IRS Acting Chief Resigns--Is Issue Resolved?

This what you call "puttin lipstick on a pig."  In other words, it looks good but it still digs in the mud and stinks to high heaven! If Obama thinks that this will end the investigation, he is seriously deluded.  Those harmed by this outrageous abuse of power will not rest until they get their pound of flesh. And they should not!

Not since the days of Richard Nixon has there been such an abuse of American citizens. There will be many more revelations in the days to come and most will reflect very poorly on the White House and its current occupant.  Will it cause a resignation? Doubtful.  As Rush Limbaugh said yesterday on his program, (we paraphrase) "in today's world of political correctness, no sitting black Attorney General will ever be asked to resign nor will any black President be impeached."  It might not be the exact words, but it is the general tone of his comments.  We agree.  

We are resigned to the fact that we have to put up with Obama and his gang of thieves and criminals for another three and a half years. Hopefully at that time they will leave!  If not, then we really have a problem.

Conservative Tom

Acting Chief of I.R.S. Forced Out Over Tea Party Targeting

Drew Angerer for The New York Times

President Obama arrived in the East Room of the White House to announce that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service had resigned at his request.

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

Published: May 15, 2013

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WASHINGTON — President Obama announced Wednesday night that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service had been fired, and he pledged that his administration would cooperate with Congressional investigations into the targeting of conservative groups.

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Attorney General on the I.R.S.

• DOCUMENT: Inspector General’s Report on I.R.S. Audits

Related

• At Hearing, Holder Calls Issa’s Accusations ‘Shameful’ (May 15, 2013)

• Management Flaws at I.R.S. Cited in Tea Party Scrutiny(May 15, 2013)

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Speaking in the White House’s formal East Room, the president said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew had asked for and accepted the resignation of Steven Miller, who was aware of the agency’s efforts to single out conservative groups for special scrutiny as a deputy I.R.S. commissioner.

Mr. Miller is scheduled to testify on Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee in the first of a series of hearings on the I.R.S. targeting scandal.

“Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” the president said. “It should not matter what political stripe you’re from. The fact of the matter is the I.R.S. has to operate with absolute integrity.”

He vowed that the Treasury Department would ensure new safeguards were in place to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future, and he promised to work “hand in hand with Congress as it performs its oversight role.”

“We’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable,” Mr. Obama said.

Earlier Wednesday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. warned top officials at the Internal Revenue Service that criminal laws on false statements could come into play in a Justice Department investigation on the agency’s targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Appearing at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Holder said the investigation would examine whether groups of individuals had their civil rights criminally violated and whether statutes governing I.R.S. conduct were violated.

After repeated accusations from senior lawmakers that top I.R.S. officials had lied to them, Mr. Holder also issued a warning: “False-statement violations might have been made, given at least what I know at this point.”

Three Congressional committees already have hearings planned to investigate the agency’s activities, and an early focus appears to be on whether I.R.S. officials lied to members of Congress.

Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has a hearing scheduled for next Wednesday, and Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, sent a nine-page letter accusing Lois Lerner, the head of the I.R.S.'s division on tax-exempt organizations, of providing false or misleading information to the committee four times in 2012 as the scope of the targeting effort became clear ahead of the presidential election.

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which also has opened an investigation, said he was “purposely misled” by the acting I.R.S. commissioner, Steven Miller, when he and other Republican senators were told that no targeting of conservative groups had taken place.

Ahead of a public hearing on Friday with Mr. Miller, the bipartisan leadership of the House Ways and Means Committee requested all I.R.S. documents on the targeting of conservative organizations. Mr. Miller met privately with Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, as four Republican senators, including the top two leaders, demanded his resignation.

Mr. Holder made it clear that the criminal investigation he said he ordered on Friday was only the beginning. But he said it would be based in Washington to give it the broadest possible scope and would not be concentrating solely on the service’s field office in Cincinnati, where the political targeting was largely based.

“The facts will take us wherever they take us,” he said, adding: “This will not be about parties. This will not be about ideological persuasions. Anyone who has broken the law will be held accountable.”

The other area of particluar interest to House and Senate investigators is whether top officials in the I.R.S. shared information about the targeting efforts with the Obama administration.