Who appoints the Commissioner again?

What are his duties?

What's ol' Steven Miller up to these days?

5/13/2013 7:30:20 PM

The fuck are you talking about?

5/13/2013 7:33:28 PM

Tea baggers need to be vilified... But not this way.

[Edited on May 13, 2013 at 7:34 PM. Reason : ]

5/13/2013 7:34:14 PM

Quote :

"I thought the IRS ran independently within the treasury department "

I thought it might be worthwhile to actually nail down how the IRS functions.

Starting with the head might be a good place to start.

That's what she said.

5/13/2013 7:34:53 PM

i genuinely am not sure, and google is inconclusive about how they function. i understand who appoints the commissioner, but that doesn't meant that the commissioner reports to Obama (he reports to the secretary of the treasure) or that they do not function independently. google keeps saying they function independently, but some of the sources are from before they were restructured.

[Edited on May 13, 2013 at 9:24 PM. Reason : treasure = autocorrect treasury ]

5/13/2013 9:24:22 PM

Yes, I'm sure "the execution and application of the internal revenue laws or related statutes and tax conventions to which the United States is a party" means he and Obama have very little to talk about.

(wikipedia)

5/13/2013 9:37:55 PM

nothing of that excludes them operating independently

5/13/2013 9:47:24 PM

it's forehead slappingly disappointing that some of you honestly believe the president has the time for and interest in micromanaging government agencies.

5/13/2013 10:03:09 PM

The same could be said for those of you who think he's not involved in anything.

5/13/2013 10:16:05 PM

yes

5/13/2013 10:29:25 PM

Quote :

"The White House was unaware of the subpoenas, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday night. "We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department," Carney said."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/13/us/justice-ap-phones/index.html

Legally, but broadly, tapping ap reporter phones. They don't seem clued in to a lot of what's going on...

Between failed shoo-in gun legislation, sequester, the IRS thing, now this, Obama really has no victories to show for his 2nd term.

Benghazi I think is nothing, but if Obama can't parry it, this is going to be a bad year.

5/13/2013 10:36:27 PM

the Guantanamo hunger strikes are starting to get press traction too

5/13/2013 10:54:51 PM

Closing gitmo should be achievable.

5/13/2013 11:03:23 PM

It should have been done his first term, and any excuse he had ended on day 1 of his second term

5/13/2013 11:08:12 PM

He did make a good try his first term, and the GOP did a good job of generating outrage.

There's no reason it shouldn't be done now.

It's always been the right thing to do, even if it has some costs.

5/13/2013 11:15:07 PM

He doesn't need GOP support to do it, he can just do it

5/13/2013 11:23:27 PM

The issue last time was that prisons didn't want them, and countries didn't want them.

I suppose he could just put them in prisons without buy-in. Probably what should be done.

And release the ones that don't need to be in prison.

5/13/2013 11:27:00 PM

Quote :

"He did make a good try his first term"

No, he really didn't.

5/14/2013 2:16:29 AM

It's going to be very difficult for Attorney General Holder to hold on to his job with this one, especially given that this happened near the end of the President's first term. Holder was either asleep at the wheel, tacitly approved it or supported a culture that made it think that something like this was a good idea.

5/14/2013 2:19:18 PM

5/14/2013 9:40:05 PM

Quote :

"He doesn't need GOP support to do it, he can just do it "

congress overwhelmingly passed legislation barring the executive from using any money to close gitmo or to move prisoners.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704774604576036520690885858.html

saw this in my searching for the above article from a couple weeks ago:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/05/president_obama_can_shut_guantanamo_whenever_he_wants_to.html

basically says that obama could get around the congress by declaring that hostilities with al-qaeda are over.

[Edited on May 14, 2013 at 11:03 PM. Reason : .]

5/14/2013 11:00:01 PM

So you don't use DoD to move them

5/14/2013 11:02:52 PM

Quote :

"Benghazi I think is nothing"

Not taking your quote out of context.



I thought the Benghazi thing was really bad management. Kinda like FEMA and Katrina. Just really bad decisions that lead to horrible events. That those responsible (leadership type positions) should be held accountable and procedures should be looked over and adjusted so it doesn't happen again.


The thing that bothers me was the blaming it on the video. I thought that was pretty cheap. The other thing is the timing of it before the election. Even if they wanted to say one thing other the other to help calm the situation or who knows why it'll always be questioned because of the close timing to the election.

5/16/2013 6:20:14 AM

your memory of actual events is suspect

5/16/2013 8:31:18 AM

Quote :

"The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that the EPA under Ms. Jackson has a history of favoring groups that share the agency’s political agenda. “Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived,” according to the report. Government agencies like the EPA typically waive so-called Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit, but it’s up to the agency to decide whether a fee-waiver is justified. At the EPA, fees were waived for liberal environmental groups like Greenpeace and EarthJustice almost always. Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, “had its requests denied 93 percent of the time. One request was denied because CEI failed to express its intent to disseminate the information to the general public. The rest were denied because the agency said CEI ‘failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.’” This is important because the White House and Democrats have increasingly used regulators at the EPA to advance a green agenda that they can’t get through Congress."

Nothing to see here...

5/16/2013 11:11:54 AM

Quote :

"One request was denied because CEI failed to express its intent to disseminate the information to the general public. The rest were denied because the agency said CEI ‘failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.’”"

very reasonable

credibility +1

5/16/2013 11:14:19 AM

very nice of the writer of that article to tell you why you should think it's important

5/16/2013 11:47:39 AM

why don't they just make the information freely available instead?

