Congressman Asks NSA To Provide Metadata For "Lost" IRS Emails 347
An anonymous reader writes in with news that the IRS lost email scandal is far from over. Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) has sent a formal letter to the National Security Agency asking it to hand over "all its metadata" on the e-mail accounts of a former division director at the Internal Revenue Service. "Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment," Stockman wrote on Friday. The request came hours after the IRS told a congressional committee that it had "lost" all of the former IRS Exempt Organizations division director's e-mails between January 2009 and April 2011.
Just imagine "if" (Score:3, Interesting)
if they actually had that information... they can't possibly... and even if they do I'm pretty sure they'll deny it. The feds are in full blown police state at this point as regards due process. But still imagine if they actually had that information. That would be pretty incredible.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Insightful)
For all their mouth-breathing bullshit, nobody should make the mistake of thinking that the GOP is stupid. This is a lose-lose for the President on its face: if the NSA doesn't come back with the data that it's asserted they have, then they're in cahoots with Obama; if they somehow do come back with it, then it proves the GOP right. Either way, they win. It's a slimy, empty, political victory, but a victory all the same.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing how you have made this into the GOP being slimy when the whole issue is due to the Democrat controlled IRS (during that time-period) losing all relevant emails from a large period of time. That is what is slimy here.
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the Democrat controlled IRS (during that time-period)
....while these emails are to and from a Bush appointee...
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Everyone knows that all bureaucrats are fired and new ones hired whenever the administration changes.
All this stuff really is just base politics, a way to prove that one side is virtuous and the other side is the most evil that has ever existed. An extraterrestrial overseeing all this over time would conclude that presidents are often accused of doing presidential things, in the same way that criminals are accused of committing crimes. It would be better if politics were utterly removed from this and rath
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it isn't so much where the bodies are burried and more the civil service act. It limits the ability of administrations to rid non cabinet level positions and stack government with incompetent friends and donars. Of course the latest craze is to create a new position, call it a czar which has absolutely no power outside of recomending something to the administration and the gaft runs rich again.
But this civil service act limits an administration's abilitty to clean house and makes sure somewhat competent people fill most of the positions.
As for Learner being a bush appointee, it doesn't matter. We already have confirmation that she was working with someone in the white house. The extent and degree of legitimacy in that is what is trying to be determined.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazing how you have made this into the GOP being slimy when the whole issue is due to the Democrat controlled IRS (during that time-period) losing all relevant emails from a large period of time. That is what is slimy here.
But, but ... the GOP is always slimy, all the cool kids say so. Because, er, it just is, you know.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's a slimy, empty, political victory,"
Remember what this was about - the IRS actively impeding a particular political organization. That's not an "empty" matter.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Informative)
No, they did not target one single organization. Instead they targeted multiple organizations, according to a popular viewpoint.
From a different point of view, meaning from other news stations, they were asked to apply extra scrutiny to the rash of new requests for tax exempt status which was then performed overzealously by some staffers.
The problem here is that rather than deciding which of these viewpoints are closer to the truth that guilt has been decided a-priori.
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Remember that the tea party was just one targeted group among a long list of political groups on both sides of the fence that were rightly being looked into for cheating on their taxes by masquerading as charities. That was the first and most easily forgotten critical fact in this matter.
If not, how could the Republicans harness their voters' potent persecution complex to once again build a slightly quesitonable government action into a partisan scandal, and then beat that dead horse until its bones are tur
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It is actually worse than no one was blocked from donating to one of these organizations. Donar lists were being used to select for audits and being passed to opposition groups if the claims in the current lawsuits are accurate.
So it became known early on that if you donated to one of these groups trying to get tax status that you would be exposed to an IRS audit. This is one of the accusations that got congress involved before the IRS issued its report and admision.
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Witch hunt comes from assuming guilt ahead of time and then seeking to find or distort evidence as proof of that guilt. In the past, this might mean that the village is all out looking for a witch and notice that a cow died which proves that a witch is present. In the present, it means that when emails are deleted then this becomes proof that a crime is being covered up.
