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Holly Paz testifies:

"What were these employees' explanations for using the term 'tea party'?"

"Just sort of a shorthand reference," she said. "You know, I think they may have reference, you know, it's like calling soda 'Coke' or, you know, tissue 'Kleenex.' They knew what they meant, and the issue was campaign intervention."

Because of all these liberal tea party groups.  Right. 

Note that this doesn't even agree with earlier testimony.  If you're persecuting tea party groups based on those groups having "tea party" in their name, it doesn't matter if you think "tea party" is internal shorthand for a politically neutral term.  To borrow her analogy, it doesn't matter if you are referring to generic soda as "Coke" internally if you send an intern out to buy "Coke" and the intern comes back with "Coke".

This also doesn't explain why liberal groups sailed through with no scrutiny while conservative groups were delayed and denied.

"Do you have any sense of how it is that they could have not noticed that there was a problem with using 'tea party' to refer to political advocacy cases?" asked another Democratic counsel for the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"My impressions, based on, you know, this instance and other instances is that because they are so apolitical, they are not as sensitive as we would like them to be as to how things might appear," Paz responded.

IRS employees are so apolitical that 75% of their campaign donations go to Democrats (over the past three elections), and every single traceable donation in 2012 from the Cincinatti office at issue here went to Obama or liberal Democrat Sherrod Brown.

If the Democrats want to play monopoly with the instrumentalities of the federal leviathan, than Paz and her colleagues who participated in this abuse of power deserve to go directly to jail.  Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200.

Instead, she's gone on "administrative leave", which we outside of Washington, DC would call a paid vacation.

So, I left a comment on the article I was discussing in this post:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Heidi,

Gun safety is a personal responsibility, not a government one. No matter what the legal requirements in your state happen to be, you have a personal responsibility to learn to handle that firearm safely. Guns are not safe, and they are not toys. You should not be putting yourself and those around you at risk by carrying a firearm you have no idea how to use or handle safely.

If, god forbid, you should make a mistake and hurt yourself or someone else, it will not be the fault of your state's firearms laws. It will be your fault, because you behaved in a childish and irresponsible manner around a dangerous tool. Not the fault of America's millions of responsible gun owners; not the fault of your state's gun laws; not the fault of a coffee shop's policy to follow state laws and stay out of a political issue; your fault. And you will be legally responsible for the consequences of your ignorance.

You've published your article and made your point, asinine as that point may be. Another time I'd be happy to discuss the merits of the issue with you. Responsible gun owners take gun safety very seriously. However, making your point was clearly more important to you than behaving in a safe and responsible manner. That makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution. Go take a gun safety class. Not because you have to, but because it's the right thing to do.

See that bit at the top about how the comment is awaiting moderation?  It's not dated, but several comments after mine have been approved.

Yeah, reasoned discourse is in full effect.

Other gunbloggers have noted the same thing, but Bryan Preston did some research and tried to figure out what state the author lives in by analyzing the requirements she described in her article.  He concludes that her story doesn't match the firearms laws of any state.  The most likely candidate is Washington State, but that state has a 5-day waiting period for firearms purchases -- with an exemption for concealed-carry permit holders.  The background check for obtaining the permit can legally take up to 30 days, and in practice takes up to 2 months, unless you happen to know which county to apply in and show up really early.

The other possibility is Idaho, but that state requires a gun safety course for concealed carry licensees.

... personally I think it's the refusing to submit part that is causing him problems:

We obtained official court documents from both sides of this case.  On one hand, the arresting officer from the Logan City Police Department, James Adkins, claims that when Jared refused to stop talking, that hindered his ability to do his job, hence, the obstruction charge.  On the other side, Ben White points out that nowhere in the arresting officer's petition, does it mention Jared ever making any threats or acting in a violent manner.

So he wore an NRA t-shirt to school and refused to stop talking when the school officials infringed his 1st Amendment rights by demanding that he remove the shirt.  This is alleged to justify arresting him and charging him with obstruction of justice.

Justice would be firing everyone involved in this case so far, and then charging them with obstruction of civil rights under color of law.

The legislation contained universal background check provisions.

Peggy Noonan writes:

The purpose of the surveillance is enhanced security, a necessary goal to say the least.

If this were true, the government would not be exempting mosques from surveillance.  It is impossible to provide security from terrorism, which has an undeniable Islamic component, without scrutinizing mosques.  Therefore, the purpose of the surveillance state is not to provide security.  Security is the excuse.

