Kidnapping and Torture of White Male by 4 Black Gang Bangers is Savage and Racist (UPDATED) | PUMABydesign001's Blog

Kidnapping and Torture of White Male by 4 Black Gang Bangers is Savage and Racist (UPDATED) | PUMABydesign001's Blog

Chicago PD has arrested the four gang bangers responsible for the two-day kidnapping and torture of a mentally disabled white male.

The gang of four who live streamed their acts of depravity which has left their victim traumatized have been charged with committing a hate crime among other charges.

Brittany and Tanishia Covington, Jordan Hill and Tesfaye Cooper are all charged with kidnapping, aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint. Three of the four thugs detained were also charged with burglary.

Be sure to watch CPD press release below breaking down the string of events which lead to the arrest of these thugs. Talk about insanity.
....
What are the odds that the court will throw the book at these thugs? Don’t hold your breath.
....
With any luck, Jeff Sessions once confirmed, will not allow this case to be swept under the rug. Black on white violence must for once be reigned in.

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The Chicago Police Department, so politically correct, can’t find the words, are either afraid or just refuse t0 call this attack by its name. Instead, after decades of the inmates running the asylum, Chicago PD is attributing the kidnapping to boys being boys, correction, “kids will be kids.”

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There are those who refuse to call this racist attack by its name. Who are they? The same race baiters who by no fluke are profiteers of the grievance industry. You see, while there is money to be made in what is ordained “white on Black violence,” it has been officially declared that there is no money to be made or crime in “Black on white violence.”

Those dismissing this attack by refusing to call it by its name have a vested interest in dismissing the act because it does not fit their narrative and they see no profit.

Comments across social media and so-called new reports by government sanctioned propaganda machines continue to reflect as much.

This Puppy has been Muzzled | Cedar Writes

This Puppy has been Muzzled | Cedar Writes

Anti-harassment policies are all the rage at SF conventions nowadays. Some authors have stated they will refuse to attend any conventions that don't have such policies in place.

This lady feels harassed and threatened.

I can never again go to a ‘literary’ con and feel safe. These are the people who have spent months dragging people I know and respect through the mud, and my name with them. Calling me a token woman, and the other women who were on the ballot with me. Because we didn’t fit their narrative. I have no power, they have it all, and they revel in it. They have no qualms about punching down, making sure unwanted fans don’t get their noses into the establishment.

Today, they dance and celebrate, because they won. They won by voting no award as a bloc, while accusing the Sad Puppies of having done so.

....

Now? I’d be afraid to go to WorldCon. They have shown how they feel, and they will treat any threats to their position with… theft, suppression of free speech, mockery, and more. There are people who will never again be able to publish traditionally because of this. And not everyone has the options to be an independent, to have the freedom I so cherish.

I can’t be involved any longer.

Theoretically, convention committee members should be subject to the kind of discipline they prescribe in the harassment policies they advocate. However, my theory is that those who demand such policies never intend that they, themselves, would ever be subject to them.  Rules are for other people.

Betsy's Page: Cruising the Web

Betsy's Page: Cruising the Web

Israel as punching bag

James Taranto links to this essay by Israeli journalist Matti Friedman about how the media cover Israel. Friedman points out that the media cover Israel and the Palestinians as if it's the most important story on earth with move coverage than any other conflict on earth.

Staffing is the best measure of the importance of a story to a particular news organization. When I was a correspondent at the AP, the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the “Arab Spring” eventually erupted.

To offer a sense of scale: Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the permanent AP presence in that country consisted of a single regime-approved stringer. The AP’s editors believed, that is, that Syria’s importance was less than one-40th that of Israel....

The volume of press coverage that results, even when little is going on, gives this conflict a prominence compared to which its actual human toll is absurdly small. In all of 2013, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives—that is, roughly the monthly homicide rate in the city of Chicago. Jerusalem, internationally renowned as a city of conflict, had slightly fewer violent deaths per capita last year than Portland, Ore., one of America’s safer cities. In contrast, in three years the Syrian conflict has claimed an estimated 190,000 lives, or about 70,000 more than the number of people who have ever died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since it began a century ago.