In other words, there is no search for the truth occuring here, especially when the request for the metadata says that the guilt has alre
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Insightful)
anyone who knows anything about government systems knows about retention laws. If somehow all her emails were on a single device, with no backups, someone needs to be held accountable for that. To make it even worse
as for the NSA why not use this issue to bring to light some more NSA BS??? we get info regardless of their response. I commend this congressman for thinking outside the box
Re:did you even NOTICE what you just admitted? (Score:5, Interesting)
The level of discourse is very low on both sides.
I have to suffer through way more "libtards" than "knuckle-dragger" (rare) or a "mouth breather" (never?) or a "religious nut" (now this one is common).
And it's Limbaugh who is calling women "sluts" (and worse.)
After Romney lost- it was my conservative friends who were defriending all my liberal friends. I couldn't believe they were shocked he lost. It was *clear* from August that he was going to lose- he was unelectable.
I *used* to be a conservative independent (Voted for Reagan- twice... and for Bush Sr). But the republican party has been running so hard to the right, I'm finding myself unable to vote for any republican candidate that gets through the primary. They are all religious extremists who are neither fiscally conservative nor socially liberal.
In my conservative mailing list, Eric Cantor ( A "grade A" conservative according to the NRA and the anti-abortion groups) was called a "Rino". As far to the right as he was, he was still considered a liberal.
It is *literally* reached the point that it is crazy. Especially now that the Tea party has been taken over by the christian right who has basically forced out the original libertarian base.
I don't think your view of reality is very realistic. I've seen that increasingly in both the left and the right wings becoming extremists. The right seems to also be losing touch with reality. I really am starting to think we are going to see the disintegration of the republican party into a wealthy/corporate party, a religious party, and a libertarian party. And none of them will be electable so that should be impossible.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Funny)
NSA is the National Backup Service
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Funny)
National Storage Archives.
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Of course, what they're shooting for is
No Secrets Anywhere.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:4, Insightful)
The e is silent
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Insightful)
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if they can't get it, then the next thing this congressman should bring up is "why the heck are we funding the NSA if they don't actually seem to do anything?"
The NSA is not tasked with backing up everyone's email. Why would they be expected to do that?
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The Congressman did not ask for the email. He asked for the "metadata", who sent it and when, and to whom. NSA monitoring and collection of metadata was shown as pervasive by Edward Snowden's revelations and by their own testimony to Congress, so it's difficult for them to now say "we only collect metadata". The IRS office that handles tax exemptions also corresponds with many international organizations, some of which are accused of being criminally based or fronts for illegal political activity. (Sinn Fei
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If only they could restore those lost emails [wikipedia.org] from the Bush era while they're at it.
I'm not trying to be partisan; e-mails are constantly being "lost" in any controversy irrespective of political affiliation, and I think the NSA should do their patriotic duty and help recover these important bits of evidence for congress like they otherwise normally do for the FBI.
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The whole point of this is not to actually get the data, or even to embarrass the president. This is about jockeying for position for the upcoming elections (now and in two years). Since the request for information is coming from a politician then it should automatically be assumed to have ulterior motives completely unrelated to discovering the truth or serving the citizens.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep telling everyone, the NSA blew it - had they advertised their services as the ultimate backup, folks would have paid them to spy on everyone.
Sometimes you do need some help from marketing.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Funny)
All they needed was some marketing. If only they had called themselves SkyDrive, or OneDrive, or iCloud...
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if they actually had that information... they can't possibly... and even if they do I'm pretty sure they'll deny it. The feds are in full blown police state at this point as regards due process. But still imagine if they actually had that information. That would be pretty incredible.
What on earth are you talking about? Of course they have it. It's a federal agency. It's the IRS! It's probably some of the most desirable, easiest to get info out there.
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I'm highly dubious that they would touch it. But you could be right... I just wouldn't think they'd touch it... a little too close to home.
Re:Just imagine "if" (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. What we've been seeing lately is that they'll just tell you they don't have it. They'll confirm they don't have it. Especially if they do actually have it.
They're on record lying to congress already. So they're not going to have any trouble looking you right in the eye and saying "nope"...
Keep in mind, we're talking about investigating an IRS scandal in which the IRS is now claiming the requested emails were lost in a hard drive crash.
