Archives for May 2013

A recent military report on sexual assault in the military shocked many in Washington and around the nation, but a leading expert on military personnel says the prevalence of men assaulting other men is one of the major headlines in this study.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged that a huge majority of Americans condemn the IRS for harassing conservative groups and a majority also believes it was intentional.  They also rip the leaking of Fast & Furious documents to smear the ATF whistleblower.  And they shred Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse for blaming GOP indifference on climate change for Oklahoma tornadoes – while the storm was still going on.

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The Interior Department is proposing new federal rules for hydraulic fracturing that the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee says is unnecessary and will only limit energy production and economic growth.

Hydraulic fracturing, known more commonly as fracking, is an increasingly effective method by which oil and gas are extracted from rock formations.  Estimates suggest the energy production potential in fracking is massive and states like North Dakota and Pennsylvania have already enjoyed significant economic benefits.  And while the concept is somewhat new to many Americans, it has actually been in practice for decades.

That’s exactly why Washington Congressman and House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings says new rules from Washington are not needed.

“For a long time, 60-70 years, the states have regulated hydraulic fracturing.  So there hasn’t been a nationwide rule.  Frankly, it’s for that reason that I think that this proposed regulation is a solution in search of a problem, because the states have done it very, very successfully for a number of years,” said Hastings.

Now, the Interior Department’s proposed rule would require compliance with mandates such as “requiring operators to disclose the chemicals they use in fracturing activities on public lands; improving assurances of well-bore integrity to verify that fluids used during fracturing operations are not contaminating groundwater; and confirming that oil and gas operators have a water management plan in place for handling fluids that flow back to the surface.”  The government would also mandate which type of tools extractors could and could not use.

Hastings says these and other proposals just prove the federal government is meddling needlessly.

“What they’re getting at is trying to, at least on federal land, have a nationwide, one-size-fits-all regulation,” said Hastings.  “All of those three concerns are covered by states with their laws on hydraulic fracturing, so there’s nothing new here.  The states have been doing it.  They’ve been doing it very well and I think we need to respect that.”

While noting that states already have tough environmental standards in place, Hastings says different states have slightly different regulations because the conditions in each state are different – something a sweeping federal rule fails to take into account.

“Not every state is exactly the same,” said Hastings.  “All states are different as to the make-up of their geology.  Each state knows their geology than other states.  This is a solution looking for a problem.”

Hastings says the Department of the Interior has allowed states to pursue their own regulations in other areas, which makes this decision all the more confusing.  But he also believes there are politics involved by some in the administration.

“They don’t like the development of the oil and gas industry.  In fact, they have said that indirectly with their promotion of green energy.  I suspect that eventually this could be some sort of tool to slow the process down.  It’s slow enough on federal lands already.  This could be a way to slow it down even more,” said Hastings.

“If this goes into effect, I think it’ll probably slow down energy development on federal lands.  I can’t draw any other conclusions because any time you look at other federal regulations, even in other industries, the end result tends to be a slowdown in production or a slowdown of activity with whatever those regulations are trying to regulate and I suspect that’ll be the same in this,” said Hastings.

Hastings and other GOP members are also furious that after some three years of putting this new rule for federal lands together, the Interior Department is allowing just 30 days of comment before making a final determination on implementation.

“We will be asking, officially from the committee, that they extend the comment period to 120 days.  I suspect there will be other groups asking for the same, because 30 days on a rule or regulation like this that’s been three-some years in the making is too short of a time period.  There’s too much at stake with this,” he said.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad an IRS staffer told The Washington Post that the harassment of conservative groups had to have come from a directive far up the chain.  They also react to new the Justice Department is threatening to prosecute a reporter for a 2009 story on North Korea.  And they wonder whether it’s more than a coincidence that President Obama met with the head of the IRS union the day before the intense questioning of Tea Party groups began.

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The IRS and the entire Obama administration are under scrutiny after revelations last week that hundreds of conservative organizations suffered undue harassment and intrusion by the IRS after applying for tax-exempt status.

Groups with “tea party” or “patriot” were made especially uncomfortable.  Larry Nordvig is executive director of the Richmond Tea Party and explains how he first suspected the IRS was going far beyond its normal duties in delaying and demanding information from the group.

“There were two things that tipped us off.  Number one was the length of time.  Our organization figured it would take maybe six months to a year.  We were willing to put up with that.  They do need to take a good, hard look to make sure you are who you say you are.  That’s fine.  That’s legitimate,” said Nordvig.  “But after it went past a year, it felt like stonewalling, especially when you’re coming up on over two years.  The time element was one.

“The second thing that tipped us off was the second round of questions that they sent and that was a 12-group set of a total of about 55 questions.  But those questions had sub-questions and those sub-questions had bullets.  It was extremely hard information to try to dig up.  It produced over 500 pages of documents and they only gave us two weeks to do it.  We knew something was wrong right there,” said Nordvig.