The purpose?  Judging by the experiences of Catherine Engelbrech, whose True the Vote organization sought to clean voter rolls of ineligible or fraudulent voters, and who was harassed by the IRS, FBI, BATFE, and OSHA during an election year, the purpose of the surveillance is to elect Democrats.  Particularly Barack Obama.

Recall how proud Obama was of his campaign's data mining capabilities?  How well they targeted people?

Yep.

Tea party groups are dangerous and must be suppressed, because they motivate Republican leaning voters to actually get out and vote.  The 2010 elections showed that when Republican leaners get motivated, Democrats lose badly -- so those voters must remain disillusioned and apathetic.  It's enough to turn the IRS loose on them.  Delay them, deny them non-profit status the left has been abusing for years, demand reams of intrusive information about them, intimidate them.

But True the Vote got the full treatment -- a four-agency anal probe.  Why?

Because True the Vote threatened to expose the left's reliance on voter fraud for the margin of victory.

Accorti responded to a home Monday afternoon where a feral mother cat and her five kittens were living in a woodpile.

He allegedly told the homeowner that shelters were full and that the cats would be going to kitty heaven. He then pulled out his gun and shot the five, 8- to 10-week-old kittens.

Accorti allegedly told the homeowner that he isn't supposed to do this, but it was justifiable. The woman ran into the house to shield her children, who were screaming and crying.

These are the actions of a psychopath.  They are also the actions of a police officer.  We are so fucking screwed.

"A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson's computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson's accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.

This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.

CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access."

What does the Justice Department have to say about that?

To our knowledge, the Justice Department has never compromised Ms. Attkisson's computers, or otherwise sought any information from or concerning any telephone, computer, or other media device she may own or use.

"To our knowledge"?  What about, say, the NSA?  The CIA?

47 Senators show up for a briefing on NSA surveillance.  The nation employs 100 Senators.  Why are we paying the other 53?

... says nothing about the NSA surveillance going on while he was Vice President.

In other news, Al Gore is a Democrat.  Democrats are attacking a Democratic president over the NSA scandal.  Wow.

... says Big Sister Napolitano.

To make a long story short:

All three letters tested positive for ricin, using a somewhat insensitive field test. No one was exposed to lethal levels of the toxin (lethal levels being extremely small), fortunately. But the publicity over the letters wasn?t what the putative sender might have expected. Glaze, Bloomberg, and Obama, and their partisans and the media (but we repeat ourselves!) received the news with something approximating delight. The letters were proof that gun owners were murderous, insurrectionist sickos, fully deserving the IRS audits and whatever other miseries federal authorities could bring down on them. Editorials and "news analyses" (i.e., the New York Times equivalent of the front-page editorial formerly favored by Pravda pre-1992) piled imprecations on the presumed facilitator and enabler of this act of terrorism: the NRA, naturally.

Meanwhile, the actual investigation took another turn.

Another turn that involved an unsuccessful zombie actress with anti-gun views married to a pro-gun husband she was tired of. 

Solution: She allegedly decides to frame the husband for sending letters poisoned with ricin to prominent anti-gun politicians along with a threatening pro-gun letter.  The police arrested her husband, but he immediately figured out what was up and when they investigated further, well, his alibi was valid -- he was at work when she was using his computer to print the letters she wrote on hers.

Which leads me to ask... say, why are anti-gun activists so violent?

... is that criminals don't buy weapons from law-abiding citizens.

They steal them from police officers.

Or from FBI agents.

Or from the secure firearms room in a courthouse.

Even in Jamaica, an island where firearms are banned outright, criminals seem to have no problem getting firearms.  Even fully automatic firearms.

Oh, and about how assault weapons are really powerful and deadly:

For two hours, the man - armed with an assault rifle, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition - opened fire on unsuspecting motorists from his pickup truck as he drove around the remote central Texas county.

Two hours, hundreds of rounds from an assault rifle (really?  I don't know if it was full or semi automatic) and a handgun, and the death toll was... 1.  5 others wounded.

He could have killed more people running them over with his truck.

... and removing their facebook pages, too.  It's almost like they have something to be ashamed of, isn't it?  Peggy Noonan writes that the IRS thinks they are The Untouchables.  I agree; I'm just thinking of a different kind of untouchable.

He's allying with Bloomberg and funding a "Stop The NRA" website. 

What's weird about this is that he says his reasons for focusing on gun control are. 

First, he says the issue is tearing the country apart -- but overall crime is down, and so is gun crime.  Even spree killers are low enough to be statistical noise, though recent horrific incidents have the issue on the media's mind.

Second, he says:

"I also don't like bullies," he adds. "And the NRA is a bully. And Congress needs leadership from the outside."

