United Liberty

Even before the scandals that have recently hit the Obama Administration, some were already worried that the Democratic Party was in decline. Just last week, Doug Sosnick, a Democratic strategist, told colleagues in a memo that the party is “in decline” and “at considerable risk” when President Barack Obama’s second and final term expires in January 2017.

Sosnick noted that, despite President Obama’s electoral success, “Democrats have lost nine governorships, 56 members of the House and two Senate seats” since he took office. The memo hit before the IRS and DOJ scandals became public knowledge, so there is no measure of the impact of those from the memo. However, there is growing concern from Democrats that the now-scandal plagued White House could cost them next year.

Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, explained the electoral implications of the scandals earlier this week:

The danger for Obama, of course, is that many Americans will start to doubt his administration’s veracity and values. If that happens — and for now it is only a danger, not an inevitability — then the president could well turn into a serious liability for Democrats in next year’s elections.

While it may be just temporary, Chris Matthews, a talking head who has fawned over President Barack Obama like some dewy-eyed school girl, ripped the White House yesterday during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

The cantankerous pundit still made the case for a big government during the nearly 22-minute segment on the show, but he didn’t hide his contempt for President Obama’s very serious leadership failures.

“This President’s responsible for the federal government. He’s responsible even if he didn’t do anything wrong,” said Matthews on the Morning Joe. “He keeps acting like the only problem he’s got — the only real problem he has, viscerally — is the talking points in Benghazi because that gets to Susan Rice, people close to him, and Michelle.”

Matthews said that President Obama needs someone to handle the day-to-day affairs of the White House to deal handle problems like the administration has seen over the last several days. He cited the lack of this leadership as a “real problem.”

In the wake of a very serious scandal that involved his agency singling out Tea Party groups, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked for and received the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller.

President Barack Obama announced this development during a short statement to this press this afternoon. He took no questions, but added that the recommendations made by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General will be implemented.

Quoting a congressional source earlier today, CNN noted that two Cincinnati-based staffers were largely responsible for the discrimination toward Tea Party groups. They have, according to the story, “already been disciplined,” though specifics weren’t provided.

While it’s good that there has been some accountability, much more needs to be done to prevent this from ever happening again. Moreover, President Obama’s response, to this point, had been woefully inadequate. Just Tuesday, the White House still didn’t want to own up that a mistake had been made, despite an admission and apology from the IRS.

The IRS is the problem. It’s very nature is to harass Americans into complying with the United States’ completely incoherent tax code. Couple that with the intimidating nature of this White House, and it’s a recipe for what happened to these Tea Party groups.

A day after criticizing the IRS over the targeting of Tea Party groups, Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, slammed President Barack Obama and the White House for not knowing about the scandals that have recently plagued the administration.

He showed that President Obama’s said that he’d heard about the IRS scandal through news reports, rather than hearing about it from officials in the agency. That, by the way, is odd since President Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday that White House lawyers knew about the investigation into the allegations in April.

Stewart showed that this is actually a pattern when it comes to stories that reflect badly on President Obama and leadership failures, noting that the same line was given in response to Operation Fast and Furious. “You know,” said Stewart, “I wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama learned Osama bin Laden had been killed when he saw himself announcing it on television!”

Check out the segment below:

On Monday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) floated the possibility of impeaching President Barack Obama over the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack on the American compound in Benghazi:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz says President Barack Obama’s handling of the government’s response to the Benghazi terrorist attack could be an impeachable offense and vows to continue digging at the “lies of highest magnitude” from the White House.

“It’s certainly a possibility,” the Utah Republican said Monday when asked about impeachment. “That’s not the goal but given the continued lies perpetrated by this administration, I don’t know where it’s going to go. … I’m not taking it off the table. I’m not out there touting that but I think this gets to the highest levels of our government and integrity and honesty are paramount.”

Chaffetz did clarify, however, that he’s not necessarily calling for impeachment. As he explained during an interview on CNN, he was asked about impeachment, so merely answered the question.

If you’ve listened to pundits over the last couple years, you’ve no doubt heard them say that the Tea Party, a grassroots movement that was essential to Republicans taking control of the House in the 2010, doesn’t have the influence that it once had. But the IRS scandal that has plagued the White House this week has placed new emphasis on the dangers of big government that were the central focus of the Tea Party and, as Sean Sullivan explained this morning at the Washington Post, it could breathe new life in the movement:

A product of frustration with the government’s direction — specifically the Obama administration’s decisions on spending, taxes and the creation of the federal health-care law — the tea party was angst channeled into activism. Now comes another moment of widespread frustration, if a smaller one, with the potential to incite a new round of advocacy.