Many of the questions demanded very personal information, including every piece of literature ever published, background on every speaker and copies of every speech from each event, lists of donors and how much they contributed.  Nordvig says there was much more.

“They wanted all of our communications, so any kind of email of Facebook communication with any of our members, which obviously would tip off their identity.  They wanted to know who we associated with, who our members associated with.  One of the most alarming ones was they wanted pictures of our web pages, including the member log-in only pages, which would have been very private.  We did not give that to them,” said Nordvig, who says the demand for donor information was also greatly disturbing.

“The entire purpose of us filing for that 501 (c) 4 status is so that our donors can remain anonymous.  If they can’t remain anonymous, they don’t donate money.  I think whoever set this up, this was one of their primary goals,” said Nordvig.

He says those behind this IRS strategy succeeded in part to limit the impact Tea Party groups could make.

“It knocks you off your mission because instead of doing what we’re supposed to be doing, which is political education and advocacy, we’re dealing with miles and miles of red tape and stacks of documents of more than 500 pieces,” said Nordvig.  “We lost a lot of donors because of this whole cloud hanging over us.  People either didn’t want to touch it or they were afraid their information would be made public.  So we literally lost money.”

“Now we find out that was on purpose.  It definitely impacted our ability to accomplish our mission,” he said.

The Richmond Tea Party subsequently sought legal counsel from the American Center for Law and Justice.  It didn’t take long for the group to learn there were plenty of like-minded organizations dealing with the same IRS meddling.

Thus far, two IRS officials have been asked to resign.  President Obama insists he didn’t know about the scandal until last Friday.  Nordvig isn’t buying that explanation and he does not see these early actions as anywhere close to being severe enough in terms of punishment.

“No, we are absolutely not satisfied at this point.  That has to be made clear.  This is an extremely serious event that every single American should be very, very worried about.  What you’re talking about is the government knowingly targeting political groups using the second most powerful arm of the government, second only to the military is the IRS.  They can destroy your lives,” said Nordvig.  “All you have to do is replace Tea Party with your individual name or you can put in Green, Justice, Progressive, whatever.  Put yourself in our shoes.  If the power flip-flopped up in the White House, I don’t think you would want this kind of attention.”

Nordvig also explained what needs to happen before he is satisfied.

“We need to find out how high this goes, how wide it goes, how deep it goes.  The more we find out, it’s like peeling back those onion layers.  The more we find out, the worse this thing gets.  That’s why we won’t be satisfied until we have a complete, thorough congressional investigation because they’re not coming clean otherwise,” said Nordvig.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see Bob Woodward say Benghazi is a serious issue and has parallels to Watergate.  They’re also appalled that the IRS official who led the tax-exempt office while the scandal unfolded is now running the IRS Obamacare office.  And they fire back as the outgoing IRS commissioner claims partisanship had nothing to do with the protracted harassment of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

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Just days after the IRS admitted making life miserable for conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status, Georgia Rep. Tom Price says the agency cannot be trusted to enforce the Obama health care laws and is pushing legislation to strip the IRS of any new powers connected to the law.

The “Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013” would bar the IRS from “implementing or enforcing” any components of the health care laws.

“We always opposed utilizing the IRS in this fashion.  They have no expertise in that area and we just think that it’s inappropriate to have the IRS involved in people’s health care,” said Price, a physician and member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee that will hold hearings on IRS abuses on Friday.

“When it became clear that the IRS has been abusing it’s privilege of gaining information from folks and treating certain Americans differently than other Americans, then that was just an unconscionable bridge too far and we said, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something about this,” said Price.  “This bill, H.R. 2009 simply says that the IRS may not be involved in any aspect of the president’s health care law.”

Updated reports on the depth of the IRS scandal suggest the politically motivated activities were far more widespread than the IRS admits.  Price says the rampant bullying of Americans based on political beliefs proves the agency should be nowhere near our health care system.

“It was not just targeting groups that were applying for a tax exempt status but that they were asking for information about who were the donors to those entities and then going after the donors themselves.  This is much broader than picking an organization or two,” said Price.  “If you let your mind draw a parallel to health care, then it’s wholly possible that the IRS could then determine whether or not the health care you were purchasing or where you were going was the kind of health care they wanted you to have or they wouldn’t allow you to have or didn’t comply with their dictates or their mandates in something so very, very personal as health care.

“As a physician, I can tell you that is absolutely irresponsible and unconscionable, and we’re going to do all that we can to make certain that the IRS doesn’t get that power,” said Price.

Not surprisingly, many House Republicans are enthusiastically backing Price’s bill and the congressman says Texas Sen. John Cornyn intends to introduce the bill on the Senate side.  Democrats are not lining up behind the legislation yet, but Price believes some of them might.

“Many of them are also disgusted by what the IRS has done and I think the next step for them is to answer, ‘Well, in that case, don’t you believe that the IRS ought to be strictly confined to its original mission and do so in a transparent way as opposed to expanding its mission to get into people’s health care?'” said Price.

