Of course, she has the right to express her opinion. And there’s no evidence that Anderson improperly influenced her husband, Shulman, who was a George W. Bush appointee.
But suffice to say, as more and more information flows, we at Twitchy Team greet every new twist and turn in the IRS scandalabra with our #shockedfaces on.
Update:
We changed the headline of this article. The original version’s headline was “Tweets by former IRS chief’s wife reveal liberal political views.” We decided that this underplayed the radicalism of Anderson’s views….
Robert Costa appeared on the Kudlow Report last night to discuss National Review’s latest scoop on Lois Lerner, “Why She Took the Fifth” by Eliana Johnson.
“Even inside the IRS in Cincinnati, there are people who work there who tell National Review that the questions were very much invasive, that they were really intrusive on these conservative groups — they went over the top,” Costa said. “And now for Lois Lerner just to shrug it off is making a lot of people in Washington raise their eyebrows.”
In one tweet she mentioned being at a teach-in by Larry Lessig:
I found this interesting. When I did a BING search on the commissar’s wife, BING showed me some “related” links… BING was on the money!
Asking about wives is only important if you are Republican. Notice the “Obama Star” in the masthead. Click graphic to see original site. I like topic number four, “Transparency,” exactly!
On Friday, reports broke that Former IRS chief Doug Shulman’s wife works with a liberal lobbying group, Public Campaign, where she is the senior program advisor. Public Campaign is an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.”
The goal of Public Campaign is to target political groups like the conservative non-profits at issue in the IRS scandal. The Campaign says it “is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system.”
[….]
Public Campaign gets its cash from labor unions like AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and Move On.
Former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, a frequent White House guest during the period when the IRS was targeting conservative nonprofits, is married to the senior program advisor for Public Campaign, an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.”
[….]
Shulman’s wife Susan L. Anderson is the senior program advisor for the Washington-based nonprofit organization Public Campaign, which claims that it “is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system.”
Public Campaign receives “major funding” from the pro-Obamacare alliance Health Care for America NOW!, which is comprised of the labor unions AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and the progressive activist organization Move On, among others.
“Together we are building a network of national and state-based efforts to create a powerful national force for federal and state campaign reform,” according to Public Campaign’s website.
Public Campaign also receives funding from the liberal Ford Foundation, the Common Cause Education Fund, and Barbra Streisand’s The Streisand Foundation, among other foundations and private donors.
It could be a coincidence: a meeting between a very union-friendly president andthe head of the union that includes IRS employees, a union described as very “anti-Tea Party,” and then the very next day the IRS begins targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups, stalling their applications for non-profit status.
According to the White House Visitors Log, provided herein searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.
The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:
“Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30″
In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”
The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:
“April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.”
In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.
And we also have this bit of information about how the IRS union acted negatively towards Republicans (a public service organization shouldn’t be unionized for this exact reason). This is via GATEWAY PUNDIT:
In 2011 over 500 federal employees of the National Treasury Employees Union held a rally with Democrats to bash Republicans and Bush. Medill on the Hill
More than 500 federal employees piled into the Capitol Visitor Center after rally organizers scrapped the original setting. The passionate audience welcomed Democratic lawmakers and NTEU President Colleen Kelley as they listed the grievances of the federal workforce and encouraged the union to spread the message.
In particular, Kelley expressed disappointment over the two-year pay freeze on federal employees imposed by President Barack Obama, which Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., called “wrong.” “You shouldn’t have had those freezes,” he said. “You didn’t cause this deficit…Don’t pick on the federal workforce; that’s wrong.”
A chorus of boos echoed through the packed auditorium when former President George W. Bush and the Republican Party were fingered as the culprits at blame for the ailing economy. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said Republicans favored the wealthy and insisted on using the middle class workers as a “nice piggy bank,” which would “make up for their Bush tax cuts, their unpaid-for wars and their corporate tax breaks.”
Now there is this information making it look more and more likely that the White House knew about the inner workings of this scandal, the following is from the Daily Caller:
Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet (see graph at top).
Shulman’s extensive access to the White House first came to light during his testimony last week before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Shulman gave assorted answers when asked why he had visited the White House 118 times during the period that the IRS was targeting tea party and conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny and delays on their tax-exempt applications.
By contrast, Shulman’s predecessor Mark Everson only visited the White House once during four years of service in the George W. Bush administrationand compared the IRS’s remoteness from the president to “Siberia.” But the scope of Shulman’s White House visits — which strongly suggests coordination by White House officials in the campaign against the president’s political opponents — is even more striking in comparison to the publicly recorded access of Cabinet members.
