Sometimes a photo says it all...

Biden now blamed in SEAL Team 6 deaths

Attorney: 'He should even be held criminally accountable'

WND

The families of three fallen Navy SEAL Team Six members say President Obama and Vice President Biden are culpable for the deaths of their sons for publicly identifying the unit that killed Osama bin Laden and pursuing policies that coddle Muslims and put our own troops at a tactical disadvantage.

SEAL Team Six carried out the daring raid in Pakistan in early May 2011. Three months later, three members of the unit were among 38 killed in a Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Twenty-five of the dead were special operations forces. Larry Klayman is founder of Freedom Watch, a WND columnist and the attorney representing three of the families who lost their sons. He said the Obama administration carelessly and illegally revealed the role of SEAL Team Six shortly after announcing the successful mission to kill bin Laden.

“Shortly after that successful raid on bin Laden, the president – through the vice president for political purposes – released the name of SEAL Team Six. That’s classified information, and even (then) Defense Secretary Robert Gates was critical of that. So that was like putting a target on the backs of the sons of my clients,” said Klayman, who revealed the helicopter may have been infiltrated by the Taliban before the crash because the Afghans on board were last-minute changes from the names on the original flight manifest.

Klayman said Vice President Joe Biden deserves special blame for these deaths.

“Biden did something, which was more than irresponsible. He served on foreign relations committees, intelligence committees. He knew, or should have known, what he was doing. He should be held accountable. Frankly, he should even be held criminally accountable for doing that,” Klayman said.

In addition to the identification of the the team, Klayman said the Obama administration is culpable for these deaths due to a policy of coddling Muslims and putting tremendous restrictions on U.S. forces.

“This president has set a tone that Muslim outreach … is more important than protecting the lives of our servicemen, and that’s crept into the military brass to the point where they can’t engage in preemptive fire. They can’t engage in return fire until they’re fired upon once. They’re sent into battle without adequate equipment,” he said.

Perhaps the greatest insult to the families was at the funeral for their sons in Afghanistan. The military refused to allow a Christian minister or chaplain at the service and instead brought in a Muslim cleric who proceeded to slander the fallen.

“For some bizarre reason, probably this Muslim outreach again of Barack Obama, they had a Muslim cleric give a prayer. Why the heck you would have a Muslim prayer and the servicemen are Christian is beyond imagination. So it has to come from the top down. And this cleric then proceeded in Arabic. No one understood it at the time, but we have a video of it, and it was translated by certified translators. He proceeded to damn my clients’ sons, and others who died, as infidels and that they should go to hell under Allah, the Muslim god,” he said.

“That’s unbelievable. We’ve never even gotten an apology from the military that they did that,” said Klayman, who is demanding a congressional investigation and added that an announcement of litigation will be coming soon.

“This is a major scandal. This is as big if not bigger than Benghazi because it concerns all of the military,” he said. “The mid-level military brass are not serving the interests of the brave fighting men that serve behind them. But the problem is that the tone and substance of these policies come from Barack Obama himself.”

Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Sharia Islamic supremacists

From Jihad Watch / Posted by Robert Spencer

Just more of the same from the Obama Administration. "Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists," by Charles C. Johnson in the Daily Caller, May 17:

The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Janet Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists. 

In a checklist obtained by The Daily Caller entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Dos and Don’ts” the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties notifies local and national law enforcement officials that it is Obama administration policy to consider specifically Islamic criticism of the American system of government legitimate.

This policy stands in stark contrast to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis’ 2009 memo “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” [pdf], which warned of the dangers posed by pro-life advocates, critics of same-sex marriage and groups concerned with abiding by the U.S. Constitution, among others.

The advice of the Dos and Don’ts list is far more conciliatory. “Don’t use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally-protected activity, including disliking the U.S. government without being violent,” the manual’s authors write in a section on training being “sensitive to constitutional values.”

The manual, which was produced by an inter-agency working group from DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center, advises, “Trainers who equate the desire for Sharia law with criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First Amendment.”...

What Happened, Mr. President?

Bill O'Reilly / Townhall Columnist

 

 

It hasn't been a great week for the Obama folks, as the scandal du jour tour has firmly taken hold. Every day it seems another federal agency is exposed as having intimidated, snooped, covered up or gone to Vegas on the taxpayer dime. Zimbabwe is even making fun of us.

On Jan. 21, 2009, in remarks welcoming his new presidential staff, Barack Obama said: "Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."
So what happened, Mr. President? Why so much stonewalling?

Let's take this one by one. Obama has to know that nobody is buying the assertion that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice made a simple error when she blamed the assassination of Ambassador Christopher Stevens on a spontaneous Muslim uprising caused by a stupid anti-Islamic video. No one believes that was an honest mistake, Mr. President.

