I made the case yesterday that Dems that don't want a repeat of Clinton's second term-where we never get back to fixing the sequester, jobs, immigration, and background checks-need to eat their Wheaties: in this case read some Diary of a Republican Hater.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-go-there-democrats-should-try-diary.html
Clearly Charlie Rangel has not tried it which is why he came up with such a lame statement to the press:
"Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that he believes President Barack Obama owes the American public explanations for both the seizure of Associated Press phone records by the Department of Justice and the IRS targeting of conservative groups"
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/charlie-rangel-irs-associated-press-comments-91398.html#ixzz2TNZy4bNt
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-go-there-democrats-should-try-diary.html
Clearly Charlie Rangel has not tried it which is why he came up with such a lame statement to the press:
"Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that he believes President Barack Obama owes the American public explanations for both the seizure of Associated Press phone records by the Department of Justice and the IRS targeting of conservative groups"
“I don’t think anyone truly believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer for America, much less the press,” Rangel said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think this is just the beginning and the whole idea of comparing this with Nixon, I really think is just, it doesn’t make much sense. But the president has to come forward and share why he did not alert the press they were going to do this. He has to tell the Americans, including me: What was this national security question? You just can’t raise the flag and expect to salute it every time without any reason and the same thing applies to the IRS.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/charlie-rangel-irs-associated-press-comments-91398.html#ixzz2TNZy4bNt
Then Dana Milbank-who's considered a liberal by some but seems to me more of a Very Serious Person-has a truly vapid piece about how the President is the "Uninterested President" because he isn't given answers on everything under the sun. Milbank gives us a tell that he's a VSP by his Green Lantern Theory of Presidential Leadership: from the way he talks you'd think the IRS has a daily morning meeting with the President.
"President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency. Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters."
"And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology: He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news."
"Milbank seems to have this childlike view of the powers of the President whom he imagines to be downright omniscient. Obama of course knows every detail of the IRS' process in dealing with applications for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status and he should give it to us now. I wonder why Milbank and company don't ever ask themselves why they do such a poor job in fulfilling their own responsibilities."
After all, he could have mentioned that the GOP's sudden worry about the civil liberties of AP journalists is very new; just last year they had been demanding that Obama find out where the leaks to the CIA's successful prevention of a terrorist attack in Yemen came from. So if the DOJ had alerted the AP of it's subpoena beforehand they'd be pleased with Obama today?
Meanwhile, credit where credit is due, we have one case of actual journalism over at Bloomberg today-rather than like Milbank, simply cheerleading the scandal mongering:
Bloomberg points out that there were also Democratic groups scrutinized.
"The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status."
One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected.
"Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.
This is a very important point. Greg yesterday pointed out that none of these Tea Party groups have said they were ultimately denied tax exempt status.
Yet a NYTimes editoral today makes it sound like only conservative groups were scrutinized.
Of course, one of the big outrages is that Karl Rove's CrossRoads enjoys tax exempt status. If people like Dana Milbank would add facts like this to their vapid commentary we'd realize that this is not just about ginning up scandals for GOP gain but really asking ourselves: why do so many of these Tea Party groups deserve a public subsidy in the first place, to say nothing of Karl Rove.
No comments:
Post a Comment