Palin Nails Obama's New Advisors

We respect Sarah Palin so much for her ability to get down to the brass tacks in language that everyone can understand. We say "keep at it Sarah!"

Conservative Tom

Sarah Palin: 'America ... So Screwed' with Rice, Power Picks

Thursday, 06 Jun 2013 02:53 PM

By Bill Hoffmann

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Sarah Palin on Thursday issued a blistering attack on President Barack Obama's appointments of Susan Rice and Samantha Power as top national-security and foreign-policy advisers, lamenting, "America, we are so screwed."

"We're in for a helluva ride, America. Obama just named Susan Rice as his National Security Adviser and nominated Samantha Power to replace Rice as our U.N. ambassador," the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee said in jaw-dropping Facebook post.


"Samantha Power is married to Cass Sunstein, the very, very strange Obama pick for an early 'czar' position who wowed us with his numerous bizarre claims including the wacko belief that animals should have the right to sue in court, that hunting should be banned as genocide, and that pet ownership is akin to 'slavery.'"

Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is an outspoken advocate of animal rights and once said that granting animals legal rights could decrease animal cruelty.

Palin then says of Power — an Irish-born, former journalist and Pulitzer Prize winer — that her "judgment in choosing her life partner is the least of America's worries."

Palin then cited a report in The Daily Caller claiming that in 2002 Power proposed forcing a peace deal on the Israelis and Palestinians, "even if it alienated wealthy, pro-Israel American Jews."

"I actually think in the Palestine-Israeli situation there is an abundance of information, and what we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there," Power said at the time, according to the Caller.

"What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in sort of helping the situation. And putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import."

The article states that Power laughed as she made the last remark, "clearly referring to American Jews and suggesting they were a great obstacle towards peace between the Israelis and Palestinians."

Palin continues in her Facebook rant: "Isn't that lovely. Not only is she condescending toward American Jews, but her analysis also happens to be utterly wrong.

"The failure to achieve peace in the Middle East is not because wealthy American Jews have somehow manipulated America's leaders into thwarting peace, but rather because Palestinian leaders have consistently rejected generous Israeli peace offers for a state of their own.

"In fact, the wealthy American Jews that Power haughtily dismisses in the interview as obstacles to peace are very often staunch advocates of a two-state solution."

Palin also says Power "once compared U.S. actions abroad to those of Nazi Germany. As the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein wryly noted on Twitter, 'Samantha Power is the UN Ambassador, who is supposed to represent US interests at the UN?'"

Palin goes on to cite articles from TheBlaze.com, Breitbart.com, and Townhall.com that should "help wake up Obama supporters who naively and blindly (despite failure after failure and scandal after scandal) continue to give him the benefit of the doubt."

She promised her followers that more "information about Obama's new picks will be revealed in coming days" and admonished the nation to "pay attention to who they are; what they stand for; and what their records, associations, and statements reveal about them and their intentions."


Palin called Rice and Power Obama's "chosen ones," adding that they represent "evidence of his skewed thinking as he 'fundamentally transforms' our great nation."

Finally, Palin concludes: "Nah, America... I shouldn't have prefaced this post with a warning to hang on because 'we're in for a helluva' ride.' Sorry. That was crass and inaccurate. I should have just said about Obama's judgment and unchecked power, 'America, we are so screwed.'"
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Holder To Hold Onto His Job--Is It Racial?

Holder will not resign, his boss does not have the guts to sack a fellow African american! Who has Obama fired, only white males? We cannot remember anyone other than Caucasians who have been asked to resign and most were military personnel. The latest firing was of the IRS official who already was planning to retire. Can you think of any?

Does the President have a blind spot to anyone except Caucasians? We would like to know what you think.

Conservative Tom

Holder Says He Won't Step Down, Has 'Great Respect' for Journalists

Wednesday, 05 Jun 2013 07:19 PM

By Paul Scicchitano

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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told NBC News on Wednesday that he has no plans to resign for the time being and insisted that he has "great respect" for the news media despite signing off on requests by his Justice Department to examine the phone and email records of journalists.

"There's some things that I want to do, some things that I want to get done that I’ve discussed with the president, and once I have finished that I'll sit down with him and we’ll determine when it’s time to make a transition to a new attorney general," Holder told NBC's Pete Williams in an exclusive interview.

"But to be clear, you’re not stepping down now?" Williams pressed.

"No, I have no intention of doing so now," Holder replied.



A number of prominent Republican lawmakers have called for Holder’s resignation in recent weeks and some White House advisers have expressed frustration over Holder's apparent inability to have foreseen problems arising from his approval of a subpoena naming Fox News’ James Rosen as a possible co-conspirator in an espionage investigation.

