At issue is whether the IRS probes were politically motivated and directed by the White House. Congressional investigators were hoping for answers in Lerner’s emails.
The IRS also screened liberal groups, which Democrats claim as proof that there was no abuse of power. That’s wishful thinking. The fact that liberal groups were screened is mitigating, not dispositive.
Republicans lawmakers are prone not to trust any explanation from the White House. Their most conservative voters assumed from the start that the White House was targeting right-leaning groups for intimidation.
“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the inspector general.”
Obama has adamantly rejected the suggestion that the IRS was used for political purposes. “That’s not what happened,” he told Fox News in February. Rather, he said, IRS officials were confused about how to implement the law governing those kinds of tax-exempt groups. “Not even a smidgen of corruption” occurred, he said. His allies dubbed it a “phony scandal.”
Six weeks after the scandal broke, I chastised House Republicans for cherry-picking evidence and jumping to conclusions. In the same column, I urged the president to be transparent: pave way for investigators to question witnesses under oath and subpoena the White House and his own reelection campaign for related emails and other documents.
If forced to guess, I would say that the IRS and its White House masters are guilty of gross incompetence, but not corruption. I based that only on my personal knowledge of—and respect for—Obama and his team. But I shouldn’t have to guess. More importantly, most Americans don’t have a professional relationship with Obama and his team. Many don’t respect or trust government. They deserve what Obama promised nearly six weeks ago—accountability. They need a thorough investigation conducted by somebody other than demagogic Republicans and White House allies.
Somebody like … a special prosecutor. Those words are hard for me to type two decades after an innocent land deal I covered in Arkansas turned into the runaway Whitewater investigation.
Nothing has changed. The White House is stonewalling the IRS investigation. The most benign explanation is that Obama’s team is politically expedient and arrogant, which makes them desperate to change the subject and convinced of their institutional innocence. That’s bad enough. But without a fiercely independent investigation, we shouldn’t assume the explanation is benign.
A sloppy mistake, the government calls it, but you couldn’t blame a person for suspecting a cover-up—the loss of an untold number of emails to and from the central figure in the IRS tea-party controversy. And because the public’s trust is a fragile gift that the White House has frittered away in a series of second-term missteps, President Obama needs to act.
If the IRS can’t find the emails, maybe a special prosecutor can.
The announcement came late Friday, a too-cute-by-half cliche of a PR strategy to mitigate backlash. “The IRS told Congress it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner’s emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year,” the Associated Press reported.
Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea-party and other conservative groups.
By Ron Fournier

Children with involved fathers are more likely to graduate from college—particularly among middle- and upper-income families but also among those from lower-income backgrounds, a recent study found.
Using his pen again in “this year of action,” President Obama today took executive actions to ease the burden of student debt at the expense of “millionaires.”
The Obama administration’s apparent miscalculation of the threat posed by Al Qaeda-aligned militants in Iraq drew severe criticism Thursday from top Republican lawmakers, who accused President Obama and his national security team of “taking a nap,” warning “the next 9/11 is in the making.”
The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.
Hillary Clinton will likely be the next president of the United States, and why not? We live in an age of choreographed reality, and hers is among the most choreographed of lives. Also, an age of the triumph of symbol over substance and narrative over fact; an age that demonstrates the power of the contention that truth matters only to the extent people want it to matter. Mrs. Clinton’s career is testimony to these things as well.
The largest hearing room the Senate has in the Hart Building was standing-room only on Tuesday when the Senate Judiciary Committee held its hearing on the resolution proposed by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would amend the First Amendment and give Congress unlimited, plenary power to restrict political speech and political activity.
Tea Party Patriots filed an ethics complaint against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., alleging he has abused his power in a campaign to smear conservative donors.
Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing the Tea Party Patriots, says the complaints were timed to coincide with a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Tuesday, where congressional leaders, including Reid, clashed over a proposed constitutional amendment to curb political spending.




For six years the world has scratched its head about President Obama’s foreign policy doctrine. Is it “leading from behind,” as he himself has said on occasion, stepping back in hopes that an international coalition will take charge? Is it using American military or economic power to topple dictators? Is it killing enemies with drone strikes and spying on allies with advanced technology? Is it using words instead of weapons?
And while Obama was busy offering up Krispy Kremes, others were eating his lunch. He claims Putin was foiled in Ukraine because he mustered an international community to criticize him, but he neglects to mention that Crimea is now part of Russia and eastern Ukraine is under its operational control. The other peoples along Russia’s border, in countries like Poland or Romania or the Baltics, certainly don’t think Putin is finished.
President Obama, in his first public comments on the controversial trade of five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl since the deal was announced, acknowledged Tuesday there’s “absolutely” a risk that the former Guantanamo inmates will try to return to the battlefield — but nevertheless defended the deal as in America’s interest.
Obama said they saw an opportunity to bring Bergdahl back and seized it, and that the U.S. government will bring a soldier back regardless of circumstances.
The release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, said to be America’s last POW, comes amidst criticism and concern. Barack Obama, as president, is supposed to notify Congress 30 days in advance of any prisoner’s release from Gitmo. His decision to exchange five of the most notorious Taliban terrorist leaders held at Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl, without following the protocol put into place for prisoner release, is criticism that such a move is 
A petition on the White House website asking President Obama to demand the release of a Marine sergeant in a Mexico prison has garnered more than 100,000 online signatures — a threshold that typically elicits an administration response.
He also said he was stripped naked and chained to a bed, with his feet on one end and his hands on another.
On Thursday, the day before a double resignation at the White House, ABC’s Jon Karl grilled Jay Carney over Barack Obama’s confidence in Eric Shinseki. Less than 24 hours later, the press secretary and Veterans Administration head had both quit. During the back-and-forth, Karl pressed, “But does the President right now have confidence in Sec. Shinseki, yes or no? It’s a very simple yes or no question. You told us last week he did have confidence, does he have confidence now?” [See video below.]
Next week, the Obama administration is planning to unveil a climate action plan that it intends to implement without legislative approval. It’s a creative approach to governing, 
The White House is scrambling to contain the damage from inadvertently outing the top CIA official in Afghanistan, a rare blunder that potentially puts that individual at risk.
A new and important study of religion in America has, among other things, a good deal to say about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Recently published under the title American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, the sociological study was conducted by scholars Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell and yields valuable insight to the nature and social effects of American religion. Drawing from in-depth new surveys, the study’s authors affirm that in many respects, religion in America exerts a healthy influence upon American society — one that typically promotes generosity, trust, neighborliness, and civic engagement. And while Mormons are a relatively small component of American society, the study data reveals that they play a conspicuous part in American religious life.
Mormons are relatively friendly to other religious groups.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday reluctantly picked her team for a GOP-led Benghazi investigative committee, saying that Democrats’ participation was the only way to assure Americans of a “fair process.”
The mother of a U.S. Marine being held in a Mexican jail after he crossed the border with guns in his pickup truck said her son’s current ordeal is more traumatic than the two tours of duty he served in Afghanistan.
International outrage is mounting over the death sentence a Sudanese judge ordered for the pregnant wife of an American citizen — all because she refuses to renounce her Christian faith.
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