Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller.
Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.
Ingram attempted to counsel the White House on a lawsuit from religious organizations opposing Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Email exchanges involving Ingram and White House officials — including White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz and deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew — contained confidential taxpayer information, according to Oversight.
Daily Caller
53 comments:
Oh boy! This again?
More evidence of wrongdoing.
Hoist them by their own petards.
Quick. Before we lose the Republic.
You never need "evidence". It was a conservative at IRS doing the "wrong" and the meetings were already known as part of legitimate accounting over the impacts of the ACA. John Stewart blew this garBazh out of the water months ago already. Who's fooling whom?
Personally, I think the IRS opted to go after the Tea Party on its own.
It is a "who will rid me of this meddlesome priest" situation. Obama made it crystal clear that he considered the Tea Party to be enemies of both the Democratic Party and the United States as a whole. He used language describing us that he'd never dream of using to describe, say, actual terrorists. In a scenario like that, government agencies don't need explicit instructions. You don't need to tell government workers to harass enemies of the state; they do it naturally. It is ordinary human behavior.
Now, that being said, I expect that the IRS did tell the White House what they were doing. But Chicago pols generally have more sense than to openly call for their enemies' heads on a platter. Al Capone did that; Daley, not so much. :)
You are insanely gullible, Ritmo.
The fact that the attacks on the Tea Party took place is the evidence that Obama ordered the attack.
It is self-evident that Obama orchestrated that attack. Yes, he probably insulated himself from documentary proof.
Hey, I'm opposed to impeaching Obama for what is clearly an egregious impeachable offense. It's too important for the first black president to finish his term peacefully.
Obama knows this too. Knowing that he is immune from the normal criticism and punishments has made him reckless.
I breathlessly await your eruption, and those brilliant exclamations about your burning love for black people and how disagreement with you is proof of membership in the Klan.
We can always count on you for that.
Personally, I think the IRS opted to go after the Tea Party on its own.
Read what you wrote in your statements following this comment.
You just described one of the ways Obama instructed his functionaries to carry out this attack, and then you absolved him of responsibility for doing it.
It is much the same with the denial of the military death benefits and the monies to let the families come and get their fallen sons and daughters.
Obama made it know that the government should "make it difficult for ordinary people so they would blame the Republicans for the shut down."
If Hagel knew about this he should be fired. If he didn't know about he should be fired even faster. The arrogance of that cocksucker Jay Carney is enough to get the villagers to gather their torches and pitchforks.
The fact that the attacks on the Tea Party took place is the evidence that Obama ordered the attack. It is self-evident that Obama orchestrated that attack.
Lol. This sounds like Syrian regime talk - The rebels gassed themselves!
The best kind of evidence for ST is "self-evidence"... i.e. He is so sure of it that he needs no evidence.
I'm so glad that rule of law works that way. The parties go in and argue to the judge, "Based on the strength of my beliefs, I am surely the party in the right."
Hahahahahahahaaa.
The Tea Party is an organization increasingly at odds with not only the rest of America, but now the Chamber of Commerce. But you sure are sure of what you're sure of, aren't you? Just like Dick Morris and Karl Rove were on election night.
Welcome to Politi-Church. Services begin at 7:30, with opening pronouncements by Rector Thomas.
Yes, Ritmo, when a campaign uses an agency of the Fed to cripple its most vocal opponent's ability to even participate in an election, it is self-evident that the candidate, i.e., President Obama, orchestrated and approved of that tactic.
You can't be this stupid....
Well, yes you can!
Who gets to decide who is "ordinary people"?
Fund the whole job or fund nothing. The time for negotiating what gets funded doesn't occur just because of the threat of default. Are republicans that incapable of making budgeting decisions that they need to do so only under economic threats?
Impeachment is not conducted in a court of law.
Impeachment requires an indictment, but the process is strictly political.
If enough Senators can be convinced to vote to remove a president from office, that president gets removed from office.
Note: I'm not suggesting that it's time to impeach Obama.
Are republicans that incapable of making budgeting decisions that they need to do so only under economic threats?
There is no budget, because Democrats refuse to pass one, and prefer to conduct business under a continuing resolution.