To those who think IRS snooping was masterminded by rogue agents… please explain why such snooping didn’t occur while George W. Bush was President of the United States. (Via Gay Patriot)
These “rogue” employees were getting info in 2012… the act had been happening since 2010 and the IRS has admitted to knowing about it in 2011. So how can these guys/gals be “off the reservation” in 2012? Breitbart:
FOX 19 is reporting that four Cincinnati workers have been identified for disciplinary and possible criminal action for targeting “right wing” groups applying to the IRS for non-profit status. However, according to sources, IRS workers in Cincinnati, OH “simply did what their bosses ordered.”
Yesterday, Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller described two Cincinnati workers as “rogue” and “off the reservation.” But two sources tell the news outlet that there are four workers “pin-pointed” by the IRS, as opposed to only two as mentioned by Miller.
Fox19 has confirmed that the four employees in question made unusual requests for information from:
1. The Richmond, Virginia Tea Party in January of 2012. 2. The Ohio Liberty Council in January of 2012.. 3. Dan Backer, a lawyer based in Washington D.C. who helped six small conservative groups apply for 501c4 status in February of 2012. 4. The Liberty Township Tea Party in March of 2012.
Four Cincinnati IRS employees not two were involved in targeting conservative and Christian groups. The employees said they “simply did what our bosses ordered.”
Criminal! Peter Riehm, chairman of the Common Sense CampaignIRS, a conservative group was on with Neil Cavuto today. Riehm told Neal they withdrew their application after months and months of harassment.
A liberal professor interviewed in Indoctrinate U explains that protecting and teaching from one ideological viewpoint insulates students who are liberal to properly defend and coherently explain their views. This excerpt is taken from two parts, Part 1 (http://tinyurl.com/cdt94vp), and Part 2 (http://tinyurl.com/cvlhlba).
I posted the above video on my FaceBook site, with the following information and the long portion before and after this small excerpt. This video garnered a response from a very left leaning person. Let’s dive in:
J.B. Started:
…now, find anyone who actually thinks conservatives can survive being expose to FACTS
I Respond (SeanG):
What facts do you think conservatives should be exposed to J.B.?
J.B.
that id [is] such a loaded question … i guess we could start with the fact that the tea party and the KKK have the same ideology…
SeanG:
Lets stick with that first sentence J.B., “i guess we could start with the fact that the tea party and the KKK have the same ideology.” It is interesting that you would choose that option as your first example. It was chosen by a previous liberal “mind” that I spoke with. And I responded thusly (remember?):
I just wish to comment here that John (J.B.) waxes long about FACTS, even capitalizing them. But you will notice how I present them and he refers to the concept of them.
J.B.
I chose it for ONE reason ….because it is a FACT you cannot stand .. and try to hide from with ramblings at length about dead people rather than addressing the FACT … the TEA PARTY is a racist organization…and is making the GOP into a racist party ….until you can accept the FACTS of today … you may as well keep living in your little ,nicely protected hole of propaganda form the [the] right
SeanG
How can the “Tea Party” be racist when we know… sorry,…. when we KNOW Obama has racist leanings and surrounds himself — most of his life [literally] — with racist persons and radicals? Wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, your concern be with racist Democrats like the ones that were keynote speakers at the 2012 DNC?
Another note. I have given a real world example, Julián Castro, whom — as I already pointed out to John is a card carrying member of LaRaza Unida,. In fact, his mother founded her cities chapter… it is [if there were an analogy to it, be] like the KKK, just a Mexican version of it.
I continue:
J.B.? shouldn’t you be worried about the highest levels of the Democratic Party choosing a keynote that is a card carrying member of La Raza Unida (his mother being the founder of the chapter in her city — if there were an analogy it would be the religious arm of the KKK) to speak at a presidential event? How is this comparable to the Tea Party?
How can a President of these United States have gone to a church that had a preacher from the Nation of Islam on its church magazine (with 20,000[+] subscriber homes) 3-times and awarded him an IN CHURCH award and honorary day? The same guy that says and teaches the White man was created by a mad scientist over 6,000 years ago on the Island of Cyprus. And was personally connected with the death of police officers (http://www.facebook.com/notes/sean-giordano/the-mosque-and-charlie-rangel/10151150128828193)?
