United Liberty

The Justice Department’s already troubling assault on the media just got weirder. Days after it was reported that the DOJ seized phone records from the Associated Press in an attempt to discover a leak from the administration, it was discovered that James Rosen, a Fox News correspondent, was the target of an investigation into a separate leak.

But the story has taken another turn for the worse. It appears that the DOJ also seized phone records from two White House staffers and five additional Fox News reporters:

“The irony is inescapable. Ms. Lerner gets to use her constitutional rights, but then won’t stay and answer questions about Americans being denied their constitutional rights.” — Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

Earlier this morning, Lois Lerner, the embattled director of the IRS’s Tax-Exempt Division, invoked her Fifth Amendment right before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and refused to answer questions about the agency’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative organizations:

“I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations,” Lerner, the head of an IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups that targeted conservative groups, said before the House Oversight Committee.

Lerner then said she was following her counsel’s advice not to testify. “

“I know that some people will assume that I have done something wrong,” she said. “I have not.”
[…]
House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)asked that she reconsider, but she declined.

Issa then tried to dismiss Lerner, but Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), himself a former prosecutor, said that Lerner had waived her Fifth Amendment rights via her opening statement. Issa eventually did dismiss the IRS official, but said she could be recalled.

Members of Congress are aghast that Apple, makers of Mac and iPhone, used completely legal tax shelters from 2009 to 2012 to avoid paying taxes on $44 billion in international profits. Rather than using the issue as an opportunity to look at the United States’ insanely complicated tax system, a Senate subcommittee brought in Apple for what was basically a show hearing.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee (HSAGC), had strong words for his colleagues. In his prepared remarks, Paul said that he was “offended by the tone and tenor” of the hearing and noted that Apple had not done anything wrong.

“I am offended by the spectacle of dragging in here executives from an American company that is not doing anything illegal. If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress,” Paul told members of the committee. “I frankly think the Committee should apologize to Apple. I frankly think Congress should be on trial here for creating a bizarre and byzantine tax code that runs into the tens of thousands of pages, for creating a tax code that simply doesn’t compete with the rest of the world.”

Lois Lerner, the official at the heart of the controversy of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups, will invoke the Fifth Amendment at this morning’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the scandal:

A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.
[…]
“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif. The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Taylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm of Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year.

Since Lerner won’t answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.”

Perhaps one of the most brilliant things about a free market is law of supply-and-demand. Businesses or financial institutions set a price for their good and/or services based on demand. But Congress often interferes with this basic economic law, often masquerading it as some sort of “victory for consumers.”

And while there are countless instances, last Monday was the birthday of one of the more recent recent examples. Before passing Dodd-Frank — frequently referred to as the “financial reform law” — the Senate added an amendment by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) that capped how much financial institutions could charge for debit card transactions.

Jason Hughey of Americans for Prosperity marked the birthday of this regulation last week, noting that financial institutions are still getting their money, despite having the fee capped. They’re just doing what every other business does when they’re hit with a new regulation — they’re passing the costs along to account holders (emphasis mine):

Before Durbin, banks were charging roughly 44 cents per debit card transaction.  In the aftermath of the market crash, congressional leaders thought that this price cap would help struggling consumers.

There have already been a number of stories written on the effects of ObamaCare on many small businesses. Perhaps no enterprise has felt the impacts of the law worse than the restaurant industry.

ObamaCare requires employers with over 50 employees to offer insurance coverage to those who work 30 hours or more, which is considered to be “full-time” under the law, or otherwise pay a $2,000 fine per worker. This is known as the “employer mandate.” Opponents of ObamaCare warned that this mandate would hurt investment and many workers, who would either lose their jobs or face scaled back hours. Supporters of the law obviously didn’t care enough listen.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal highlighted the plight of restaurant franchisees who are struggling to remain profitable as the realities of ObamaCare hit their businesses:

Sam Ballas, chief executive of ECW Enterprises Inc., owner of East Coast Wings & Grill, a 26-unit chain in North Carolina and Texas, in March imposed a three- to five-unit limit, for the time being, on the number of restaurants that franchisees can own, because of worries about health-care costs.
[…]
Mr. Ballas said several East Coast Wings franchisees are up against that limit now and that one is considering selling a restaurant to remain below the threshold.

The IRS serving as a political tool isn’t exactly a new concept. The agency has long-been used by administrations to target political and ideological opponents. But the latest incident involving the agency and its target of Tea Party groups has made some pundits to have an epiphany — that government abuses lend weight to concerns over other areas of public policy where sensitive information is obtained.

Citing concerns that expanded background checks would eventually led to a national gun registry, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Mike Lee (R-UT) promised to filibuster a procedural motion to bring the gun control measures to the floor. While they were initially unsuccessful in filibuster, the trio was able to rally enough support to kill the Manchin-Toomey amendment.

Many talking heads slammed those who voted against background checks during last month’s gun control debate in the Senate, but a couple of pundits have realized that maybe opponents of background checks had a point.

Joe Scarborough, host of the MSNBC’s Morning Joe, conceded on Friday that his argument in support of background checks is “less pursuasive today due to these scandals.”

There is little chance that Republicans will lose the House next year. There doesn’t seem to be much worry there. In fact, many Republican strategists believe that they may even pick up a few seats.

What has evaded them over the last two cycles is control of the Senate. Some bad candidates and poorly run races prevented them from gaining seats that they would have otherwise won. And while it’s far from a sure thing, Republicans have a an opening for 2014 that could lead them to a majority in the Senate, according to Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report:

Democrats are defending seven states that President Obama lost in 2012 and Republicans need a net gain of six to reclaim the majority. That also means in the very unlikely event that Democrats somehow knock off Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the only Republican senator up for re-election in an Obama state, the GOP could be in the majority without her by sweeping the Romney states currently held by a Democrat.

Republicans do have to worry about nominating candidates who are less popular than Romney and, in some states, deal with Democratic incumbents who are more popular than President Obama.

But Republicans have considerable room for error.

President Obama lost six of the seven states with a Democratic senator by an average of 19 percentage points. Some of the states were uglier than others for the President, including West Virginia (Obama minus 27 percent), Arkansas (minus 24 percent), South Dakota (minus 18 percent), Louisiana (minus 17 percent), and Alaska and Montana, which he lost both by just under 14 percent.

There are a couple different stories that have brought a twist in the story of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups. Both The New York Times and Washington Post noted that the directives given to lower-leven staffers in the agency’s Cincinnati office came from from management, perhaps even higher.

Here’s excerpt from The New York Times:

During the summer of 2010, the dozen or so accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati got a directive from their manager. A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the Tea Party had begun applying for tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections.

The Washington Post told a similar story:

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do….That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

There is a reason that President Barack Obama found out about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups on the news — his senior staff opted not to tell him.

White House lawyers were told about the Treasury Department’s investigation into the politically-motivatived targeting of the groups in April. During the daily press briefing yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted that senior staff also knew about the investigation, but decided not to tell President Obama because they wanted to wait for the final report:

With the knowledge of an investigation, the White House held to a “cardinal rule” that it should not get involved in an external investigation, Carney said during his daily briefing. “No one in this building intervened in an ongoing independent investigation or did anything that could be seen as intervening,” he said.

“To the chagrin of some who would have liked us to get more in front of this, we appropriately waited,” Carney later added.
[…]
Though senior staff knew of the probe, Carney said [White House counsel Kathy] Ruemmler concluded that the investigation was “not a matter she should convey to the president” until the report was finalized.