They expect us to believe that the emails were only stored on an end user laptop and that there were no back ups and that the server retained no records... of official IRS email.
Do you believe that? No one does. Even the people saying they believe it don't actually believe it... its just part of the political game going on right now.
Apparently the IRS was taken over by some political factions that wanted to limit speech... and when they got caught at it the whole IRS is now trying to cover it up.
None of which is being made easier by the white house which wants everyone to believe their shit doesn't stink... and the "justice" department which so far as I've seen has made a point of not investigating anything.
I could respect the "neither confirm nor deny" line because it wasn't a lie. It was a refusal to answer. But they're not doing that anymore. They're just lying now. And they're not just doing it to casual requests for information. They're lying on court documents, lying in response to FOIA orders, and they're lying directly to congress.
Which means they're lying to everyone we have access to... they could be lying to the president as well for all we know.
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You have a very high opinion of government IT. Myself, having encountered the BOFH's that run government IT I can say with all seriousness it's entirely likely the entire email server for the IRS division was stored on a second hand laptop sitting in some closet without any backups whatsoever.
Government pays so shitty I wouldn't expect any "qualified" IT people in the IRS. Hell they still use mainframes from the 70's to process taxes because every time they've tried to replace them they've failed miserably
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Apparently the IRS was taken over by some political factions that wanted to limit speech... and when they got caught at it the whole IRS is now trying to cover it up.
Exactly. Lois Lerner also went after the Christian Coalition when she was at the FEC. [weeklystandard.com]
Captain Oblivious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Captain Oblivious (Score:5, Insightful)
Use your fourth amendment violation to help us with this first amendment violation!
Government records are not protected by the fourth amendment. Here is the amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Corporations may be people, but government agencies are not.
Re:Captain Oblivious (Score:5, Insightful)
While this particular set of data isn't a(n alleged) violation of the 4th amendment, it was (allegedly) caught in the net of massive (alleged) 4th amendment violations
That's a long wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's going to be a long wait for a train that never comes - the NSA will simply not comply. Its a nice 'in your face' gesture though, real cute. Should get some political points during election time, I'm sure.
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All the NSA has to do is request that the congressman file a brief detailing the national security issue which is under investigation and they will provide their recommendation as to the veracity or connections to the appropriate department in charge of that security area. Or they can submit a request to the executive branch, which will pass it on as it deems appropriate for the NSAs mission.
The NSA is not the personal investigative arm of the congress. Any provision of data from the NSA storehouse for dome
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Not really, it seems perfectly possible they are collecting internal emails from all federal government agencies.
Hell, I would expect and demand that they do, as a "watchers of the watchers" role.
1st Amendment rights?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. These people are just trying to avoid paying taxes. Kill this 501(c) bullshit now. Or are you going to try to tell me that would violates everybody's "rights"?
Re:1st Amendment rights?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Charities are not all religious and they really need that 501c status and tax-break
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So do many companies and individuals. It would be nice if we were all interested in lower taxes overall instead of just carving out special exceptions for pet projects.
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Tax exempt status is a really tiny amount of money overall compared to the government actively becoming a wide safety net. Compare to parts of Europe where charitable giving is very small but the government provides extensive support paid for by taxes, but in the US charitable giving is relatively much higher but the tax burden is much smaller and the safety net has larger holes.
I would agree that there could be reforms here. For instance a church should be measured on the charitable activities, to see if
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I was under the impression that one of the requirements for being a non-profit was the agreement that you wouldn't be an actionable organization. Seems to me that most of the organizations, both conservative and liberal, were rightly under the microscope.
They were.
They're also organizations that are probably donating to people like Representative Steve Stockman. Funny how that works.
Re:1st Amendment rights?? (Score:5, Informative)
They cannot explain OFA getting status, seeing how the supposed 501(4)(c) uses the Presidents Twitter account to make announcements.
There is no way that the Tea Party applicants can be scrutinized when OFA was not, given the regulations. OFA is the proverbial camel that passed through the eye of a needle, while conservative organizations are being examined in detail.
