IRS launches security review after threats, misinformation on social media

David Lawder via Reuters

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is reviewing safety and security measures in response to an "abundance" of threats and misinformation on social media about the agency and its employees, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in a staff memo released on Tuesday.

Rettig said the steps include new risk assessments, monitoring perimeter security at facilities, designating restricted areas and reassessing exterior lighting and entrance security. The actions follow "an abundance of misinformation and false social media postings, some of them with threats directed at the IRS and its employees," he said.

Last week, President Joe Biden signed into law a sweeping climate, drugs and tax package that provides the IRS with $80 billion in new funding to beef up compliance and service over the next decade. The provision has prompted Republicans to claim that the IRS is hiring an "army" of 87,000 new agents to police tax collections

Issa directed Treasury inspector general to ignore IRS treatment of liberal groups

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

The bombshell IRS audit released in May omitted information about liberal groups at the request of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s office.

A spokesman for Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George told The Hill on Tuesday that Issa had requested investigators “narrowly focus on tea party organizations.”

The subsequent audit concluded the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to single out for additional scrutiny tea party groups that applied for tax exempt status. The findings lead almost every politician, including President Barack Obama, to denounce the IRS. Several Republicanssuggested the audit indicated the White House had a Nixonian “enemies list.”

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Issa said the IRS appeared to have been targeting Obama’s political opponents “perhaps not on his request” but “on his behalf.”

But new documents have revealed that liberal and progressive groups received similar treatment from the IRS. The “inappropriate criteria” used to single out tea party groups — so-called “Be On the Look Out” (BOLO) memos — also singled out progressive and “Occupy” groups.

“We did not review the use, disposition, purpose or content of the other BOLOs. That was outside the scope of our audit,” the Treasury inspector general spokesman told The Hill.

The BOLO memos stated tax exempt status for progressive groups “may not be appropriate” because they were engaged in “anti-Republican” political activity. On the other hand, the BOLO memos only directed IRS employees to send tea party applications to a particular group. IRS officials have said the tea party applications were “centralized” to insure they received consistent treatment. Exactly how the BOLO memos were used remains unclear.

The report identified 298 groups that were subjected to additional scrutiny, and identified 98 of those groups as either tea party, patriot or 9/12 groups. The remaining 202 groups were labelled as “other.” During congressional hearings, George was repeatedly asked if these 202 “other” groups included liberal organizations. He said he couldn’t “make that determination” based on the available evidence. However, several liberal groups received the same level of IRS scrutinyas tea party groups.

The omitted information has caused Democrats to question whether the audit was truthful.

“Failing to make this clear in these documents and at Congressional Hearings even when asked directly has been fully misleading,” Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) wrote in a letter to George on Wednesday. “It has contributed to the distortion of this entire investigation, including use of innuendo and totally unsubstantiated assertions of White House involvement.”

The Associated Press on Wednesday confirmed that liberal and progressive groups were subjected the same treatment that conservative groups had complained about, including excessive questioning and extremely long waits. The liberal group Catholics United, for instance, waited seven years before receiving tax exempt status, far longer than any tea party group was forced to wait.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s office has continued to defend its audit of the IRS. Karen Kraushaar told the Associated Press that the inspector general was only “asked to look at the treatment of organizations known to be affiliated with the tea party in its review, and was asked to audit the way those organizations were being treated when they applied for tax-exempt status.”

Kraushaar implied information regarding liberal and progressive groups was omitted simply because of the narrow scope of the audit.

House Republicans have denied they attempted to limit the audit of the IRS. They acknowledged they requested the audit based off complaints they received from tea party groups, but that should not have prevented investigators from mentioning the impact on other effected groups. A Republican aide told The Hill that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration had “the authority to look at whatever they wanted to, and would be expected to do so if there was wrongdoing.”

Issa had previously released excerpts from a congressional investigation that purportedly proved the “targeting of conservative political groups came from Washington, D.C.” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) later released the full transcripts to show there was no evidence the Obama administration was involved.

Democrat demands answers from Bush-appointee over ‘flawed’ IRS audit

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), a ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has called for a congressional hearing into the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

J. Russell George, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004, conducted an audit of the IRS that concluded the federal agency had used “inappropriate criteria” to target tea party groups.