Even as the tea party sentiment is not as widespread as it once was, the ideology underlying the movement remains a force in Congress. Look at the House, where an unruly conservative GOP conference has caused headaches for leadership. The House will hold yet another vote on a repeal of Obamacare on Thursday, an effort designed in part to satisfy freshmen lawmakers who want the vote on their record.

The White House and leading congressional Democrats are still trying to fight back against critics of ObamaCare, but their specious case isn’t convincing skeptical small business owners. According to a recent survey from Gallup, only 9% believe that the law will help them, while 48% of small business owners believe ObamaCare is going to be bad for business:

To show how deep the concern over the law goes and the messaging problem before apologists of the law, only 13% of small business owners believe that ObamaCare will improve quality of healthcare.

FreeEnterprise.com, the official blog of the United States Chamber of Commerce, also points to a separate poll of business owners showing the confusion over ObamaCare and points to the fact that “41% said [of sma held off on hiring workers, and 38% said they’ve pulled back on growing their businesses because of the law.”

If you’ve been following the story, you know that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gave extra scrutiny to Tea Party groups, including asking them questions about donors, relationships with candidates and eleced officials, and youth outreach programs.

ABC News notes that American Patriots Against Government Excess, one of the groups singled out by the IRS. was asked for a synopsis of books they read. Instead of sending a synopsis, the group sent a copy of the Constitution:

When Marion Bower decided to start her tea party organization in 2010, she didn’t know that it would take nearly two years for the Internal Revenue Service to approve her request for tax-exempt status.

The Ohio woman also did not expect that providing information about the books her group read would be part of the application process.

“I was trying to be very cordial, but they wanted copies of unbelievable things,” Bower told ABC News today. “They wanted to know what materials we had discussed at any of our book studies.”

She ultimately sent one of the books, “The Five Thousand Year Leap,” promoted frequently by Glenn Beck, to the IRS official handling her tax-exempt request in Cincinnati. She also sent a paperback copy of the Constitution.

“They wanted a synopsis of all the books we read,” Bower said. “I thought, I don’t have time to write a book report. You can read them for yourselves.”

That is awesome.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), one of the most consistent voices for Liberty in the House, will give a 30-minute special order speech today against the so-called “Marketplace Fairness Act,” legislation that would turn online retailers into tax collecting agents for 45 states and more than 9,600 taxing jurisdictions.

“The Marketplace Fairness Act is not fair, and is essentially a National Internet Tax Mandate,” Massie said in announcement on his Facebook page. “The Internet has been an enormous boon to our entire economy. Let’s keep it that way.”

The graphic below was posted with the announcement. As you can see below, Massie is pushing a Twitter hashtag — #NoNetTax — to correspond with his speech. There was no announcement of the exact time, though Massie said he would speak after votes for the day, which will end around 6pm.

The Senate passed the online sales tax measure, which is being being pushed by mostly traditional brick-and-mortor retailers and tax-hungry state government, earlier this month. Most conservative groups oppose the measure because they correctly view it as a tax hike and a burdensome new regulation that could put small, mom-and-pop retailers out of business.

While White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was hesistant to admit that the IRS did anything wrong during his daily press briefing on Tuesday, a report issued by the agency’s watchdog confirms that Tea Party groups were singled out for additional scrutiny and that the more needs to be done to reassure an already distrusting public:

Lax oversight at the Internal Revenue Service allowed for the singling out of some conservative groups, resulting in lengthy delays in the processing of their applications for federal tax-exempt status, according to a report by the agency’s inspector general released Tuesday.

The report found that for more than 18 months beginning in early 2010 the IRS developed and followed a faulty policy to determine whether the applicants were engaged in political activities, which would disqualify the groups from receiving tax-exempt status.

“The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention,” according to the report.

The list of words that IRS officials were using to flag groups for extra scrutiny is about as blatant as it can get. Obviously, “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” and “9/12” were among them, but they also flagged groups that wanted to “make America a better place to live” or educate about the Constitution and Bill of Rights — our nation’s founding documents.