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1.) Liar, liar, IRS on fire — Senior IRS official Lois Lerner doesn’t appear to have provided the whole truth Friday when she revealed the shocking news that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny. TheDC’s Caroline May reports:
“Lawyers representing Tea Party groups are disputing the Internal Revenue Service’s claim that the discrimination against Tea Party and conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status was initiated among low-level employees at an IRS office in Cincinnati. According to the lawyers, the practice was more vast and included IRS officials in Washington, D.C. David French, Senior Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents 27 Tea Party groups, told The Daily Caller that the IRS’ Cincinnati office was not the only unit targeting tea party and conservative groups for increased scrutiny. ‘We’ve dealt with two offices in California, the one in Cincinnati of course, and one in Washington, D.C. So when that story came out on Friday, we knew instantaneously it was false, because we had personal dealings with four different IRS offices from coast to coast and that was in connection with our representing 27 Tea Party groups and conservative groups in 19 states,’ French said, adding that the two California offices were located in Laguna Niguel and El Monte.”
Yet more evidence that trust should be in short supply on Capitol Hill when investigating this scandal. We need to know exactly what went on and who knew about it when. This type of thing makes America look like a banana republic, not the leader of the free world.
2.) Welcome to Scandal City — Because there never can be enough scandals in Washington, we now have got another one to add to IRS-gate and Benghazi-gate. TheDC’s Alexis Levinson reports:
“The Department of Justice issued a vague response to an Associated Press report Monday that the DOJ had ‘secretly obtained’ two months worth of phone records of AP reporters and editors. AP reported that the government would not give an explanation for why it had sought out the phone records, but noted that the DOJ had previously stated that it was looking into who leaked information to the AP for a story in May about a terror plot that was successfully deterred. In the story were details about ‘a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.’ In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt called the seizure of phone records ‘a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news’ and demanded that the DOJ sequester the seized records and explain its actions.”
Now the Obama administration has done it. It is picking on journalists, something that the media class will under no circumstances overlook.
3.) Not fit to print — According to the New York Times, babies born alive and then murdered are fetuses. TheDC’s Vince Coglianese reports:
“The New York Times referred to three murdered children as ‘fetuses’ in an article about the conviction of Kermit Gosnell Monday. Gosnell, a former Philadelphia abortion doctor, was found guilty of first-degree murder Monday afternoon for severing the necks of three born-alive infants. The New York Times referred to those infants as ‘fetuses’ six times in the paper’s write-up.”
The Grey Lady is grey because she is morally dead.
4.) A SEAL of a deal — All you knife collectors out there, pay attention. TheDC’s Mike Piccione reports on how you can bid to win a pretty spiffy (and historically interesting) knife:
“A prized piece of Navy SEAL memorabilia is being auctioned to benefit Special Operation Forces and their families. The auction item is the Emerson CQC-7 folding knife that was carried by ‘Mark Owen,’ a SEAL who was sent to kill or capture now-deceased terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden on May 1, 2011. The Mark Owen pseudonym is used by the former DEVGRU mission member who published the account of the raid in the book ‘No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden.'”
Read the full article to see where you can bid. This sounds better than even the “amazing” Ginsu knife.
5.) Tweet of Yesterday — Jose Canseco: Can’t believe Barbara Walters is gone I used to mix up her and Madonna
6.) Today in North Korean News — BREAKING: “S. Korean Students Exposed to Violence”
VIDEO: Obama complains about GOP investigation into Benghazi cover-up