News organizations have nonetheless decided that this conflict is more important than, for example, the more than 1,600 women murdered in Pakistan last year (271 after being raped and 193 of them burned alive), the ongoing erasure of Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the carnage in Congo (more than 5 million dead as of 2012) or the Central African Republic, and the drug wars in Mexico (death toll between 2006 and 2012: 60,000), let alone conflicts no one has ever heard of in obscure corners of India or Thailand. They believe Israel to be the most important story on earth, or very close.

I suspect that part of this discrepancy is that it is much easier and pleasanter to be a reporter in Israel than one in Syria or Pakistan or Tibet or Congo. He goes on to point to how the media frame the story by totally ignoring the Palestinians as having any responsibility for their situation. They ignore the corruption in the Palestinian Authority yet drill down on the slightest negative story about Israeli society. The media ignore or downplay the fact that Hamas censors and intimidates them in their coverage of conflict in Gaza. It is like after the fall of Saddam Hussein, CNN's Eason Jordan told the world of how CNN had kept certain stories to themselves because of their fear of what Saddam would do to Iraqis who had worked with CNN if they had made stories of atrocities committed by Saddam and his sons. Yet reporters in Gaza don't seem to care about presenting a true picture of life in Gaza because they're too focused on blaming everything on Israel. Friedman goes on to say many perceptive things about how the media and their western audiences see conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and fail to see those tensions as part of of conflicts throughout the Middle East. And, by portraying the conflict as simply one between Israel and Palestinians they get to portray Israel as the stronger entity instead of framing the conflict as one between Israel and Arabs or between Israelis and Muslims if one were to include the hostile countries of Turkey and Iran. Such a framing would make Israel be a tiny country of 6 million facing 300 million Arabs in surrounding countries. 

And what explains this invidious depiction of Israel? Westerners can project onto Israel everything they despise about their own nation's histories.

When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain....

White people in London and Paris whose parents not long ago had themselves fanned by dark people in the sitting rooms of Rangoon or Algiers condemn Jewish “colonialism.” Americans who live in places called “Manhattan” or “Seattle” condemn Jews for displacing the native people of Palestine. Russian reporters condemn Israel’s brutal military tactics. Belgian reporters condemn Israel’s treatment of Africans. When Israel opened a transportation service for Palestinian workers in the occupied West Bank a few years ago, American news consumers could read about Israel “segregating buses.” And there are a lot of people in Europe, and not just in Germany, who enjoy hearing the Jews accused of genocide.

You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.

Bret Stephens ponders the intriguing way that Obama's aides describe his personal reactions to various conflicts around the world.

Barack Obama "has become 'enraged' at the Israeli government, both for its actions and for its treatment of his chief diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. " So reports the Jerusalem Post, based on the testimony of Martin Indyk, until recently a special Middle East envoy for the president. The war in Gaza, Mr. Indyk adds, has had "a very negative impact" on Jerusalem's relations with Washington.

Think about this. Enraged. Not "alarmed" or "concerned" or "irritated" or even "angered." Anger is a feeling. Rage is a frenzy. Anger passes. Rage feeds on itself. Anger is specific. Rage is obsessional, neurotic.

And Mr. Obama—No Drama Obama, the president who prides himself on his cool, a man whose emotional detachment is said to explain his intellectual strength—is enraged. With Israel. Which has just been hit by several thousand unguided rockets and 30-odd terror tunnels, a 50-day war, the forced closure of its one major airport, accusations of "genocide" by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, anti-Semitic protests throughout Europe, general condemnation across the world. This is the country that is the object of the president's rage.

Think about this some more. In the summer in which Mr. Obama became "enraged" with Israel, Islamic State terrorists seized Mosul and massacred Shiite soldiers in open pits, Russian separatists shot down a civilian jetliner, Hamas executed 18 "collaborators" in broad daylight, Bashar Assad's forces in Syria came close to encircling Aleppo with the aim of starving the city into submission, a brave American journalist had his throat slit on YouTube by a British jihadist, Russian troops openly invaded Ukraine, and Chinese jets harassed U.S. surveillance planes over international waters.