However, Levin revealed Tuesday that the same “inappropriate criteria” appeared to have been used to target progressive groups — and continued to be used after it had stopped being used for tea party groups.

“Please describe in detail why your report dated May 14, 2013 omitted the fact that ‘Progressives’ was used,” Levin wrote in a letter to George.

“The American public expects competent, impartial, unbiased, and non-political treatment from the IRS,” the Congressman concluded. “The same standard is also applicable to you and your organization. Your audit served as the basis and impetus for a wide range of Congressional investigations and this new information shows that the foundation of those investigations is flawed in a fundamental way.”

The audit stated the IRS was wrong to use “Be On the Look Out” (BOLO) memos to target tea party groups. But at least seven BOLO memos used by IRS agents included the word “progressive,” a fact that was completely omitted from George’s audit.

In addition, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked George during a congressional investigation if the IRS had “a BOLO for MoveOn or progressive?” George responded that he couldn’t provide a “definitive response.”

The IRS Targeted Progressive Non-Profits, Too

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

After weeks of conservative outrage over the Internal Revenue Service’s improper targeting of Tea Party groups applying for 501 (c)(4) status, newly released documents obtained by the Associated Press showed that the agency was also targeting progressive groups.

Conservatives and Republican lawmakerscharged that the IRS was operating under directions from the White House to target the president’s political enemies. But these internal documents show screeners were not only using the term “tea party” to scrutinize applications, but also the keywords “Israel,” “Occupy,” and “Progressive.”

The new acting chief of the IRS, Danny Werfel, told reporters that an internal investigation had uncovered a much broader use of the “Be On The Look Out” (BOLO) lists that flagged certain groups. While these lists contained “inappropriate criteria,” a preliminary examination has not found any suggestion of improper screening outside of the office that examines groups seeking tax-exempt status and affirmed that there was no “evidence of intentional wrongdoing by anyone in the IRS or involvement in these matters by anyone outside the IRS.”

In order to prevent more inappropriate targeting of both conservative and liberal groups, the IRS is implementing a new fast-track process for applications that have not gotten a response from the IRS within 120 days.

No conservative groups’ applications were ultimately denied, but Republicans have still likened the IRS to Al-Qaeda and called for its abolishment. Many lawmakers have seized on the scandal to argue that the IRS be stripped of its power to implement the Affordable Care Act lest the agency deny health care access for conservatives.

How Will Fox Report On Full Transcript Undermining IRS Conspiracy?

MATT GERTZ/Media Matters For America

For weeks, Fox News has promoted selective clips of interview transcripts leaked by House Republicans to promote their baseless claim that the White House engineered the Internal Revenue Service's improper screening of conservative groups seeking non-profit status.

Such claims were always speculative. The IRS' inspector general has said that while employees used "improper criteria" to scrutinize conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, that behavior was "not politically biased" and was not driven by the White House. Subsequent testimony leaked by House Republicans has suggested that high-ranking IRS officials in Washington were at first unaware of the improper behavior and stopped it when they learned of it.  

The House Oversight Committee's Democrats have now released the full transcript of an interview with another IRS witness which further undermines claims that the White House was at the center of the process. According to the interview subject, a self-described conservative Republican who worked in the IRS' Cincinnati office, an agent he supervised flagged the first Tea Party application that came under scrutiny, asking for guidance on the case.The interview subject denied having had contact with senior IRS officials or the White House about the targeting. According to The Washington Post's Greg Sargent:

In the testimony, the screening manager says that he first became aware of the initial Tea Party application when an "agent who worked for me" asked for "guidance concerning a case for him." The manager testified that in this case he agreed with the agent that "there was not enough information" to figure out whether to grant the group tax exempt status.

"I told him at that point in time I agreed with his thinking," the manager testified, adding that he informed the agent that he would "elevate that issue to my area manager."

"This was the first case that came in that was brought to my attention," the manager continued.

The manager further testified that the Tea Party groups were deliberately grouped together so that they would receive consistent treatment. "There was a lot of concerns about making sure that any cases that had, you know, similar-type activities or items included, that they would be worked by the same agent or same group," the manager testified.

In the testimony, the screening manager also flatly stated he had no reason to believe there was White House involvement.

[...]

The screening manager also testifies that he never had any conversation with Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Division, or former IRS commissioner Douglas Schulmanm about the "screening of Tea Party cases."