Well, Tommy, if your faith-based/evidence-absent smarts is the alternative to my ignorant knowledge, I'll go with facts. Speculation is sort of your very own sort of masturbation, and I know how much you enjoy it!
Idle speculation. Talk is cheap (like you). Show me some fucking facts, for once. Even Lem (the author of the post) doesn't use the term "self-evident". You're the only one here who stoops to saying that what is in your mind and heart already is all that counts, REAL evidence be damned!
If you worked as an investigator, you'd be fired before being a week on the job, that's for sure.
Just because you're a cranky old fart who hates facts, Tommy, doesn't mean you shouldn't update them every once in a while.
It's called seeing the obvious, Ritmo.
The evidence, as I said, is that the attack on the Tea Party occurred.
That is the absolutely convincing irrefutable evidence.
Nobody but Obama could have ordered that attack. Nobody but Obama stood to benefit from it.
Obama ordered the IRS attack on the Tea Party.
You just described one of the ways Obama instructed his functionaries to carry out this attack, and then you absolved him of responsibility for doing it.
Well that's certainly *a* way of interpreting what I wrote... but the correct way would be to say that I assigned Obama responsibility for what happened but doubt that he explicitly ordered it.
Your theory is basically that Obama sent coded instructions to the IRS via his public condemnation of the Tea Party -- that he expected them to interpret his statements as "please harass the Tea Party" and made the statements with that in mind. This theory depends on Obama being subtle. I've seen no evidence that Obama is capable of subtlety. Obama is a big fan of hyperbole and straw men. He loves to shoot his mouth off without thinking (the Syria "red line" fiasco was a classic example). The most plausible explanation, to me, is that that is what happened here.
Obama was already favored to win in 2012 because the Tea Party hated Romney. Romney was and is a creature of the Republican party establishment, which hates the Tea Party even more than the Democrats do. Why would Obama do something that would, if discovered, cost him the Presidency, when his opponent was so busy losing the election and alienating the only energetic constituency his party had left?
The IRS scandal is like Watergate. Nixon didn't order the break-in. The break-in was, in fact, an utterly retarded idea from both a tactical and strategic point of view. What Nixon DID do was establish an us-vs-them atmosphere that encouraged his underlings to go after "the enemy" with hammer and tongs.
You're bragging about the first budget in FOUR years?
*Squirrel!
No, it's all circumstantial bullshit. The words "absolutely", "convincing", "irrefutable", and "evidence" have no place in your diatribe.
But you sure know how to talk the talk! Preach on, Brother Thomas! Lay the truth on us! Tell us what da truth is! No facts, just truth!
You sound, Ritmo, like the diehards who defended President Nixon to the last moment.
Another blind one, "April", believes it's "bragging" to correct Thomas.
Hey April, correcting Thomas is as ordinary a thing to do as turning off the lights at night. Ain't nothing brag-worthy about it. He makes mistakes more often than a blind man finding a urinal.
Are republicans that incapable of making budgeting decisions that they need to do so only under economic threats?
Because the Republicans have, of course, never asked for cuts to Obamacare prior to this last week.
It was the first time Democrats had ever heard of the idea. Boy, were THEY surprised! They thought the Republicans were huge Obamacare supporters. That the total lack of Republican votes for the law was because Republicans were shy about expressing their love for it.
That's why Reid is so darn angry, you see. He'd been telling all his friends about how much the Republicans were looking forward to Obamacare and then all this happened. Was HIS face ever red, I tell you.
I've thought from the moment Obama was elected that a constitutional crisis on the scale of impeachment was inevitable.
For precisely the reason that there is no restraint on his ambitions and desire for power.
He cannot be removed from office. He must finish his term. Those are the realities. Our societal goal of fully assimilating blacks into our system dictates this.
He knows this. Very dangerous.
You sound, Ritmo, like the diehards who defended President Nixon to the last moment.
Mmmm... ok. At least you're using terms more descriptive of your thought process, like "sound like".
And, you're admitting that impeachment is a bit more political than an ordinary legal trial.
But again, this is coming from a guy sympathetic to economic "populists" so populist in their conviction that even the Chamber of Commerce has had it with them.
So, hopefully you'll forgive me for finding even this attempt of yours at sensibility tonight still just a bit skewed.
Because the Republicans have, of course, never asked for cuts to Obamacare prior to this last week.