Holder has become a lightning rod for criticism over the Justice Department's decision to subpoena the phone records of 100 Associated Press reporters and editors in another polarizing leak investigation.

The top lawman in the U.S. said the aggressive crackdown on leaks was not the result of a policy decision, but rather demands from the intelligence community and Congress.

"I'm a little concerned that things have gotten a little out of whack," he said. "I think we can do a better job than we have. We can reform those regulations, reform those guidelines to better reflect that balance."

The Justice Department obtained Rosen's phone and email records to investigate the leak of sensitive intelligence about North Korea, describing the journalist as an aider, abettor, or co-conspirator at the very least — a phrase that Holder maintains was needed to obtain the search warrant.

"I don't like that because it means that me as a government official, who has great respect for the press, is in essence saying that a reporter who is doing his or her job — and doing that very important job — is somehow branded a criminal, and I’m just not comfortable with that. We’re going to change that."


Williams said another possible change would be to give the news media a chance to fight a request for records in court before they are turned over.

"We'll come up with ways in which notification can be given to the media, and possibly involve on a more consistent basis, judges as third-party arbiters," Holder said.




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US Puppets Never Last Long

If the US (CIA) has been funding and supplying arms to the "rebels" in Syria through Turkey, we should expect that the Prime Minister and his government should fail soon. When that happens, we suspect that the Turkish leader will face criminal charges or worse.

All you have to do is look back at other leaders who were our puppets and see their demise. Remember Noreyga of Panama and Saddam Hussein of Iraq for two. The former Panamanian dictator is in jail and Saddam is visiting with his 72 virgins.  Why would any one want to be our friend?

Conservative Tom

Turkey’s Arab Spring

June 6, 2013 by Bob Livingston 

There is a revolution growing in the Middle East you are not hearing about. The mainstream media are all but ignoring it, and there’s good reason. It’s not part of the plan. In fact, it threatens to upend the plans of the globalist elites running U.S. foreign policy in the region.

The Turkey uprising has been going on for a week. Unlike high-profile “Arab Spring” events in Egypt, Libya and Syria, this one is truly organic. It wasn’t instigated by the CIA and affiliated nongovernmental organizations. And it’s threatening the rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the U.S. puppet who has ruled the country since 2002.

Erdogan and President Barack Obama shake hands in the White House Rose Garden in May. Credit: UPI

The uprising began over the government’s decision to destroy a park in Istanbul and turn it into a shopping center. It grew after police cracked down on the protesters with tear gas and water cannons. It has grown beyond the park issue into a rejection of Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian rule, his crack down on press freedoms (hundreds of journalists have been imprisoned in recent years), Internet censorship and his pursuit of an Islamist agenda. In a television interview this week, Erdoğan described social media, including Twitter, as a “scourge”. But social media have taken on a particular importance as newspapers and television have come increasingly under the sway of government.

So far, two have died and more than 3,000 have been injured and dozens have been arrested in seven days of protests. Some in the Turkish government — like Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arnic — are apologizing for the heavy-handed tactics police have used against Turkish citizens. But Erdoğan appears to be getting desperate and has begun calling protesters looters, vandals and terrorists.

The CIA has been using Turkey to funnel arms to the so-called rebels (really al-Qaida terrorists) trying overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. If Turkey comes apart the region could explode. And as Turkey is a member of NATO, the U.S. will be drawn into another shooting war in a place we don’t belong.

The protest may fizzle out. But it may also grow. And world wars have begun over less significant incidents.

What Is The Real Obama Columbia Story

Barack Obama: The Ghost Of Columbia University

June 6, 2013 by Wayne Allyn Root 

Hello, this is Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. I just returned from New York, where I attended my 30th Columbia University reunion. I celebrated with my esteemed classmates. Everyone except Barack Obama. As usual, he wasn’t there. Not even a video greeting. Not a personalized letter to his classmates. Nothing. But worse, no one I met at our 30th reunion ever met him. The President of the United States is the ghost of Columbia University.

I’m certainly no “Johnny come lately.” For five years now (since 2007 when it became clear Barack Obama was running for President), I’ve been quoted in the media as saying that no one I’ve ever met at Columbia can remember ever meeting, or even seeing, our college classmate Barack Obama. Don’t you think the media should be asking questions? Isn’t this a very strange story?

I am a graduate of Columbia University, Class of 1983. That’s the same class Barack Obama claims to have graduated from. We shared the same exact major; political science. We were both pre-law. It was a small class; about 700 students. The Political Science department was even smaller and closer-knit (maybe 150 students). I thought I knew, or met at least once, (or certainly saw in classes) every fellow poly sci classmate in my four years at Columbia.

