It's the best thing in the world....And it's certainly not a distraction.
Brad
I'm having a particularly hard time with this Soccer match that just started...
My mom is from Argentina, and my dad is from Holland... soo.... they've separately been calling me on their cell phones, and I haven't been picking up the phone.
To make matters worse, my wife dressed my daughter in an Argentine "Messi" jersey and sent her to school like that, took a picture, and sent it to my parents... I got like three calls in a row from my dad this morning, I think he was kind of pissed... didn't pick up... I'll call them after the game to see what's up.
Oddly enough though... the Queen of Holland is from Argentina as well... they just tied the knot last year... the media cornered her so to speak, and she said she's rooting for Holland... heh.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) announced on Thursday that he has filed a resolution directing the House sergeant-at-arms to “arrest Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress” over the IRS targeting scandal.
Stockman said in a statement that asking the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute Lerner for “admittedly illegal activity” is a “joke.” Instead, the Republican said it is up to the U.S. House to “uphold the rule of law and hold accountable those who illegally targeted American citizens for simply having different ideas than the President.”
Under the proposed resolution, Lerner would be held in a Washington, D.C., jail and would be given access to an attorney and all her constitutional rights.
By "arrest" do they mean hand her a piece of paper that says "you've been arrested?" I doubt they'll even do that. I hope I'm wrong, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Never going to happen. There're probably too many people involved, most likely elected officials, so they'll do everything they can to put on a dog and pony show without actually doing anything. Remember, this is Washington DC. The rules only apply to everyone else.
Newest "news" is that Lerner sent an e-mail in 2013 warning staff at the IRS to watch what they were putting in e-mails, because congress might be calling for all of them to review.
I have heard a few republicans jumping on this as more evidence that she was hiding things.
I have to be objective, and say that this proves nothing and infers nothing.
ANYone that knew that government might be going through e-mails, whether involved in anything or not, would appreciate the "heads up" reminder to be careful what you put in e-mails.
The evidence of IRS corruption just keeps piling up.
At what most expected to be a relatively routine House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday, there was yet another IRS bombshell.
On April 9, 2013, just days after seeing the draft Treasury Inspector General Report that revealed the IRS’s massive Tea Party targeting scheme, Lois Lerner, then director of exempt organizations at the IRS, sent an email to an IRS IT official asking whether the IRS’s internal chat system was searchable.
What’s equally as troubling and unbelievable is that congressional investigators and the American people learned of this internal chat system only on Wednesday – the first time this critical communications method inside the IRS was disclosed.
Some have said the IRS was out of control. I’d say the opposite. It was very much in control – doing exactly what it intended to do with relative impunity, including setting up its own IT resources not to preserve records but to cover its tracks.
That same email indicated that Lerner was urging her colleagues to be “cautious” in their email communications – because Congress might be watching. Here’s the relevant portion of the e-mail:
I had a question today about OCS [Microsoft Office Communications Server]. I was cautioning folks about email and how we have several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails – so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails. Someone asked if OCS conversations were also searchable – I don’t know, but told them I would get back to them. Do you know?
This email is damaging enough; it shows that the IRS officials were deeply concerned about what Congress might see. After all, if there’s “not a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS, as President Obama contends, what is there to fear from routine congressional oversight?
The response from IRS IT official Maria Hooke, however, was worse:
No, the IRS does not routinely save chat communications – unless employees intentionally take steps to preserve their conversation. These chat communications are not saved – and this is critical – despite the fact that “the functionality exists within the software.”
In other words, the IRS could have saved these communications – communications of particular concern to Lerner and her team – but it simply chose not to.
Lerner’s response to this news?
Perfect.
The timing of this email is not coincidental. As mentioned, it came just days after Lerner reviewed a draft investigative report from the inspector general (IG). And it came just one month before Lerner herself orchestrated a downplayed admission about the targeting scheme – planting a question at an American Bar Association conference so she could issue an apology in advance of the release of the IG’s findings.
It’s clear: This disturbing email was part of her well-orchestrated cover-up plan.
Now we know that the IRS “lost” Lerner’s emails with government officials and others outside the IRS.
Now we know that rather than preserve Lerner’s allegedly damaged hard drives – at a time when the IRS had already been sued by one conservative nonprofit and was facing congressional inquiries on behalf of others – it went ahead and “recycled” her computer, essentially throwing it away.
Now we know that the IRS didn’t even bother to save its internal chat communications, despite having the capacity to do so.