Mr. Obama or his administration responded to these events with varying degrees of concern, censure and indignation. But rage?

Nope. Not so much. He saves that for the Israelis.

Betsy's Page: Cruising the Web

Betsy's Page: Cruising the Web

Lengthy post.  Obama vs the Constitution.
What if Bush had done any of this?

David Harsanyi has a very good question that should be posed to every Democrat who has turned a blind eye to everything that Obama has done to extend the power of the executive at the expense of Congress.

Enforce laws at your political leisure. Name recess appointments when there’s no recess. Legislate through regulation. Rewrite environmental laws. Rewrite immigration policy. Rewrite tax legislation. Bomb Libya. Bomb Syria. All by fiat. All good. The only question now is: what can’t Barack Obama do without Congress?

Every day seems to bring forth another story about what Obmaa has done or intends to do to ignore the constitutional limitations on the power of the president. A constitution, by the way, that Barack Obama swore to preserve, protect, and defend. The most recent was the news that he wants to forge a sweeping multi-national agreement on climate change without submitting it to the Senate. And the only excuse given is that the issue is so important and the Senate won't act. As if no president has ever faced a recalcitrant Congress.

“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America,” then-candidate Obama declared years ago. You can imagine what might have transpired if George Bush had argued that a lack of seriousness regarding a “broken” Social Security program – and the obstruction of his reform efforts – meant that Democrats had ceded the political field on the issue and should be sidestepped. It might not have gone over that well. Then again, liberal pundits seem to be under the impression that the issues we face today are the most significant in the history of mankind. Every liberal hobbyhorse becomes a moral imperative. And as frustration mounts, the abuses grow and the excuses get uglier.

But, apparently, there is some invisible clause, as Charles C.W. Cooke writes, in the Constitution that allows Democrats to ignore the limitations it puts on the presidency - the "We Can't Wait" clause.

Justifying his infringements, the president typically submits that Congress has in some way abandoned its role, and that he is obliged by expedience to step in. This asseveration rests unsteadily upon the false presumption that Congress’s role is to agree with the executive branch, rather than to make law. It is not. Even if we were to agree wholeheartedly with Barack Obama that Congress’s judgment is poor, it would remain the case that there is no provision in the Constitution that makes the legislature’s absolute role conditional upon its good sense. On the contrary: If the president can’t get Congress to agree to what he legally needs them to agree to, he doesn’t get to do what he wants to do. This is so whether Congress is packed with angels or with clowns. It is so whether Congress adores the president or loathes him, whether it is active and engaged, and whether it is idle and lackadaisical. And — crucially — it is so whether Congress is popular or it is unpopular. Public opinion matters in the American system come election time, mass plebiscites serving as the basis by which our representatives are chosen and our sentiments established into law. But it has no bearing on the day-to-day legal operation of the government, nor upon the integrity of the rules that govern that operation. If one of the elected branches proves recalcitrant, steadfastly ignoring what the voters want, the remedy is electoral, not legal. The integrity of the constitutional order, suffice it to say, is not contingent upon the transient public mood. That way lies chaos.

Knowing that appeals to raw power are jarring to the average ear, those who have taken to defending the president’s imperialism tend instead to sell their wares by introducing complexity where it does not belong. It is the case that some parts of our Constitution are vague and open to interpretation. But not all. Alas, over the last six years, we have been told that there is considerable nuance even in those portions that have been taken for more than two centuries to be utterly straightforward. Does the president have to faithfully execute the laws as they are written? That, apparently, is complicated. Does the ratification of treaties really work in the manner that the Constitution prescribes? Ooh, a tricky one! What about Article I, which makes it clear that all legislative powers belong to the legislature? Sure, but only if Congress behaves itself. Must the executive branch adhere to the established budget and borrowing process, or can it mint trillion-dollar platinum coins if Congress won’t acquiesce with its demands? This too, it seems, is unclear. Can the president deem the Senate to be in recess and make appointments without them? Why not, man? So deeply has this rot set in — and so ready have political opportunists proved themselves to abdicate their responsibilities in favor of political victory — that we have been treated to the sight of a three-term senator and majority whip claiming with a straight face that the president can merely “borrow” congressional power if it is not forthcoming.

