From “The Neighbors”
There are no ifs or ands to the photos taken by New York City artist Arne Svenson but there’s at least one but — butt, more properly — and its owner is displeased at being so immortalized.
The Associated Press reports that Svenson snapped the images of residents of a glass-walled luxury apartment building across the street from his own through (one hopes) a rear window. The artist was careful to obscure the subjects’ faces, or avoid showing them altogether.
So many IRS Agents… so few Divine Smitings.
During today’s House Ways and Means Committee hearings on the ever-growing Internal Revenue Service scandal, it was revealed that the IRS demanded that an Iowa pro-life group surrender the content of its prayers.
Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock asked the still-serving Acting Commissioner Steven Miller specifically about the Iowa-based Campaign for Life of Iowa letter from the IRS 2009:
Piers Morgan’s true confessions
Those old enough to remember Watergate will recall that once major scandals within a presidential administration get rolling, they snowball. The press finds itself reporting new developments daily. That is, assuming the press is reporting anything at all.
It is no surprise that the government agency responsible for taxing the rich and funding the liberal management of our lives for the collective would be a bastion of the most partisan members of the Democratic Party, willing to wield the hammer that is government power for the various factions of the gangster-like mob it has become.
Current tax law, or what passes for “law,” requires tyranny in its enforcement. The Internal Revenue Service has always been uniquely above the law with its unique right to preemptive seizure of a target’s property and a reverse burden of proof that requires accused taxpayers to prove their innocence.
Several columns this morning probe the question of the president’s involvement in the burgeoning IRS scandal. Jonah Goldberg at Townhall delivers a typically compelling argument that the IRS was following Obama’s example (more on which below), but the article opens with a disclaimer: “Yes, it’s extremely unlikely he ordered the IRS to discriminate against tea party, pro-life or Jewish groups opposed to his agenda.”
Did Obama’s DoJ use Dubya’s much-hated-by-liberals Patriot Act?
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have been under increasing pressure as he defended the seizures of the records of more than 20 Associated Press (AP) phone lines assigned to 100 various journalists of the news service.
But as Barack Obama and members of his administration have been doing since 2008, it may be time to blame Bush.
A chilling fact, and one that EVERY American needs to be fully aware of, is that the IRS will have a major role in the implementation of Obamacare, officially known as Affordable Care Act. (ACA).
Now, in light of the current IRS scandal, the thought of the IRS legally wedded to the ACA should give every American serious heartburn.
What happens when a fundamentally flawed entitlement program that threatens to usurp one sixth of the U.S. economy runs up against a scandal involving the government’s second most powerful enforcement agency? The answer is a class-action lawsuit filed by a California HMO alleging that 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by the IRS.
The IRS didn’t just investigate groups based on their perceived political views, but also targeted groups for “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights” or advocating limits on government or deficit spending, reports the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the Obama Justice Department is demanding that colleges adopt sweeping unconstitutional speech codes that ban even speech that would not offend a “reasonable person,” but only hypersensitive people, notes a prominent law professor. The Post describes the additional groups targeted by the IRS:
The TSA should make its mind. First its agents get all wee-weed up when a passenger refuses to cooperate. Then when a passenger capitulates to their demands to search his person, they want to slap a fine on him.
Some clothes, too. At least that was the case with passenger John Brennan of Portland, Ore., who was stopped at a security checkpoint last year at Portland International Airport.