MICHAEL BENNETT: A snake rots from the head down

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Anyone who thinks the IRS probes of conservative groups and individuals aren’t political should read this. I can tell you, for a start, that OSHA is not supposed to inspect any facility unless there is an accident, fatality, or a complaint by an employee of an imminent, serious safety violation. The fact that these folks were targeted by OSHA makes it clear that the federal government as a whole, and not just the IRS, is going after people who disagree with our supreme leader. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348756/true-scandal-jillian-kay-melchior

There are only two possible explanations for this (well three, if you believe that its all just coincidence).  Either the White House orchestrated an intimidation campaign against its perceived enemies, or the administration is so incompetent that it can’t keep many of the departments of the executive branch from acting lawlessly.

Personally, I’m betting on Chicago thug politics gone national.

RICH BULEY: AP’s outrage is selective

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The Associated Press is mighty upset that the United States Justice Department subpoenaed a large number of their reporters’ phone records. As a civil libertarian myself, I find it extremely disturbing. However, while civil libertarians were up in arms when oppressive legislation like the Orwellian named Patriot Act was passed during the Bush administration, the mainstream press was largely silent. It must be remembered that, in this case the Justice Department actually followed the law in obtaining the subpoena and the records.

The “Big Brother” laws were passed in a time of unrelenting fear-mongering of Terrorism! Terrorism!

Those who warned of the consequences were deride as being naive and soft on terrorists. As Ben Franklin said long ago: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The government always uses fear and security as a basis for stepping on people’s rights. That was the reason for the mass internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Unfortunately, the People either quickly forget or don’t care because it doesn’t directly affect them.

As concerned as the AP is over the government obtaining phone records with a subpoena, imagine the ruckus they would raise if thousands of phone records had been obtained illegally without a subpoena. Well, that actually happened. But, it happened between 2003 and 2006. Do you remember the outrage from the AP and the rest of the press? Me neither.

RICH BULEY: Benghazi worse than Watergate?

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The right wing news crowd (Fox News) has been all in a dither lately about what they consider to be the greatest of all scandals: Benghazi. One of the greatest polls ever, shows that most of the country thinks Congress should spend it’s time on things that actually matter, though.

The poll shows that among Republicans, they think Benghazi is a worse scandal than Watergate by a 74% to 19% margin. History is obviously not a strong suit of Republicans as they also think Benghazi is worse than the Tea Pot Dome Scandal by a 74%-12% margin.

The most shocking finding of the poll, though, is that for all the outrage of the Republicans, 4 out of every 10 of them didn’t even know where Benghazi is:

“One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is. 10% think it’s in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.”

Who needs knowledge when you’ve got propaganda?

MICHAEL BENNETT: Why do we even have a mainstream media?

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One of the favorite whipping boys for pseudo-intellectuals on the left is Fox News.  When these folks get to the point where they are hopelessly losing a political argument, they almost inevitably pull out the “did you get that from Faux News?” card, as if a fact reported on Fox is less true than one reported in the New York Times.

I bring this up because, eight months later, the CBS, NBC and Washington Posts of the world have finally discovered that the assault on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya was not caused by a low-budget video, and that the Obama administration has been consistently, overtly, and gratuitously lying about the whole affair ever since.   Fox News has been reporting on this, almost alone, for the entire period.

The proximate cause of this sudden spate of interest was not some bit of drama-worthy sleuthing by a pair of hungry young MSNBC reporters, but an article written by the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, in which he point by point lays out the metamorphosis which the infamous Susan Rice talking points went through, from honest intelligence to unrecognizable political pablum.

Even after Hayes’ article, it didn’t become acceptable for MSM journalists to ask about the issue until Jonathan Karl of ABC News, apparently picked up a copy of the Weekly Standard, and put together his own version.  At that point, the deception officially became news, and the Washington press corps decided it was okay to ask White House spokesman Jay Carney to clear up all those inconsistencies he had been piling up for eight months.

This, of course, is not an isolated incident.  The MSM did not think the horrific Kermit Gosnell abortion/murder trial was newsworthy until shamed into reporting on it by the estimable liberal commentator Kirsten Powers’ USA Today piece.

And, of course, there was the John Edwards love-child story, in which the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate impregnated and paid off a videographer, then had an aide claim paternity of the child.  As far as the MSM was concerned, none of this was news because Edwards was no longer a VP candidate.  I’m sure they would treat Sarah Palin just the same, under the same set of circumstances.  In any event, it took the National Enquirer to break that story.

So my question is, what do we need these guys for?  They do a great job of adversarial journalism when a Republican is in the White House, but as soon as a Democrat is in office, especially a young, black, charismatic, Ivy-League educated one, they become almost zombie-like in their incuriosity.

Perhaps they should all take nice long sabbaticals, and come back to work only after President Ted Cruz is inaugurated.

MICHAEL BENNETT: It’s time to audit the IRS

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An IRS spokeswoman revealed last week, in a speech to the American Bar Association, that members of Tea Party groups are not paranoid.  The IRS really is out to get them.   Applications for tax exempt status from any group containing “tea party” or “patriot” in its name have not only been given a level of scrutiny wholly different than other groups, but have been told to provide the government with much information that has nothing to do with tax exempt status, and that the IRS has no legal or constitutional right to ask for.

The spokeswoman, Lois Lerner, who runs the IRS division dealing with tax-exempt organizations, claimed that the tea-party scrutiny was limited to lower level employees in Cincinnati, and was not politically based.  Yeah…. Right….

