for Self-Governance, a group launched by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler.

Meckler claims that IRS agents demanded massive amounts of disclosure of information not authorized by the Internal Revenue Code or any other federal law. The suit alleges that the tactic was used to delay or dissuade conservative groups from going through with their applications.
The IRS acknowledged that employees at its Cincinnati office had targeted conservative groups, creating massive amounts of paperwork or rejecting applications altogether.

On May 21, Texas-based True the Vote, filed its own suit against the IRS and is demanding the government admit its mistake, grant the group tax-exempt status and pay for thousands of dollars in damages the group says it suffered.

Published May 29, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Husband of Arizona Mom Jailed in Mexico Fights for Her Freedom

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mormon_mother_mexicoThe husband of an Arizona mother of seven accused of trying to sneak 12 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. says his wife is no drug smuggler.

Yanira Maldonado, 42, and her husband Gary said they were returning from the funeral of her aunt last Wednesday when the passenger bus they were on was stopped at a Mexican military checkpoint about 90 miles from the U.S. border. Authorities ordered everyone off, searched the bus and then claimed to have found the marijuana under her seat. Yanira Maldonado, a devout Mormon, has been in custody ever since, and is now being held in a jail in Nogales pending her next court appearance.

“It’s looking promising, like our case is solid and theirs looks weak.”- Gary Maldonado, husband of woman accused of pot smuggling

“We just had our witnesses testify, I did my declaration,” Gary Maldonado, her husband, told MyFoxPhoenix.com by phone. “Yanira did hers yesterday. It’s looking promising, like our case is solid and theirs looks weak.”

Gary Maldonado, who said authorities initially demanded a $5,000 bribe, said the Mexican legal system is a far cry from the judicial process in the U.S.

“What they do is they gather up all the testimonies and then the judge will have her secretary-lawyer type all the stuff us and then she’ll give a recommendation of what she thinks to the judge,” he said. “The judge will decide the case from reading all the evidence, who weighs more in evidence.”

Brandon Klippel, Gary Maldonado’s brother-in-law, told the station that four members of Maldonado’s family testified in court Tuesday, including a relative who dropped them off at the bus station. More testimony is expected Wednesday. Klippel said witnesses testified that the Maldonados entered the bus “without anything with them” and that documentation exists confirming that the funeral took place.

“Our greatest fear right now is that our sister will be lost,’’ Yanira Maldonado’s brother-in-law, Brandon Klippel, told Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday. “One of the things the attorney said to us right in the beginning is that once you’re in the federal prison system (in Mexico), they move you around without keeping good records. In fact, she was lost for the first day in the prison system when this first started. “If she’s moved and transported around, we may never see our sister again, and that’s something that would just be devastating to our family.”

Yanira Maldonado, a U.S. citizen for 17 years, is a devout Mormon and mother of seven. One of her daughters, Anna Soto, said she’s innocent and should be allowed to return to Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix.

“Just let her come home,” Soto said. “Let her come home. She is innocent.”

Soto said she hopes her mother will be home by Friday.

“[I] keep praying, that’s all I can really do,” she told MyFoxPhoenix.com.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement Tuesday that Yanira Maldonado’s “rights to a defense counsel and due process are being observed.” The embassy didn’t respond to allegations she was framed.

Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy spokesman for the U.S. State Department in Mexico, confirmed Maldonado’s arrest but referred all questions to her attorney and Mexican authorities.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., “is personally monitoring the situation and he has had multiple conversations with the deputy Mexican ambassador,” his office said in a statement.

Published May 29, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Mormon Mom Jailed in Mexico after Aunt’s Funeral

FEELING THE HEAT: Liberal Attorney Joins Calls For Holder to Be ‘Fired’

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eric-holderTop Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee openly challenged Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday over his testimony two weeks ago in which he claimed to be unaware of any “potential prosecution” of the press, despite knowing about an investigation that targeted a Fox News reporter.

Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., R-Wis., voiced “great concern” in a letter to Holder. They asked a litany of questions about the department’s dealings with the press, and pointedly alleged that the Fox News case “contradicts” his testimony at a May 15 hearing.

“It is imperative that the Committee, the Congress, and the American people be provided a full and accurate account of your involvement,” they wrote.