But not Obama. No one ever met him. Even worse, no one even remembers seeing that unique memorable face. Think about this for a minute. Our classmate is President of the United States. Shouldn’t someone remember him? Or at least claim to remember him?

One of the speakers at the 30th reunion should have reminisced about “my days with the future President.” But no one did. You’d think Obama might have sent a video to tell us all how much he enjoyed his time at Columbia. You’d think he’d have sent at least a letter to be read aloud from one of his former college buddies. Right? But he didn’t. Because Obama has no former college buddies. No one that ever met Obama, let alone befriended him, was in attendance at our 30th class reunion.

Now you might argue this is all strange, but it’s possible. After all, Columbia says he graduated. And I take my college’s word for it. Would one of the world’s greatest Ivy League institutions participate in a cover-up, thereby risking their billion dollar reputation? And there is one single article written for the Columbia newspaper with Obama’s name on it. A single photo also exists of Obama in his Manhattan apartment with the man he claims was his college roommate — a Pakistani foreign student. USA Today described Obama’s roommate as a pot smoker, cocaine user and foreign student. Isn’t that lovely? And one single radical leftist Columbia professor who hates Israel also claims he remembers Obama. Quite a crew in the Obama camp, huh? Hard to even believe.

That’s the sum total of Obama’s existence at Columbia University, Class of ’83.

So I asked every classmate I met at our 30th reunion, many of them political science majors, if they ever met, or saw, or heard of Obama. The answer was a resounding “NO” from every one of them. I asked if they found this strange, or worried how this was possible? They all answered “yes.” I asked if they thought it was possible to be a political science major and never meet a fellow major in our small classes? They all gave me a very strange look and answered “no.” So I asked, “How could this be possible? Can you explain this?” No one had an answer.

Keep in mind these people I spoke to are all — to a man and woman — dedicated liberal Democrats who voted for Obama. I’m guessing 90 percent are major Democrat contributors. My Columbia classmates are the cream of the crop of American society. Lawyers, doctors, billionaire hedge fund members, stars of the media. They adore Obama. But they all admit they never met him in their four years at Columbia. I am proud of my classmates for their honesty and integrity.

One classmate told me he was present when one of the most honored professors in Columbia University history gave a speech to alumni a couple of years ago. The speech was followed by Q&A. This beloved professor was asked about Obama at Columbia. He said, “I have my doubts about the story.” The crowd was stunned. He immediately went onto the next question and never elaborated. So obviously I’m not the only one with doubts.

So here’s my take on this great mystery. I’ve never said Obama was not registered at Columbia. I’m sure he was. I’ve never said he didn’t graduate. If Columbia says he did, then I’m sure he did. But I’ve always said there is something wrong with the story. It’s rancid. It’s unbelievable. It’s impossible. It’s the story of a Manchurian candidate.

The question isn’t was he ever registered, or did he graduate? And it’s interesting that one photo, one professor, and one newspaper article exists — just enough to provide a thin cover. The kind of thin cover you might find created by the CIA or KGB. Really strange.

But the serious question the media should be asking is…What did Obama do for two full years in-between registration and graduation? Did he ever attend a class? Did he ever have a single friend other than a Pakistani national? Why is the only professor to ever come forward and claim he remembers him a radical leftist who hates Israel? What exactly was he doing when no one met him, saw him or heard of him? Why are his college records sealed? What has he got to hide? But my educated guess is he can’t, or won’t ever release those records. Because what we’d find would be shocking.

Now I know somewhere in America is an Obama defender that will accuse me of lying. But are all those classmates at our 30th reunion lying too? And if I wanted to lie, wouldn’t I better off saying I knew the future President well? If I wanted to malign the President, shouldn’t I be saying he was my close buddy and I witnessed all kinds of terrible things? If someone wanted to smear the President, wouldn’t they say they saw him snorting cocaine at a Columbia party? Anyone could make that claim. But I can’t say that. Because I never witnessed anything. Neither did any of my classmates. We didn’t know him. Never met him. Never saw him. He wasn’t at any Columbia parties. My story is simply the truth, and it’s the same consistent story I’ve told since 2007.

There is something wrong with Obama’s story, that much I know. He is either the ghost of Columbia, or the perfect Manchurian candidate. But something smells rotten at Columbia. I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. See you next week same time, same place. God Bless America.

