Is there anyone else that is as outraged as I am about this whole thing? I mean this is a dangerous abuse of power and I'm alarmed by the lack of news coverage on this outside of conservative media. Imo, this shows the importance of conservative news media. Losing the emails is just absurd.
I need for more democrats to be outraged on this. It's a huge potential slippery slope if the perpetrators get away with it.
So anyway... Am I overreacting or is this something I should be ticked off about?
thank you weso1!
Hawk (06-23-2014)
For one, it is nearly impossible this day and age to "lose emails". So it basically means they found them and deleted them , permanently.
Pretty crazy that was not only allowed to go on, but encouraged to an extent. I am pretty outraged... Not seeing it anywhere but right wing outlets.
Those emails can be retrieved by experts.
If Obama knew about this or was in on this, their should be massive outrage.
Can you imagine if Bush had told the IRS to target liberal groups? The media would be all over it
You mean like when they instructed US Attorneys to prosecute nonexistent voter fraud cases and fired the ones who wouldn't say that horse**** smelled like roses?
Just politics being politics. It's gone on since the dawn of time.Originally Posted by weso1
It's something to be pissed about but both sides do it. Which is why we should abolish the 2 party system because even way back in the John adams era they did nasty things to fight the other party, see Alien and Sedition act, Judiciary Act of 1801 and Midnight Judges. 2 parties = 2 different set of dickheads.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
Where was this "outrage" when the Bush Admin sent our troops to Iraq because of WMD that never existed? Oceans of Blood spilt everywhere but you guys were too madly in love with Bush and war to see thru the smoke.
And yes, the IRS thing certainly appears to be an abuse of power. Between this and Obamacare I'm thoroughly disgusted and ready to elect someone else. Sadly I doubt anyone from the right could get elected per its own in house fighting.
More liberal/progressive groups were targeted in the IRS audits than Tea Party/conservative groups.
I doubt there is anything here. There was a mushrooming of 501 (c) Whatevers after the Citizens United decision was handed down and the IRS audits a bunch every year as it is. I run a 501 (c) 6 and we were audited years ago. It's part of what the IRS does. Lots of monkey business in the non-profit world across the ideological spectrum.
Paul Ryan heard Weso, or either Weso is Paul Ryan.
Ivermectin Man
This is not true.
He does have huge ears.
thank you weso1!
BedellBrave (06-24-2014)
It's hard to do.
Even further, it's hard to lose just the emails from just the period and just the people under investigation. Unless you intend to...
Computers crash all the time and people are generally pretty bad about backing things up. Outlook is often configured to delete emails from the server after some amount of days because otherwise you require massive amounts of server space.
It's not hard. It was an issue at my old firm on multiple occasions.
You certainly have more faith in bureaucrats that I do if you believe these are the only e-mails the IRS has ever lost.
Last edited by Metaphysicist; 06-23-2014 at 06:06 AM.
Darrell Issa’s flailing search for his white whale
06/24/14 08:02 AM
By Steve Benen
Congressional oversight of any administration is important and worthwhile. Indeed, it’s a critical part of the American system to have institutional checks and balances. Lawmakers have a duty to watch the White House and ask tough questions when potential controversies arise.
That said, this was just embarrassing.
Representative Darrell Issa of California, the Republican who is leading one of the investigations into the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of Tea Party groups, accused the I.R.S. commissioner on Monday of lying, an allegation that only deepened the partisan mistrust about the motivations behind the numerous congressional inquiries into the matter.
The hearing on Monday night, before the House Oversight Committee, was the second time in four days in which the commissioner, John Koskinen, was called to Capitol Hill to explain what had happened with the emails.
These questions have already been asked and answered, and there’s simply no evidence of wrongdoing. The IRS won’t apologize for the incident because, in this case, agency officials really haven’t done anything wrong – a fact congressional Republicans seem to recognize but choose to ignore.
But what made last night’s hearing an unusually sad display was, well, just about everything.
Consider for example the fact that it was an evening hearing, which is quite unusual on Capitol Hill. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee and its chairman, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), demanded the IRS’s John Koskinen testify on the emails. The relevant people checked calendars and picked a date: the hearing would be the morning of Tuesday, June 24 (today).
Issa, seeing the opportunity for a tantrum, literally 10 minutes later, announced he would hold a hearing with Koskinen about the emails on the evening of Monday, June 23. Why? Because Issa wanted to be first. It just made him feel better.
But Koskinen rechecked his schedule and told Ways and Means he had an opening on Friday, June 20, so they held the hearing then – leaving poor Issa to hold a redundant, evening hearing, asking the same questions of the same official about the same story, three days later.
In other words, Issa, still looking for attention and some semblance of a “scandal” that fell apart a year ago this week, is still hunting for his white whale – except he’s not doing it very well.
It’s become increasingly difficult to take the “controversy” seriously because there’s so little meat on the bones. Yes, it’s understandable to raise questions when computers crash and documents are no longer available, but there’s literally nothing to suggest the missing emails would have been remotely interesting. GOP lawmakers are on a fishing expedition, starting with an answer – there must be some wrongdoing, somewhere, from someone – and then working backwards in the hopes of justifying the agreed-upon conclusion.
Consider what we’ve seen for over a year: Republicans demand information, which the administration supplies, and which shows no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no crime. So Republicans demand different information, which the administration also supplies, and which again shows no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no crime.
Which in turn leads Republicans to ask for still more information. In this case, those materials are no longer available, leading the right and some lazy pundits to declare, “A ha!”
This is silly and no way to conduct credible oversight. In my heart of hearts, I strongly suspect Republicans know this, but just don’t care – this is about election-year tactics, mobilizing the GOP’s far-right base, creating fundraising opportunities, and giving conservative media something to talk about.
In reality, though, there’s still nothing here.
Now, John Dickerson argues that the IRS should be better at record-keeping, especially since the tax agency expects much from taxpayers. It’s a fair point. That said, it’s also unrelated to what Republicans care about – the obsession is about politics, not governance – and as Thomas Mann has explained, we’re talking about an agency that “has serious problems, many arising from vast new responsibilities (e.g. the ACA), inadequate resources, and low staff morale in the face of widespread hostility in Congress to the very idea of an Internal Revenue Service.”
If congressional Republicans want to have a mature conversation about how to improve the IRS, that’d be a worthwhile exercise. But by all appearances, the opportunities for mature conversations with GOP lawmakers are far and few between these days.
Joker, where's the weenie?
The reactions seem to follow the same predictable lines...
Go away for a couple of weeks and things are pretty much status quo. Sort of de ja vu all over again.
And the same is true in the real world as well, what with Thad Cochrane using typical cheap tricks to win the primary. Very predictable.
thank you weso1!
Hey, this guy that's becoming the face of the IRS, I think I heard that he was formerly with FreddieMac. If so, dude likes winners doesn't he?
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