The letter comes a day after the committee confirmed it was looking into Holder’s testimony. Appearing before the House Judiciary Committee on May 15, Holder insisted that “the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material” is not something he was involved in or knew about.

But days later, it emerged that the Justice Department obtained access to the emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen — after filing an affidavit that accused him of being a likely criminal “co-conspirator” in the leak of sensitive material regarding North Korea. Rosen was never charged, and never prosecuted. But he was effectively accused of violating the federal Espionage Act.

“The media reports and statements issued by the Department regarding the search warrants for Mr. Rosen’s emails appear to be at odds with your sworn testimony before the Committee,” Goodlatte and Sensenbrenner wrote in the letter Wednesday. They did not accuse Holder of committing perjury, but noted he was “under oath.”

Among other questions, they asked Holder how he could claim to have never heard of the potential prosecution of the press. And they asked him to clarify whether he “personally approved” the search warrant request.

The top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Michigan Rep. John Conyers, said Tuesday, though, he thinks Holder “was forthright and did not mislead the Committee.”

“Certainly, there are policy disagreements as to how the First Amendment should apply to these series of leak investigations being conducted by the Justice Department, and that is and should be an area for the Committee to consider.  However, there is no need to turn a policy disagreement into allegations of misconduct,” he said.

Holder could argue that, in fact, Rosen was never prosecuted — and so his testimony was not misleading.

A federal law enforcement official said last week that the department had to establish probable cause in the affidavit in order to obtain the search warrant, per the terms of the Privacy Protection Act.

“Saying that there is probable cause to believe that someone has committed a crime and actually charging the person with that crime are two very different things,” the official said.

Meanwhile, one of the country’s most prominent liberal legal scholars called Wednesday for Holder to be “fired,” joining the growing list of left-leaning pundits slamming his department’s pursuit of journalists’ phone and email records.

Jonathan Turley, an attorney and law professor at George Washington University, hammered Holder in a USA Today column Wednesday. He charged that Holder has “supervised a comprehensive erosion of privacy rights, press freedom and due process,” aided by Democrats who looked the other way.

But in the wake of the reporter records scandal, Democrats are starting to join with Republicans in questioning whether Holder continues to be the right man to lead the Department of Justice in President Obama’s second term.

Turley, in his column, referenced a recent call by the Republican National Committee chairman for Holder’s resignation. “Unlike the head of the RNC, I am neither a Republican nor conservative, and I believe Holder should be fired,” Turley wrote.

While Democrats largely defended Holder when his department came under fire for the botched anti-gunrunning sting Operation Fast and Furious, they’ve been less forgiving over the move this year to seize two months of phone records from Associated Press offices. That bombshell was compounded by the revelation that the department seized phone and email records for Fox News offices. The scandal grew as the department acknowledged Friday that Holder was involved in the court document that accused Rosen of being a likely criminal “co-conspirator,” as part of the department’s successful argument for obtaining a search warrant for Rosen’s emails.

According to a report in The Daily Beast, aides say Holder has started to feel regret for the investigations. Under Obama’s direction, he is starting a review of DOJ policies and meeting with representatives from the media.

A Justice Department official said Wednesday that Holder will hold meetings with several Washington bureau chiefs of national news organizations over the next two days.

“These meetings will begin a series of discussions that will continue to take place over the coming weeks. During these sessions, the Attorney General will engage with a diverse and representative group of news media organizations, including print, wires, radio, television, online media and news and trade associations,” the official said.

Turley, in his column, scoffed at this course of action, since Holder was involved in the surveillance — at least the surveillance involving Fox News — in the first place. “Such an inquiry offers no reason to trust its conclusions,” Turley wrote.

He described Holder as a trusted Obama “sin eater,” swallowing the worst criticisms to shield the president.

“Indeed, these sins should be fatal for any attorney general,” Turley wrote.

Published May 29, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Rep. Michele Bachmann Says She Will Not Run for Re-election in 2014

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michele_bachmanCongresswoman Michele Bachmann says she will not run for re-election in 2014, ending her tenure as the representative from Minnesota’s sixth congressional district after four terms.In a video released on her website early Wednesday, the Tea Party favorite says that, in her opinion, if presidents can only serve eight years that length of time is sufficient for her to serve in Congress.