AP: Obama's Open And Transparent Administration Withholds Emails of Top Bosses

Emails of Top Obama Appointees Remain a Mystery

Tuesday, 04 Jun 2013 06:14 AM

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Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.
The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged — but often happens anyway — due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.
"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."
Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.
The AP couldn't independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.
Google can't find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.
Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.
A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency's FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer.
The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees — except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius' email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.
The AP decided to publish the secret address for Sebelius — KGS2(at)hhs.gov — over the government's objections because the secretary is a high-ranking civil servant who oversees not only major agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but also the implementation of Obama's signature health care law. Her public email address is Kathleen.Sebelius(at)hhs.gov.
At least two other senior HHS officials — including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing health insurance reform — also have secret government email addresses, according to the records obtained by the AP.
The Interior Department gave the AP a list of about 100 government email addresses for political appointees who work there but none for the interior secretary at the time, Ken Salazar, who has since resigned. Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said Salazar maintained only one email address while serving as secretary but she would not disclose it. She said the AP should ask for it under the Freedom of Information Act, which would take months longer.
The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month's work. But under the department's own FOIA rules — which it cited in its letter to the AP — it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.
Fillichio later acknowledged that the $1.03 million bill was a mistake and provided the AP with email addresses for the agency's Senate-confirmed appointees, including three addresses for Harris, the acting secretary. His secret address was harris.sd(at)dol.gov. His other accounts were one for use with labor employees and the public, and another to send mass emails to the entire Labor Department, outside groups and the public. The Labor Department said it did not object to the AP publishing any of Harris' email addresses.
In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn't provide such emails without undergoing "an extensive and elongated department-wide search." He also said there were "no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS."
Late last year, the EPA's critics — including Republicans in Congress — accused former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of using an email account under the name "Richard Windsor" to sidestep disclosure rules. The EPA said emails Jackson sent using her Windsor alias were turned over under open records requests. The agency's inspector general is investigating the use of such accounts, after being asked to do so by Congress.
An EPA spokeswoman described Jackson's alternate email address as "an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials." It was later determined that Jackson also used the email address to correspond sometimes with environmentalists outside government and at least in some cases did not correct a misperception among outsiders they were corresponding with a government employee named Richard Windsor.
Although the EPA's inspector general is investigating the agency's use of secret email accounts, it is not reviewing whether emails from Jackson's secret account were released as required under the Freedom of Information Act.

The EPA's secret email accounts were revealed last fall by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that was tipped off about Jackson's alias by an insider and later noticed it in documents it obtained the FOIA. The EPA said its policy was to disclose in such documents that "Richard Windsor" was actually the EPA administrator.
Courts have consistently set a high bar for the government to withhold public officials' records under the federal privacy rules. A federal judge, Marilyn Hall Patel of California, said in August 2010 that "persons who have placed themselves in the public light" — such as through politics or voluntarily participation in the public arena — have a "significantly diminished privacy interest than others." Her ruling was part of a case in which a journalist sought FBI records, but was denied.
"We're talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private," said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He said that's different than, for example, confidential information, such as a Social Security number.
Under the law, citizens and foreigners may use the FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.
Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation's signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be "administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails."

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IRS Scandal Gets Wider And Deeper

IRS Victims Testify as New Agency Scandals Emerge

Tuesday, 04 Jun 2013 01:26 PM

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The IRS has a culture of targeting some organizations that went beyond the extra scrutiny given to Tea Party groups, Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said as he opened a panel hearing on the IRS Tuesday.Suggesting a pattern, Camp listed gift-tax audits of donors to a group that supported the war in Iraq, the release of confidential information from other groups, and extensive questions to Republican-leaning organizations.
"Americans were affected by the culture of political intimidation and discrimination that was cultivated by this targeting," said Camp, a Michigan Republican. "For simply exercising their First Amendment rights -- the freedoms of association, expression and religion, the IRS singled them out."

The hearing signaled the two parties' different views of investigations into the tax agency over the past month. Republicans say the IRS demonstrated bias against small-government groups while Democrats say the controversy resulted from a series of errors and flawed laws and rules.
Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat, said Republicans are looking to create a conspiracy that doesn’t exist.
Speaking to representatives of the tea party groups at the witness table, he said: "None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We're talking about whether or not the American taxpayers will subsidize your work. We're talking about a tax break."
Among the witnesses testifying at today's hearing was John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. The group's political opponents received its confidential information, including a donor list, that contained markings suggesting it had come from the IRS. That can't be inadvertent and it has chilled donors, he said.
"You can imagine our shock and disgust over this," he said. He said he has been "stonewalled" in attempts to get information about the document release from the IRS or its inspector general. Eastman's group opposes same-sex marriage.
The IRS said the inspector general's investigation found that the release of information was inadvertent.
The inspector general released a report today that said the IRS spent $4 million on a 2010 conference for employees in Anaheim, Calif., including $17,000 for a speaker who painted pictures of Michael Jordan and U2 singer Bono to motivate employees.
The tax agency spent about $49 million on 225 conferences from fiscal 2010 to 2012, it said. Two top IRS officials stayed in presidential suites that typically cost between $1,499 and $3,500 a night in Anaheim, the most expensive of the conferences, the report said.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform plans a June 6 hearing on the IRS spending.
Also testifying to the Ways and Means Committee today was Sue Martinek, president of the Coalition for Life of Iowa, which she said was asked not to protest at Planned Parenthood as a condition of receiving tax-exempt status.
The hearing is the Ways and Means panel's second since the IRS revealed May 10 that it had selected some groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names for tougher scrutiny of their applications for tax-exempt status.
Rep. Sander Levin, the top Ways and Means Democrat, said he thought the IRS request made to Martinek's anti-abortion group was "worse than inappropriate."
"I do think it's our obligation to get the facts and not deal in conjecture," said Levin, D-Mich.