It remains to be seen how Fox News will react to statements that so strongly undermine their conclusion. But we have some precedent - on June 9, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, released excerpts from this interview, and said that it showed that "the case is solved" and that the White House had not been involved in the improper behavior. Fox responded by airing his conclusion that "the case is solved" and hosting conservatives to criticize that claim, without laying out Cummings' evidence.

The Press Lets Darrell Issa Turn IRS Story Into Another Partisan Pursuit

 ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters For America:

Answering reporters' questions in the White House Rose Garden last month, President Obama vowed to address the just-uncovered IRS controversy, in which the agency inappropriately targeted conservative groups that were applying for tax-exempt status. "We will be putting in new leadership that will be able to make sure that we...hold accountable those who have taken these outrageous actions," Obama said on May 16.

Obama announced that the acting IRS director was leaving, and pledged to work with Congress and institute new safeguards, in part by implementing some of the recommendations included in the newly released inspector general's report.

"The good news is it's fixable," Obama said. "And it's in everyone's best interest to work together to fix it." At the time, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said that the president "set exactly the right tone."

Less than three weeks later, Issa appeared on CNN and called White House Press Secretary Jay Carney a "paid liar." He also dangled for journalists some cherry-picked excerpts from Congressional interviews with a handful of IRS workers, stressed he was convinced the IRS targeting had been done "in all likelihood" for political purposes, and assured viewers it was just a matter of time before he uncovered enough evidence to prove his claims. ("We're getting to proving it," he said.)

In other words, what started out, briefly, as a bipartisan effort to fix a serious federal government problem, and what started out with Obama admitting that mistakes were made and committing to holding people accountable, quickly degenerated into the latest partisan pursuit inside Washington.

The focus of Issa's hearings is no longer fixing a problem. It's been shifted to affixing political blame. Rather than asking how the IRS mistake can be avoided in the future, the questions now being asked revolve around politics and the process.

And it was Issa's June 2 CNN appearance, where he uncorked wild charges about the IRS story (charges often based on his "gut" instincts), that signaled to the press that Republicans were, without question, treating the IRS story as purely a political and partisan endeavor. And it was Issa's rhetoric that helped mold the larger media narrative surrounding the story: GOP targets the White House in IRS probe. That in turn produces puts Democrats on the defensive, forced to disprove Republican charges, even though the allegations aren't grounded in fact.

Much the same way the press followed Republicans' lead and allowed the terrorist attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi to be turned into an almost an exclusively partisan pursuit, the same pattern has emerged with the IRS story.

Despite the fact the IRS commissioner at the time of the targeting scandal was appointed by President Bush, and despite the fact the inspector's general report stressed there was no proof the White House or the Obama administration or his re-election campaign in any way urged IRS workers to single out conservative applicants, Issa has adopted the Fox News approach to scandal investigating: Announce Democrats are guilty and then set out in search of the evidence.

It's almost the Alex Jones approach to fact-finding. Issa throwing out allegations based on his "gut" leads to headlines like these: 

Politico: "Darrell Issa charges Washington involvement In IRS scandal"

Atlantic Wire: "Issa Says IRS Scrutiny Was Directed By Washington"

Christian Science Monitor: "Smoking gun in IRS Scandal? Rep. Darrell Issa Says He's Close"

Following Issa's cable TV appearance, the New York Times eagerly portrayed Issa's hollow allegations as newsworthy:

Mr. Issa ratcheted up the pressure over the weekend with the selective release of excerpts from continuing committee interviews with I.R.S. employees in Cincinnati involved in the added scrutiny of Tea Party groups and other conservative associations.

It wasn't until the 24^th paragraph that the Times conceded none of Issa's claims "constituted evidence of wrongdoing at the White House."

‘Daily Caller’ story on IRS director’s many White House visits a bust

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

The Daily Caller story that kicked off the latest round of finger-pointing and blame in the IRS “scandal” currently gripping the right blogosphere and Fox News was actually based on erroneous information. According to the Atlantic, the editorial staff at the Caller overestimated the number of visits by now-former IRS director Douglas Shulman by 146, claiming that Shulman visited the Obama White House 157 times rather than the 11 visits he is confirmed to have actually made.

The Daily Caller eagerly reported on Wednesday that Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee, visited President Barack Obama’s White House “at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.”