Bachmann claims her decision was not influenced by concerns that she would not be re-elected, or by recent inquiries into her 2012 presidential campaign.

In January, a former Bachmann aide filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming Bachmann made improper payments to an Iowa state senator who was the state chairman of her 2012 presidential run. The aide, Peter Waldron, also accused Bachmann of other FEC violations.

Bachmann says she considered not running again for her House seat in 2012 after her failed presidential bid, but felt another Republican candidate would not have enough time to adequately prepare for the race.

“I will continue to work overtime for the next 18 months in Congress defending the same constitutional conservative values we have worked so hard on together,” Bachmann says in the video.

Bachmann had given few clues she was considering leaving Congress. Her fundraising operation was churning out the regular pitches for the small-dollar donations that Bachmann corralled so well over the years, and she had an ad running on Twin Cities television talking about her role in opposing President Obama’s health law.

As for her plans beyond Congress, Bachmann said, “There is no future option or opportunity, be it directly in the political arena or otherwise, that I won’t be giving serious consideration if it can help save and protect our great nation.”

Published May 29, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report

California Dems Aim to Curb Oil Bonanza With Anti-Fracking Bills

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cal_frackingCalifornia is on the verge of a new gold rush. Expanded hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — at the Monterey Shale formation is sparking estimates that 15 billion barrels of oil could be accessed, along with millions of jobs and huge contributions to the domestic energy supply.Even the state’s green-friendly Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, says “the potential is extraordinary.”But standing in the way is a flurry of anti-fracking bills. At last count, 10 were on the table, all introduced by Democrats seeking tighter controls over the controversial technology.Some of the measures take aim at how crude is extracted from rock layers beyond the reach of conventional drilling.Others call for full disclosure of what chemicals are used in the high-pressure process, how they’re removed, and where they’re stored.California State Sen. Fran Pavley, a longtime environmental activist, is pushing for a fracking moratorium until more studies are done on the potential risks, particularly to the groundwater supply.

“With hydraulic fracturing, hundreds of gallons of water, laced with chemicals, sand … can go horizontally underground. … We don’t know enough,” she said.

Fracking has been around in California for decades. It’s a standard step in oil drilling, and while health problems have been reported in states like Colorado and Pennsylvania, the technology has a clean safety record in the Golden State. But critics argue it’s virtually impossible to know exactly where, or how often, fracking operations are occurring.

“Companies aren’t required to report fracking to anyone — not the state or the federal government,” said Patrick Sullivan, with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Some have made their fracking public, but they certainly don’t have to.”

Even so, supporters say bills seeking more studies and rules are, at this point, premature — and could jeopardize a potential bonanza.

“Why would you want to curtail energy production, with a technology that has proved to be safe, and (deny) the folks in the regions of the state where those benefits are going to accrue? That just doesn’t make any sense,” argued Tupper Hull, with the Western States Petroleum Association.

At public workshops, state regulators who oversee drilling in California are outlining their own preliminary rules. They argue once they’re formally approved, these rules will make anti-fracking laws unnecessary.

But some legislators aren’t convinced those regulations will be enough, as energy companies aggressively eye the vast Monterey Shale, and the promise of the biggest boom ever in this oil-rich state.

By Claudia Cowan / Published May 28, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Issa Subpoenas Kerry for Missing Benghazi Emails

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john_kerryRepublican Rep. Darrell Issa issued subpoenas Tuesday for a host of State Department emails and other communications on the Benghazi terror attack, signaling that the Obama administration’s recent document dump would not satisfy congressional investigators.Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, claimed in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry that the department is still “withholding documents.”

He demanded the department release more on the administration’s behind-the-scenes discussions, in the days after the attack, on how they would describe the strike. These documents have since become known as the “Benghazi talking points.”

“The State Department has not lived up to the administration’s broad and unambiguous promises of cooperation with Congress. Therefore, I am left with no alternative but to compel the State Department to produce relevant documents through a subpoena,” Issa wrote to Kerry.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Tuesday that the department “remains committed to working cooperatively with the Congress” and would “take stock” of any requests for information — but noted that the department has provided thousands of pages of documents.