The congressman does not believe that the IRS will suddenly play by the rules just because it was caught in the current scandal.  He says a “trust but verify” approach would be needed to determine whether the IRS really cleaned up its act and there’s not enough time for it to prove real reforms have taken place before Obamacare is implemented

Price does not believe the explanation that this targeting of conservative groups and individuals was the work of a few rogue, low-level staffers.

“This had to come from somewhere up the chain.  Was it the individual in charge of the tax-exempt division?  Was it the secretary of the treasury?    Or does it go further than that?  That’s what we need to answer with our oversight,” he said.

Price does not buy President Obama’s carefully worded denials about what his staff knew about this scandal.

“Call me skeptical, but I believe the White House was involved in this activity,” he said.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss the revelations in the Benghazi emails released by the White House.  They’re also bewildered at Attorney General Eric Holder’s inability to answer many questions, including why and when he recused himself from the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records.  And they have fun with a New York Times report that President Obama wants to unleash his inner Bulworth.

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Ohio Rep. Michael Turner says the IRS hassling and prying into hundreds of conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status is outrageous but may have actually been legal, so he is introducing legislation to criminalize such activity.

“Unfortunately, it currently isn’t a crime if a political appointee or a faceless bureaucrat gets up as a supervisor and walks over and instructs a bunch of employees to begin targeting the American public.  That’s wrong.  It should be a crime,” said Turner, who adds this was a crime if the directive to make life miserable for conservative groups came from the White House.

Turner’s legislation, the Taxpayer Nondiscrimination and Protection Act of 2013, would make it a crime for anyone else to do it.  The bill calls for five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for anyone found to be targeting organizations as a result of their political ideology.

“By making it a crime, we hope to stop it.  When that supervisor walks in that employee’s office and gives him that direction when they know it’s a crime and that they themselves could go to jail for five years and pay a $5,000 penalty, they’re going to think twice and hopefully stop,” said Turner.

In addition to forbidding the IRS from targeting those of a particular political persuasion, the bill affords the same rights to religious organizations.

“This covers the gamut.  Although they have targeted conservatives this time, we want to make sure that it’s all inclusive.  If that is undertaken, then they have committed a felony,” said Turner.

The House Ways and Means Committee will hold the first hearings on the IRS abuses on Friday.  Turner says there a lot of questions that still need answers.

“We need to to find out where was this initiated, who started it, who directed it, who participated in it and also who knew about it.  Those people are all complicit and bear responsibility,” said Turner.  “In addition, now we’re getting information that some of the confidential information that was solicited from these groups may have been leaked to other political organizations.  Now that is a crime and these investigations should include that and people need to be pursued and held accountable.”

Turner isn’t ready to accuse President Obama of any involvement in the scandal at the this point, but he says Obama’s reaction to the IRS scandal was underwhelming.

“The president’s reaction is also appalling because we hear from the White House not the the type of outrage that you would hear if these were groups that were supportive of President Obama.  So it sort of sets a tone that I think everyone should be very concerned about,” said Turner.

The IRS apology did not impress him either.

“When the IRS apologized, I remember thinking, ‘That’s it? That’s all they have to do is apologize?’ said Turner.  “The fact that they used an investigative arm of the government to target the American people based upon their political beliefs.  It is outrageous and it’s the type of activity that can weaken our democracy,” said Turner.

The congressman does not buy the explanation that just a few rogue IRS staffers got carried away and are responsible.

“This is so systematic and it’s not just, ‘Let’s send somebody a letter.’  They had a very systematic process by which they investigated these groups and persecuted these groups and individuals.  This doesn’t sound to me like a handful or certainly doesn’t sound like people who are low down on the chain,” said Turner.

Turner says Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is trying to attach Turner’s legislation to pending Senate bills.  He hopes to see quick House action as well and expects broad bipartisan support whenever the vote comes.

The bad press for the IRS comes at a politically critical time, since it will be the primary enforcer of Obamacare starting next year,

“I think everyone should be concerned about that.  Now that you see what has happened with the IRS and their political bias, to trust them now with your medical records certainly would cause everyone to have some concern and a pause,” said Turner.

House Republicans recently announced their latest efforts to repeal Obamacare.  Turner says this new scandal is a perfect example of why the law has to go.

“I think that goes right to the heart of it.  The moment that government steps in between you and your doctor and also between you and private and confidential information, I think we all know that there is a possibility that information could be misused and it shouldn’t be in the government’s hands,” said Turner.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Charles Krauthammer for telling Republicans to dig up and present facts as the Obama scandals unfold and not spend time talking about impeachment and making comparisons to Watergate.  They also shake their heads as Jay Carney tries to avoid tough questions and isn’t even sure the IRS did anything wrong despite its own apology.  And they rip former NAACP President Julian Bond for saying the Tea Party should have received great scrutiny from the IRS because those groups are “admittedly racist” and “the Taliban wing of American politics”.

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