The Tucker Carlson-run conservative website failed to make the distinction between the actual White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is covered by the Secret Service’s visitors’ log. Shulman was required to meet with administration officials about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” in the Eisenhower Building. The Secret Service log also covers the New Executive Building, which is located up 17th Street and off the White House grounds.

According to the Atlantic:

Shulman was cleared primarily to meet with administration staffers involved in implementation of the health-care reform bill. He was cleared 40 times to meet with Obama’s director of the Office of Health Reform, and a further 80 times for the biweekly health reform deputies meetings and others set up by aides involved with the health-care law implementation efforts. That’s 76 percent of his planned White House visits just there, before you even add in all the meetings with Office of Management and Budget personnel also involved in health reform.

Furthermore, there’s no proof that Shulman did or did not attend the meetings, since there are no arrival or departure times listed. He may have been scheduled to pass through the Secret Service checkpoints, but this has little bearing on whether he did. Shulman’s time of arrival is only confirmed for 11 specific events between 2009 and 2012.

“That does not mean that he did not go to other meetings,” wrote the Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta, “only that the White House records do not show he went to the 157 meetings he was granted Secret Service clearance to attend.”

At least one Shulman visit to the White House grounds had nothing to do with IRS business or the ACA. Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly asked Shulman in a Congressional hearing last week what would occasion a visit to the White House for him.

“Um, the Easter Egg Roll with my kids,” Shulman replied.

Franke-Ruta wrote that Secret Service logs are a wildly imprecise means of determining the comings and goings of visitors to the White House. The procedure is not the only means of getting clearance to enter the White House security perimeter. In large social gatherings like the aforementioned Easter Egg Roll, people enter the White House gates in pre-cleared carloads.

The Center for Public Integrity reported in April, 2011 that “(t)he logs include names of people cleared by the Secret Service for White House entry who never showed up. The Center analysis found more than 200,000 visits with no time of arrival, an indication the person didn’t enter the White House though there is no way to know for certain.”

Even the Caller admitted at the end of its article that “it is probable that the vast majority of visits by major Cabinet members do not end up in the public record.”

When the IRS targeted liberals

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD/Salon

While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting some 300 conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, from bona fide social welfare organizations. Employees are given almost zero official guidance on how to do that, so they went after Tea Party groups because those seemed like they might be political. Keep in mind, the commissioner of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee.

The second is that while this is the first time this kind of thing has become a national scandal, it’s not the first time such activity has occurred.

“I wish there was more GOP interest when I raised the same issue during the Bush administration, where they audited a progressive church in my district in what look liked a very selective way,” California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said on MSNBC Monday. “I found only one Republican, [North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones], that would join me in calling for an investigation during the Bush administration. I’m glad now that the GOP has found interest in this issue and it ought to be a bipartisan concern.”

The well-known church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, became a bit of a cause célèbre on the left after the IRS threatened to revoke the church’s tax-exempt status over an anti-Iraq War sermon the Sunday before the 2004 election. “Jesus [would say], ‘Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine,’” rector George Regas said from the dais.

The church, which said progressive activism was in its “DNA,” hired a powerful Washington lawyer and enlisted the help of Schiff, who met with the commissioner of the IRS twice and called for a Government Accountability Office investigation, saying the IRS audit violated the First Amendment and was unduly targeting a political opponent of the Bush administration. “My client is very concerned that the close coordination undertaken by the IRS allowed partisan political concerns to direct the course of the All Saints examination,” church attorney Marcus Owens, who is widely considered one of the country’s leading experts on this area of the law, said at the time. In 2007, the IRS closed the case, decreeing that the church violated rulespreventing political intervention, but it did not revoke its nonprofit status.

And while All Saints came under the gun, conservative churches across the country were helping to mobilize voters for Bush with little oversight. In 2006, citing the precedent of All Saints, “a group of religious leaders accused the Internal Revenue Service yesterday of playing politics by ignoring its complaint that two large churches in Ohio are engaging in what it says are political activities, in violation of the tax code,” the New York Times reported at the time. The churches essentially campaigned for a Republican gubernatorial candidate, they alleged, and even flew him on one of their planes.

