BOISE, Idaho (KBOI) - A Boise pastor imprisoned in Iran has been removed from solitary confinement, where he had spent more than a week, and returned to the main prison population.

Saeed Abedini's attorney, Jay Sekulow, says the news raises hope because Abedini suffers from kidney issues caused by beatings and may have been kept in solitary for 20 days or more.

Sekulow says Abedini and other prisoners were placed in solitary confinement after protesting Iran's lack of providing them medical care.

Abedini has been imprisoned in Iran since September.

Officially, he is charged with threatening the national security of Iran, but his family and others believe Abedini was arrested because of his Christian faith.


SOURCE http://www.kboi2.com/news/local/Boise-pastor-Iran-Saeed-Abedini-207024031.html

The American pastor jailed in Iran for his Christian faith has managed to get a letter out to his global supporters, thanking them for their prayers while confirming the brutality of his conditions.

According to a story by Lisa Daftari for Fox News, Saeed Abedini, the 33-year-old Idaho resident serving an eight-year prison term in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison, passed the letter to family members who were permitted to visit him after several weeks of isolation.

The letter was passed to Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, who is at their Boise-area home with their two children and unable to visit her husband for fear of being arrested herself.

“I heard that the persecution, my arrest and imprisonment has united churches from different denominations, from different cities and countries, that would never come together because of their differences,” Fox News reported Abedini wrote.

He added, “You don’t know how happy I was in the Lord and rejoiced knowing that in my chains the body of Christ has chained together and is brought to action and prayer.”

Fox News said Abedini signed the letter, “With many thanks for your continued and faithful prayers, Servant of our Lord in chains for Jesus Christ, Saeed.”

Abedini has been held at the brutal prison for 238 days, enduring long stints in solitary confinement, and, according to his supporters, beatings and torture at the hands of his jailers and fellow inmates.

For months, Fox News reported, he has been suffering from serious injuries, including internal bleeding from beatings with no proper medical attention, according to his family and attorneys.

More than a decade ago, Abedini began working as a Christian leader and community organizer developing Iran’s underground home church communities for Christian converts who are forbidden from praying in public churches. He was arrested in 2009, but released after pledging to stop formally organizing house churches in Iran.

Fox News said when he returned to Iran last year to help build a state-run, secular orphanage, Iranian police pulled him off a bus and imprisoned him.

After spending months imprisoned without any notice of charges, Abedini was sentenced in January to eight years in prison, as his family and attorneys continue to press the State Department and other public and private groups to help win his release.

Fox News said the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents Abedini and his family in the U.S., last week met with State Department officials after noting the U.S. diplomats had not issued a single press release demanding Abedini’s release.

“The fact is with each passing day, Pastor Saeed’s health worsens – he’s now suffering from internal bleeding,” said ACLJ chief counsel Jay Sekulow.

He added, “Time is of the essence.”

Fox News said Sekulow noted that Iran in January freed an Iranian Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, under pressure from the international community – including the State Department and the White House.

“This year, the international community – including the European Union and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran – have spoken out clearly and directly for Pastor Saeed, but his own adopted nation has done less for him than the EU, less than Australia,” Sekulow said.

Fox News said Sekulow added, “Shouldn’t the United States do at least as much for its own citizen as it did for that brave Iranian pastor?”


SOURCE http://continentalnews.net/2013/05/24/american-pastor-held-in-iran-releases-letter-208262.html

The IRS scandal that has grabbed America's attention away from other crucial national developments - like Benghazi - continues to unravel, revealing increasingly troubling information about the abuse of the American government, its intent to cover-up its misdeeds, and its willingness to mislead the American people about it. Despite claims made by White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, that the IRS had stopped its misconduct back in May of 2012, the ACLJ reported on Wednesday that such a claim could not be further from the truth.

