Thursday, June 25, 2015

Breaking: House Republicans Considering IMPEACHMENT of Partisan IRS Commissioner

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress last year that Lerner emails were lost and could not be found – The agency then later destroyed the email files.
In March 2014, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform. Koskinen told Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) during the hearing that Loise Lerner’s emails were archived and it would take a long time to retrieve them.
In June 2014 the IRS told Congress Lois Lerner’s emails were lost in a computer crash.
There were audible gasps in the room on June 20,2014, when IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress that Lerner’s hard drive was tossed out. Koskinen testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the IRS conservative targeting scandal.
Today Congress discovered that the IRS destroyed Lerner emails during the probe of IRS targeting.
Now Congress is considering impeachment of the scandal-plagued commissioner.

National Review reported:

House Republicans investigating the IRS’s targeting of tea-party groups are seriously considering an effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen or other agency employees for “culpable misdemeanors” pertaining to the destruction of e-mails written by Lois Lerner, the former official at the heart of the scandal. “We’ve briefed the leadership’s counsel, and I think that they’re open to it, but it’s the type of thing where this town is like, ‘oh, that’s not how we do things, it’s not really been used lately,’” a Republican member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says. “But, quite frankly, we really haven’t had executive branch officials behave this way like we do now.”
“We’ve briefed the leadership’s counsel, and I think that they’re open to it, but it’s the type of thing where this town is like, ‘oh, that’s not how we do things, it’s not really been used lately,’” a Republican member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says. “But, quite frankly, we really haven’t had executive branch officials behave this way like we do now.”
Lawmakers have been privately mulling the unconventional tactic for months, in part due to frustration that cutting the agency’s budget and holding Lerner in contempt of Congress failed to speed up the glacial pace at which the agency has produced documents requested by the committee. The ultimate decision depends on their ability to demonstrate that the IRS has obstructed the investigation — a public case that might begin Thursday, when the Treasury Department’s inspector general announces that IRS officials destroyed the files “most likely to have contained Lerner’s emails” after telling Congress they could not be found, according to a transcript of the IG’s forthcoming testimony to the Oversight Committee obtained by NR. Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the committee, says the next steps depend on what emerges from the hearing. “We are going to have the hearing, digest the content, read the report, and then chart a way forward,” he says.

Game Over, Obamacare Haters

C
hief Justice John Roberts’s lone substantive interjection during oral arguments in King v. Burwell hinted at a fox-like deviousness. Perhaps the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies should survive in all states, but perhaps, too, the law is ambiguous enough that a future Republican president could discontinue those subsidies in states that didn’t establish exchanges.

Keep the dream of hobbling Obamacare alive, but also leave it in the realm of politics.
But Roberts did something different, and deeply unexpected, instead. He wrote an opinion, preserving all subsidies, that marks the end of the line for Obamacare’s most zealous challengers. Before Thursday morning, most close Court watchers believed there were about five plausible outcomes inKing. Roberts sidestepped all of them.
Instead, he authored an opinion, joined by the Court’s four liberals, and conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, that leaves the law’s challengers with the measliest of consolation prizes: He allowed that they, in all their certitude of hindsight, weren’t completely insane. They put forth a plausible-seeming construction of the statute, but one that’s ultimately impermissible, in part because their supporting theory—that Congress intended to use the law's subsidies as a weapon against states—is completely risible. The King v. Burwell story ends today.
“Petitioners’ arguments about the plain meaning…are strong,” the opinion concludes. “[But] the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.”
The Court’s majority holds that the text at issue—"an Exchange established by the state," the ACA states—“is properly viewed as ambiguous,” and plausibly “refers to all Exchanges—both State and Federal—at least for the purposes of the tax credits.”
Which is to say, the government was within its rights to distribute tax credits through all exchanges in every state, regardless of their provenance.
The typical underpinning of a holding like this would be what’s known as “Chevron deference,” a canon which assumes that when statutes are ambiguous, Congress has implicitly delegated authority to federal agencies to interpret them. But Roberts and the majority determined that this standard should not apply. That ambiguity aside, the statute compels the IRS to issue tax credits in every state.

The Stupidity Continues: New Orleans Democrat Mayor Mitch Landrieu Calls For Removal Of Robert E. Lee Circle Statue…

Now is the time to talk about replacing the statue of Robert E. Lee, as iconic as it is controversial, from its perch at the center of Lee Circle, Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced Wednesday (June 24) during a gathering held to highlight his racial reconciliation initiative.
"Symbols really do matter," he said. "Symbols should reflect who we really are as a people.
"We have never been a culture, in essence, that revered war rather than peace, division rather than unity."

[Listen to Landrieu's speech on why Lee Circle should be renamed, or read a full article on his announcement here. ]

The slaying last week of nine black people in a historic Charleston, S.C., church at the hands of Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist, has sparked heated debate about whether the Confederate battle flag and other symbols associated with the country's racist past ought to be displayed in public places.