“We have demonstrated an unprecedented degree of cooperation with the Congress on the issue of Benghazi, engaging in over 30 hearings and briefings for members and staff, and sharing over 25,000 pages of documents with committees,” he said. “All of us — in the administration, in the Congress, in the media — we should all be focused on the issue of protecting the American diplomats and development experts who are working every day to advance America’s national interest and global leadership.”

Issa, in the letter, said he was issuing a subpoena that would cover “all documents and communications” for 10 current and former State Department officials.

This includes former spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, as well as nine others. Nuland is the official who, in the emails released earlier this month, could be seen pressing other agencies to remove references to prior attacks and security warnings in Benghazi — expressing concern that the warnings could be used by lawmakers to criticize the State Department.

She also questioned references to Islamic extremists.

Issa wrote that her comments suggest “that she did not raise these concerns in a vacuum,” noting specifically that Nuland said some of the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.”

Issa wrote: “The documents the enclosed subpoena covers will help the Committee understand why, although on the day after the attacks senior State Department leadership believed that Islamic extremists were involved, there were reservations about publicly acknowledging any such involvement just three days later. This issue is at the heart of the Committee’s ongoing investigation.”

The committee confirmed to Fox News that the subpoena has been served.

Issa gave the department until June 7 to comply. The subpoena would cover communications under the leadership of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The intelligence community’s final talking points compiled for members of Congress suggested the Sept. 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans stemmed from protests over an anti-Islamic video rather than an assault by extremists. Five days after the attack, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice relied on the talking points in a series of interviews on the Sunday talk shows.

Republicans have accused the Obama administration of trying to mislead the American people about an act of terrorism in the heat of the presidential campaign. The White House says Rice reflected the best information available while facts were still being gathered.

After several revisions, the gist of the talking points read: “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

Issa said the emails and documents failed to answer the question of who else at the department other than Nuland had concerns about the early versions of the talking points. The chairman is seeking all documents and communications related to the talking points from former officials such as Nuland; Cheryl Mills, counselor and chief of staff to Clinton; and Philippe Reines, a deputy assistant secretary to Clinton; as well as Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

Published May 28, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

‘A MODEL CITIZEN’: Ariz. Mom of 7 Thrown in Mexican Jail While on Trip

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model_citizen_mexico_jailAn Arizona mother of seven is being held in a Mexican prison after being accused of attempting to smuggle drugs while in the country for a family funeral.

42-year-old Yannira Maldonado, a devout Mormon who has been a U.S. citizen for 17 years, was thrown in jail while traveling on a bus back to Phoenix from her aunt’s funeral in Hermosillo with her husband Gary, MyFoxPhoenix.com reports.

The woman’s father-in-law, Larry Maldonado, tells the station the couple believed it would be safest to travel to and from Mexico on a bus from a Phoenix-based bus company. However, on the trip back, the bus was stopped by Mexican authorities, who ordered all the passengers off the bus and searched it.

The Mexican authorities then claimed they found 12 pounds of marijuana under Yannira Maldonado’s seat and took her to jail. Her family says the drugs were not hers.

“She’s never been in trouble with the law,” Larry Maldonado told MyFoxPhoenix.com. “A model mom, she’s a model citizen. Just as nice as can be and has never been involved in anything illegal. We’re just praying that she’ll come home and we can use any help we can get.”

Yannira Maldonado faces 10 years in prison if convicted of the drug smuggling charges. Her family says a judge will decide at a hearing Tuesday whether there is enough evidence in the case to proceed.

Maldonado’s daughter Ana Soto visited her mother in the prison, and was put slightly at ease by the fact her mother has not been harmed.

“I keep repeating myself but she is one strong woman,” Soto told MyFoxPhoenix.com.

The office of Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake tells MyFoxPhoenix.com the senator is personally monitoring the situation, and spoke with the deputy Mexican ambassador over the weekend regarding the case.

Published May 28, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Federalist Press recommends that readers call their senator or representative and demand that this American mother and wife be released immediately.

A Facebook page has been set up to support Yanira Maldonado

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