"The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents 27 Tea Party organizations unlawfully targeted by the Internal Revenue Service, said today the White House assertion that the IRS misconduct of targeting conservative groups ended in May 2012 does not match the facts. The ACLJ has received 26 IRS questionnaires sent to 18 clients during the past year – letters demanding further intrusive and intimidating questions, with the latest inquiry coming just days before the IRS revealed its targeting scheme."

Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ, reveals that the White House is continuing its efforts to create a narrative that would appeal to the American people but unfortunately does not match up with the facts that are being uncovered in the case.

“It’s apparent this White House continues to try and create a narrative that simply does not square with the facts. Without question the IRS misconduct of harassing and abusing our clients was still in high gear from May 2012 through May of this year. The intrusive and unconstitutional questions continued – with the IRS demanding donor lists and even requesting lists of what reading materials that organizations used. To suggest this tactic ended a year ago is not only offensive, but it is simply inaccurate as well.”

Will there be any repercussions for this abuse of power?

Jay Sekulow asserts that there will be and that a federal lawsuit is already in the works.

"The ACLJ is preparing a federal lawsuit to be filed in Washington, D.C. on behalf of a number of clients – including organizations and groups that it has represented during this IRS assault – as well as new groups that have approached the ACLJ in recent days. The ACLJ is finalizing the complaint and continues to add plaintiffs. The lawsuit is expected to be filed early next week."

In the meantime, as CNS News also reported on Wednesday, Lois Lerner, the woman responsible for harassing the Christian Coalition back in the 90's, and who still remains the head of the tax-exempt organizations division of the IRS, decided to plead the fifth, refusing to testify before a congressional committee.

Denying any wrongdowing, Lerner laid out her case and said that she is, in fact, "very proud of the work" she has "done in government".

Yet, as head of the FEC, Lerner launched an unmerited investigation of the Christian Coalition, wrongly claiming that the organization was coordinating expenditures with a number of political candidates for office. There was absolutely no evidence of this and yet Lerner and the FEC pushed on, costing the Christian Coalition hundreds of thousands of dollars and many hours of lost work, as the Weekly Standard reports.

Lerner insists, however, that she has done nothing wrong in the current IRS scandal.

"I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided any false information to this or any other congressional committee. And while I would very much like to answer the committee's questions today, I've been advised by my counsel to assert my constitutional right not to testify or answer any of the questions today."

Wouldn't her "insider" input be helpful in the investigation of this scandal?

Meanwhile, as ACLJ's Jay Sekulow pointed out, the IRS misconduct continues to this day.


SOURCE http://www.examiner.com/article/aclj-white-house-wrong-irs-abuse-still-ongoing-lerner-invokes-the-fifth

America is facing a jihadist enemy. It is an enemy that has proven it can inflict more civilian casualties on the United States than any other foreign enemy in almost 200 years.

Just last week this enemy killed 3 innocent people, wounded more than 100 and paralyzed a major American city.

Yet, our obsession with political correctness, with a strong desire not to offend our enemies makes our self-defense immeasurably more difficult.

The evil nature and intentions of our jihadist enemies are already clear. They hate us enough to pack pressure cookers with ball bearings, to hijack airliners and turn them into weapons of mass destruction, to wear underwear bombs, shoe bombs, and any other kind of bomb they can smuggle onto aircraft.

Yet we still can’t face facts.  Consider these recent events:

- Despite screaming “Allah Akbar!” when he opened fire on unarmed fellow soldiers at Fort Hood – and despite his own long history of radicalism, including communicating with Anwar al-Alwaki, the American Al Qaeda terrorist – the Obama administration still calls Nidal Hasan’s deadly attack an act of mere “workplace violence.”  In fact, the Army’s after-action report said nothing about radical Islam.

- We spent crucial days blaming the deadly Benghazi terror attacks on a video, and even now have treated the filmmaker much more harshly than the actual terrorists who killed our ambassador.

- The Associated Press Stylebook recently revised its definition of “Islamist” to render it more benign, classifying Islamists as mere supporters of a “political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam.”