Oh. Right. 40 some-odd times they tried to de-fund or revoke the constitutional legislation. It's like, no other legislative priority existed for them. Or ever does. They can never get on with the things that need to be gotten on with. Completely monomaniacal and obsessed with their perpetual obsession du jour.
He cannot be removed from office. He must finish his term. Those are the realities. Our societal goal of fully assimilating blacks into our system dictates this.
Whereas were he not black, he would have been removed from office just like all those other white Presidents we've successfully impeached for abusing their power and breaking the law.
And, you're admitting that impeachment is a bit more political than an ordinary legal trial.
I wasn't "admitting" anything. I was refuting your contention that impeachment demands evidence on the level of a criminal trial.
Whereas were he not black, he would have been removed from office just like all those other white Presidents we've successfully impeached for abusing their power and breaking the law.
Yes, Bill Clinton got away with it.
Using a Federal agency to undermine your most vocal opponents' ability to participate in an election is far, far more dangerous and damnable than lying to a grand jury.
That 9:25 is too funny, ST. I even got a laugh out of it. Someday you'll have to tell me just how "dangerous" the impeachment-proof negrosity of Mr. Obama is! Does it make him as awesome as Romney's orange face paint made him when speaking to Univision?
Oh. Right. 40 some-odd times they tried to de-fund or revoke the constitutional legislation.
Defunding and revoking legislation? Those fiends! Its like they think they're legislators or something!
I was refuting your contention that impeachment demands evidence on the level of a criminal trial.
I contended no such thing. I contended that intelligent Americans require more than circumstantial belief if they want the respect of more than just a few of their most die-hard, fellow-believing citizens.
It's Jon not John. Idiots are politically informed by a cabal of liberal comedy writers. You must be joking to cite him for your authoritah, it confirms that politically you are a child, and a mean one at that.
Private emails for Department business are illegal.
Forget the content. A prosecutable offense right there. To dismiss it so casually is insane.
ATTENTION ALL A-HOLES: Try something new. Reverse the situation and switch Parties, check out how it looks, that is what you are arguing against.
Naaaah. All analysis begins with, how does this affect my Party? Not, how does this affect my country? All of it.
Individuals withing the IRS behaved precisely the same way National Park rangers are behaving, going out of their way to make things difficult, while complaining about being shut down. They have developed into a fiefdom and protected accordingly. The IRS, the National Parks, OSHA, BATF, all the rest, need only be told, "make it difficult" with no specific orders and they spring into action on their own.
We don't need an IRS, you know. I am not saying we don't need taxes. I am not saying we don't need government but we certainly do not need politicized Departments waaaaaaay too big for their britches sucking the life out of the nation for the benefit of Party. It is unacceptable irrespective of what a comedian tells his child-like audience.
Ritmo, you're a fruitcake.
I'm not opposed to Obamacare. I don't buy the arguments on either side.
The medical insurance and payment system was anything but a free market pre-Obamacare, and it was outrageously wasteful and expensive.
Socialized medicine, or single payer, is probably just an inevitable reality of a huge, data driven economy like the U.S. That doesn't mean that it's going to be a great thing.
I suspect that Obamacare will also be outrageously wasteful and expensive.
What's driving the enormous expenditure of the healthcare system is the demographic reality of a population so heavily weighted toward seniors and dying people.
Defunding and revoking legislation? Those fiends! Its like they think they're legislators or something!
With monomaniacal obsessions who exist for no other purpose! Which makes them not only stupid, and not only powerful, but powerfully stupid in a way that exposes their powerful stupidity to the nation like never before.
Yes, Bill Clinton got away with it.
And Bush, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, FDR, Wilson...
We've been letting Presidents get away with illegal activity and abuse of power for a long time without ever once successfully removing one from office via impeachment. Some of them were far worse than Obama. Sending the IRS after political enemies? FDR *invented* that shit.
For better or worse, the American people's attitude is a mix of "its ok if he's on my team" and "eh he'll be gone in a few years anyway".
I can't wait until some Republican pulls something like this on the Left.
The sound of Ritmo's neck snapping as he tries to retract all of his above inanities and bluster his outrage will be the embodiment of schaudenfreude.
The Fed and the states are in a panic trying to figure out how to pay for the seniors and the nursing home care. The costs are staggering.
