To Lois Lerner if she is held in contempt? Jail time, fine? What are the possibles? Will she ask for and receive immunity and testify, or will a judge side with the claim that she waived her 5th amendment right when she made her opening statements? I'm curious.
Nothing. This IRS targeting stuff happened, what 2 years ago, dude. What difference, at this point, does it even make? No corruption here. Move on.
They found Holder in contempt over a year ago and nothing has happened to him. Like most of Congress powers, the threat of a contempt ruling seems to be diminishing in importance.
She'd be looking at serious repercussions if the matter were more serious; like lying about whether or not she used steroids for example.
CPFan Please notice and acknowledge that dalhorn actually used Hillary's exact quote in his reply. That attention to detail in making his sarcastic point is appreciated. But he forgot to mention that it is all a 'witch hunt". That no conservatives groups were hurt by the extra scrutiny endless requests for doc and delays. None were hurt except for the ones hurt and of cpurse it was not political.
I haven't been following this...has any evidence surfaced that the Right Leaning groups were any more effected than the Progressive groups? I believe I saw a headline earlier this week (NPR?) that evidence now exists that progressive groups were more "discriminated" against. I didn't read the article though.
So Congress is toothless when you do not have a Justice Department that will follow the law. What have we come to as a nation when the crime is not punished? Sad.
Husker I am sure there are links( NPE HuffPO) out there that mention that yes progressive groups were targeted as well. There turned out to be a difference between being initially singled out( and there were some 'liberal' groups initially singled out and those who were subjected to endless scrutiny . scrutiny which took in most cases years to sort out and which meant of course they could play no part on the 2012 elections. Hundreds of ' tea party ' groups were affected/ Not one liberal group was so yes Libs can say progressive groups for looked at by the IRS . none were denied. I am sure you are smart enough to know that not all of the hundreds of Tea party groups denied until after the election should have been denied.
Congress found her in contempt partly becasue they thought that Justice was dragging its feet on the investigation in the first place. Now they have to depend on Justice to enforce their contempt finding? Poor Congress. They're disappearing before our eyes. I doubt Obama will issue some kind of executive pardon, but if he does.... I'd bet he knows all about this little scheme.
The rw crazies, in their unhinged hatred of the 'other' guy in the WH, forget that Lois Lerner was a Dubya appointee:
I read that she was a Bush appointee when it was floated in the press last year, and I don't give a damn who appointed her to the position. Evidence is there showing that she abused her office and violated the law. Now, get off your phony high horse and go slink back in the partisan swamp you crawled out of, Roger35.
I read most of the article, yes, before I had to duck for cover from a tornado warning. I am not disoriented, though. I still stand by the belief that she abused her position, aided/gave cover for illegal actions to occur, then obfuscated and misled Congressional hearings, repeatedly pleaded the 5th and hasn't seemed to have made any attempt to provide honest and concise answers to what she's been asked. I'll say it again, in case you didn't read it right the first time- I don't care what party or lack of party she was aligned with. If evidence shows she broke the law, then the DOJ needs to hand down punishment to her. Cleaning up the government needs to be done, no matter what affiliation she or any others have. We all deserve better, and I don't care who gets taken down and how they vote. My comments at the top of the thread were tongue-in-cheek, regarding other ridiculous quotes in current events.
Husker here is one piece of info "White House spokesman Jay Carney and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell on Friday called for an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service after the federal agency apologized for placing heavier scrutiny on conservative groups than other applicants that applied for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012.' The Link and tis link from WaPO 'The IRS grants tax-exempt status to 40,000 nonprofit groups per year. When the IRS began targeting conservative groups' applications in 2011, nonprofit approvals for groups with tea party or 9-12 in their name stopped entirely. Five groups with those names had been approved in 2009 and 2010, but zero were approved in 2011. After policy reconsideration in 2012, the backlog was broken and 27 groups were approved, mostly in the second half of the year. The slowdown was evident with other conservative-sounding groups, as well. Thirty-seven groups with the words patriot or constitution had been approved in 2009 and 2010, but only 10 were approved in 2011. Once again, the backlog was relieved in 2012 with 29 approvals. On the other hand, groups with the word progressive in their names suffered no similar slowdown pattern. The number of approvals increased each year from 17 in 2009 to 20 in 2012." The Link The Inspector General of the Treasury reported that 100% of 'tea party" groups( 292 groups) that applied were put under special review Husker This USA today article gives a really good over all look "WASHINGTON -- In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked. That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months. In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive " The Link If you doubt the sources I linked you can easily do a search for yourself. To have you admit you did not know this is really disheartening to me since you are usually well informed. If you didn't know then the lesser informed people do not. What if it had been dem leaning groups?
The original IRS report describes the number of groups affected and it was predominantly conservative groups. Then recently once some of these records requests have been followed, there is correspondence between Lerner, Rep. Cummings and maybe another Democratic rep or two, and someone in the DOJ discussing the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and what the IRS is going to do to help minimize the affects of it. It's pretty obvious at this time that the IRS did in fact target conservative groups because they feared the Supreme Court decision was going to put the Democrats in a competitive disadvantage. Therefore, they used what political power they had to minimize the amount of conservative groups allowed to function in 2012 leading up to the election. Who knows what would have happened but with the IRS and Benghazi things happening the way they did, the effect could only be positive for the re-election efforts of Obama. Now Obama is saying he will do everything in his power to make sure that the House recovers a Democratic majority. Wouldn't be surprised to hear of similar things coming out in 2015.
dilllo I did consider that Husker was baiting us by saying he did not know it has been admitted and apologized by the IRS that it unfairly targeted conservative groups., hundreds of them. I also considered that no matter what sources were provided he or someone would either dismiss the source or try to twist the facts, It should be hard to dismiss a USAToday report. We will see. The last thought I had is Husker will disappear for a few days.
Rog, it's called documentation. You know when people write things to other people? Like you and I are doing now? You can use these things to prove what people are doing. I don't know anything about other examples that you bring up. However, if documentation was uncovered that shows what people were doing, then I am confident problem isn't the ones reading the documents. It's the ones writing them.
Monahorns- Thanks for the response. Obviously if there is evidence of unfair scrutiny and a link to Capitol Hill then it should be pursued, IMHO. I'm less concerned about extra scrutiny by this particular IRS team as their job is to scrutinize these applications. I'd rather that all applications got the same scrutiny the Tea Party orgs got. In fact, I don't think any of them should be tax free orgs but that's another thread topic. If there is evidence of direction from D.C. on this matter then like the Chris Christie bridge scandal, that's a gross abuse of power and should be investigated. Horn6721- A few days...as in a weekend...sorry, that's my family time thus I don't typically post then.
husker I appreciate you even coming back to this thread. In response to your questions you:"Can you point me to the facts on this? How many Tea Party groups were accepted and what was their timeline like? No progressive groups were denied? " I posted some credible links including showing?the IRS apologizing for targeting conservative groups . The apology from the IRS only for conservative group. The USA Today article is prettty self explanatory We know you think all groups should be scrutinized. That is not the issue here. You said you were not aware of conservative groups being targeted. so after reading these links Or links you researched that are more credible for you than WaPo or USAToday do you think conservative groups were not targeted?