- Even after the Boston bombing suspects radical beliefs became well-known, commentators continue to insist that their beliefs are just one part of their personality no more relevant than, say, tastes in music or the influence of violent movies.

- A commentator at one of our nation’s most influential magazines even went so far as to write an essay entitled, “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?”

As key figures in government and the media continue to minimize the threat of radical Islam, one wonders if it’s having a direct impact on investigations.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the oldest of the two Boston bomber suspects, is now the fifth suspected terrorist to be questioned by the FBI before they attempted their acts of terror.  

Why are we questioning and releasing future terrorists?

Who are we trying to impress with our political correctness?  

Our enemies simply don’t care. Even worse, they view our hand-wringing as a sign of weakness, and it encourages further attacks.

Don’t forget that plotting for the 9/11 attacks began during a Clinton administration that was so eager to appease Middle Eastern jihadists it invited Yasser Arafat, one of the world’s foremost terrorists, to the White House again and again.  

He even received the ultimate tribute from the international politically correct left: the Nobel Peace Prize.  Arafat was so impressed by this tribute that he launched the Second Intifada – complete with wave after wave of deadly suicide bombings – just a few years later.

Yet we not only persist with political correctness, we now go so far as to actually arm our enemies.  

The Obama administration persists in giving F-16s and advanced tanks to Egypt, even after the Muslim Brotherhood (motto: “Jihad is our way”) took power.  

The United States just pledged $500 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority, a government that is even now unifying with Hamas, one of the world’s worst terror organizations.

While we revise stylebooks and debate the power of movies and music over the power of jihad, our enemies laugh – and plan future attacks.

Political correctness kills.

Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). Follow him on Twitter@JaySekulow. This article originally appeared on Fox News.


SOURCE http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/39211-lessons-from-the-boston-marathon-bombing-political-correctness-kills

The Internal Revenue Service scandal may be the worst of all the current Obama administration fiascoes. It is an easily understood gross misuse of the powers of government to target opponents of the president. What is more, the administration’s supplicants in the lefty punditocracy can no longer claim this is just an IRS scandal.

The Post reports:

    J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s top tax watchdog, said Friday he had informed top Treasury officials starting last spring about problems related to the special attention the agency was paying some conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status. George said he shared the information with the Treasury’s general counsel in June and with Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal S. Wolin “shortly thereafter.”

Are we to believe, with allegations of IRS harassment swirling in the media, that these two officials nodded, returned to their offices and told no one? If so, they are guilty of suppressing a huge scandal in an election year. But let’s get real. Upon hearing this information, it is almost inconceivable that they unilaterally decided to remain mum. Both of these officials must be required to answer questions under oath. If they do not, an independent prosecutor would be essential.

But we may not need to wait for that. ABC News reports:

    Tea partiers say the lengthy questionnaires, some of them 30 questions long, cost them hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars as they sent stacks of paperwork to the IRS and were held in legal limbo for years, uncertain of what activities they could pursue, and cut off from skeptical donors scared away by their pending status.

    “This is not only unconstitutional, it is illegal,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative civil-rights group that says it is suing the IRS on behalf of 17 clients who were targeted for extra scrutiny because of their groups’ leanings. . . .

    The American Center for Law and Justice represents 27 tea party groups that received questionnaires from the IRS asking for information on their donors, members, finances, educational materials, events and, in at least one case, connections to another group and another individual. Sekulow said 17 of his clients are prepared to move ahead with a civil lawsuit against the IRS.

Good for them. Through the civil discovery process they can compel individuals to disclose what they did, with whom they discussed the issue and how this scheme was kept quiet until Lois Lerner, now chief the Obamacare unit of the IRS (!!), planted a question at an American Bar Association gathering (a year after IRS officials knew of and were already investigating the scandal) to allow the matter to surface. Now, officials can take the Fifth, I suppose. And they all should lawyer up.

It’s ludicrous to think, as the most diligent Obama spinners assert (do they even believe it?), that scandals do not implicate senior administration officials or that these are petering out. To the contrary, more than two-thirds of Americans, according to Gallup, believe the IRS fiasco is a “serious matter that needs to be investigated.” And that was before Friday’s hearing.