He must do no such thing, for an assault on any part of our settlement is an assault on the whole. To the extent that Obama has been accorded political power, he may use it, and use it to the fullest. Beyond that, he is tightly and rightly circumscribed in his authority. As a matter of both propriety and legal rectitude, there can be no place within the American constitutional order for a president to menace Congress with threats. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Like Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, Barack Obama would profit from the recognition that it is for his own good that he is expected to give the Devil the benefit of the law. By demonizing one’s opponents and making legal excuses in result, it is easy to make the men in the cheap seats applaud and holler. But before long, somebody else will be taking the oath, and wondering, as he promise the best of his ability, just what he might put over on the rest.

Seth Lipsky explains why the procedures set up in the Constitution for approving treaties makes so much sense.

In recent years it has grown apparent that our country is in what I like to call a “constitutional moment,” and this example is a humdinger. Presidents are perfectly entitled to sign treaties that haven’t been approved by the Senate. That’s part of the process. They ink all sorts of sketchy stuff, but it can’t become binding as supreme law of the land until it gets through the Senate.

The Senate gives it a chance to simmer. Hearings are held. People with interests get to testify. The Senate is where the states, key parties in the American contract, get their say. Sometimes, treaties don’t get ratified and are laid aside. This happened to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty known as SALT II. President Carter signed it, but the Senate didn’t trust the Soviet boss at the time, Leonid Brezhnev, nor anyone else in the Kremlin camarilla. So it refused to ratify the treaty. No one was the worse for wear.

America worked for years on the Law of the Sea Treaty, a vast giveaway of oceanic wealth that we had the best technology to exploit, but the measure didn’t get to first base in the Senate, either. There are still politicians and diplomats and lawyers out there hoping to persuade the Senate to act. Fair enough. I wouldn’t ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty for all the sardines in the ocean. But trying to convince the Senate is fair enough. If it’s one thing to try to persuade the Senate, it’s another thing to take a treaty that the Senate is so clearly unwilling to ratify, as with global warming, and enter into a conspiracy to dodge the Senate and evade the Constitution — a document that every public official in our country is sworn to support.

This is basic Civics 101. My 10th grade students all understand this. You would think that someone who prides himself on having been a professor of Constitutional Law would understand this. And, of course, he does understand it. But he has just decided that if he wants to do something and he can't get the Senate for a treaty or the whole of Congress for a law to go along, then dang it he'll just have to do it himself and blame the Republicans for his being forced to ignore the Constitution. And just how does this differ from the sort of tyranny that the Constitutional checks and balances were designed to protect against?

No, the IRS Did Not Target Progressives Like It Targeted Conservatives | National Review Online

No, the IRS Did Not Target Progressives Like It Targeted Conservatives | National Review Online

Looking at the numbers, the chart answers a question I’ve asked myself ever since the Left claimed that it had been targeted as well: If progressives experienced similar targeting, why didn’t they make any notable contemporaneous complaints? After all, conservatives raised the issue well over a year ago, members of Congress asked the IRS commissioner about it directly, and the New York Times was even moved by the complaints to write its now-clownish March 7, 2012, editorial claiming the IRS was merely “do[ing] its job.”
Perhaps progressives didn’t complain because their targeting experience involved seven groups that were asked an average of just five additional questions (rounded up to be generous) and were approved at a 100 percent rate.