So it is on Obama himself to explain the Rice deal -- and also to explain why armed U.S. assets in Tripoli were not immediately sent to help the ambassador and other Americans under siege in Benghazi.

But for eight months, the president has refused to explain.

The IRS chaos is newer, and the president was forced to respond by firing Steve Miller, who ran the agency. But again, how could the powerful IRS get so out of control? Was it loyalty to a liberal president that made agents unfairly target conservatives? We need some clarity here.

On the Associated Press front, all the president has to do is what Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to do: explain in general terms why the Justice Department thought it necessary to secure the phone records of AP reporters; explain why there was an urgency to the investigation. Obama can certainly do that without compromising national security. So why isn't he doing it?

The answer to that question lies in accountability. When has Obama ever been held accountable for anything? The press largely covers for him when mistakes are made, and the public seems to be in a very forgiving mood, especially on economic matters, where, according to some polls, almost half of the voters believe the sluggish economy is George W. Bush's fault.

Sensing blood in the water, the president's ardent opponents will continue to take the scandals as far as they can. The only way this stops is for Obama to take control, admit whatever mistakes were made, explain how and why they happened, and hope the public understands.

If he doesn't do that, his second term could well be a national nightmare.

Obama, IRS and Eric Holder: The Axis of Hear No Evil, See No Evil

By: John Ransom / Townhall Finance Editor

You know the people I’m talking about. The Know-Nothings.

You know the folks who pushed that one law regarding almost 20 percent of the entire economy before they even read the bill? The ones who rushed it into law just to see what was in it? The ones who managed to write a bill, while still not being familiar with what the bill actually did?

Yeah, those guys? The Know-Nothings.

Well, they know nothing about a lot of other stuff too.

Obama’s one of those guys. So is Eric Holder. So, apparently, is the entire staff at the IRS from the executive offices upward.

They are kind of an “Axis of See No Evil, Hear No Evil”.

Below is a laundry list from the Huffington Post about Attorney General Eric Holder’s gripping testimony to congress regarding his department’s latest suppression of the First Amendment while seizing phone records from a news organization.

You know, just in case you didn’t know about it, this will clear everything up for you. And just in case you miss the subtlety below, Holder, by the way, knows nothing:

·      "I was not the person involved in that decision,"

·      "I am not familiar with the reasons why the subpoena was constructed in the way that it was because I'm simply not a part of the case."

·      "I do not know, however, with regard to this particular case, why that was or was not done."

·      "I simply do not have a factual basis for answering that question."

·      "Again, Mr. Chairman, I don't know."

·      "I assume he was, but I don't know."

·      "I don't know what has happened in this matter."

·      “This is both an ongoing matter and an ongoing matter about which I know nothing.”

·      Holder also said he did not know "precisely" when he had recused himself from the investigation. 

Liberal publications, including the Washington Post, carry similar lists.

However, Holder’s Know-Nothing affiliation shouldn’t surprise us because his boss is a Know-Nothing too.

In fact, he’s the chief Know-Nothing.

When asked about the recent Inspector General’s report on the IRS’s practice of targeting conservative groups, the president said: Hey! I just read about that!

“I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this,” Obama said in a statement that says nothing, but still reveals much. “I think it was on Friday.”

As a follow-up I wish someone had thought to ask Obama what he had for lunch on Friday. It’d be nice to know if our president knows nothing about that as well.

Obama apparently knew nothing about Boston, about the illegal seizure of Associated Press phone records, the strong-arming of State Department employees, the constitution, the economy, job creation....

In fact, as I wrote at the beginning of the month, Obama, the know-it-all, suddenly seemed to know nothing, even before the IRS-AP fracas:

Still, it’s surprising that the administration that knows more about banking than bankers, more about healthcare than doctors, more about firearms than people who legally possess arms, more about budgets than citizens who have to balance their checkbooks and more about practically everything than anyone else, would admit that on a few things, they really know nothing.

“On most days it's hard to tell him he's wrong about anything,” recently confessed one top Democrat about the Commander in Brief.

It’s seems equally hard to TELL him about anything too.

But here it is:

Obama knows nothing about Benghazi.

He knows nothing about Boston’s Tsarnaev brothers.

He knows nothing about Fast and Furious; he knows nothing about green energy loans, either.

Yes, the man who recently proclaimed: I AM IN CHARGE NOW, FINALLY! knows nothing.

This seems strange coming from the administration that leaked every damn detail about how Barack 

Obama personally hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden, while simultaneously saving Detroit from bankruptcy… saved Detroit at least until after the election in 2012, that is.  
  
