Was it illegal?

Falling back to the old liberal standby that legal = ethical?

No, it was not illegal to abandon four members of our foreign service to die at the hands of terrorists and take no action to defend or evacuate them earlier. No, it was not “illegal” to tell those in the CIA Annex on Benghazi not to help those at the consulate, which they did anyway and were able to evacuate several people out of the consulate compound back to the annex.

No, it probably isn’t even illegal to tell bald-faced lies to the American people or to lie to Congress when not under oath. None of that is “illegal” but it needs to see the light of day and be exposed for exactly what it is:

Slimy, underhanded, lying bastards.

Obama creates a bipartisan budget commission and ignores their results.

Obama creates a jobs commission, ignores it.

Obama’s pal Corzine steals millions from investors, never spends a single day in jail. In fact, Obama is on a pace to file a record low number of cases for financial fraud among modern Presidents.

Obama has so far charged more people under the espionage act than all Presidents in history combined. Several of these cases are legitimate whisleblowers using legitimate channels.

The Obama administration has shoveled literally billions of dollars into the pockets of politically connected investors through their various “green energy” and “green fuels” programs.

Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Zero judicial experience, college socialist, basically appointed a political hack from his administration to the Supreme Court.

Fired Inspector General Walpin when he started investigating major supporter of Obama.

Authorized assassination of US citizen. First time in history by a US President.

Black Panther voter intimidation case.

For some reason had the 2010 US Census placed directly under the control of the White House for the first time in history.

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If we don’t have an agency responsible for collecting taxes, how will the government collect taxes?

Also: If we don’t have an agency responsible for investigating and charging criminal gun deals with selling guns to criminals and straw purchasers (in order to earn money), how will we charge illegal gun dealers with selling guns to criminals and straw purchasers? The ATF NEEDS to be reformed. Right now there are too many regulations on the ATF preventing it from enforcing laws already on the books. We don’t need new gun laws. We just need to enforce the laws on the books, which requires having an ATF that is allowed to enforce laws on the books.

I don’t think the CEO of Taco Bell knew that some of his employees were selling weed out of the drive through. I don’t think a mayor should have prior knowledge if cops are selling evidence on eBay. I don’t think Rumsfeld knew that his troops were stacking Iraqi prisoners like cordwood. I don’t think Bush knew his team was cherry picking intelligence. And I don’t think in this case Obama knew about the methods bureaucrats were using to determine eligibility of tax-exempt status.

Nice array of straw men you built there. What if the CEO of Taco Bell’s chief attorney was told well in advance that they were selling pot from the drive through and the manager in charge of drive through sales knew about it for two years and the manager he reports to knew about it for 4 months before it finally became public?

What we have here is a pattern of scandal going all the way back to Fast and Furious where nobody knew anything yet the operations HAD to be approved by higher authority. Selling pot out of a drive through is something a person can do on their own without any knowledge from above. Stacking prisoners and taking their picture is something a small unit, drunk with victory, can do on the spur of the moment.

All of these scandals are either very long term operations that required approval from higher up (who created the questionnaires sent to tea party groups? Who approved them? Line agents don’t just make those up on the fly)

Nobody knows who ordered the White House to pull a Nixon Plumbers move and confiscate the records at AP to plug a leak. Nobody. This is something that requires senior approval to do. Holder claims he “recused himself” which means he knew admits he knew it was happening, but there is no recusal letter to be found. There is no paper trail of any sort.

Again, this says they are either bald-faced liars or that we have a Democratic Party with activist partisans running amok in the departments of government.

If in any of the cases, the leader of the organization knew about it and directed, well they should be fired/imprisoned or in Obama’s case impeached. In the case of Nixon for example, there was ample evidence he directed these illicit activities and was tactically involved in the cover up. In this case, I have seen no evidence that these came from the Whitehouse and like Benghazi, I see no evidence that any cover-up came from the white house. Instead at least the record I have seen shows there was a complicated back and forth between agencies until a consensus evolved that even Petraeus said was “good work.”

Further more, if you click on the link that V the K provided in comment #10 you can see that indeed at this time, it appears to be a bunch of well meaning people trying to organize things in a manner that made sense to them.
From his link:
“ In a way, Washington wasn’t meddling enough. And this allowed middle managers in Cincinnati to make some bad calls.”

And then this:
“The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office.

“You’re not going to have a bunch of flaming liberals in the exempt-organizations department looking for conservative applications,” he said.”

Thanks to V for providing this fair representation.

If the Government doesn’t have our personal, financial, or health records, then Government can’t abuse our personal, financial, and health records.

That could be true. But in this specific case he was talking about how if its legal its not up to him, but he would not wait for the justice department to determine as such. He said to the Obama admin, legal or not, its just plain wrong. He could do as other administrations have done and say “wait for the investigation to be complete” yada yada yada.
But nope. They came out strong and deserve credit for that.

And to suggest that he thinks “No need to get the law involved” is a lie.

This is bad enough for Obama and there is no need for the right to get caught up in lies like ILC just did.

V – thank you for point that out. I have been out of the loop and did not see that earlier. However, there are two periods in which this happened, August 2010 to July 2011 & January 2012 to June 2012. Maybe there were referring to the 2012 incidents? – where clearly there was a HUGE surge as your link shows. I am not sure.

So it is either that Obama is a complete and total liar or we have an entire political party gone rogue. So which is it?

“We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

But lower-case leftists are happy with the situation because people they don’t like are being persecuted.

And by saying “the law is irrelevant” he basically freudian slipped his way into saying what he really thinks: I will get away with this, because Obama’s awesome. And YOU’RE irrelevant.

He claims that “sunlight” has brought accountability for these scandals, and yet the two people in charge, Lois Lerner and Sara Hall Ingram, have not only not been held accountable, they have been promoted and given bonuses.

And on the basis of these lies and excuses, says, “Yes, I trust the Government.” Mainly because, it’s being used to persecute people he doesn’t like anyway.

V-
– You should absolutely not trust the government to do anything. What you should do is ensure that everything is done in an open and transparent manner so there can be checks. The IRS was correct when processing these applications. They were correct to be concerned about the huge surge of a new type of applications. They were correct to ensure that folks looking for the privilege to get tax-free benefits were legit. What they were not correct is the targeting of Conservative Groups. Just like when the IRS went after liberal churches during the Bush Admin, or when the IRS went after environmental NGO’s at the behest of conservative groups during the Bush Admin. The IRS in these cases was correct to be looking at these groups but incorrect in targeting liberal groups only.

The same thing that stopped the bureaucrats in those cases is the same thing that stopped the bureaucrats in this case.
Sunlight. Nothing stops abuses of power like sunlight.

So when it comes to Guns, immigration and health care as long as its done with oversight, there should be no issue. Will mistakes happen? Yes. Will a bureaucrat go to far? For Sure. Will sometimes top officials direct abuses of power? You bet. But in all cases, as long as there people watching the government and oversight, it will be limited and it will be short.
This is the power of sunlight and why the reaction of the Obama admin is so encouraging. They are not trying to hide behind the law, or arcane bureaucratic minutia. They saying its wrong and needs to stop and we will make sure it does.

Any Obama defenders care to field those?

Picture that Bart does something outrageous, and gets caught. Thinking fast, he says “Yes that was outrageous! And I’m putting a stop to it! From now on, it’s against my policy! So we’re good, right? My new policy stops it. No need to get the law involved. The law is irrelevant, since I am so deeply outraged as you are, and don’t quote me out of context, man!”