The Clarence Thomas Rules « Commentary Magazine

The Clarence Thomas Rules « Commentary Magazine

Yesterday’s front page feature in the Sunday New York Timesabout Thomas and his various associations with rich people is the sort of thing that one simply cannot imagine being written or published about anyone else on the high court.
The piece is a 2,800-word insinuation about ethical violations that are never spelled out. Reporter Mike McIntire was sent out on a fishing expedition looking for juicy material about this liberal bête noire and clearly came up empty. But instead of spiking the story, the Times (whose new editor Jill Abramson’s career was made via slanders of Thomas) printed it anyway.
The worst allegation in the piece is that Thomas may have helped persuade a wealthy donor to contribute to the building of a museum about the culture of poor Gullah-speaking African-Americans along the Georgia coast where the jurist grew up. Federal judges aren’t supposed to do fundraising even for charity but the code has never applied to the Supreme Court and even if it did, McIntire has no real proof of Thomas specifically conducting an “ask” for the Pin Point museum.
And that’s the most substantive allegation in the article. Everything else is mere conjecture and insinuation intended to give readers the idea that Thomas is unethical and conflicted. Except there are no instances of conflicts of interest and no ethical violations reported in the story. Liberal justices like Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg associate with rich people, travel to give speeches and attend liberal think tank events the same way Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia go to ones run by conservatives. The idea that the votes of either faction on the court are up for sale is absurd.
But you don’t have to be an investigative reporter to understand the motivation behind this article. Liberals have always treated Thomas as traitor to his race because he is a black conservative Republican. That has meant that Thomas is the sort of person about whom anything can be said. It is true that he may not have been the most qualified person in the land at the time of his appointment but the same can be said of a number of his liberal colleagues on the court. But, unlike other judges, his personal destruction has always been the goal of the political left. Switch the name and the political affiliation of the subject of this hit piece and you have a story that would never have been assigned, let alone published by the Times.

National Review Online | Crying Rape

National Review Online | Crying Rape

Rape. Decades ago, women who were raped and reported it, particularly those raped by someone outside their race or social class, were often disbelieved and shamed. That is tragic.

But how far the pendulum has swung in the other direction! Now, the term “rape” or “sexual assault” is thrown around almost effortlessly, accusations easily made and lives easily ruined.

First, the pendulum shift began with feminists pushing the notion that women claiming they were raped should always be believed and never questioned. Presumption of innocence, a foundation of our culture, suddenly went out the window. Consider how quickly the public tried and found guilty the Duke lacrosse boys. Ditto for a woman alleging sexual harassment. Watch the Designing Women episode concerning the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy. The show’s theme? Only a sexist Neanderthal would question Hill!

Then followed the loosened standards for arrests in rape accusations. Sure, district attorneys still require evidence of a rape to prosecute, but police are not restricted by such to make a mere arrest (so, smile for your life-ruining mug shot!).

Close on its heels came the broadening of the very definition of rape, a term on which there is now almost no consensus, thanks to the Left’s deliberate expansion of it. Prominent scholars and activists now even define rape as including any sexual activity in which the woman is not sober, claiming that consent is never truly given if one has had a few drinks. Admittedly, I am no scientist, but I am fairly certain that a statistically significant amount of sex — including very enjoyable sex — happens under the influence of alcohol. But by the liberal definition of my generation, I have been raped. Multiple times. (No word from the Left on whether men partaking in “SUI” — sex under the influence — are similarly raped by a sober woman or, if both are SUI, they both raped each other? Logic, ever so inconvenient to the gender-warriors, causes these questions to go unanswered.)

And what of drugs and the issue of consent? While conservatives will rightly and gladly continue to urge girls to abstain from promiscuity and drug use, liberals will smirk that such is ”unrealistic” and “puritanical.” All right, so what is to be done? Will the Left continue to reassure girls that there is nothing wrong with drug use or casual sex . . . while simultaneously telling them that the (inevitable) sex under those circumstances was rape?

Lastly, there is the move toward using the term “sexual assault” rather than “rape.” Why? As a conveniently vague term, “sexual assault” encompasses a variety of acts yet nonetheless sounds horrific. Instances of “sexual assault” are, naturally, far higher than those of rape, and we can count on the public to blur and forget the distinction between the two. The resulting statistics of sexual-assault instances are then alarming, leading to greater attention for the feminist-warriors and vindication of their theories.