501(c)(4) organizations may inform the public on controversial subjects and attempt to influence legislation relevant to its program[44] and, unlike 501(c)(3) organizations, they may also participate in political campaigns and elections, as long as their primary activity is the promotion of social welfare.[45] The tax exemption for 501(c)(4) organizations applies to most of their operations, but contributions may be subject to gift tax, and income spent on political activities – generally the advocacy of a particular candidate in an election – is taxable.[46] An "action" organization generally qualifies as a 501(c)(4) organization.[47] An "action" organization is one whose activities substantially include, or are exclusively,[48] direct lobbying or grass roots lobbying related to advocacy for or against legislation or proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation that is related to its purpose.[49] A 501(c)(4) organization may directly or indirectly support or oppose a candidate for public office as long as such activities are not a substantial amount of its activities.[37][50]
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You are advocating for the removal of charitable organizations? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This would cost society far more than it would ever save in tax revenue.
Capcha is "patriot" lol
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Maybe, maybe not. Congress is saying "Since charities like food shelves and food banks take care of feeding people in trouble, we are cutting funding to food assistance programs." Never mind that people need food shelves because their assistance programs were reduced by the very same Congress.
They're outsourcing assistance programs and the only funding comes from donations. If people and corporations don't get tax exemptions for their donations, they won't donate as much. Many of the already stretched t
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We don't need to encourage political and religious organisa
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Yeah, it took literally 2 seconds to Google thousands of examples of the Red Cross being overrun with corruption. Here's just one entry:
Red Cross Scandals [weebly.com]
Or Google yourself: https://www.google.com/#q=red+cross+scandal [google.com]
Interesting how you pick one of the worst organizations that regularly flaunts its largess as a champion of altruism. Though I'm not a fan of the Roman Catholic Church, at least they have people dedicated to altruism instead of making their CEO wealthy. The second worst offender this year i [snopes.com]
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Compare churches to a service club like Rotary or Kiwanis. Or if you want goofiness then compare them to the Shriners. These groups do get highly involved in charitable activities (not just donating money but actually donating the time and manpower). However there are other social clubs which are not as actively involved in charity despite having goofy practices, providing only the occasional fund raiser for a good cause.
Some churches will be much more charitable than others when it's actually measured.
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Actually, that's not a bad idea. True charities which spend all of their money on their causes can whittle their taxes to near zero. And the lack of 501c3s would eliminate a massive tax dodge used by everyone and their brother to reduce their taxable income.
Re:1st Amendment rights?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The laws appear to be vague such that somebody has to make a judgment call over what suspicious activity to inspect further. If anybody has an idea for making those judgements more objective and/or fair, please speak up.
And it may require more staff and resources. You can't have good & fair auditing on the cheap; pony up the taxes or stop complaining when one low-level person has "too much power" to make such decisions.
There is no free lunch.
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If anybody has an idea for making those judgements more objective and/or fair, please speak up.
Sure, apply existing law fairly and impartially.
And it may require more staff and resources.
Which wasn't a problem here. Favoritism is worse than no enforcement at all.
1st Amendment rights?? (Score:3, Informative)
Fine. So long as they also do it for liberal groups like the Unions. But that won't ever happen because liberals like to play by a different set of rules.
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I agree unions should pay tax, however union officials already pay incom
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Must not be a complete list, seeing how a quick google showed many with more than that $200M Cap you claim as "richest"
teacher's union $316M
http://www.unionfacts.com/unio... [unionfacts.com]
Electrical workers, $730M
http://www.unionfacts.com/unio... [unionfacts.com]
SEIU, $411M
http://www.unionfacts.com/unio... [unionfacts.com]
Re:1st Amendment rights?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just telling you the reality of the situation. It's never going to happen where everyone plays fairly. Each side will find workarounds. Liberal groups like Unions and MoveOn.org get around campaign finance laws.
Eventually the Republicans/Tea Party Groups wizened up and started their own groups to get around tax exempt laws, but when they did so, the Liberals didn't like it. The Liberals tried to squash the conservatives in the courts, but were defeated by the Supreme Court, so the liberal senators and federal officials in the IRS and other federal agencies put pressure on conservative groups in order to minimize the conservatives' community organizing effectiveness. This is not right and it's hypocritical.