Meanwhile, Citizens for Ethics in Washington filed two ethics complaints against a church in Minnesota. “You know we can’t publicly endorse as a church and would not for any candidate, but I can tell you personally that I’m going to vote for Michele Bachmann,” pastor Mac Hammond of the Living Word Christian Center in Minnesota said in 2006 before welcoming her to the church. The IRS opened an audit into the church, but it went nowhere after the church appealed the audit on a technicality.

And it wasn’t just churches. In 2004, the IRS went after the NAACP, auditing the nation’s oldest civil rights group after its chairman criticized President Bush for being the first sitting president since Herbert Hoover not to address the organization. “They are saying if you criticize the president we are going to take your tax exemption away from you,” then-chairman Julian Bond said. “It’s pretty obvious that the complainant was someone who doesn’t believe George Bush should be criticized, and it’s obvious of their response that the IRS believes this, too.”

In a letter to the IRS, Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel, Pete Stark and John Conyers wrote: “It is obvious that the timing of this IRS examination is nothing more than an effort to intimidate the members of the NAACP, and the communities the organization represents, in their get-out-the-vote effort nationwide.”

Then, in 2006, the Wall Street Journal broke the story of a how a little-known pressure group called Public Interest Watch — which received 97 percent of its funds from Exxon Mobile one year — managed to get the IRS to open an investigation into Greenpeace. Greenpeace had labeled Exxon Mobil the “No. 1 climate criminal.” The IRS acknowledged its audit was initiated by Public Interest Watch and threatened to revoke Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status, but closed the investigation three months later.

As the Journal reporter, Steve Stecklow, later said in an interview, “This comes against a backdrop where a number of conservative groups have been attacking nonprofits and NGOs over their tax-exempt status. There have been hearings on Capitol Hill. There have been a number of conservative groups in Washington who have been quite critical.”

Indeed, the year before that, the Senate held a hearing on nonprofits’ political activity. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, the then-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the IRS needed better enforcement, but also “legislative changes” to better define the lines between politics and social welfare, since they had not been updated in “a generation.” Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the IRS has defined 501(c)4′s sufficiently to this day, leaving the door open for IRS auditors to make up their own, discriminatory rules.

Those cases mostly involved 501(c)3 organizations, which live in a different section of the tax code for real charities like hospitals and schools. The rules are much stronger and better developed for (c)3′s, in part because they’ve been around longer. But with “social welfare” (c)4 groups, the kind of political activity we saw in 2010 and 2012 is so unprecedented that you get cases like Emerge America, a progressive nonprofit that trains Democratic female candidates for public office. The group has chapters across the country, but in 2011, chapters in Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada were denied 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Leaders called the situation “bizarre” because in the five years Nevada had waited for approval, the Kentucky chapter was approved, only for the other three to be denied.

A former IRS official told the New York Times that probably meant the applications were sent to different offices, which use slightly different standards. Different offices within the same organization that are supposed to impose the exact same rules in a consistent manner have such uneven conceptions of where to draw the line at a political group, that they can approve one organization and then deny its twin in a different state.

All of these stories suggest that while concern with the IRS posture toward conservative groups now may be merited, to fully understand the situation requires a bit of context and history.

Fox Distorts Obama's Response To IRS Report In Order To Justify Calls For A Special Prosecutor

 EMILY ARROWOOD/Media Matters For America

Fox News ignored President Obama's explicit demand for accountability in the wake of news that the Internal Revenue Service applied extra scrutiny to conservative groups. The network's omission gave it cover to accuse Obama of not taking the IRS's actions seriously and to call for a special prosecutor.

Obama first addressed the IRS controversy during a May 13 joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, where he condemned the IRS's behavior with the caveat, "If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported," then "that's outrageous and there's no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable."

After the Inspector General published its report on the IRS's actions, concluding the agency applied "inappropriate criteria" to conservative applicants, Obama granted the IRS no such caveat. He released a statement definitively naming the IRS's actions "intolerable and inexcusable" and directing action to be taken to hold those responsible accountable:

I have now had the opportunity to review the Treasury Department watchdog's report on its investigation of IRS personnel who improperly targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.  And the report's findings are intolerable and inexcusable.  The federal government must conduct itself in a way that's worthy of the public's trust, and that's especially true for the IRS.  The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity.  This report shows that some of its employees failed that test.

I've directed Secretary Lew to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, and to make sure that each of the Inspector General's recommendations are implemented quickly, so that such conduct never happens again.

