Where Are My Keys?

More shady dealings by the IRS?

It's starting to look like the IRS has some significant systemic failings:

The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.

According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.  

 

"This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents," the complaint reads. "No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records," it continued.

 

According to the case, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company, however, "it did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter," the complaint read. 

 

The class action lawsuit against the IRS seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages "per violation per individual" in addition to punitive damages for constitutional violations.  Thus, compensatory damages could start at a minimum of $250 billion.

(emphasis mine)

People need to go to jail.

Does the dam finally break now?

I can only hope reporters around the Country are thinking the following:

• When the scandal was "Fast and Furious", I didn't care, because I don't like guns..
• When the scandal was Benghazi, I didn't care, because I'm not an Ambassador..
• When the scandal was the IRS, I didn't care, because I don't belong to the Tea Party..
• When the scandal was AP wiretaps, I woke up, and did my job!

Nope, nothing to see here..

As I have said before (repeatedly), it's not the crime, but the cover-up.  Today we learn that there were 12 revisions to the Benghazi talking points before they were released.  Here's Carney saying that the changes to the talking points were "stylistic and non-substantive:

 

"Stylistic and non-substantive".

The evolution of the talking points, showing significant edits and revisions, specifically to remove references to al Qaeda.  As you scroll down through the 12 revisions, note the "strike-outs", and how much the document changes from the original assessment.

All one has to do is a little exercise here.  Read the original CIA talking points, then read the "official" talking points after all the edits by the White House and/or State Department.  Which one is closer to the truth?

Kudos to Sharyl Attkisson, Jake Tapper, and now Jon Karl, seemingly the only MSM reporters actually interested in learning what happened, and the Administration response to it.  Stephen Hayes also gets a large chunk of credit for uncovering proof that there were multiple revisions made to those talking points.

US News | Syria News | More ABC News Videos

 What will the rest of the MSM do with this new information?

Had the White House and State come out after the attacks, revealed what they were, and then gone after those that did it, they could have effectively managed this situation.  Instead, they ignored requests for help from Stevens, refused to acknowledge an attack on 9/11 was terrorism related, did nothing to try and help those fighting for their lives, and tried to change the narrative.

The truth always wins out.

There will still be folks on the Left that will blindly follow the lead of the White House, and not turn a curious eye to the latest revelations, and ask their own questions of why the Administration acted in the way it did, and then lied about those actions later.  They will choose to ignore that a week or so after the attack, President Obama was on Letterman, saying that "there was this video" that started the event in Benghazi, knowing full well the video had nothing to do with it.

Wake up.  You were lied to.

It will be interesting to see how President Cruz' head of DHS uses these powers..

And I'm sure the Left will be quiet about the use of that power as well.  I don't hear much opposition from that side of the aisle when Big Sis tries to get it today:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) entered a letter from law enforcement officials nationwide warning of the dangers of the immigration bill S.744 into the judiciary committee record today.

The letter To Congress from the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council of the American Federation of Government Employees Affiliated with AFL-CIO warns of the discretionary power the bill gives to “political appointees” and takes away from law enforcers:

“Congress can and must take decisive steps to limit the discretion of political appointees and empower ICE and CBP to perform their respective missions and enforce the laws enacted by Congress. Rather than limiting the power of those political appointees within DHS, S. 744 provides them with nearly unlimited discretion, which will serve only to further cripple the law enforcement missions of these agencies.”

They warn that the Senate immigration bill gives DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano “virtually unlimited discretion to waiver” prohibitions on obtaining legal status, such as criminal activity or previous deportation:

“This same section (Section 2101 of S. 744) gives the Secretary of Homeland Security virtually unlimited discretion to waive any manner of crimes that would otherwise make an individual ineligible for legal status––for such expansive reasons as family unity, humanitarian purposes, or what the Secretary believes is in the public interest.”

“At least two of these standards appear undefined by S. 744 or current law, providing political appointees with broad authority to establish their own definitions of these terms and pardon criminal acts under almost any circumstance.”

“The bill states that individuals who have previously been deported or otherwise removed from the country are ineligible to apply for legal status. However, the Secretary is given the 'sole and unreviewable discretion' to waive that ineligibility for large classes of qualifying aliens.”

The same Left that screamed about Bush and FISA wiretaps remain silent..

Kudos to the NYTimes for reporting on this, but don't count on seeing any of the same outrage directed towards President Bush being leveled at President Obama.

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.

While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.

Still, the plan is likely to set off a debate over the future of the Internet if the White House submits it to Congress, according to lawyers for technology companies and advocates of Internet privacy and freedom.

“I think the F.B.I.’s proposal would render Internet communications less secure and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves,” said Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It would also mean that innovators who want to avoid new and expensive mandates will take their innovations abroad and develop them there, where there aren’t the same mandates.”