Six congressional committees and the Justice Department are investigating the IRS.
Dianne Belson, president of the Laurens County Tea Party in South Carolina, said she is still waiting to hear from the IRS on her group's application for tax-exempt status after answering repeated and extensive questionnaires from the agency.
"Nearly three years of waiting for an answer is totally unacceptable," she said. "The IRS needs to be fully investigated and held accountable for its incompetence, harassment, and targeting of conservative groups."
Becky Gerritson, president of the Wetumpka Tea Party in Alabama, which has been approved for tax-exempt status, said she didn't want to disclose lists of volunteers to the IRS.
"The questions were chilling," she said. "I was shocked that I was being asked those questions.


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Some Friend The US Government Is

UH OH: THE U.S. REPORTEDLY MADE A BIG MISTAKE REGARDING A SECRET ISRAELI MILITARY BASE

Jun. 4, 2013 7:40am Sharona Schwartz

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Arrow 3 missile fired during test launch earlier this year (Photo: U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Flickr via Times of Israel)

Israeli military officials are reported to be shocked and angry after learning that the U.S. government revealed details about a top-secret Israeli military base in documents it published seeking bids from contractors to work on the project.

On Monday, the Israeli outlet Haaretz mentioned at the bottom of a story about the development of the Arrow 3 missile defense system that Jane’s Defense Weekly had run a story showing how the U.S. had revealed plans for the construction of a secret Israeli missile base.

Later on Monday, McClatchy provided Israeli reaction to the revelation, reporting:

Israel’s military fumed Monday over the discovery that the U.S. government had revealed details of a top-secret Israeli military installation in published bid requests.

The Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state-of-the-art facility to house a new ballistic-missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls.

An Israeli military official who asked not to be named told McClatchy, “If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility.”

“This is more than worrying, it is shocking,” he added.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller would not comment to McClatchy about the specific base, but did say that publishing details about construction specifications so that businesses can properly estimate their expenses was routine procedure.

Haaretz described just how many sensitive details were revealed, including the type of structures, how it is to handle high pressure levels and protect electrical components:

Jane’s Defence Weekly magazine recently published a story showing how official U.S. publications reveal plans to construct a secret Israel missile base designated for the Arrow III. According to the story, this is part of an Israel Air Force plan to expand an existing facility in Tel Shahar, between Jerusalem and Ashdod, whose location has never been officially revealed.

The estimated cost of this expansion is $25 million. The report detailed the construction plans: Four underground missile launchers, each carrying six interceptors (Reshef model). The report said this information means that Israel can potentially launch 24 Arrow III interceptors against a barrage of ballistic missiles.

The Times of Israel describes the publication of the classified information as a “faux pas” while the Times of London says it was done “inadvertently.”

The Times of Israel reports that Israel relies on the knowhow and experience of seasoned American contractors, despite the risk of security leaks.

Haaretz on Monday quoted a senior IDF officer who said that Israel is trying to speed up development of the Arrow 3 missile interception system due to ongoing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.

Col. Aviram Hasson, who heads the branch of the Defense Ministry responsible for developing anti-missile systems said, “We want to reach a situation in which Israel has a ready defense for any threat, present or future.”

The report of this latest security leak comes on the heels of a report by Israel Radio two weeks ago that Obama administration officials apologized to their Israelis counterparts for confirming that Israeli military aircraft were responsible for airstrikes on the Damascus airport in early May.

Israel Radio’s diplomatic correspondent Chico Menashe reported that lower ranking officials at the Pentagon were behind the leak, which is now being reviewed.

Israeli media suggested then that Syrian President Bashar Assad was forced to make threats on Israel once it was reported that Israel was behind the strike rather than rebel fighters.