But the Know-Nothing party isn’t just a celebration of individual ignorance, it’s institutional too:

“Republicans seem to be losing patience with [ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service Steven] Miller because his answers don’t change,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “of course, neither have their questions. Miller, in response to rough questioning from [Republican] Dave Reichert, says he doesn’t know who is primarily responsible for initiating these searches of tea-party groups.”

“I don’t have that name, Sir,” Miller said.

Nor does anyone else at the IRS.

But of course the only people who seem surprise by this outbreak of ignorance are those other Know-Nothings, the press.

The rest of us?

We knew that this administration knew nothing a long time ago.

Paul Ryan: IRS Withheld Information From Congress 

By Todd Beamon and Newsmax Wire Services

“Last year, we had these investigations in the Ways and Means Committee, we received all of these reports of this kind of harassment,” the 2012 vice presidential candidate said. “We questioned the IRS in hearings, in letters, and the IRS withheld all of this information that they were in possession of as to whether this targeting was occurring or not.

“We do now know this targeting did occur,” Ryan added. “That it was politically biased, it was only of conservative groups and now we’re getting lots of questions with respect to religious groups and other groups.”

In nearly four hours of testimony, Miller apologized for treating the conservative groups differently, calling it "horrible customer service.''

He said the treatment resulted from a misguided effort to handle a flood of applications, not political bias.

"I want to apologize on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service for the mistakes that we made and the poor service we provided," said Miller, who was forced out this week by the White House as a result of the scandal.

"The affected organizations and the American public deserve better. Partisanship and even the perception of partisanship have no place at the Internal Revenue Service."

Miller conceded that "foolish mistakes were made" by IRS officials trying to handle a deluge of groups seeking tax-exempt status.

But Rep. Dave Camp, who led Friday’s hearing, said the tougher examinations that conservative groups encountered seemed to be part of a "culture of cover-ups and intimidation in this administration." He offered no other examples.

Camp, a Michigan Republican, also said the fact that Miller and another top IRS official are stepping down does not solve the IRS' problem.

"The reality is, this is not a personnel problem,” Camp said. “This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful, too intrusive, and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers."

Camp's remark about cover-ups drew a sharp retort from the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin, also of Michigan. Levin said if the hearing became a preview of the 2014 political campaigns, "we'll be making a very, very serious mistake."

Still, the bevy of scandals embroiling the White House in recent weeks could damage President Barack Obama politically, hurt his credibility, and make it harder for him to press a second-term agenda.

The administration has been forced on the defensive about the attack in Benghazi, Libya, last Sept. 11 that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and the government's seizure of telephone records from The Associated Press as part of a leaks investigation.

Friday's IRS hearing is the first of what are expected to be many by congressional panels.

Underscoring the seriousness of the episode, Miller was sworn in as a witness, an unusual step for the House Ways and Means Committee and one that could put Miller in jeopardy if he is later shown to have misled lawmakers with his testimony.

Levin said the IRS' mistreatment of conservative groups meant the agency "completely failed the American people." He said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that makes decisions about tax-exempt groups, should be "relieved of her duties."

Miller said the IRS struggled to efficiently handle growing numbers of applications for tax-exempt status.

The agency has said that between 2008 and 2012, the number of groups applying for tax-exempt status as so-called social welfare groups more than doubled. Along with that was an increase in complaints that such groups were largely engaging in electoral politics, which is not supposed to be their primary activity.

"I do not believe partisanship motivated the people" at the IRS who engaged in the harsher screening for conservative groups, Miller said.

In recent months, Republicans on the Ways and Means panel had repeatedly asked the IRS about complaints from conservative groups that their applications were being treated unfairly.

On Friday, numerous Republicans wanted to know why Miller and others never told them the groups were being targeted, even after May 2012, when the IRS has said Miller was briefed on the practice.

Miller had been a deputy commissioner whose portfolio included the unit that made decisions about tax-exempt status.

"I did not mislead Congress or the American people," Miller told Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-La., one of several Republicans who challenged him about why he hadn't mentioned the targeting in the past.

Miller also bristled at the use of the term "targeting'' to describe the actions of the IRS zeroing in on conservatives, calling it a "loaded term'' and a "pejorative term.''

Also testifying Friday was J. Russell George, the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration.

In a report he issued this week, George said IRS officials reported they were not politically pressured to target conservative groups.

Asked about that conclusion, George said, "We have no evidence at this time to contradict that assertion," but in prepared testimony to the committee, he said he was continuing to investigate the question.

George's report concluded that the IRS office in Cincinnati, which screened applications for the tax exemptions, improperly singled out tea party and other conservative groups for tougher treatment. The report says the practice began in March 2010 and lasted more than 18 months.