So one way to solve this is to revoke tax exempt status to any group that is political which would include Unions, Media Matters, MoveOn.Org - as well as Tea Party and conservative groups. However, as I stated before, that's never going to happen in this political environment.
So another solution is to allow tax exempt groups to say what ever they want politically. Why should the federal government be able to squash a group's 1st amendment rights? Heck, let's abolish the IRS and make April 15th just another day of the year. Let's get rid of the income tax and just have use/sales tax: i.e. Fair Tax. The IRS is way too powerful.
But of course, that's never going to happen either, but we can only dream.
Golly, have you ever fallen for a scam! (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have ANY comprehension of what you seem to be supporting????? Consider:
Person A pays his taxes. Person B pays his taxes. Person C pays his taxes.
Persons A,B, and C form a club, and each tosses-in a few dollars to fund club activities.
WHY ON EARTH is the government automatically entitled to apply a new tax to the already taxed money the three people chipped-in????
Now let's extend this a bit...
The club has functions of general benefit to society. Anything from providing medicine to needy kids, or food to hungry families, or teaching English to immigrants, helping drunks get sober, you name it ... and wealthy person D decides to donate to the cause. For a wide variety of historical and cultural reasons, in the US it has long been policy to not tax the money that person D donates to help the club. The general reason is that the US was never intended to be socialist - it had a small government and left "social welfare" to a huge array of voluntary and charitable organizations. Money already flowing to such organizations was already deemed to be in the public good, and it was therefore redundant and counter-productive to tax it "for the public good".
do-gooders on the left long-ago declared that actions in the political realm were in this very nature of being "beneficial to society" and in that vein, the labor unions were enabled to become hugely involved in politics by disguising their Democrat-aligned election activities as "voter outreach", "volunteer training" and so-on and were able to do it under the 501(c4) section of the US code (which covers labor unions). For DECADES all the people on the left DEPENDED on this and defended it with lofty rhetoric about "civic responsibility" and so on. Only recently, as people on the right started to try using the same parts of US law in a similar way, have Democrats become critics - and ALL their proposals to remove the tax exemption have included the 501(c3) section of IRS code (which is where the non-union charities all are) while carefully and deliberately letting the 501(c4) section (which conveniently only applies to labor unions) stand. Any proposal to kill-off tax exemption for the 501(c3) groups in a partisan attempt to "get" the Koch Brothers or the TEA Party, will also hit things like the Shriners, Alcoholics Anon, Food Banks, etc while protecting the thugs at the UAW and the SEIU - an obnoxious result for something pretending to be "reform".
IF you are going to remove ABSOLUTELY ALL tax exemptions from US Law, you'd at least be more fair than any proposal the Democrats have ever supported BUT you are still stuck with the problem of a group where all the members are contributing after-tax dollars: Should THAT money be re-taxed? I ask because many such proposals remove that tax exemption by declareing a gathering of people to be a new entity and the money chipped-in to be "income". Under that scheme there is no such thing as "freedom of assembly" because nearly every gathering costs money and as such would be taxed and regulated and subject to harassment and arbitrary suppression.
Re:1st Amendment rights?? (Score:5, Insightful)
These people are just trying to avoid paying taxes. Kill this 501(c) bullshit now.
The problem isn't that the Tea Party folks wanted to avoid paying taxes. The problem is that the IRS, which has vast powers so that it can extract tax revenue from the people, abused those powers for political ends. And what is worse, it abused those powers unequally, harassing one group while leaving another group alone.
For 27 months, not one single Tea Party group was approved for 501(c) status, while dozens of liberal groups were approved. And since you will automatically call me a liar if I link Fox News, here's a USA Today story about this.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/ [usatoday.com]
I view this as tampering with an election, and it is very much NOT OKAY. I'm pissed about this and you should be.
Or are you going to try to tell me that would violates everybody's "rights"?
Are you going to try to tell me that nobody's rights have been violated? Or is it just that you think it's okay to violate the rights of "Tea Party" groups since you don't approve of them?