Yet the next day, America Live host Megyn Kelly and Fox's digital political editor Chris Stirewalt pretended Obama issued no such condemnation.

Instead, Kelly claimed that even after the IG's report was released, "we still have the president saying, 'Well, if they did it, if they did it, if they did it." She ranted, "I don't understand, more so today than the other day, why the president used that word 'if.' 'If these people did this, if these people did that.' Now that I've seen the Inspector General report -- and you're telling me -- now Fox News just got it last night. But other news organizations had it leaked to them early. You're telling me President Obama couldn't have got it when it was complete on Monday?"

Kelly and Stirewalt used their mischaracterization of Obama's response to call for a special prosecutor into the IRS's actions. Stirewalt told Kelly that if he were the president, he would "find a Republican of good standing" to appoint as an independent investigator. Kelly responded with the charge, "Where is the harm to this administration, if as these IRS employees state, no one outside of the IRS had anything to do with this, this was just IRS employees deciding to target conservatives. So if the White House and no one else had anything to do with it, where is the harm? Why doesn't the president just say 'absolutely'?"

When the IRS targeted liberals

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Former NAACP chairman defends IRS targeting of ‘the Taliban wing of American politics’

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Former NAACP chairman Julian Bond on Tuesday said the IRS was justified in flagging tea party groups for extra review.

“I think it’s entirely legitimate to look at the tea party,” he told MSNBC host Thomas Roberts. “Here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who’ve tried as best they can to harm President Obama in every way they can.”

The NAACP was audited by the IRS in 2004 after Bond delivered an anti-war speech. The IRS said the NAACP was being audited because Bond criticized the President of the United States. But Bond denied any parallels between that incident and the more recent incident. He suggested that extra scrutiny of the tea party groups was justified.

“They are the Taliban wing of American politics,” he said. “We all ought to be a little worried about them.”

Roberts question if Bond was being overly harsh.

“Not at all, not at all,” Bond replied. “The truth may hurt, but it’s the truth.”

IRS officials have admitted to using terms like “tea party” and “patriots” to flag groups applying to be social welfare nonprofits. The agency also asked unnecessary, burdensome questions to some of these groups.

Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:

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GOP Anti-Abortion Bill Will Force IRS Agents To Audit Abortions Of Sexual Assault Victims

By Tanya Somanader

The GOP’s H.R. 3, or the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortions Act, is quickly racking up a number of unprecedented offenses against a woman’s right to choose. Starting with the redefinition of rape, H.R. 3 also torpedoes the GOP anti-tax pledge by changing the tax code to raise taxes on women and small businesses that provide health insurance covering abortions. Now, as Mother Jones’s Nick Baumann reports, this tax code provision would turn the Internal Revenue Service into “abortion cops” who “investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest.”

In the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on H.R. 3 Wednesday, the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee’s chief of staff Thomas Barthold testified that because the bill bans using tax credits or deductions to pay for abortions or insurance, a woman who used such a benefit would have to prove, if audited, that her abortion “fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.” Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) asked Barthold point blank “if a woman were audited, would IRS agents be at her house demanding court documents or affidavits proving that her pregnancy was the result of rape or incest?” Barthold confirmed what former IRS official Marcus Owens told Baumann — a woman would have to give “contemporaneous written documentation” that it was “incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger” that compelled her abortion:

Barthold replied that the taxpayer would have to prove that she had complied with all applicable abortion laws. Under standard audit procedure, a woman would have to provide evidence to corroborate facts about abortions, rapes, and cases of incest, says Marcus Owens, an accountant and former longtime IRS official. If a taxpayer received a deduction or tax credit for abortion costs related to a case of rape or incest, or because her life was endangered, then “on audit [she] would have to demonstrate or prove, ideally by contemporaneous written documentation, that it was incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger,” Owens says. “It would be fairly intrusive for the woman.”

Not everyone has “contemporaneous written documentation” that a pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. And, as Owens notes, adults sometimes pay for abortions for their children. If H.R. 3 becomes law, parents could face IRS questions about whether they spent pre-tax money from health savings accounts on abortions for their kids. “It would seem there would have to be a question about that [in an audit] and maybe even a question on the tax return,” Owens says.