I observed this from the vantage point of being involved in clinical trials.
The Fed and the states are desperately trying to find effective treatment for Alzheimer's and cancer out of sheer self interest. Throwing a windfall of money at Alzheimer's makes sense if you're trying to find a way out of paying for all those old people retiring and dying.
The cost of institutional care for the old has become a crippling burden.
With monomaniacal obsessions who exist for no other purpose!
My goodness, four percent of the bills passed by the House over the past three years have been devoted to repealing or altering a law most Americans want repealed or altered?
Those monomaniacs! Devoting a mere 96% of their efforts to other priorities... what could they be thinking?
That's a really nice Constitution you got there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.
Revenant's idea of principled and responsible.
The country's laughing at your idea of seriousness, Revved-up-innint?
This is why you don't have a party of your own, and instead ride, like a parasite, inside the belly of another party.
I wonder how soon it will be until the GOP recognizes its indigestion and the need to hiccup, or maybe upchuck you out.
Harry Reid is so toxic - MSN "news" (wink) is portraying Harry Reid without any party identification
AND with a photo of the schmuck under the headline of "Republicans weigh short term debt bill". As if Harry is a Republican. Desperate.
Pro-dem media in action.
The country's laughing at your idea of seriousness, Revved-up-innint?
I'm being mocked on a show that's getting its butt kicked by "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo". Truly this is a low point for me.
3 million YouTube hits, none of whom have a problem with your mother-figure boo boo.
Only 165 million more views before it surpasses footage of a panda sneezing. Go team Obama!
Well, if anyone knows about popularity (or even just plain old sociality) it's a guy whose party can't get a single vote on its own - and must instead parasitize another ideology's party. Right? Go Team Gliberterrorist!
And also, not only are your mad econ skillz making an enemy out of The Chamber of Commerce, but the National Retail Federation! Go 1800s economy's party!
Useless. Loser. Parasite. Destroyer.
Voter suppression.
The reason liberals defend the IRS is that petty dictators really like the big dictator.
Can you imagine the cosmic scope of the audacity required to call yourself a liberal and yet support the malignancy we call a government?
That's why I prefer the term "left-wing" to "liberal".
Liberals are libertarians. Democrats are just left-wingers.
I am seriously amused by what is humorously called "government shutdown"... one where 80%+ of the government is still at their jobs and a majority portion of those actually furloughed will be paid for time not worked. In short, because we didn't get a amenable Continuing Resolution that only lasts a couple months, we don't have the money to run the government...er, ah, other than the 80% still working and the 20% who will be paid for not working, adding up to 100%>
What shutdown are we having? We decides what gets "shut down" and in some cases shut down areas require 100% more federal employees to shut down that it does to leave open?
I can't believe the populace of the USA is so naive that they actually buy in to this Kabuki Theater. Doesn't anyone realize that the very details of this shutdown, when virtually little is actually shut down, and what is "closed" is politically arranged, implies a future where Congress is irrelevant and the Courts are immaterial.
I've seen the word "budget" used in this thread and others here...and I must ask what flipping "budget" is that? There has been no Congressional Budget voted out and sent to the President in going on 5 years now. Congress has relegated itself to no longer be a legislature and from now on a "sorority."
Even the President now refers to a CR as a "budget" and insists it must be lump sum all in one. Real federal budgets are generally comprised of 13 parts, each voted on separately...apparently the administration and President Princess Peacock figure we no longer need line by line accountability.
BTW: You've read or heard about how DOD hasn't the authority to pay for death benefits of soldiers now? Right? That is a giant forking lie, those funds were obligated prior to the "shut down" and as such are expendable on demand (which in this case constitutes "delivery" on a contract).
Maybe before anyone gets the right to vote in elections the law should require 3 years service in a government bureaucracy so voters would actually know a bit about how it really works.
I said...
Maybe before anyone gets the right to vote in elections the law should require 3 years service in a government bureaucracy so voters would actually know a bit about how it really works.
Another thing they'd learn is just what parts of government are totally unnecessary, starting with the hugely inflated senior executive levels, all "flag ranks", as well as our immense number of Generals and Admirals for an ever shrinking enlisted force.
At my job we call an 80% shutdown "flu season".
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