If you think it's okay to violate the rights of those with whom you disagree, just be honest about it and say so.
If you think it's not okay for the IRS to abuse its powers for political ends, regardless of whom they were abusing, then wake up and start reading the news.
I want to see dozens of people from the IRS fired, tried in court, and go to jail if convicted. But if I can't have that, then I will look forward to the day when some conservative President gets elected and the IRS starts doing this stuff to liberal groups. Perhaps then you will take it seriously.
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Bullshit. These people are just trying to avoid paying taxes. Kill this 501(c) bullshit now. Or are you going to try to tell me that would violates everybody's "rights"?
You're right, they are. And you're also right that the 501(c) nonsense is bullshit.
The point is, however, that the IRS decided it was only a bad thing if you had the words "Tea Party" or "Israel" in the name of your organization.
This is called Selective Enforcement [wikipedia.org]
Historically, selective enforcement is recognized as a sign of tyranny, and an abuse of power, because it violates rule of law, allowing men to apply justice only when they choose. Aside from this being inherently unjust, it almost inevitably must lead to favoritism and extortion, with those empowered to choose being able to help their friends, take bribes, and threaten those from whom they desire favors.
A good example of this is when Chicago tried to make being in a "Gang" illegal.
There are plenty of white groups in Chicago that were not illegal. The difference being that most people in the gang were black. Basically law enforcement were selecti
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BS indicator spiking.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BS indicator spiking.... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think you ever worked for a bureaucracy before.
Imagine trying to use that excuse in an IRS audit of your business.
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You've never worked with $1500/hr corporate tax lawyers, I see. You'd be surprised the kind of time that gets taken and the conditions which are glossed over or agreed to in a final settlement.
Special prosecutor (Score:5, Interesting)
We've got politically motivated BOLO lists, a political appointee hatchet-person taking the fifth, a government agency bullshitting the nation about "crashed" computers and "lost" emails....
There is a turd in here somewhere. Let a special prosecutor to sift through the IRS back up tapes, and subpoena all the other agencies for Lerner's mail. Let's find out why all these motherfuckers are stonewalling and lying.
It's personally offensive to me; to be told they can't recover the mail. I know that's bullshit. It's not even vaguely plausible. It's an insult to my intelligence and it deserves to be persecuted if only to expose and humiliate the fuckwits that have the temerity to make such a stupid claim. Letting that one slide just isn't tolerable. Let's kick open the door and find out what in the hell is going on here.
lost the emails............ I know that's bullshit and so do you.
Re:Special prosecutor (Score:5, Insightful)
A Special Prosecutor would have to be appointed by a member of 'The Most Transparent Administration.' That ain't gonna happen.
We can hope for change, though.
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http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/... [gwu.edu]
"electronically shred more than 5000 e-mail notes in the memory banks of their computer systems, as the Iran-contra scandal breaks."
"Subsequently, investigators from the FBI and the Tower Commission use the backup takes to reconstruct the Iran-contra scandal."
The data on backups would be clean, internal, bureaucratic, everyday office work expected to be fall under court or
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Hold on, Tex, why assume malice over stupidity without clear evidence? Guilty until proven innocent? What special inside knowledge do you have? Slashdotters are supposed to pride themselves in careful analysis and rational, carefully stated steps toward conclusions. Calling it "bullshit" on a gut feeling alone is not the spirit of STEM. That's for muggles.
By the way, I've yet to find evidence they are even required to keep emails for 4 years or more. Maybe it's not even a requirement, and any older emails a
Sad thing about this is (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sad thing about this is (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much this. It's also amazing how many people believe that ONLY the Tea Party groups were investigated (they weren't), or spout off with the "they should investigate unions too" crap (unions aren't this kind of organization and so such a thing would be meaningless).
What this is all about is the Tea Party groups trying to keep their rich astrotuf donors secret, getting caught at it, and doing what conservatives do: accusing their enemies of doing what they themselves do. The louder the better, because like they learned during the Bush administration, a lie told loudly and often will be believed by a lot of people.
Re:Sad thing about this is (Score:4, Interesting)
"civic leagues and volunteer fire departments"
Like Greenpeace, PETA, Public Citizen, Priorities USA, League of Conservation Voters Inc., Planned Parenthood, etc.
