POTUS deploys Marines for rain in Rose Garden with Turkish PM Erdogan. twitter.com/MajorCBS/statu…

— Major Garrett(@MajorCBS) May 16, 2013

This has all the indicators of reaching the West Wing. Prior Democrats in Congress had espoused the IRS *should* take this approach. With such blatant admissions in 2010, and even 2011 after they lost the House they continued the approach, this is going to be VERY difficult for the administration to firewall.

UPDATE: No Questions, will hold press conference tomorrow (with Turkish delegation) and take questions then.   IRS Commissioner Steven Steven Miller (pictured below) resigned effective TODAY.   Three main points emphasized:

“the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity” – Barack Obama

1.  We are going to hold the responsible parties accountable.  –  The acting commissioner of the IRS, Steven Miller, has resigned effective today.

2.  We will put in place new safeguards to insure it doesn’t happen again.  – I told Jack Lew to make that happen and implement the IG recommendations.  Also, Lew will work with Holder who will launch an internal DOJ investigation.

3.  We will work with congress as it performs its oversight control.   I’ll do all I can to insure this does not happen again.   We need to look at the laws to insure that no ambiguity exists.

“That’s what we’ll do, that’s what I’ll do, and that’s what the American people can expect”. (more…)

House Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday that it’ll take more than firings to clear up the IRS scandal — it’ll take someone ending up serving jail time.

“My question is, who’s going to jail over this scandal?”  the Ohio Republican said at a press conference with Republicans Wednesday morning. (link)

(more…)

……Obama said this:  “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.  Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works; they’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

Now Consider: (more…)

You know when the President sends out an official announcement at 8:30pm that a  general sense of the pending sh!tstorm is looming far closer than the horizon.

So close in fact it is quite possible the nucleus of the scandal will be tracked to the West Wing of 1600.

Earlier yesterday, prior to the official Inspector General report release,  ABC Newser Trey Hardin directly asked White House Spokesman Jay Carney:

Trey Hardin: “I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it. It simply just does not happen at an agency level like that without political advisers likely in the West Wing certainly connected to the president’s ongoing campaign organization.”  (link)

Notably, Jay Carney never disputed this assertion.   Bad sign. (more…)

The DOJ having the authority to do warrantless wiretaps without presenting justification to a judge is alarming. The DOJ having the authority to do such wiretapping against reporters in the media, who provide the fourth estate to protect -and check- the balance of power, is well beyond alarming.

It was only fair that Associated Press reporter Jim Kuhnhenn got the first question to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at Tuesday’s press briefing. Coming just one day after news broke that the Department Of Justice had secretly seized two months worth of phone records from AP reporters, Kuhnhenn used his question to tie the AP scandal together with the other troubling news stories of the week for the Obama administration.

“For fear of stating the obvious,” Kuhnhenn began, “the White House right now is confronting a confluence of issues: Benghazi talking points, IRS reviews of political groups, Justice Department’s review of journalists’ phone records, and in every instance either the president or you have placed the burden of responsibility someplace else… But it is the president’s administration, so I wonder, doesn’t responsibility for setting tone, for setting direction ultimately rest with the president on these matters?” (more…)

Listen to what Jay Carney is stating here in regard to the White House knowledge of the issues surrounding the targeting of Tea Party and Conservative groups.

Last Friday the same original media sources (the reporters on the phone conference with the IRS official who apologized) said the report was to be released within the next day.  As a result of the admission the media story quickly took off.

Now The White House is saying:  We’ll defer comment, and “wait for the report” etc.

You know this “report” has not only been scrutinized at length by the protectors, but has been re-written more than a few times as the points are critiqued by all the concentric circles that compromise the White House and Cabinet political machine. Revisions, revisions, revisions…..

WASHINGTON DC – Republicans are training their attacks on acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller amid new revelations that he and the agency’s former top official knew employees were targeting conservative groups but failed to notify Congress despite repeated requests.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, and 10 other GOP lawmakers wrote to then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman on June 18, 2012 demanding answers about why the agency requested donor information from groups seeking nonprofit status.

By the time this letter was sent, Shulman and Miller, who was the deputy IRS commissioner at the time, were aware of the extent of the targeting program for about a month. (more…)

First “his” point:

Then “her” counter point: (more…)