According to the Wall Street Journal, the mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. 

The 501(c)(4) groups in question are officially known as "social-welfare organizations." They have for decades been permitted to engage in political activity under IRS rules, so long as their primary purpose (generally understood to be more than 50% of their activity) wasn't political. They are permitted to lobby without limitation and are not required to disclose their donors. The groups span the political spectrum, from the National Rifle Association to Common Cause to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

If we were to connect the dots in the following events, we would see a scandal of majestic proportions.

• Jan. 27, 2010: President Obama criticizes Citizens United in his State of the Union address and asks Congress to "correct" the decision.

• Feb. 11, 2010: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) says he will introduce legislation known as the Disclose Act to place new restrictions on some political activity by corporations and force more public disclosure of contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations. Mr. Schumer says the bill is intended to "embarrass companies" out of exercising the rights recognized in Citizens United. "The deterrent effect should not be underestimated," he said.

• Soon after, in March 2010, Mr. Obama publicly criticizes conservative 501(c)(4) organizations engaging in politics. In his Aug. 21 radio address, he warns Americans about "shadowy groups with harmless sounding names" and a "corporate takeover of our democracy."

• Sept. 28, 2010: Mr. Obama publicly accuses conservative 501(c)(4) organizations of "posing as not-for-profit, social welfare and trade groups." Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asks the IRS to investigate 501(c)(4)s, specifically citing Americans for Job Security, an advocacy group that says its role is to "put forth a pro-growth, pro-jobs message to the American people."

• Oct. 11, 2010: Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) asks the IRS to investigate the conservative 501(c)(4) Crossroads GPS and "other organizations."

• April 2011: White House officials confirm that Mr. Obama is considering an executive order that would require all government contractors to disclose their donations to politically active organizations as part of their bids for government work. The proposal is later dropped amid opposition across the political spectrum.

• Feb. 16, 2012: Seven Democratic senators— Michael Bennet (Colo.), Al Franken (Minn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Mr. Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Tom Udall (N.M.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.)—write to the IRS asking for an investigation of conservative 501(c)(4) organizations.

• March 12, 2012: The same seven Democrats write another letter asking for further investigation of conservative 501(c)(4)s, claiming abuse of their tax status.

• July 27, 2012: Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) writes one of several letters to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman seeking a probe of nine conservative groups, plus two liberal and one centrist organization. In 2013 testimony to the HouseOversight and Government Reform Committee, former IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller describes Sen. Levin as complaining "bitterly" to the IRS and demanding investigations.

• Aug. 31, 2012: In another letter to the IRS, Sen. Levin calls its failure to investigate and prosecute targeted organizations "unacceptable."

• Dec. 14, 2012: The liberal media outlet ProPublica receives Crossroads GPS's 2010 application for tax-exempt status from the IRS. Because the group's tax-exempt status had not been recognized, the application was confidential. ProPublica publishes the full application. It later reports that it received nine confidential pending applications from IRS agents, six of which it published. None of the applications was from a left-leaning organization.

• April 9, 2013: Sen. Whitehouse convenes the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism to examine nonprofits. He alleges that nonprofits are violating federal law by making false statements about their political activities and donors and using shell companies to donate to super PACs to hide donors' identities. He berates Patricia Haynes, then-deputy chief of Criminal Investigation at the IRS, for not prosecuting conservative nonprofits.

• May 10, 2013: Sen. Levin announces that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold hearings on "the IRS's failure to enforce the law requiring that tax-exempt 501(c)(4)s be engaged exclusively in social welfare activities, not partisan politics." Three days later he postpones the hearings when Lois Lerner (then-director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division) reveals that the IRS had been targeting and delaying the applications of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

• Nov. 29, 2013: The IRS proposes new rules redefining "political activity" to include activities such as voter-registration drives and the production of nonpartisan legislative scorecards to restrict what the agency deems as excessive spending on campaigns by tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups. Even many liberal nonprofits argue that the rule goes too far in limiting their political activity—but the main target appears to be the conservative 501(c)(4)s that have so irritated Democrats.

• Feb. 13, 2014: The Hill newspaper reports that "Senate Democrats facing tough elections this year want the Internal Revenue Service to play a more aggressive role in regulating outside groups expected to spend millions of dollars on their races."