The primary activity of a 501(c)(4) must be "issues-related" rather than "electioneering" but that is certainly a very broad brush. If candidate A supports issue X while candidate B opposes issue X, a group can support A (and oppose B) by running ads on issue X while never mentioning either candidate by name.
I'm Confused (Score:5, Interesting)
Not surprising. That seems to happen a lot. As such, would someone please explain to me why the IRS allows anyone (let alone the IRS' top administrator) to download their emails to their desktops and delete them from their servers? And even if they did, why don't server backups exist which contain those emails?
Are the IRS' IT staff that incompetent?
As for demanding that the NSA turn over email metadata for Lois Lerner's IRS email address, that assumes they even have such information. Emails internal to the IRS shouldn't go across the Internet. I assume (maybe incorrectly) that the NSA isn't actively capturing packets on the IRS' internal networks, so what is to be gained here, except highlighting the incompetence of the IRS and using the "NSA is capturing everything" meme to make the Obama administration look bad.
So. It's just business as usual. Nothing to see here, just political wrangling to distract us from the fact that our government is being run for the benefit of the monied interests and not its citizens. Move along.
Does it have to come from NSA ? (Score:2)
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The only option is to audit networks and staff from other secure networks that do not show or are part of any internal or external networks.
Small expert US teams ccould then hunt for spies without been seen by ot
Bullshit but favorable bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like the action of a Congressman trying to discredit the NSA. The NSA obviously is not going to respond to this - if they did, they'd be inundated with requests from every small-town prosecutor wanting some more evidence (ironically, some might even get warrants for it). That would be worse than what will happen instead, which is that an anti-NSA legislator gets a talking point about how the NSA isn't using its data and isn't cooperating with the rest of the government (namely Congress).
Yes, it's just a political point being scored. But it's a point hopefully in our favor - or at the very least, one against our common enemy.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is the best way to get the NSA shut down. The general public has no control over it; trying to get them angry about it is pointless. The only way the general public could shut it down is by a revolution, and we're too well-fed and content to do that. But Congress could shut it down, so let's find every way to get Congressmen upset about the NSA. I wonder what a FOIA request for some congressional metadata would do...
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Active foreign clandestine signals, mil, gov, human intelligence groups now have to share, be open to or even get given tasks from one new agency.
Stockman is an asshat (Score:5, Interesting)
He walked out of the State of the Union Address saying "I could not bear to watch as he continued to cross the clearly-defined boundaries of the Constitutional separation of powers". Really adult.
He's running for Senate in Texas against Senator Corwyn, the Senate Minority Whip, and he just dropped off the map. He missed 17 House votes in a row. It also seems that even though he is a official candidate, he is doing zero campaigning. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-senate-candidate-steve-stockman-goes-awol/ [cbsnews.com]
He has also been cited by the Office of Congressional Ethics (I know, I laughed too). He accepted campaign contributions from his own staff members, which is a big no no. He is also accused of using his full time House staff members to work on his Congressional campaign. They all pull this trick, but there is a legal way and a stupid way to do this. He chose stupid. http://oce.house.gov/2014/06/june-11-2014---oce-referral-regarding-rep-steve-stockman.html [house.gov]
So it's not surprising that he would be the one to further complicate the snake pit of uncontrolled domestic surveillance by injecting it into a congressional investigation. Considering his quote about Obama breaking the constitution, his appeal to use unconstitutionally collected data to get at the IRS is mind boggling. His brain is clearly an irony free zone.
So the IRS is a terrorist organization? (Score:3)
Since the NSA is supposed to be monitoring threats to the US, this request implies that the NSA is targeting the IRS or members of its staff as a potential threat.
I could agree with that.
This is great. (Score:2)
Well ... (Score:2)
... at least we're safe from binders full of women, whatever that would mean!
Whew, dodged that bullet!
It's a bullshit excuse to start with (Score:3)
In both the US and Canada, data is supposed to be retained for 7 years by companies. It's standard practice to archive email at the SERVER before letting a client download it. Some places won't even allow email downloads, but force you to stick with protocols that leave the email on the server for safe keeping.
I don't buy it for a second. They didn't "lose" the emails and they can get them from the system backups for the email server ANY TIME.
Someone should be SHOT for this fraud.
Re:SubjectsForCommentsAreStupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SubjectsForCommentsAreStupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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Same here. Between CYA and emails which contain some extremely useful information, can't afford not to keep them around.
Re:SubjectsForCommentsAreStupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I happen to know for a fact that all of my email sent & received is backed up for 7 years, because those are the retention requirements imposed on my company by the federal government.
So my emails from 2009 - 2011 are archived happily along with all of the other email from the 2nd half of 2007 through the present day. If a private corporation can be held to this level of competency (and it's really not THAT hard), why shouldn't the motherfucking IRS, which literally owns the fucking finances of the government?
Re:Nice Synergy (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing "stupid" about naming a political party with a political name.
It's a real scandal when the party in power can leverage tax exempt status, or any other "treatment" from the IRS. You can agree or disagree with the political opinions or positions of these parties, but you must never use political power to prevent another party from gaining traction.
That's more than a scandal, it's pure simple corruption.
You'll probably reply with something political now, such as that you don't like the tea party or Romney or something. Totally irrelevant, save it for a real political discussion.
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I expect that with a two-party system every single official in government has a political party affiliation. This is nothing new.
What I do not expect is for them to intentionally target groups which oppose some party they are adherents to. This is in direct contradiction to their job description, and of course, to the constitution.
What do I expect? I expect them to do better.
Re:Nice Synergy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Take a real scandal (NSA) and link it to a fake one (IRS)"
Translation: "Take government malfeasance that I imagine affects me personally and link it government malfeasance that I don't think impacts me personally...yet"
You (and so many others) fail to appreciate what's obvious to others of us: that while the NSA behavior is egregious, it's now out in the open, and you can take steps to protect yourself. And if you already assume the worst--that the NSA is scanning/saving *everything*, then that can't get any worse.
But the extent of the IRS behavior *isn't* out in the open. It *can* get much worse. If there's *any* politically motivated behavior going on the the IRS, then that is tacit approval and groundwork for more. And you won't think it's a "fake" scandal in a decade when, left unchecked, you find yourself the subject of a tax audit because you donated to the political party not in power. They can put a lien on your house. They can garnish your wages. In terms of practically achievable damage to the average citizen's life, the IRS is far more dangerous. The power to tax is the power to destroy.
You can stymie the NSA. You can't stymie the IRS.
Re:Nice Synergy (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a real scandal (NSA) and link it to a fake one (IRS)
Can we please stop referring to this as a "fake scandal"? It's real.
Richard Nixon could only dream of using the IRS like this. By now, only the willfully blind can consider this a "fake" scandal.
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Actually, what they WANT is the Lerner emails which went out on the internet. The internal ones are less likely to be interesting.
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Recall Room 641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] - domestic, all data is split (mirrored) and sent to another part of the USA for sorting, indexing and then efficient encoding and compression for longterm storage. The corporate pipes are the backbones.
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Nixon was impeached for threatening to use the IRS as a political weapon. Obama has done it.
Nixon did not threaten to do so, he did so. [colorado.edu] And lots more, too
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Also, Nixon was never impeached. He resigned before it got that far.
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The only button they have is the one labeled "overcharge".
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Yes, mailgate was a big fiasco [wikipedia.org] and the Democrats wasted no time in flogging the administration over the lost e-mails. Funny how things turn around now 7 years later and everybody is aghast that the Republicans would now be yelling about the same thing.
Here's a solution for our branches of government, instead of every dept. having its own e-mail systems, get one and everybody use it. Set up default retention policies and eDiscovery mechanisms and then we won't have this kind of "lost" e-mail issue in the
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I happen to be a structural engineer. I do buildings now, but started in aerospace - dealing with materials at elevated temperatures and harsh environments - and I can tell you that most architectural engineers can't find their asses with both hands when it comes to complex material science (and half of them can't figure out simple material science). I didn't read the whole report, but I was not surprised by the outcome.