Justice Department investigated Fox News reporter
The Washington Post reported Sunday evening that the federal authorities went to great lengths to investigate how James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, was able to report on classified intelligence on North Korea in 2009.
According to the Post, the Justice Department went further in investigating Rosen than they did with AP reporters. They obtained his security badge access records at the State Department, looked at records of his calls with a specific State Department adviser and even went through his personal e-mails.
Virginia Republican Candidates Not Joining 21st Century
Last week I reported that 40 percent of Virginia Republicans – and 56 percent of independents – now support gay marriage. But on Saturday the Virginia GOP nominated three statewide candidates whose views on homosexuality and marriage equality range from unwavering opposition to bigoted to insane… .
The 9 Most Anti-Gay Statements From The Republican Nominee For Lt. Governor Of Virginia
The Virginia Republican Party picked conservative minister E.W. Jackson as their nominee for lieutenant governor Saturday night. Jackson will run alongside Ken Cuccinelli.
Hoo boy.
REVEALED: IRS letter to tea party groups
The long-awaited Treasury Department inspector general report … says the agency itself decided some of its questions to conservative groups were way over the line.
— POLITICO
Dear Sir or Madam,
We have received your application for tax-exempt status. In order to complete our consideration of your application, we require additional information. Please answer the following brief questionnaire and return it no later than 12 p.m. the day before yesterday.
Your response must be signed in blood by an officer whose name is listed on your application; a notary public; singer Kanye West; Simon Abney-Hastings, (the former Lord Mauchline), 15th Earl of Loudon and the rightful heir to the throne of England; and three eyewitnesses.
Please seal your response in a Klazomenian sarcophagus constructed no later than 500 B.C. and ship it by horse-drawn carriage to the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office at P.O. Box 2508, Cincinnati, OH 45201.
Please provide the following information.
(1) The names of all board members, officers, and employees, in phonetic Klingon.
(2) Your current membership total, converted to base 7.
(3) The complete genetic code of each member, written in longhand.
(4) A high school yearbook photo of each board member, officer, employee and member, unretouched.
(5) The results from each board member’s, officer’s, employee’s and member’s latest colonoscopy.
(6) The complete names and current addresses of the first persons each board member, officer, employee and member ever kissed.
(7) The location, date, time of, and weather conditions surrounding said kisses.
(8) As a result of said kisses, did any board member, officer, employee or member get to Second Base?
(9) When you play “Los Angelenos” from the 1974 Billy Joel album “Streetlife Serenade” backward, what do you hear?
(10) How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?
(11) Do all notrivial zeros of the analytical continuation of the Riemann zeta function have a real part of one-half? Explain (please show your work).
(12) Why is there something rather than nothing?
(13) If Theseus replaces each plank of his ship as it wears out until every plank has been replaced, does he still have the same ship, or does he have a different ship? … .
Not the usual sort of vehicle you see in the Walmart parking lot, but there it was.
IRS Abuses Past and Present
The IRS scandal is only the latest in a long line of them.
Guns vs. Booze, and Feelings. vs. Arguments
ThinkProgress (along with many others) treats the fact of gun deaths as if it were an argument in itself. The number of people who die by gun is indeed shockingly and horribly high. But you cannot reason from emotions (shock and horror) to a conclusion (we need more gun control) — although ThinkProgress, and gun-control advocates generally, clearly want us to.
To see why not, consider this:
Alcohol abuse kills some 75,000 Americans each year and shortens the lives of these people by an average of 30 years, a U.S. government study suggested Thursday.
Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States after tobacco use and poor eating and exercise habits. . .
That works out to 205 deaths by alcohol per day, which is almost two and a half times as many deaths by gun each day. Does it necessarily follow that we should therefore enact much more stringent limits on the availability of alcohol?
Clearly not — and you can think of the obvious reasons yourself. Those who abuse alcohol are a small minority of all alcohol users; we have tried Prohibition and it didn’t work; etc. Similar arguments, obviously, can be made with regard to guns.
Kind of ironic that a group with the word “Think” in its name didn’t stop to.
IRS stalled conservative groups, but gave speedy approval to Obama foundation
IRS office in the middle of controversy gave nod to Obama group in about a month’s time.
Flashback: Schumer, Franken urged IRS to target tea party in 2012
Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that.
Burglars Unwittingly Put Victim In Gun Closet; He Comes Out Shooting
The victim of a home invasion managed to turn the tables on his attackers after they unwittingly forced him into his own gun closet.
Letters show top IRS official knew of targeting
A top Internal Revenue Service official knew last year that the Richmond Tea Party was the target of extra scrutiny and reminded the Richmond organization to comply with requests for information, according to IRS letters.
In March 2012, the Richmond group received two letters signed by Lois G. Lerner, the agency’s director of exempt organizations, following up on the status of their applications for tax-exempt status.
Lerner’s letters to the Richmond Tea Party contradict claims in a recent inspector general’s report that the improper targeting was just a low-level effort and that she attempted to avert it… .
Here's the Letter From the IRS to the Richmond Tea Party
Among other things, the IRS wanted…
* the “time, location, and [a] detailed description of each event” the group held since Oct. 2010;
* “detailed contents of the speeches” at such events;
* “copies of all the publications and/or advertising materials that you have distributed”;
* “your presentations on … social networking sites and blog sites”;
* “copies of your website that your members can only [sic] access.”
* “A resume for each member of your governing body.”
* “Copies of all your newsletters.”
* “Copies of your materials on Face Book [sic].”