Just two days ago, Landrieu was noncommittal when asked whether the Lee statue should be removed, though he called for a larger discussion on it and other Confederate monuments in New Orleans. The 2018 Tricentennial Commission, whose tasks include addressing the city's complex racial history ahead of its 300th anniversary, would also examine the propriety of the monuments continued display on public property, the mayor's office said.

"These symbols say who we were in a particular time, but times change. Yet these symbols -- statues, monuments, street names, and more -- still influence who we are and how we are perceived by the world," a spokesman said in a statement. "Mayor Landrieu believes it is time to look at the symbols in this city to see if they still have relevance to our future."


Awesome! Justice Scalia Goes Nuclear In Obamacare Dissent, “We Should Start Calling This Law SCOTUScare”…

Scalia +1,000,000
1. “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’”
Justice Scalia2. “Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.”
3. “Today’s interpretation is not merely unnatural; it is unheard of.”
4. “And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”
5. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

Huckabee: SCOTUS Obamacare Decision ‘Out-of-Control Act of Judicial Tyranny’

As soon as the news of the King v. Burwell decision broke, 2016 GOP candidate Mike Huckabee published his reaction on his official blog. And just in case not enough people were paying attention, he decided to get a little ranty on Twitter as well.
The first indication of Huckabee’s impending opinion came in the form of a 139-character attack on the current Supreme Court justices and the judicial branch at large.
There isn't a 'do-over’ provision in our Constitution that allows unelected, SCOTUS judges power to circumvent Congress & rewrite bad laws.
Of course, his “do-over” jab wasn’t going to be enough, so he wrote a much longer blog post about it. From the very beginning, Huckabee makes his stance clear when he calls the King v. Burwell decision “an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny.” He then spends the rest of the first paragraph nit-picking the SCOTUS’s announcement, but quickly leaves it behind for a second paragraph filled with a “what I will fix as president” campaign message:
Everywhere I go, I talk to American families who keep getting punched in the gut with outrageous insurance premiums and infuriating hospital bills. ObamaCare was railroaded through Congress to ‘solve’ our healthcare problems, but five years later, American families are getting railroaded by runaway mandates, big government bureaucracy, and out-of-control healthcare costs. ObamaCare is a $2.2 trillion Washington disaster that raided billions from Medicare and did nothing to fix our broken system of ‘sick care,’ which rewards irresponsibility and penalizes commonsense.  As President, I will protect Medicare, repeal ObamaCare, and pass real reform that will actually lower costs, while focusing on cures and prevention rather than intervention. The status quo is unfair, unaffordable, unsustainable, and completely un-American.
But this is all part of a campaign, so of course the Huckster wasn’t done.
has NO authority to rescue Congress from creating bad law. ruling is an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny.
Not gonna lie. I kind of miss Fox News’ Huckabee. Kind of.

Eric Holder Calls Charleston Shooting “Domestic Terrorism” . . . Still Labels Ft. Hood Islamic Terror Attack “Workplace Violence”…

Why do retired democrats feel the need to open up there traps!!!!

Screen Shot 2015-06-25 at 2.54.17 AM


Via: Weasel Zippers

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[VIDEO] Watchdog reveals evidence was destroyed during probe of IRS targeting

The lead government watchdog for the IRS revealed Thursday that computer evidence was erased during the investigation into the agency's targeting scandal, months after the IRS was told to preserve documents. 
J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that IRS employees erased computer backup tapes shortly after officials discovered thousands of emails related to the tax agency's Tea Party scandal had been lost. 
As many as 24,000 emails were lost because 422 backup tapes were "magnetically erased" around March 4, 2014. 
George said his office found no direct evidence the tapes were destroyed to hide information from Congress or law enforcement. But the destruction nevertheless defied a preservation order, and is sure to raise suspicions over motive. 
"We have been misled. There has been evidence that has been destroyed," committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Thursday. 
George said those tapes "likely contained" 2010 and 2011 emails to and from former IRS official Lois Lerner, who has emerged as a central figure in congressional investigations. He said they will "most likely never be recovered." 
A source familiar with the matter told Fox News the evidence was destroyed 10 months after a preservation order for the emails; seven months after a subpoena; and one month after IRS officials realized there were potential problems locating certain emails. 

[BREAKING NEWS] SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS NATIONWIDE HEALTH CARE LAW SUBSIDIES

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.

The justices said in a 6-3 ruling that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.

The outcome is the second major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement. It came the same day the court gave the administration an unexpected victory by preserving a key tool the administration uses to fight housing bias.

Chief Justice John Roberts again voted with his liberal colleagues in support of the law. Roberts also was the key vote to uphold the law in 2012. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a dissenter in 2012, was part of the majority on Thursday.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "We should start calling this law SCOTUS care." Using the acronym for the Supreme Court, Scalia said his colleagues have twice stepped in to save the law from what Scalia considered worthy challenges.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent, as they did in 2012.

Nationally, 10.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the Obama health overhaul. That includes the 8.7 million people who are receiving an average subsidy of $272 a month to help pay their insurance premiums.

Via: AP

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