5/16/2013 12:11:11 PM

The AP surveillance and Tea Party harassment will be far more damaging to the administration than Benghazi.

5/16/2013 12:18:14 PM

^ Neither should be. Benghazi is a major cover-up that involved Obama, Clinton, Rice, etc all blatantly lying about the reason for the attacks. Nixon was impeached for less. No one died in Watergate.

Between the AP and IRS stories as well as the Fast and Furious debacle, it is clear that Obama's administration is either:

A. Intentionally shitting on the constitution

B. Has lost control of the people that work for them

Either way, Obama and his people need to be held accountable.

5/16/2013 12:27:34 PM

TALKING POINTS GALORE

5/16/2013 12:31:14 PM

Quote :

"B. Has lost control of the people that work for them "

so when's the impeachment start for Bush?

[Edited on May 16, 2013 at 12:39 PM. Reason : .]

5/16/2013 12:35:31 PM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/obama-anwar-al-awlaki-son_n_3141688.html

Obama reportedly "upset" after execution of 16-year-old American citizen for publishing pamphlets.

However, John Brennan, at the time President Obama’s senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, "suspected that the kid had been killed intentionally and ordered a review. I don’t know what happened with the review."

5/16/2013 12:40:31 PM

Quote :

"Neither should be. Benghazi is a major cover-up that involved Obama, Clinton, Rice, etc all blatantly lying about the reason for the attacks. Nixon was impeached for less. No one died in Watergate."

I really want you to break this all down, just to see what it's like to live in the bubble

I'm also excited for the day that everything ever won't be compared to Watergate, but I'm pretty sure that day will never come. you do understand why Watergate was such a HUGE deal, right?

5/16/2013 12:44:48 PM

Benghazi isn't a big deal. Administrations send people off to certain death in hornet's nests all the time, this is business as usual.

The AP thing is very bad and damaging for the administration, and we should all be troubled by it.

5/16/2013 1:00:12 PM

explain why people should be mad about the "AP thing" when its been happening to everyone for awhile now with little outrage.

5/16/2013 1:01:21 PM

Ideally we would have a better process of review before allowing wire taps, you know, like that media shield bill from way back in 2010 that was filibustered in the senate by republicans. At the time they wanted to hang Bradley Manning if I remember correctly.

5/16/2013 2:22:24 PM

Or even more simply, DoJ has procedures already in place so that when they are looking for this type of data, they approach the AP first and negotiate with them. That, and when a request like this is made, it goes straight to the Attorney General for his approval. Yet for some reason, the DoJ decided to make a huge exception in this case, and the Attorney General recused himself from the issue but can't remember when, has no paperwork to prove it and honestly doesn't know anything about what's going on under his own watch.

5/16/2013 5:14:32 PM

Scandals already falling apart
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/05/16/scandals_already_falling_apart.html

5/16/2013 5:27:46 PM

The best leaders are blind.

5/16/2013 6:21:27 PM

Came expecting excuses and half-baked justifications for the actions of administration officials. And.....yep.

Quote :

"Scandals already falling apart http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/05/16/scandals_already_falling_apart.html"

That's not how leadership works. You don't get to have lax oversight, and when someone in your administration fucks up, on your watch, say, "Eh, it didn't cross my desk."

If Exxon or Wal-Mart did this kind of shit, you'd be up in arms about it. But, it's the government, and you don't know why people should care. Not surprising.

[Edited on May 16, 2013 at 7:53 PM. Reason : ]

5/16/2013 7:51:01 PM

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/16/ice-admits-hundreds-illegal-immigrants-with-criminal-records-released/

5/16/2013 9:29:05 PM

After 9/11/01, Bush was excoriated for remaining in that classroom after learning what happened, deciding to remain calm in front of those children.

After 9/11/12, Obama supporters are hoping that he had nothing to do with it. Instead he ran off to Vegas the next day to campaign.

Bush immediate inaction BAAAAAAD
Obama immediate inaction GOOOOOOD

5/16/2013 9:41:29 PM

^ ,^^

Grasping at straws.

5/16/2013 9:45:20 PM

I could tell you that I held video of him murdering one of his staffers who threatened to leak and you'd tell me that I was grasping at straws.

Open you're eyes. I'm not saying that he's directly involved in any of these stories, but he's steering the ship, so he needs to right it. But hey, he's your god, he can do no wrong.

5/16/2013 10:05:59 PM

except that you just made those things up, so why should anyone respond to them seriously?

5/16/2013 10:08:54 PM

pretty sure dude is equating 9/11 with a consulate attack

pretty sure dude is waaaaaaay out there

5/16/2013 10:31:20 PM

^^^

Lol

Where have I deified him? He's your devil; he can do no right.

Seems particularly apt nowadays: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/04/24/william-wordsworth-on-poetry/?utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer47c72

Quote :

"The human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses this capability. It has therefore appeared to me, that to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves."

5/16/2013 10:34:22 PM

Quote :

"After 9/11/01, Bush was excoriated for remaining in that classroom after learning what happened, deciding to remain calm in front of those children. After 9/11/12, Obama supporters are hoping that he had nothing to do with it. Instead he ran off to Vegas the next day to campaign."

also, one of these things actually happened

the other is a sick conservative fantasy

5/16/2013 11:29:45 PM

Conservatives give him way too much credit.

It should be painfully obvious after these past two weeks that Obama and his closest subordinates dont really know anything.

5/16/2013 11:42:03 PM