And there likely are more bombshells to come. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, also testifying Wednesday, indicated more emails would be released and said, “I’m sure some of those will be interesting to people.”
We await those new emails with keen interest.
Some have said the IRS was out of control. I’d say the opposite. It was very much in control – doing exactly what it intended to do with relative impunity, including setting up its own IT resources not to preserve records but to cover its tracks.
With each revelation, however, it loses a bit more of its control over the conservative movement, over the media and over the public narrative. The evidence of corruption and cover-up is growing too great to ignore.
At the ACLJ, we are pressing ahead with our lawsuit on behalf of 41 conservative groups in 22 states. Soon enough, it will be held accountable in federal court, and at that point, the IRS will – finally – have no control over its legal destiny.
Love to read the comments on sites involving this situation. I read one where the guy, whom I'm guessing is a troll, insisted that he had over twenty years of experience in IT and also insisted that once your computer crashes, your email simply disappear and are unrecoverable. I could throw my lap top off an overpass today and all I would have to do is use or buy another lap top, re-enter my screen name and password on a website and "boom" there's my emails. Thanks for playing. Please come back and fail later. lol
Id be in trouble then if I made say $100K and spent $65K for parts and materials . I guess Id get rid of this property finally, then just declare bankruptcy to everyone again...
According to this site, six other hard drives at the IRS failed in the same month as Lois Lerner's. The odds of this happening is 1 in 78,664,164,096 according to the writer.
quote
NOT a SMIDGEN of Corruption!
The odds of winning the Florida lottery are 1 in 22,957,480. The odds of winning the Powerball are 1 in 175,223,510. The odds of winning Mega Millions are 1 in 258,890,850.
The odds of a disk drive failing in any given month are roughly one in 36. The odds of two different drives failing in the same month are roughly one in 36 squared, or 1 in about 1,300. The odds of three drives failing in the same month are 36 cubed or 1 in 46,656.
The odds of seven different drives failing in the same month (like what happened at the IRS when they received a letter asking about emails targeting conservative and pro-Israeli groups) is 37 to the 7th power = 1 in 78,664,164,096. (That’s over 78 Billion) In other words, the odds are greater that you will win the Florida Lottery 342 times than having those seven IRS hard drives crashing in the same month. Unbelievable odds of it being the truth in my opinion.
You decide if you believe the official storyline is the truth…
This info may or may not be true. It is (after all) taken from the internet. Maybe seven drives failing in one month is normal for a large group of computers?
[This message has been edited by spark1 (edited 07-17-2014).]
Up until a few days ago, I have never had a hard drive fail on me. And I work my hard drives hard, and expose them to extreme danger.
They have been to places that would make most people want to take their skin off with steal wool & bleach...
But they're telling us that the hard drives of their desk tops/lap tops crashed and they can't retrieve the emails they requested. So it must be true because that's what they're telling us right? Why didn't they just say "The dog ate my hard drive." lol
For over a year now, the DOJ and FBI have been investigating the IRS targeting scandal. Yet a DOJ lawyer testified before a Congressional committee that even a year into its investigation, DOJ had no advance notice of the 2 years’ worth of emails the IRS says went missing years ago. ... Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis asked Deputy Attorney General James Cole, “So you actually read about it in the press and nobody in the IRS ever went to the Justice Department to give you a heads-up, knowing you were conducting the investigation that some evidence may have been destroyed?”
“Not before the 13th of June,” Cole replied. “I think we learned about it after that, from press accounts,” Mr. Cole told House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan. Rep. Jordan pressed Mr. Cole, “Is it a big deal to you Mr. Cole, a big deal to the Justice Department that the head of the Internal Revenue Service waited two months to tell the United States Congress, two months to tell the American people, and, most importantly, two months to tell the FBI and the Justice Department that they had lost Lois Lerner’s emails?”
Mr. Cole’s response seemed practically Presidential, “It depends on what the circumstances were behind,” Cole responded.
That must have been quite a through "investigation." I'm not sure what's worse - that level of malfeasance, or the useful idiot's breathless acceptance of their explanation.
[This message has been edited by Formula88 (edited 07-18-2014).]
The gross incompetence in this administration truly is amazing.
It is not incompetence if it is intentional. And I think it is. This administration is doing just what they said they would before the election. Remaking America. Unfortunately it is a destruction of the Constitutional Republic given to us by the founders and our forefathers. What we have now is a politicized IRS, EPA and all of the other alphabet agencies along with an imperial president who could care less what the people need or want.