The pot that is Benghazi, about to boil over?

It should make for an interesting week:

No matter what happens with Darrell Isaa’s congressional committee meetings this week, we are witnessing the beginning of the endof the Obama Administration, and the cause is Benghazi. It’s impossible to underestimate the blowback that has been gathering steam for the past seven months, now about to erupt with full force. Few reputations will emerge unscathed, Obama’s presidency will be crippled, Hillary Clinton‘s 2016  candidacy will be destroyed — and perhaps some new heroes will be born.

Time will tell if these predictions come true.  Someone is going to have to toss someone else under the bus.  Either Obama does it to Hillary!, or she does it to him.  One of them will have to play offense.  Whomever is forced to play defense will lose, and lose big time.

Nope, no need for entitlement reform in this Country..

The Bomber Brothers and their families received $100,000 in benefits:

The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.

“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today.

The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify.

Look, I get that it's pretty hard to look at each and every application for benefits to spot the bad eggs, and prevent them from getting taxpayer funds.  Could we at least cross-match names against no-fly lists, terrorist watch lists, and maybe folks with extensive criminal records?

Maybe that would be an easy place to start.

Cops are the only folks we should trust with guns, right?

Because they are so responsible with guns, and would never use them improperly, right?

A Beaver County blogger who keeps tabs on local government testified through tears Monday that Beaver County Sheriff George David drew his service revolver and threatened to kill him during a profane rant at his office last April.

"I was witness to the ravings of a madman," said John Paul Vranesevich, who runs the Beaver Countian website. "He was not in control of himself."

After a marathon preliminary hearing, retired District Judge Michael Gerheim, brought in from Armstrong County to hear the case, ordered the sheriff held on the majority of the 11 misdemeanor counts brought by state police in connection with that incident and an earlier one involving a campaign volunteer, Daniel Fleischman.

...

Mr. Fleischman, a county jail guard, said that when he went to shake the sheriff's hand at a campaign event, the sheriff called him a profane name and threatened to cut off his hands and eat them, apparently believing that Mr. Fleischman had been talking negatively about him behind his back. He said he didn't report the incident because he feared for his job and the sheriff is president of the county prison board.

Under cross-examination, he said the sheriff called him on Election Day to apologize and said he had received "bad information" that Mr. Fleischman had been talking badly about him.

During his testimony, Mr. Vranesevich said the sheriff launched into a tirade, pulling his pistol and waving it around during a meeting he had with the sheriff in the presence of two deputies, Thomas Ochs and Michael Tibolet.

"I can't explain his behavior," he said. "I don't know what is wrong with him."

Mr. Vranesevich was researching a story for his blog about a uniform contract for the sheriff's office after he said several deputies had tipped him that the sheriff was circumventing the low-bid process. He said Sheriff David, upset at the reporting on his office by J.D. Prose of the Beaver County Times, drew the gun in rage and warned that Mr. Vranesevich had better not report negatively on his office as he said Mr. Prose had done.

At one point, he said, the sheriff threatened to use the gun to blow Mr. Prose's brains out.

"If you start reporting [expletive] like this, I'm going to blow your [expletive] brains out, too," Mr. Vranesevich said the sheriff screamed at him.

City Workers finally having to contribute like the rest of Us..

Cities around the Country are waking up to financial reality, and *gasp* asking new hires to pay their portion of retirement expenses.  You know, like we do:

Pension costs have caused several recent high-profile municipal bankruptcies recently, so other cities are trying to avoid suffering similar disasters by asking employees to begin paying part of their pension costs.

In Sacramento, Calif., City Manager John Shirey said today he will hire 58 new police officers only if current officers agree to pay the employee share of their pension payments. The police union is one of few groups of employees in the city who don’t pay any of their own pension costs,  according to the Sacramento Bee.

Most public pension plans are set up with a set contribution for employers and employees, but employee unions often negotiate for employers to pay both the employer share and some or all of the employee share, which makes pension payments a large chunk of many cities’ budgets. Bankrupt Stockton, Calif., for instance, owes the California Public Employees Retirement System $900 million.

It's not just Sacramento seeing the light:

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake introduced a bill today that would require city employees to pay part of their share to address $681 million in unfunded pension liabilities, according to the Baltimore Sun. The bill would require employees to put 5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund by 2018. Rawlings-Blake’s office estimates it would save $53 million over nine years, according to the Sun. “The costs of outdated benefits have crippled our ability to pay workers what they truly deserve in their paychecks,” the mayor said in a statement. “We must make tough choices to rebalance the way we compensate our hard-working employees by reforming unsustainable benefits and instead invest in better wages up-front.”

Look for more and more this to happen in cities near you.

Remember, something that can't go on forever, won't.

Disgusting abuse of power..

 

Why was he arrested?  Mr. Grisham will soon be winning a large sum of money from the State of Texas.