The report blamed "ineffective management" for letting IRS officials craft "inappropriate criteria" to review applications from tea party and other conservative groups, based on their names or political views.

It found the IRS took no action on many of the conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status for long periods of time, hindering their fundraising for the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Republicans have spent the past few days trying to link the IRS' improper scrutiny of conservatives to Obama. The president has said he didn't know about the targeting until last Friday, when Lerner acknowledged at a legal conference that conservative groups had been singled out.

Many of the groups were applying for tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations, which are allowed to participate in campaign activity if that is not their primary activity. The IRS judges whether that imprecise standard is met.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said the FBI was investigating whether the IRS may have violated applicants' civil rights.
Obama has rejected the idea of naming a special prosecutor to investigate the episode, saying the investigations by Congress and the Justice Department were sufficient.

Obama has named Daniel Werfel, a top White House budget officer, to replace Miller.

Also on Thursday, Joseph Grant, one of Miller's top deputies, said he would retire on June 3, according to an internal IRS memo.

He is commissioner of the agency's tax-exempt and government entities division, which includes the agents that targeted tea party groups for additional scrutiny.

Grant joined the IRS in 2005 and took over as acting commissioner of the tax exempt and government entities division in December 2010. He was just named the permanent commissioner of the division on May 8.

When asked whether Grant was pressured to leave, IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Grant had more than 31 years of federal service and it was his personal decision to leave.

Op-ed: 
Let the games begin... 
Diane Sori 

On the 40th anniversary of the first Watergate hearings, Acting (until next week) IRS Commissioner Steve Miller was put in the hot seat and grilled over the IRS targeted of conservative groups who applied for tax extent status. 

Under oath and with the same arrogant attitude we've come to expect from all in the Obama administration, Miller refused to answer pertinent questions put to him by Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee during Friday’s committee hearing on the IRS scandal. The Obama appointee, soon to be former acting head, said, "I don't know" on most questions asked of him and that he couldn't recall on many others...spewing words that gave new meaning to the infamous words 'I don't remember...I don't recall'

Stuttering and stammering during this first congressional hearing, and obviously trying to dismiss the entire issue as NO big deal, Miller's testimony was paramount to stonewalling, for by refusing to disclose pertinent information, like naming those directly responsible, Miller, in a blatant in-your-face attempt, tried to mislead Congress. And even when he finally did admit that 'some errors' were indeed made because, according to him, employees wanted to "expedite the process and be more efficient due to an increase in the workload" and that those organizations in question were grouped for "consistency and quality" and NOT for political reasons, we know this NOT to be true because Miller oh so conveniently left out that the 'expediting' was done only to Conservative, Christian, and pro-Israel groups asking for tax-exempt status and NOT done to any liberal leaning groups or pro-Obama groups at all.

The number of complaints filed against the IRS all with the same political leanings proves Miller to be a liar.

As such, his testimony or lack thereof was NOT unexpected, but will still help Republicans prove that the Obama administration knew the IRS was targeting only conservative groups. In fact, J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s inspector general and man who filed the report on the political targeting, disclosing under oath that the Obama administration was very well aware of this targeting during the year leading up to the election, but deliberately kept that information under wraps so as NOT to make waves during Obama’s re-election campaign.

And I guarantee you that if Obama administration officials knew...Barack HUSSEIN Obama knew it himself.

Mr. George also testified that in June 2012 he told senior Treasury officials, including Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin, that as part of routine briefings about ongoing audits he would be conducting in the coming year, that he was auditing the IRS’s screening of political organizations seeking tax exemptions but that he did NOT tell the officials of his conclusions that the targeting had indeed been improper. 

And while Obama keeps denying in very carefully crafted language (as witnessed at Friday's press conference) that he any knowledge whatsoever of what his administration had been up to, and as he pretends angry indignation about the IRS targeting his conservative foes, he keeps claiming that he didn't personally know about the investigation into the IRS until it was made public...yeah and pigs fly...the Democrats only concern seems to be that this scandal would be used by Republicans to score 'political points'.

But truthfully, political points are a given as on Thursday it was found out that Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS official who led the tax-exempt organization's unit when the targeting of conservatives took place, has been moved over to the 'supposedly' non-political IRS unit responsible for overseeing the many provisions regarding taxation, penalties, and fees associated with the dreaded ObamaCare.

Now ain't that happy news...talk about garnering political points and the Republicans didn't have to lift a finger to get them. 

And so the political theater will continue as lawmakers vowed this hearing will be just the first in a  series of investigations that might even lead into a criminal investigation with charges being filed...hopefully against Barack HUSSEIN Obama because I can safely bet that all roads lead back to him.