Are there Tea Party comparisons you can think of? Like if “Dubya” went to a church for twenty years where Christian Identity was taught, where a David Duke figure was on its church magazine 3-times (and it went to 20,000 homes, including all members, like “Dubya’s” house), and this David Duke figure — that taught that the Jews and Black came from the sexual intercourse of the serpent (Satan) and Eve, was awarded IN CHURCH where “Dubya” went? I can’t think of an analogy, can you?
After asking others if they can give an analogy, a real world example of something similar in the Republican Party, or Tea Party, no one did. So I try my hand at helping John, after commenting on him drinking the MSNBC jungle juice:
J.B. has obviously drinking from the Kool-Aid at MSNBC’S fount:
Example 1:
I got one! The first motion picture to be shown at the White House by a sitting President that was produced by the KKK! Ha…. oh… er, wait… that was a Democrat President. My bad.
Example 2:
Oh! Maybe a group founded to scare people into voting for one political Party by lynching, threats, and violence, killing white and black persons from the other Party! There you go!
…no…no… wait… those were Democrats as well. Sorry:
Damn. I am trying to help, but am making things worse.
Example 3:
Welfare doesn’t help:
✪ “I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
How though? Hmmmm… The left subsidizes failure and broken families, and argues that this is good, which causes more to vote for handouts:
Example 4:
Maybe is we help make family planning decisions. Nope, another racist venture by Democrats:
✪ “We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” ~ Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
J.B. Responds with an evidence laced screed that would make any geometry teacher happy/ Not. Take note that in order to prove that the Tea Party is racist, he merely includes more organizations without a drop of evidence. The naming of organizations versus a leading Democrat being in a racist group and laying out Obama’s 20-years attendance in another discussion are not facts to John:
J.B.
Sean… since we are in th[e] 21st century and you seem stuck in the late 19th and early 20th century …..not much point in talking to you about FACTS….. the tea party, FOX and , apparently you, can’t stand simple facts like the extreme racism and anti-Americanism of the CURRENT right wing GOP and tea party ,… soo….. back to lurking I go ….you did prove my point however.. the topic was .. should the RIGHT as well as the left be open to looking at other points of view and you have shown your answer is no ….not points or view and not facts…. have a nice fantasy life with your ‘sources’ you will never, ever know what is going on in the real world ..and I do not have the time or energy to try to change that for yo0u . Sorry about your inability to think …and , oh
While not the topic he led off with and the one I tried to pin him down on (defend your first example would be a logical request), he mentions the following, “he objects to the FACT that right wing extremists such as himself cannot stand the idea that they ALSO need to be exposed to other people’s opinions,…”
Conservatives are exposed to the other side, on campuses, force fed by their teachers, tv, even ESPN sports casters push the Left-Wing screed. Me, I have every religious holy text, cult writings, occult texts, books by Democrats, by Libertarians, and the like. My large home library is filled with books that challenge my religious and political worldview. I doubt highly that John has said to himself that he is going to set aside his belief structure and honestly search for answers to the tough questions.
J.B. continues:
btw…. I am now going to try to be done with this thread .. and with any attempt to expose Sean to anything that might shake his fantasy world.
I respond:
J.B. said:
✪ “… you seem stuck in the late 19th and early 20th century …”
While I can literally mention from the time of Andrew Jackson (Democrat) putting on the Supreme Court Democrats who passed Dred Scott, to the segregationists/separatists, to the infamous “Black Codes,” to the founding of the KKK, to all but one of the Dixi-Crats staying Democrat.
BUT John, I mentioned YOUR President and the DNC Keynote Speaker. If I remember correctly, that all happened in the 21st century. Here are some other recent comments as well:
♛ Bill Clinton ~ “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,”; ♛ Joe Biden ~ “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…. I mean, that’s a storybook, man!”; ♛ Dan Rather ~ “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”; ♛ Harry Reid ~ “He doesn’t have a negro dialect.”