This should be scary to all Americans, liberal and conservative.  The IRS has vast powers to seize property and bank accounts, file liens, and freeze assets.  It exercises its powers in a “guilty until proven innocent” manner.  If the IRS falsely accuses you of something serious, it has the power to financially ruin you before a court could possibly sort things out.  This is scary enough when it is done by an inept bureaucracy randomly going after people possibly on the basis of mistaken information, but when it does so systematically, out of a partisan political motivation, it is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

We don’t yet know who was involved with this, or how extensive it was, but the IRS apology and statement that it has changed its ways is not sufficient.  Just the part that we know about was clearly an abuse of power, and almost certainly criminal.  Now it appears that the former IRS commissioner Doug Shulman may have lied to Congress in his 2012 testimony that ‘There’s absolutely no targeting’ of conservative groups.

There needs to be an independent investigation of the entire matter, to determine how extensive and how high up the chain of command this went, and anyone involved with it needs to be fired, and if appropriate, criminally prosecuted.

RICH BULEY: We need a senator who works for us, not banks

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I have no idea who will succeed Max Baucus as Montana’s next senator, but I sure hope it is someone like the senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. She just introduced her first legislation which would allow college students to obtain loans at the same interest rate that the Fed loans to banks.

What a novel idea, working for actual people rather than giant banks.

RICH BULEY: The 1% vs. the rest of us

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In the latest installment of “the 1% really are different from the rest of us” series of endless installments comes news that Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who was convicted of massive fraud and sentenced to 14 years of prison, may get out after serving only 4 years. The especially grating part of this story is that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Houston actually agreed to this!

As part of the deal, Skilling, who had to forfeit $40 million as part of his sentence, would agree not to further litigate the forfeiture. Let that sink in for a minute. The sentence already required the forfeiture. Skilling is getting out of prison 10 years early simply by agreeing not to contest that which he has already been done.

Although $40 million may sound like a lot to us 99%ers, it must be remembered that Enron and Skilling stole $40 BILLION from consumers and investors. Many thousands lost their entire pensions and retirements. $40 million is one tenth of one percent of $40 billion. Now, if you happen to be homeless and desperate and rob a bank and get maybe $1000, you lose the $1000 plus you go to prison for 20 years.

So, the lesson to teach your kids is, If you’re going to steal, steal real big. That, and justice may be blind, but she can also be bought.

RICH BULEY: Concern over debt is overblown

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I ran across a very interesting bit of economic history this morning. It appears that the United States has been debt free one time in it’s history. So, did this lead to economic bliss? No.

“I ask because over four centuries and two centuries respectively (six hundred years combined), the U.K. and the U.S. governments have paid off their debts exactly once: the U.S. in 1836.

This happy event was followed, in 1837, by one of the most catastrophic depressions in either country’s centuries-long history. Likewise, the one other time that the U.S. got close to paying off its debt (the U.K. never has), in 1893, a disastrous depression followed immediately thereon.”

I hear over and over from conservatives that we must pay off our national debt at the expense of infrastructure or welfare spending or disaster awaits us and our children. History has long proven this concern to be a tad overblown.

RICH BULEY: Four out of five isn’t bad

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The next entry in the “stuff I wish I had made up, but it’s true” category is the new President of the NRA, Jim Porter. If I were to make up a caricature of an NRA boss, I would probably make the guy (have to be a male) from Alabama who refers to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”. He would certainly believe that Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder were conspiring with the United Nations to take away our guns. It would go without saying that he would believe Obama is a European socialist.

And, he would look just like Yosemite Sam. Well, four out of five isn’t bad.

RICH BULEY: Baucus committed to taking the NRA’s money

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As a society, we recognize that kindergarten kids sometimes don’t know what is best for them. It is against the law to sell liquor or cigarettes to 5 year old. It is against the law to allow a 6 year old to drive a car down the highway. It is illegal to sell porn to a kid. We recognize that some toys such as “lawn darts” are inherently dangerous and shouldn’t be manufactured or sold. We recognize that toys with small parts might be swallowed by kids and that they’ll die sometimes so we don’t allow those to be sold.

The one inherently dangerous thing that is marketed to be used specifically by kindergartners is, of course, rifles. Not toy rifles. Real .22 caliber rifles. A company, Keystone Shooting, manufactures rifles specifically for the 4-12 year old group. They even come in different colors including pink. So, you’re probably thinking, “How cute! What could possibly go wrong?”

Sadly, what went wrong was a five year old killing his 2 year old sister with his rifle. At least somebody is profiting off this death. It appears that Keystone’s website for the popular “cricket” rifle, cricket.com, has been taken down. But, not before several internet sites captured screen shots of the cartoon Cricket, and the adorable pictures of toddlers brandishing their their very own killing devices.

Speaking of guns, I just received a form e-mail from Max Baucus concerning my inquiries about his vote against background checks. The e-mail states nothing about background checks. It does state, however, “Everyone agrees we need to do a better job keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, but infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens isn’t the solution”

OK, if we need to do a better job of keeping guns out of criminals’ hands, don’t background checks take a small step in that direction? How does a background check infringe on any law abiding citizen? These simple questions are left unanswered by Max. He further stated, “I remain committed to addressing the issue of violent crime.” He has a very strange way of showing his committment. I think what he meant to say is that he remains committed to taking the NRA’s money.