Keep in mind: Men can now be shamed with the “sexual assault” offender label for minor acts. If a friend jokingly comes up behind a girl and slaps her butt, that is, by today’s definitions, a sexual assault. While violating a woman is an awful act, regardless of degree, there is a difference between grabbing a woman’s breasts and violent, forced penetration. As Jed Rubenfeld, a Yale Law professor, notes:

Yale has changed its code of student conduct to define sexual assault as any “nonconsensual sexual contact,” where consent must be an advance, “unambiguous” “agreement” to each “specific” touching, whether or not consented to in the past. This sounds great until you think about it. If two Yale students are kissing and one of them touches the other sexually, that person has apparently committed sexual assault (unless they stopped and negotiated in advance) even if they’ve done it before.

Rubenfeld shows how schools even distort existing law: Fullerton State University, for example, informs its students that the “California Penal Code clearly states that having sex with a person who is intoxicated is illegal and may be punishable with a prison sentence.” But California’s rape law, albeit overly broad and terribly worded, actually does not say so — it states that a rape occurred if the person was so intoxicated that consent was not possible.

Due to all this, it is no surprise that, if recent reports are to be believed, there is an outright “epidemic” of rape on college campuses, one so grave that students are even complaining that school administrators are not going far enough in hunting down and punishing the accused. NPR confirmed last month that campus rape reports are on the rise and that students at Columbia University are now even placing in bathrooms flyers containing the names of “sexual-assault violators on campus.”

Apparently, there has not been this number of criminals running amok since England colonized Australia.

Violent-crime statistics — including sex crimes — have been declining for two decades. Did all the bad guys suddenly decide to enroll in universities? No one can explain it, other than to claim that rapes must have been underreported in the past (a claim that is, conveniently, impossible to disprove).

Are there truly more rapes occurring, or:

(1) Are college administrators, now largely in charge of presiding over rape allegations, quick to pronounce a situation as a rape, erring on the side of caution and of extreme feminism? As Caroline Kitchens reports:

Through a series of heavy-handed executive actions, the Obama administration has effectively required universities to serve as investigators and jurors for felony offenses. By doing so, they have placed universities in an impossible position, created costly bureaucracy, trampled students’ due-process rights, and empowered a cadre of hypersensitive, trigger-happy gender warriors on campuses.

(2) Are women themselves being taught to believe they were raped (the aforementioned “only sober consent is true consent!” notion)? Yes. And that, ironically enough, makes these women victims of liberal culture, too.

There is, naturally, a pressing consequence of all this that few discuss — the impact on the lives of the accused. The Left loves to paint a caricature — seen in countless films and shows (for example, the frat boys in American Horror Story: Coven) of a smirking college male who deliberately drugs and rapes a girl. That, undoubtedly, is rape and such a “man” deserves the worst the law and life can throw at him. But life is not so black and white, nor clear-cut, and those situations are far outweighed by murkier ones.

Hype and Chains - The Hideous Duke Rape Hoax On the evening of...

Link: https://www.facebook.com/Hypenchains/posts/476851202423976

The left substitutes insults for reasoned argument | PrairiePundit

Link: http://prairiepundit.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-left-substitutes-insults-for.html

There's no right answer | Columbia Daily Spectator

Link: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2013/10/02/theres-no-right-answer

I am not conservative by any stretch of the imagination. Every fall break I have gone to campaign for liberal causes, and as an underclassman I was on the board of the Columbia University Democrats. But the more time I spend in class the more sympathy I have for conservatives, not necessarily for their beliefs, but for the position they have in public discourse at Columbia. My perspective may be skewed since I am a Middle Eastern studies major, but in my classes it is taken for granted that the set of liberal positions is a list of objective truths. I don't think it is funny when professors crack jokes about the IQs of Republicans. It makes it more difficult to have genuine political discussions at best, and it perpetuates the stereotype of the Ivy League as a circle-jerk of liberalism at worst.