But we won’t.

Please Tell Me How It's Fixed!

TELL ME AGAIN...WHAT HAPPENED?

The question (at about 1:21) was: "I thought the Affordable care act was to save $2,500.00 per family. What happened?"

The answer was (looking very intent and serious): "This health care discussion has got to be broader. It's got to point out where there's weaknesses and failures. It's got to make sure that we're not leaving people behind or destroying the system. But don't pretend there was some type of safe harbor before this where everything was just peachy keen..."

So what happened? We've got to broaden the discussion.

So what happened? It's got to point out where there are weaknesses and failures

So what happened? It's got to make sure we're not leaving people behind.

So what happened? It's got to make sure that we're not destroying the system.

So what happened? Don't pretend there was some type of safe harbor before this.

Which of those five, or all of them, or any combination of them answered the question?

So what happened? Barack Obama, that's what happened.

So what happened? A Democrat Congress, that's what happened.

So what happened? We were told bald faced lies and we liked them, that's what happened.

So what happened? Liberalism played out like it always has, always does and always will play out: The people will be led down a path that leads to the government taking over everything.

We have less than two years left before we'll have to say about our country, "What happened?".

SUNDAY RESPITE-Your Great Name-Natalie Grant

???

DYNASTY-Another Portent Slips Out

“Now let the future begin, of the Barack Obama dynasty. Because that’s what it’s about to become. The dynasty of Barack Obama.”

Rusty Weiss at Mental Recession has a quote from NRCC Spokesman Ian Prior:

"...Recchia calling for a ‘Barack Obama dynasty.’ Given the problem Democrats had actually reading Obamacare before it was passed, it’s certainly understandable that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee would recruit someone who hasn't read the Constitution.”

And the crowd cheered? Yes, they cheered.

YEAH

THIS PROBABLY MAKES SENSE TO SOMEONE

The IRS will now require businesses to swear, under threat of perjury, that any downsizing they might have had to do throughout the year was not due to Obamacare…even if it was.

To avoid ObamaCare costs you must swear that you are not trying to avoid ObamaCare costs. You can duck the law, but only if you promise not to say so.

Obamacare forces individuals and companies to provide costly health insurance for their employees. Any company not doing this will be penalized… “taxed”… for non-compliance. This mandated insurance purchase, which has already begun for individuals, was supposed to have already started for companies too, but was unconstitutionally delayed twice by Obama (remember, he’s not a king. He doesn't get to even change a misplaced comma in a law passed by Congress).

Since companies that employ between 50 and 99 people will be exempt from the penalty for another year, they have a huge incentive to keep the number of people they employ at under 100. In other words, if a company employs 99 people, they would be crazy to hire anyone because they would then be subject to all the regulations, taxes and other red tape that accompanies Obamacare. Similarly, if a company employs, say, 106 people, that company has a massive incentive to fire 7 people in order to get its number of employees below the arbitrary 100 mark.

The Obama administration doesn't want Obamacare blamed for the high unemployment rate and lingering sluggish economy…even though it IS to blame. So they came up with a wonderfully awful plan to avoid this: don’t allow businesses to say that Obamacare was the reason they fired or didn't hire employees…even if it was the reason.

SUNDAY RESPITE-Lord, I Believe in You-Crystal Lewis

MY SENIOR TAX RETURN

I just received an IRS audit on my tax return for 2013. It puzzles me!

They are questioning me on the number of dependents I claimed. I guess it was because of my response to the instruction  "List all dependents."

I claimed:

12 million illegal immigrants

3 million crack-heads

42 million inmates in 243 prisons

1/2 of Mexico

535 persons in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate

AND

1 Amateur President

Evidently, this was NOT and acceptable answer. I keep asking myself, "WHO DID I LEAVE OUT?"

TO DEBT OR NOT TO DEBT---THAT IS THE QUESTION

DO AS I SAY DO NOT AS I DO DO

North Carolinians marching to protest voter-ID laws must present a valid photo ID to participate in an NAACP-hosted protest against voter-ID laws in Raleigh on Saturday.

The central claim among the protesters is that the  voter-ID laws disenfranchise certain segments of the voting population, particularly minority voters and poor voters.

According to official NAACP flyers passed out at the rally, protesters must carry the precise kind of ID that they would be expected to present at the voting booth.

