pacino wrote:a way to dig more shovelfuls onto him

you also kind of need a replacement in line

jerseyhoya wrote:Stewart and Colbert are both liberals, but have prided themselves on their willingness to skewer Dems when appropriate. The administration over the past four days has stepped in one pile of dogshit after another, and after laughing off the skeptics on Benghazi last night, Colbert ignored the stories piling up on the administration tonight.

He's not a straight news source and is not pretending to be any such thing. But if he wants to be viewed as an equal opportunity comic, and not a liberal hack, he's doing it wrong.

karn wrote:basically i want to see a birth certificate

The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status.

One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected.

Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.

In a statement late yesterday, the tax agency said it had pooled together the politically active nonpartisan applicants -- including a “minority” that were identified because of their names. “It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views,” the IRS said in its statement.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill and campaign finance watchdog groups are pressing to expand congressional hearings to encompass everything the IRS is doing concerning nonprofits, including whether such groups should be allowed to spend money on political efforts at all.

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which is conducting its own IRS investigation, has introduced legislation with Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski to require all groups spending money on politics to disclose their donors.

“These problems will continue as long as there is an absence of clear and enforceable rules,” Wyden told reporters yesterday. “In the absence of clear and enforceable rules the bureaucracy pretty much makes it up as they go along.”

Political spending by nonprofits incorporated under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code has increased since the U.S. Supreme Court (1000L) in 2010 removed limits on independent corporate and union spending and other court rulings paved the way for wealthy individuals to spend unlimited sums in elections.

A grand jury was empaneled in Washington’s federal court this
year to begin hearing evidence in the case. In February, at the request
of national security prosecutors in Machen’s office, the grand jury
issued subpoenas for telephone companies to turn over records for the AP
reporters in Connecticut, New York and Washington for the two-month
period before the story was written.
The AP was notified of the records’ seizure based on a specific timeline spelled out in Justice Department rules, an agency official said. The department is required to notify media organizations within 45 days that records have been obtained or seek a 45-day extension and then alert the news organization. In the case of the AP, the Justice Department waited 90 days.

CNN's Jake Tapper reports:

CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that apparently differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.

The actual e-mail from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned with the State Department's desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department.

The "wrong information" being disseminated that Rhodes was addressing would need to be addressed with more than just talking points for members of Congress, but also by trying to forge a general understanding of what the Obama administration was saying about the attack in Benghazi.

In this, it’s hard to conclude that the administration succeeded, given the various and conflicting explanations and continued references to demonstrations in Benghazi against an anti-Muslim video, a demonstration that the intelligence community now concludes did not happen.

So whoever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House – specifically Rhodes – was more interested in the State Department’s concerns, and more focused on the talking points, than the e-mail actually stated.

Near the top of his original piece, Karl writes “White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.” That’s pretty clear. And in the article itself he uses quotes for what were purportedly the text of the emails. At other points in the original article, Karl seems to allude to the fact that there were notes as well. Read the piece to make your own judgment on that count. (Late Update - 6:16 PM: On air he seems to have been even more clear that he’d reviewed the actual emails.)

It now seems that the ABC spokesperson jumped the gun because clearly the accounts differ substantially and Karl gets that. He says in a new piece that he asked his source to explain the discrepancy and got this response …

I asked my original source today to explain the different wording on the Ben Rhodes e-mail, and the fact that the words “State Department” were not included in the e-mail provided to CNN’s Tapper.
This was my source’s response, via e-mail: “WH reply was after a long chain of email about State Dept concerns. So when WH emailer says, take into account all equities, he is talking about the State equities, since that is what the email chain was about.”

pacino wrote:now we're talking. deny them all.

karn wrote:IRS director steps down

This past week has produced a sea change in how this administration is viewed and anybody who thinks it isn't entirely resultant of their own doing is being willfully ignorant. The big picture is this - the Obama in office today is not (or is no longer seen as) the Obama who captivatingly promised America so much. Next to nothing has changed from 5 years ago and there is writing is on the wall for things to only get worse. Tide is rapidly turning on ACA as the reality of the lies behind it are revealed. Public distrust is approaching Bush-Cheney levels which should have been unconscionable for the ahem most transparent administration in history. Writing it off as typical Republican witch hunting is avoiding the reality that there have been serious, serious failings by the president and staff. Of course the GOP is working on 2016, but that is quite a ways away. The problems for the White House are very real right now and they have not shown one iota of capability in handling them.

Werthless wrote:http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/05/14/obamas-leak-hypocrisy-ap-phone-records/

Perhaps the DOJ should access the phone records of the President's national security team to find the leaker who shared information on our activities in Iran. Oh wait, those leaks made the President look tough on Iran.

Some are saying that conservatives who blasted the president for the leaks last year and who today are decrying the infringement of press freedom are being hypocritical. But the problem here is not whether the president’s critics are trying to have it both ways on the issue. Based on what we know today, if anyone has played the hypocrite on both security and press freedom, it is the president and his cronies.

drsmooth wrote:Chaffetz is such a dipshit

reminds me of this guy