BREAKING… Audit CONFIRMS IRS Targeted 292 Conservative Groups – Just 6 Liberal Groups | The Gateway Pundit

Link: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/06/breaking-audit-confirms-irs-targeted-292-conservative-groups-just-6-liberal-groups/ (via shareaholic.com)

The American Spectator : Democrats' BOLO Bonanza

Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2013/06/26/questions-for-the-irs (via shareaholic.com)

Levin and the rest of the Ways and Means Democrats would love to have you believe that this information relieves the IRS of any wrongdoing, but there are too many things that just don't add up. Before we let Lois Lerner and company off the hook, here are a few questions that IRS officials—and congressional Democrats—should have to answer.

1. Why are we getting these lists now, over a month after Lois Lerner admitted to the targeting in a planted question at an American Bar Association panel on May 10? The IRS had every motivation to make these lists available as soon as possible to prevent any accusation of political bias. Why would Lerner or anyone else choose not to immediately release these lists?

2. Why did Lois Lerner plead the Fifth? If Lerner did nothing wrong, as she has claimed, what motivation did she have to refuse to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee? It seems like she should have been anxious to clear her name, rather than cowering from scrutiny.

3. Where are the progressives telling their stories? A few liberals claimed their tax-exempt groups were targeted under George W. Bush, but the progressive BOLO lists supposedly started in August 2010, long after Bush left office. Since this story broke in May, countless conservatives have told stories of their groups being targeted by the IRS and what the unfair scrutiny cost them. The progressive groups seem to be MIA on this one.

4. Why did conservative groups face so much unfair scrutiny, while there is no evidence that liberal groups received any? As the Ways and Means Republicans pointed out in an email yesterday, being separated through a BOLO list is not the same as being targeted:

	Tea Party	Progressives
On a BOLO	Yes	Yes
Had donors threatened	Yes	No evidence
Had confidential information leaked	Yes	No evidence
Sent inappropriate and intrusive questions	Yes	No evidence
Had applications delayed for over 2 years and counting	Yes	No evidence
Were targeted by the IRS, according to TIGTA	Yes	No evidence

Table courtesy of the House Ways and Means Committee Republican Press Office.

5. If both conservative and liberal groups were on BOLO lists, why were conservative applications put on indefinite hold while liberal groups received 501(c)(4) status relatively easily? A USA Today investigation found that no conservative group was approved for 501(c)(4) status for 28 months starting in March 2010, but applications for liberal groups were waved through.

Despite New Revelations, IRS Scandal is Still a Scandal

Link: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/despite-new-revelations-irs-scandal-is-still-a-scandal/?utm_source=AIM - Daily Email&utm_campaign=971c9e54fa-email062513&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4ddfc8d9d-971c9e54fa-221577449 (via shareaholic.com)

TaxProf Blog: The IRS Scandal, Day 47

Link: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/06/the-irs-14.html (via shareaholic.com)

Eliana Johnson: The IRS's Best Friend in Congress - WSJ.com

Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577904578557274272099196.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop (via shareaholic.com)

"The testimony offered by other Cincinnati IRS employees—which I have reviewed in full, un-redacted form—contradicts Mr. Cummings's claims and those of Obama administration officials, such as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who has pointed the finger at "line employees" in Cincinnati. The IRS interviews suggest that the agency's officials in Washington closely controlled the review of tea-party cases.

Consider Gary Muthert, the Cincinnati IRS screener who told investigators that he began singling out tea-party applications at the request of Mr. Shafer, who told him "Washington, D.C., wanted some cases."

And there is Elizabeth Hofacre, the Cincinnati IRS agent who for several months in 2010 was charged with handling all tea-party applications. She told the committee that she understood the "lookout list" used to flag the applications of tea-party groups was also intended to flag those of Republican and conservative groups. When the applications of liberal groups came in, she sent them along for general processing."

A 'Far Broader' BOLO List? | National Review Online

Link: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351718/far-broader-bolo-list-eliana-johnson (via shareaholic.com)

A November 2010 version of the list obtained by National Review Online, however, suggests that while the list did contain the word "progressive," screeners were instructed to treat progressive groups differently from tea-party groups. Whereas they were merely alerted that a designation of 501(c)(3) status "may not be appropriate" for progressive groups — 501(c)(3) organizations are prohibited from conducting any political activity — they were told to send applications from tea-party groups off to IRS higher-ups for further scrutiny. 

That means the applications of progressive organizations could be approved by line agents on the spot, while those of tea-party groups could not. Furthermore, the November 2010 list noted that tea-party cases were "currently being coordinated with EOT" — Exempt Organizations Technical, a group of tax lawyers in Washington, D.C. Those of progressive organizations were not.

To Werfel's account, add the testimony of Holly Paz. The highest-ranking official interviewed by the House Oversight Committee to date, Paz did not contend that the lookout list was politically inclusive. Rather, she told committee investigators that the use of the term "tea party" to flag applications was politically neutral.

Five IRS Scandal Myths | National Review Online

Link: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350595/five-irs-scandal-myths-andrew-stiles (via shareaholic.com)

1. It was a few rogue agents in Cincinnati

This claim has crumbled in recent weeks.

....

But the notion that the targeting was directed by low-level employees Cincinnati has been refuted on multiple fronts. A number of conservative groups that asked about the status of their applications, for example, were told that the Cincinnati office was awaiting guidance from officials in Washington, D.C.

Employees in the Cincinnati office made clear to members of the House Oversight Committee that they received direction from the Exempt Organizations Technical Unit in Washington.

2. The targeting stopped in 2012

Jay Carney told reporters last month that the IRS targeting "stopped in May of 2012." Apparently not. After more than three years, some conservative groups are still awaiting a decision on their applications for non-profit status. Dozens of conservative groups report receiving letters from the IRS in the fall of 2012 — and later. Linchpins of Liberty, a student-mentoring organization in Tennessee, which has been the target of numerous invasive requests from the IRS (it was asked to identify the names of its student participants, for example), received another letter on May 6, 2013, days before news of the scandal broke.

3. Liberal groups were also targeted

One way in which the administration's defenders have sought to downplay the severity of the scandal is claiming that the IRS also singled out liberal political groups for extra scrutiny. That doesn't appear to be the case. As McClatchy reported last week, "virtually no organizations perceived to be liberal or nonpartisan have come forward to say they were unfairly targeted" since the scandal came to light on May 10.

In fact, groups with words like "Progress" or "Progressive" in their names were quickly approved, while tea-party groups saw their applications delayed repeatedly.

4. Absolutely no political motivations

Democrats also insist that, in the words of former White House adviser David Plouffe, the IRS targeting of conservatives "was not a political pursuit." Although the inspectors general's audit found no evidence of political motivation "at this time," there are numerous factors suggesting a systemic liberal bias within the tax-collecting agency.

Douglas Shulman, who was IRS commissioner when most of the targeting occurred, is a Democratic donor, and he  is married to liberal activist with ties to the Occupy Wall Street movement. IRS employees donated twice as much money to President Obama as they did to Mitt Romney in 2012, and nearly 30 times as much to Obama over his 2008 challenger John McCain.

5. The case is 'solved'

Elijah Cummings, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, seems to think so. "Based upon everything I've seen, the case is solved," he said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. "If it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on."

Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), certainly disagrees. And so does the Treasury's inspector general, who has emphasized that the findings of his audit are merely preliminary, and that many details are "still to be determined."

TaxProf Blog: The IRS Scandal, Day 24

Link: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/06/the-irs.html (via shareaholic.com)

L.A. Times’s Michael Hiltzik: Hooray for the IRS’s Targeting of Tea Party Groups! [feedly]

L.A. Times's Michael Hiltzik: Hooray for the IRS's Targeting of Tea Party Groups!
http://patterico.com/2013/05/15/l-a-timess-michael-hiltzik-hooray-for-the-irss-targeting-of-tea-party-groups/?utm_source=feedly

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Media Excuse Themselves on Gosnell Trial Coverage

Link: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/media-excuse-themselves-on-gosnell-trial-coverage/?utm_source=AIM - Daily Email&utm_campaign=d06a070427-email041913&utm_medium=email# (via shareaholic.com)