*Fluffy the Cat*

This Is No Ordinary Scandal

Political abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government.


By PEGGY NOONAN
Updated May 17, 2013, 6:43 p.m. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...479247792.html


We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The
reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from
sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one
likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press
and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the
administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don't
look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president
enjoyed is gone.

Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.

As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers when he's
pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and
fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice
Department? You do not.

The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's
shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the
papers, just like you.

But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration.
Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.

A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant,
arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries,
that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the
third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted
abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The
second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.

In order to suppress conservative groups—at first those with words like "Tea
Party" and "Patriot" in their names, then including those that opposed
ObamaCare or advanced the Second Amendment—the IRS demanded donor rolls,
membership lists, data on all contributions, names of volunteers, the contents of
all speeches made by members, Facebook posts, minutes of all meetings, and
copies of all materials handed out at gatherings. Among its questions: What are
you thinking about? Did you ever think of running for office? Do you ever contact
political figures? What are you reading? One group sent what it was reading: the
U.S. Constitution.

The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have
opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho
businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million
dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first
time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also
soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's
attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return
and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare."

Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A
conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions
about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out,
but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they're
afraid of saying they were audited.

All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election.
They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and
shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to
overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit
by audit.

It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again,
only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely
possible that only one IRS office was involved.

Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who
finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of
what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of
"frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including
Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a
few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get
the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew
what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to
target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May
2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level
IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting.

The White House is reported to be shellshocked at public reaction to the scandal.
But why? Were they so highhanded, so essentially ignorant, that they didn't
understand what it would mean to the American people when their IRS—the
revenue-collecting arm of the U.S. government—is revealed as a low, ugly and
bullying tool of the reigning powers? If they didn't know how Americans would
react to that, what did they know? I mean beyond Harvey Weinstein's cellphone
number.

And why—in the matters of the Associated Press and Benghazi too—does no one
in this administration ever take responsibility? Attorney General Eric Holder
doesn't know what happened, exactly who did what. The president speaks in the
passive voice. He attempts to act out indignation, but he always seems indignant
at only one thing: that he's being questioned at all. That he has to address this.
That fate put it on his plate.

We all have our biases. Mine is for a federal government that, for all the partisan
shootouts on the streets of Washington, is allowed to go about its work. That it
not be distracted by scandal, that political disagreement be, in the end, subsumed
to the common good. It is a dangerous world: Calculating people wish to do us
harm. In this world no draining, unproductive scandals should dominate the
government's life. Independent counsels should not often come in and distract
the U.S. government from its essential business.

But that bias does not fit these circumstances.

What happened at the IRS is the government's essential business. The IRS case
deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that
position's powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be
cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if
they don't, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped
now, it will never stop. And if it isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have
even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.


And it would be shameful and shallow for any Republican operative or operator to
make this scandal into a commercial and turn it into a mere partisan arguing
point and part of the game. It's not part of the game. This is not about the usual
partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our
ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.

Karzai's pissed!


Afghan officials say car bomb kills 9 inside elite housing complex near Kandahar; more than 70 wounded - @AP

• 22 mins agofrom bigstory.ap.org by editor

Bomb kills 9 inside elite Afghan housing complex

May. 17 1:32 PM EDT



KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A car bomb exploded inside an elite gated community linked to the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday evening, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 70 near the southern city of Kandahar, an official said.

The blast happened inside Aino Mina, a housing complex on the northern outskirts of the city that was developed in part by Mahmood Karzai, the president's younger brother.

Kandahar government spokesman Javeed Faisal said the car bomb exploded next to a restaurant area where families were dining.

Three police were among the dead, he said, adding that an investigation is underway into how the explosives-laden vehicle slipped past the community's heavy security.

Aino Mina is home to thousands of Afghan government officials, businessmen and other wealthy citizens who pay some $90,000 for a three-bedroom house on grounds featuring parks, a jogging track and a football field.

Residents have special identification badges and cars are typically searched before entering the gates.

Mahmood Karzai was one of the main investors into the project, promoted as a triumph of modernity in Kandahar, which is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban insurgency.

Dr. Samad Ahmadi said at least nine bodies had been brought to Mirwais Hospital and many of the dozens of wounded were in critical condition.

http://bigstory.ap.o...housing-complex

I had no idea the Mayor of Toronto had such influence!!




New York EQ 4.4 followed by 3.6


Recent Earthquakes in Central US

== PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==
U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center
Version #7: This report supersedes any earlier reports of this event.
This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

A light earthquake occurred at 8:43:22 AM (CDT) on Friday, May 17, 2013 .
The magnitude 4.4 event occurred 149 km (93 miles) NNW of Heuvelton, NY .
The hypocentral depth is 10 km ( 6 miles).

Magnitude 4.4 - moment magnitude (Mw)
Time Friday, May 17, 2013 at 8:43:22 AM (CDT)
Friday, May 17, 2013 at 13:43:22 (UTC)

Distance from Heuvelton, NY - 149 km (93 miles) NNW (329 degrees)
Irondequoit, NY - 299 km (186 miles) NNE (18 degrees)
Coordinates 45 deg. 46.0 min. N (45.767N), 76 deg. 23.8 min. W ( 76.397W)
Depth 9.8 km (6.1 miles)
Quality Poor

Location Quality Parameters Nst=180, Nph=182, Dmin=77.9 km, Rmss=0.89 sec, Erho=10.3 km, Erzz=3.9 km, Gp=14.4 degrees
Event ID# usb000gxna

http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/rec...sb000gxna.html


http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/rec...s/quakes0.html

UK soccer club Stoke City launch investigation after pig's head is left in player's locker as a prank - @Telegraph

• 6 mins agofrom www.telegraph.co.uk by editor

Stoke City launch investigation after pig's head is left in Kenwyne Jones's locker leaving striker fuming

Stoke City have launched an internal investigation after a pig's head was left in Kenwyne Jones's locker as a training ground prank.

By John Percy
4:55PM BST 17 May 2013


Jones is understood to have been furious after discovering the bloody carcass in his locker on Friday morning and threw a brick through the windscreen of Glenn Whelan's car as revenge



Picture of pig's head at link:

http://www.telegraph...ker-fuming.html