I proved — with facts, quotes, history, that left-wing extremists are the racist ones, as well as prejudiced:
Webster’s says this:
♚ a. belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
So we see that Webster’s main definition are based on a belief in a genetic superiority of one ethnicity (falsely called race) over another. A more in-depth definition comes from “Safire’s Political Dictionary,” and reads (in-part):
♚ racism Originally, an assumption that an individual’s abilities and potential were determined by his biological race, and that some races were inherently superior to others; now, a political-diplomatic accusation of harboring or practicing such theories. “This word [racism],” wrote Harvard Professor J. Anton De Haas in November 1938, “has come into use the last six months, both in Europe and this country… Since so much has been said about conflicting isms, it is only natural that a form was chosen which suggested some kind of undesirable character.” In fact, racism came into use two years earlier, in his 1936 book The Coming American Fascism, Lawrence Dennis wrote, “If … it be assumed that one of our values should be a type of racism which excludes certain races from citizenship, then the plan of execution should provide for the annihilation, deportation, or sterilization of the excluded races.” Racism, a shortening of racialism, was at first directed against Jews. In the nineteenth century, anti-Semites who foresaw a secular age in which religion might not be such a popular rallying force against Jews put forward the idea of Jewishness being less a religion than a race. Adolf Hitler, with his “master race” ideology, turned theory into savage practice….
You can say all you want that “x” are racists. But I have shown (big difference) that not only is “b” racist (a belief in a genetic superiority), but prejudiced as well.
J.B.tactfully responds and decides to give me a fact that is not grounded in personal opinion:
Poor Sean, still does not understand…..and by choice never will….wonder is block willl help keep his ramblings down
This is where the conversation essentially ended, the above did cause one observer of it to note, “As the great military leader General I. Zations once said, ‘You cannot play music on a Stereo type’.”
The horrific shooting at the screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado late last night bears eerie similarities to a scene in the 1986 comic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. In the comic, a crazed, gun-toting loner walks into a movie theater and begins shooting it up, killing three in the process. The passage concludes with the media blaming Batman for inspiring the shooting, though he is not involved in the incident at all.
The 1986 comic, written and drawn by Frank Miller, was a key inspiration for the Chris Nolan Batman films. It helped to reimagine the character away from his Saturday morning cartoon image and into a dark, grim avenger. The point of this particular scene in the comic was to show just how far Gotham has fallen since Batman had retired….
I didn’t post on this (almost did when the story hit — July 18th), but this story makes me chronicle this violent trend with batman fans… really just a commentary on “just how far Gotham has fallen.”
Ratings for “The Dark Knight Rises” have dipped a bit on movie review aggregation site RottenTomatoes.com, sitting at 86 percent fresh after a series of written standing ovations arrived earlier this week.
Clearly, a rating like that means the majority of critics were pretty pleased with Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film, but as far as those who weren’t? Extreme commenter backlash.
On Monday, Rotten Tomatoes had to shut down its comments on “The Dark Knight Rises” reviews because fans who disagreed with the few negative opinions were rabidly expressing their distaste.
[….]
“I really did not expect this level of response,” Fine said. “I knew it would probably be controversial just because I was the first negative one, and the first person to bust the 100 percent always comes in for some negative response, but it was like a tsunami.” (A tsunami that also crashed his website for a time.)
The second fire-starting critique, written by the AP’s Christy Lemire, led to “several hours” of Atchity and his team “removing comments with misogynistic or threatening remarks” from the review, and the eventual disabling of comments.
Atchity ended up updating his open letter to state that comments on “The Dark Knight Rises” reviews would be down for a couple of days, and he told the New York Times Tuesday that he expects them to be up and running again Thursday or Friday, once more reviews are posted and more people have seen the film to be able to have a fruitful discussion.
His advice to commenters in the meantime was to “Just take a deep breath, step away from the computer, and maybe go for a walk. Have a smoke if you need one. There are plenty of other things to get angry about, like war, famine, poverty and crime. But not movie reviews.”
The University of Colorado Medical School says shooting suspect was student there but withdrew last month. Suspect James Holmes described himself on a rental applicationas a ‘quiet and easygoing’ medical student.
There is an email account listed at the University of Colorado for Doctoral Student James Holmes.
Stephanolpoulos: I’m going to go to Brian Ross. You’ve been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.
Ross: There’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it’s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.
Stephanolpoulos: Okay, we’ll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much.
Brian Ross now admits that he had it wrong, but I doubt yo will ever here the registered party affiliation if the shooter is not a Republican!
With Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas back in the nation’s capital, Washington Capitals fans weren’t going to let him forget his skipped trip to the White House.
At Game 3 of the Bruins-Capitals playoff series Monday night, several spectators showed up with pictures of President Barack Obama and signs taunting Thomas. In January, he didn’t show up when the rest of the Bruins were invited to the Stanley Cup champions’ traditional visit to the president’s office.
Thomas, born in Michigan, said at the time he believes the federal government “has grown out of control.”
Most of the Obama signs were displayed by fans sitting near the glass behind the net Thomas defended in the first and third periods of Monday’s game.