Leadership from a billionaire who can afford bodyguards opposing the NRA's 5 million members who just want their right to self-defense to be respected?

I don't think he really gets the whole bully thing.

It's a speech they need to hear, but I doubt they were paying attention.

See the last update to my earlier post.

... says TalkLeft?  And Democratic Senator Manchin?

I do have this to say: just because Holder resigns does not mean the scandals are over.

... it's also all of your credit card transaction information.  Not "We think you're a terrorist, so we got a warrant for your credit card transaction data."  No, there's a federal program to collect all of it -- sheep and wolf alike -- so the FBI, NSA, and other organizations can data-mine as much as they like with no controls over how they do it or what they access.  Because, you see, they already have the data.  Once they have the data, what they do with it cannot be controlled no matter how many procedures are put in place.

The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly deliberately, knowingly, and intentionally intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.

Fixed that for them.

See, here's the problem.

The government reveals a few specific cases where data was collected by mistake -- literally a typo entering a phone number.  That sounds like a reasonable error that could be forgiven if nothing was done with the information.  But that's not the reality of the program.  Here's the reality:

Blair drew a distinction between the "collection" or mining of data on specific U.S. citizens by NSA and the massive trove of phone call information that was turned over to the NSA under a negotiated agreement among intelligence officials, the telecommunications companies and the FISA judges. The purpose of the FISA order was to store information in the event that U.S. intelligence agencies need to access it after getting specific intelligence that somebody in the U.S. might be tied to terrorism.  It is only at that point, he explained, that the NSA goes back to the court to get permission to mine or ?collect? the data.

They aren't collecting data on innocent Americans by mistake.  They are collecting data on literally everyone in case they need to look it up later.

Oh, yeah, they promise they'll get a warrant to look it up later if they need to.

Sure.

Trust them.

After all, they are so dilligent and careful about staying within the appropriate lines, and our constitutional rights are such a high priority for the Obama Administration:

David Medine, chairman of the new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, asked for the briefing in a letter Friday to Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

The five-member board was  authorized by Congress in 2007 to monitor privacy and civil liberties throughout the U.S. government. But after lengthy delays by President Obama in nominating members -- and disputes over its membership -- the panel only officially came into existence last week when Medine was sworn in. It has no website, has yet to move into its office in downtown Washington and has a staff of only two members assigned from other agencies, Medine said.

Such a high priority that it took a huge national scandal that publicly revealed the programs this oversight board was supposed to be overseeing to induce Obama to actually name a chairman.

Not the Tea Party groups.

The graphics alone make the case.  Science demands that you develop a hypothesis, make a prediction, and test your prediction against the evidence.  Climate models are those predictions, and they have failed.

Yes, it's a grand jury refusing to bring charges -- but that's no less a jury nullification than a jury refusing to convict. 

Jury nullification is often attacked because it has been abused to protect racists from the consequences of their vigilante violence in the South.  The history of jury nullification, however, is a long one, extending well before our nation separated from England.  Though it can be abused, as can any mechanism, the core idea behind jury nullification is simple: society must consent to each and every application of its laws against one of its members.

If you can't get 12 random members of your community to agree that a law is just when applied to a particular person and a particular set of circumstances, it doesn't matter whether they are technically guilty or not.

That comes in pretty handy when the government is stupid enough to want to prosecute people for posting "threatening" rap lyrics.

Even if the rap lyrics really suck, and are sort of threatening when taken out of context.  They're rap lyrics, and unless the government can show that the person posting them actually intended to carry out a bombing, they are out of luck.

A word to the wise, though: don't quit the day job.

... and it seems I was right, at least in one case.  Here's my original post, and here's the evidence that John Lott noticed.

A newspaper quote is not a document that would be evidence of a conspiracy, but it is evidence of the mindset of at least one administrator.

After today's news, this graphic needs to be expanded to cover the whole country.

This is now a known and definitive fact.  It's been taking place since 2006 with Verizon, and only an idiot would think that the government would get a warrant (an illegal warrant, I might add, since it's not specific as to the persons being searched) for all Verizon customers without also getting a similar warrant for all AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular, and other phone service providers.  (And it's not just phones, it's also internet service).


The tinfoil hat brigade has been talking about this since at least under Clinton (remember ECHELON)?  They were right then, but couldn't prove it.  Now we have proof going back at least 7 years.

This sort of intensive government data collection has consequences.  Libertarians don't like it.  Even Massachusetts Democrats don't like it.

UPDATE: The NYTimes softened it's editorial, which previously concluded with "The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue."