It really is quite amazing to watch how easily the people around Ferguson Missouri are manipulated by local members of the professional grievance community, and peer pressure. Dozens of residents proud to be arrested including some younger people. Yesterday they tried to block the Interstate (I-70) but were stopped by police and law enforcement. Of course the Saint Louis media is giddy with the confrontation(s) helping to sell newspapers and generate viewership. However, a review of the people at the center of the protests and you find they are almost the exact same people from the prior evening’s City Council Meeting fiasco. It appears they have nothing more valuable to do for the community than to travel from venue to venue, agitating.
How can the DOJ conduct an investigation into unlawful aspects of the IRS targeting of specific 501(c)(4) groups, when the DOJ is the initiating body for the illegality they are seeking to investigate ?
The IRS scandal is NOT about the IRS. Yes, the IRS did indeed target conservative groups; however, they were NOT the originating entity in the overall plan to create a list of targets.
The U.S. Department of Justice was the originating governmental agency who constructed the plan to make a target list and then weaponize various government agencies against those on the list.
As said, we stumbled onto the DOJ trail of evidence back in June when we reviewed one of very few disclosures given by Lois Lerner’s attorney William Taylor III. In a moment of clarity, which was not caught by the interviewer, William Taylor responded to questioning by stating that his client, Lois Lerner, was merely responding to a request from the Department of Justice, when she sent confidential tax files to the DOJ.
Taylor said Lerner didn’t know and sent them because Justice requested the documents: “She [understood] the donor information on Schedule B had been removed. In some cases, we later learned, it may not have been.” (link)
Lois Lerner sent the DOJ 1.1 million pages of 501(c)(4) tax filing data. Including a very specific set of “33 Schedule B attachment files”. The Schedule B’s were specific to Large Conservative 501(c)(4) groups operating and organized to oppose the agenda of President Obama. The Schedule B’s include the donor lists of specific people and sub-groups attached to the 501(c)(4).
In essence the donor group or names of every person who supported the larger conservative group. (more…)
As we have been saying for months, if you peel back the concentric layers that make up the IRS scheme you will find the DOJ was the entity compiling an illegal targeting list, not the IRS. We outlined the initial discovery trail HERE, and why it matters HERE.
That’s why the Eric Holder DOJ is working diligently to cover-up their own verifiable attachment to the entire process. In this latest mistake the DOJ was asking congress to intentionally leak material given to the House Oversight Committee so they could produce a media response and get out ahead of the story.
How can the DOJ conduct an investigation into unlawful aspects of the IRS targeting of specific 501(c)(4) groups, when the DOJ is the initiating body for the illegality they are seeking to investigate ?
WASHINGTON DC – A lead House Republican is accusing the Justice Department Office of Public Affairs of improperly trying to coordinate with House Democrats on the release of subpoenaed documents in the IRS investigation.
Justice Department Director of Public Affairs Brian Fallon (pictured left) called the House Oversight Committee Friday evening and mistakenly spoke to Republican staff thinking he was speaking to Democrats, according to a spokesman for Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
In that call, Fallon said his agency was about to turn over some IRS documents. He stated that he was not being allowed to release the material directly to the media, but that he wanted to get it into the hands of certain reporters “before the [Republican] Majority” had the chance to share it. That’s according to a letter Issa sent yesterday to Attorney General Eric Holder.
“The [Justice Department’s Fallon] then asked the [Republican] Committee employee if the Committee would agree to release the material to selected reporters and thereby allow the [Justice] Department to comment publicly on it.”–Issa to Holder (more…)
√ Step One – Tell New York Times : “It’s always been a fantasy,” he said, “this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”
√ Step Ten – Construct marketing plan to sell the previously dismissed approach. We will now “provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.” in Syria.
√ Step Eleven – Call in congressional leadership to inform them his MSNBC team has “got this” plan, are ready to sell it, and he doesn’t need congress. (link)
Step Twelve – Tell American electorate in prime-time speech to the nation how providing arms to the “moderate Syrian forces” will insure success in Syria.
CNN Pundit Paul Callan points out the problems with Eric Holder rushing in his civil rights division to Ferguson, Missouri.
(CNN) — If the United States Department of Justice has any real interest in obtaining justice in the tragic shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of a new civil rights investigation in Ferguson, Missouri, (population 21,000) was a step in the wrong direction.
The department’s ham-handed effort to improve the political “optics” of active federal involvement may, ironically, create the reasonable doubt that will ultimately clear the shooter, Officer Darren Wilson.
The Department of Justice is likely to be impeding justice by proceeding prematurely with a federal investigation while local law enforcement authorities struggle with the facts of the complex and controversial case.
The DOJ investigations (there now appear to be two that have been officially announced) are highly prejudicial to the local prosecutor’s presentation of the case to the grand jury. The non-sequestered grand jurors who return home every night after scrutinizing evidence in the case are almost certain to hear of the existence of the new federal investigation.
After all, the investigation was personally announced by the attorney general himself after the President publicly commented on the case. The grand jurors might reasonably wonder why the federal government would open a civil rights investigation at the very same time they are hearing evidence about Ferguson’s most famous homicide. (more…)
Memphis Mayor A C Wharton (right) listens as Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong speaks to the media outside the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library about the attack of employees and a customer Saturday night by a mob of teenagers at the Poplar Plaza Kroger UPDATE 9/9/14 @4:20pm : Eleven Arrests – MEMPHIS — Eleven teenagers have been arrested and charged in connection with an attack on several people in a grocery store parking lot in Memphis, police said Monday.
The teens, ranging in age from 14 to 19, face charges including aggravated assault and aggravated riot, police said. Police did not release the names of the boys and girls who were charged after the fight Saturday night outside a Kroger grocery store.
The fight was caught on cellphone video.
They identified the 19-year-old as Raheem Richardson. It was not immediately known if he had a lawyer late Monday. Police said a group of teenagers first attacked a 25-year-old customer as he left his car to enter the store. (read more) (more…)
The key issue is not that ISIS is using U.S. made weapons. Given ISIS geographic conquests it would be expected, vis-à-vis Iraq, they were able to capture weapons and armament. No, it’s the *type* of weapons, specifically boxed M16’s, which identifies the covert shipments to Syria we outlined within the Benghazi Brief.
In 2012 those small arms were shipped to Syria as a result of President Obama’s authorization. Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing the financing, Turkey provided an initial storage base near Adana where the nerve center for supporting what became ISIS was set up. The UN peacekeeper Kofi Annan was pulled out of Syria, and U.S. weapons were poured in.
(Via Raw Story) Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia, according to a report published on Monday.
The study by the London-based small-arms research organisation Conflict Armament Research documented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from militants in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July.
The report said the jihadists disposed of “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt”.(more…)
Not to put too fine a point on it, yet knowing President Polling is going to deliver a magnanimous prime-time speech in a few days, the Syrian conversation with Chuck Todd needs, or, well, deserves a little e-x-p-a-n-s-i-o-n.
During a rather revealing part of the interview between Chuck Todd and President Obama the specific issue of Syria came up surrounding ISIS. Viewers should note in the entire dialogue it was not Obama who brought up Syria, it was Chuck Todd. (Video @9:20)
Mr. Todd even seemed a little perplexed with having to do it; albeit reluctantly, as if he knew he needed to. If Chuck Todd’s new role on MTP is to attempt credibility retention he held no choice, he had to bring up the geography. Todd specifically needed to ask, because Dear Leader avoided mentioning Syria throughout the previous ten minutes:
@09:25 President Obama: “the boots on the ground have to be Syrian”.
Chuck Todd interjects “but WHO”?
President Obama has publicly committed himself to the removal of Syrian head Basher Assad. His public proclamations to Assad’s removal make getting cooperation from the Syrian National Army a little disingenuous amid the option scale.
Additionally we know the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is little more than a corrupted fractured contingent of ne’er-do-wells, most of which defected to join ISIS. And then we have Dear Leader’s previous statements saying to the New York Times’ Tom Freidman it is “fantasy” to think “an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” could battle “a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, [and] a battle-hardened Hezbollah.”
So naturally Chuck Todd had to ask the question: Whose boots does Obama plan on supporting?
To wit POTUS puts three groups on the table: The Syrian national army, ISIS, and some weirdly defined “Moderate Opposition” – and then says we should support the moderate opposition who are “pinched between the Syrian Army and ISIS“.
STOP
{{Insert Scratching Record Sound}}}
Let’s just imagine a REAL REPORTER was sitting in that seat across from POTUS. (more…)
There are moments in edited TV content when a keyed-in viewer can see a cut intended to make a “comfort edit”, smoothing out the narrative. The Chuck Todd interview with President Obama was riddled with them. Even when being interviewed by a fellow ideological traveler.
But first to content: On ISIS: @00:24 “this administration has” – President Obama using third person distancing tactic discussing an uncomfortable negative. When the topic is positive, or viewed as favorable currency, the term “my administration” is used. @01:05 “what I have done over the past several months” – President Obama knowing he was caught flat-footed, having called ISIS “JV”, and having admitted not having a strategy is now trying to give appearance of them having been working on this all along. @01:45 “the next phase, is to start going on some offense” – Again, framing incompetence as if there was a previous outline/plan in place. This is similar to the re-writing of the Syrian RED LINE strategy, ‘yeah, yeah, we, um, we meant to um, create that Russian intervention WMD thing’. Embarrassingly juvenile for a President. (more…)