Asking a woman to provide a receipt of her intense emotional and physical trauma goes beyond “intrusive;” it’s destructive to a woman’s health and well-being and abusive of federal authority. Indeed, the bill “contains no instructions for how the IRS should enforce” the provision despite the inclusion of a whole section entitled “Prohibition on Tax Benefits Relating to Abortion.” But despite this ambiguity, 221 House members have sponsored H.R. 3 and, because only 218 votes are needed for passage, the bill is expected to “sail through” the House.

NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Kennan called on the 221 members to “explain to their constituents why they want to give the IRS authority to audit rape survivors.” And with 54 percent of the American people supporting abortions in all or most cases and 56 percent viewing creating jobs as the most important focus of the federal government, they may have trouble explaining how this “comprehensive and radical assault on women’s health” is suddenly a “top priority.”

Fox News disproves itself: Network’s own poll finds Americans favor ‘IRS’ over ‘Tea Party’

By Stephen C. Webster After months upon months of enthusiastic, cheer-leading coverage of any rally that involved tea, tea bagging or tea partying, the Fox News network has miraculously disproved itself by producing a new poll that finds Americans think more highly of the Internal Revenue Service than they do the vocal conservative minority.

Atop the fourth page of a Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll released April 8, the questioner explains that respondents would be read a series of names and asked whether their opinion is positive or not. The most popular among the names is Barack Obama, who scored a 50 percent approval rating. Second was the Internal Revenue Service, at 49 percent.

Down below Democrats and even below Republicans is the "Tea Party," at 36 percent approval. This particular poll's questions reference the "Tea Party" as though it were a unified group, akin to a third party actor, instead of what it really is: a disparate collection of middle to fringe right wing groups that originally came together as an organizing platform for Congressman Ron Paul, but were popularly coopted and briefly organized by old guard Republicans into a series of loud and angry demonstrations against the health reform laws.

Naturally, ratings for individual political leaders were lower than ratings given to entire political parties, but when asked about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, respondents were especially harsh, giving them 16 and 29 percent favorability, respectively.

The only single politician who scored lower than Democratic leadership was House Minority Leader John Boehner, one of the GOP's top men and a key public face for the party, with just 12 percent approval.

Naturally, Fox News went on to ask poll respondents questions like how in-line they think their values are with the "Tea Party" and whether they were less likely to vote for their congressperson if they cast a yes ballot on health reform. They also asked people to rate how health reform made them "feel," set to a scale of "good" or "bad," and if they "feel" like the United States' economy will suffer because of the new laws.

The placement of the IRS in double-digits over the "Tea Party" in favorability is startling, especially considering how vocal most of the group's loudest activists are concerning taxes. Though virtually all lower and middle class Americans received a tax cut by President Obama, 90 percent of tea party respondents to a February CBS poll were oblivious to this fact.

"Fox’s poll finding is particularly humorous considering that a recent conservative attack on health care reform has been to falsely claim that it would lead to the hiring of 16,500 IRS agents to enforce the law," noted Matt Corley, writing for Think Progress. “'I suspect every Republican candidate will campaign on a promise to cut off all funding in January for the 16,000 IRS agents,' said Newt Gingrich recently. 'You don’t need a health Gestapo in the United States.'”

In a separate CBS poll released Thursday, the network found that most Americans have a negative opinion of Sarah Palin, which the news organization called "a sort of spokesperson" for the tea parties.

According to their analysis, 38 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the former politician, whereas just 24 percent like her. Among Republicans that rating is much higher: 43 percent view Palin favorably, while another 41 percent either didn't have enough information or simply could not decide.

Because of her recent speech to the 67th annual Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America expo (which received rather bitter reviews), Palin was offered $25,000 by Nevadans for Sensible Marijuana Laws to give a short pep talk to their group. ​"There's no reason why former Governor Palin should reject our offer," a spokesman jokingly said, citing how much safer cannabis is than alcohol.

One possible reason why she'd decline: according to The New York Times, Palin charges up to $100,000 per appearance -- something that even tea partiers have chided her for and a fee the alcohol purveyors presumably paid.

Though she did not address any issues specific to the wine and spirits industries, Palin did emphasize one term in particular during he speech to the conference. According to Tom Wark's wine blog, she was all about "deregulation" in a fuzzy, non-specific sense: likely the wrong theme to employ while speaking to a room of professionals who serve an industry that strongly supports special regulations springing from the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which Palin would now appear to be against, just on general principle.