Notice the last instruction.

Chairman of the House Elections Committee and North Carolina Republican state Rep. David Lewis criticized  the protesters for their “hypocrisy.”

“I find it extremely hypocritical that when nearly 70 percent of North Carolinians across all political spectrums support the idea that one present photo identification when going to the polls, the NC NAACP has filed suit in court to block this common-sense idea,” said Lewis in a statement to The Daily Caller.  “However, the NC NAACP requires their protesters to maintain valid photo identification on their person throughout the march. The idea that Chairman William Barber and his followers find it more important to carry their photo identification with them when marching than when electing the President of the United States is reprehensible.”

SUNDAY RESPITE-Say the Name-Margaret Becker

THE RESULT OF LIBERAL POLICIES (Republican AND Democrat)

I have paid taxes since I was 18 years old. I still pay taxes. I despise that one penny has gone to people who think like this guy. But liberal policies (both Republican liberal policies and Democrat liberal policies) have deliberately produced a generation that believes we who work owe those who don't work (not who can't work) a living.

 That is absolutely outrageous.

Do you think college is going to do this twit one bit of good? He can't even speak English, is a "third year" college person (not student) and can't think his way out of the proverbial wet paper sack.

 Liberals are a bunch of stary-eyed chumps.

LOOK HOW FAR MAN-MADE "CLIMATE CHANGE" HAS REACHED!!

Nasa has found a unique planet which wobbles on its axis - causing weather conditions to be even more erratic than those on Earth.

Astronomers were stunned to find the planet, designated Kepler-413b wobbles wildly on its spin axis, much like a child's top.

The tilt of the planet's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons.

'Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat,' Nasa said. 

In contrast, Earth's rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. 

Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale.

Kepler 413-b is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. 

It circles a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars every 66 days. 

The planet's orbit around the binary stars appears to wobble, too, because the plane of its orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the star pair's orbit.

Astronomers using Kepler discovered the wobbling when they found an unusual pattern of transiting for Kepler-413b.

'Looking at the Kepler data over the course of 1,500 days, we saw three transits in the first 180 days -- one transit every 66 days -- then we had 800 days with no transits at all. 

'After that, we saw five more transits in a row,' said Veselin Kostov, the principal investigator on the observation. 

The next transit visible from Earth's point of view is not predicted to occur until 2020, because the orbit moves up and down, a result of the wobbling, in such a great degree that it sometimes does not transit the stars as viewed from Earth.

Astronomers are still trying to explain why this planet is out of alignment with its stars.There could be other planetary bodies in the system that tilted the orbit. 

Or, it could be that a third star nearby that is a visual companion may actually be gravitationally bound to the system and exerting an influence.

'Presumably there are planets out there like this one that we're not seeing because we're in the unfavorable period,' said Peter McCullough, a team member with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University. 

'And that's one of the things that Veselin is researching: Is there a silent majority of things that we're not seeing?'

Even with its changing seasons, Kepler-413b is too warm for life as we know it. 

Because it orbits so close to the stars, its temperatures are too high for liquid water to exist, making it inhabitable. 

It also is a super Neptune - a giant gas planet with a mass about 65 times that of Earth -- so there is no surface on which to stand. 

On a related topic, a blast of global warming hit the mid-west with crippling snow and ice. Meanwhile, Florida was struck with global cooling with temperatures one degree above normal.

All of this man-made, of course. No earth tilt. No sun spots. Nothing to see here...move on.

BACK TO NEBRASKA (Denver will never accept them back)

I am my dog's trainer.

I have taught my dog to lie down and roll over.

I am also the trainer for the Denver Broncos.

They learned the same trick.

Except for the offense, the defense and the special teams, they actually did OK.

What ever happened to Omaha?

SUNDAY RESPITE-Amazing Grace-Chris Tomlin

SOTU

I was going to write about all the things Presiden BO (the amateur president) said in his State of the Union  address that were new. But there weren't any.

He DID reiterate his determination to get his way with or without Congress, but that is the direction he has been going all along. It isn't new, even though many have missed it.

Other presidents have issued executive orders, some more than PBO (tap), but none have bragged about it as part of their deliberate and specific agenda.

Despotism here we come! Right back where we started from.