SOURCE http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/05/19/the-treasury-connection-not-merely-an-irs-scandal/

Tea party activists descended on Washington today, promising to sue the Internal Revenue Service and claiming vindication in their long-held complaints about perceived government overreach.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill this morning, activists joined Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., to lambaste the federal government for targeting them with extra scrutiny as they applied for tax-exempt status as public-advocacy groups.

Tea partiers say the lengthy questionnaires, some of them 30 questions long, cost them hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars as they sent stacks of paperwork to the IRS and were held in legal limbo for years, uncertain of what activities they could pursue, and cut off from skeptical donors scared away by their pending status.

"This is not only unconstitutional, it is illegal," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative civil-rights group that says it is suing the IRS on behalf of 17 clients who were targeted for extra scrutiny because of their groups' leanings.

READ MORE: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-names-acting-irs-commissioner/story?id=19194709#.UZVK3dbqnTo

The IRS has admitted to targeting groups with the words "Tea Party" and "patriots" in their names, but documents obtained by ABC News reveal that the IRS targeted other groups with conservative leanings from 2010 to 2012.

The American Center for Law and Justice represents 27 tea party groups that received questionnaires from the IRS asking for information on their donors, members, finances, educational materials, events and, in at least one case, connections to another group and another individual. Sekulow said 17 of his clients are prepared to move ahead with a civil lawsuit against the IRS.

"This is extremely troubling because the axiom is: The power to tax is the power to destroy," Bachmann said at the news conference, held outside the Capitol.

"These horror stories of the government attempting to quiet the voices of critics is apparently rather rampant," added Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

After the news conference, activists met with Senate staff in the Capitol basement, according to a McConnell spokesman.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky also joined the activists and lawmakers, lambasting the IRS for targeting conservative.

"This is a civil rights issue," said Adam Brandon of Washington-based FreedomWorks, which has facilitated organizing and communication between local and state-level tea party groups since 2009. "It's more like a Third World junta than a constitutional republic."

Later this afternoon, Brandon's group hosted nine activists at FreedomWorks headquarters on Capitol Hill to speak with reporters. Of the activists who attended, six are represented by the American Center for Law and Justice and plan to sue the IRS.

Some of the groups attained 501(c)4 tax-exempt status last year, some this year, and some said they have yet to receive a ruling from the IRS.

"We would have needed a U-Haul truck of about 20 feet to get it back to the IRS in Cincinnati," said Toby Marie Walker of the Waco Tea Party, speculating at how much paperwork it would have taken to satisfy all the IRS' requests.

"It's a month away from being three years [since her group requested tax-exempt status], and there is no resolution to this situation," said Dianne Belsom of the Laurens County Tea Party in South Carolina.  Others echoed the sentiment.

"We had to stop raising funds, and it has all but killed my organization," said Jay Devereaux, who said his group, Unite in Action, formed as a corporation before requesting 501(c)4 status and still has not been granted a decision, one way or another, by the IRS.

His group hosted a civic-engagement training session at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington and the IRS requested details on all speakers and educational materials disseminated in the 78 classes the group held, Devereaux said, a request he simply could not meet.

Now, his group remains in limbo, he said, owing money to funders and wondering about its status. His group would owe "somewhere in the neighborhood of $70,000 in back-taxes" if his request for 501(c)4 status were denied, Devereaux said.

But while the activists said extra IRS scrutiny had crippled them financially, they also said the IRS controversy has brought more interest to the tea party movement. Asked whether they'd gotten more member signups and donations since the IRS' apology brought attention to the incident, the activists nodded and affirmed.

"Not money, but support," Walker said.

Tom Zawistowski of the Ohio Liberty Coalition said, "They're afraid of the money. We need this to be settled. We're going to have a problem for a little bit."

FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe said interest in his group has spiked on social media since the IRS story became big news.

