Trail in IRS scandal leads to Washington

On Sunday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) announced that interviews with Cincinnati-based IRS employees suggest that officials in Washington, D.C. directed their efforts to target conservative and Tea Party groups.  According to Politico, partial transcripts released by Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee don’t refer to a specific individual in Washington, but to the IRS Exempt Organizations office.  That office was headed by Sarah Hall Ingram, who now heads the IRS office charged with implementing the Affordable Care Act as Examiner previously reported.

 

The transcripts released do not refer directly to President Obama, but it was reported last week that the IRS commissioner met with the president 118 times in 2010 and 2011.  According to Investor’s Business Daily, President Bush met with the IRS head only once in four years.  Whatever President Obama knew about the IRS overreach, the scandal fits the pattern of centralized power and disregard for the rule of law present in other Obama Administration brushes with scandal.

 

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http://www.examiner.com/article/rep-issa-irs-scandal-leads-to-washington

Relax! Obama won’t be impeached.

The “perfect storm” of political scandals that has embroiled the Obama Administration over the past few weeks has some conservatives and Republicans speculating that President Obama might be impeached or be forced to resign in disgrace.  While there are plenty of serious accusations of misconduct in the White House and federal government, the scandals are all still in their infancy and President Obama’s precise role is not known.  It is all but certain, however, that the president will not be impeached.

 

The first scandal, the cover-up after the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, is the most advanced.  The White House released emails earlier this month that showed that references to al Qaeda had been scrubbed from the administration’s talking points about the attack according to ABC News.  ABC reported as early as Oct. 9, 2012 that the street protests were non-existent.  More than two weeks after the attack, President Obama was still blaming a “crude and disgusting video” that allegedly “sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world” in a speech to the United Nations.  President Obama’s only mention of al Qaeda in the speech was to call it “weakened” in reference to Osama bin Laden’s death.  There is still no satisfactory explanation as to why there was no rescue attempt.

 

The second scandal involves abuse of power by Internal Revenue Service.

Read the rest on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/scandals-won-t-result-obama-impeachment