To all the activists who spoke to reporters, the IRS activities meant vindication of the tea party movement's central complaint about perceived government excess and a bloated, overbearing federal government. When the movement began in 2009, accusations of President Obama's "socialist takeover" were common at rallies, and the movement's opposition to government spending, taxes and debt were couched in allegations that the government had grown too big and too intrusive.

"It's a vindication of us, of all the terrible, horrible things that were said about us," Zawistowski said.

The irony of the situation was not lost on the activists who came to Washington to decry it. The tea party movement has opposed taxes and, at times, tea party GOP candidates have proposed eliminating the IRS. A movement dedicated to opposing government overreach now finds itself a victim of the very thing it warned about, activists said.

"The irony of us all being here, again talking about the IRS is amazing," Susan McLaughlin of the Liberty Township Tea Party in Ohio said, "because that's what started the tea party movement in our community."

SOURCE http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vowing-lawsuit-irs-tea-partiers-descend-dc/story?id=19196072

• Tax agency has admitted targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for special, politically motivated scrutiny
• IRS inspector general focused on wrongdoing in Cincinnati, Ohio office and ignored abusive letters coming from other cities
• MailOnline found letters from IRS's Washington, D.C. headquarters, and from IRS offices in two southern California cities
• The American Center on Law and Justice is threatening to sue the IRS if 27 tea party groups aren't granted tax-exempt statuses by Friday

Letters from the IRS to tea party-related organizations in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque, New Mexico show that IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C., and two satellite offices in California, were directly involved with sending harassing letters to conservative organizations that sought tax-exempt status.

The IRS has acknowledged only the involvement of its Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati, Ohio, which typically makes most decisions about granting or denying tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations.

And Wednesday afternoon, CNN cited a congressional source in reporting that the acting IRS Commissioner – whom President Obama fired later in the day – had identified two 'rogue' employees, both in Cincinnati, whom he thought were responsible for targeting right-wing organizations with tactics that were not applied to left-wing or non-political groups.

Steven Miller then the acting IRS Commissioner, described the two employees as being 'off the reservation,' according to the CNN source.

Miller, added CNN, had emphasized that the problem was not confined to just two staffers.

Tuesday's report from the IRS Office of Inspector General, however, focused exclusively on the Cincinnati office.

This IG's review, according to the report 'was performed at the EO [Exempt Organizations] function Headquarters office in Washington, D.C., and the Determinations Unit in Cincinnati, Ohio.'

The Washington staffers involved, the IG report continues, were in charge of reviewing materials prepared in Cincinnati. 'As part of this effort, EO function Headquarters office employees reviewed the additional information request letters prepared by the team of [Cincinnati] specialists,' the report reads.

Nothing in the report describes letters sent by IRS employees in California or the District of Columbia.

Yet an April 21, 2010 letter to the Albuquerque Tea Party organization, containing a preliminary list of 10 questions, came from the IRS's Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division in Washington, D.C. The group responded on June 10.

Seventeen months passed before the IRS responded on November 16, 2011. That letter, similar in scope and tone to other intrusive IRS letters that have drawn national attention, also came from the Washington, D.C. IRS office. It included an additional 28 questions.

A separate letter came to Patriots Educating Concerned Americans Now (PECAN), a Redding, California conservative group, from an IRS office in the Orange County, California town of Laguna Niguel.

That letter, dated January 31, 2012, asked 55 questions, including a demand for 'complete copies of the organization's website that is accessible to members only.'

It also asked a series of pointed questions about PECAN's relationship to the Redding Tea Party Patriots, an overtly political organization.

A third IRS letter to a group called Oklahoma City Patriots In Action, or the OKC PIA Association, came from an IRS office in El Monte, California, an eastern suburb of Los Angeles, on February 9, 2012.

It included 59 questions, including a demand for a list showing the time, date, place and 'content schedule' for every 'public rally or exhibition' the group had ever conducted.'for or against any public policies, legislations [sic], public officers, political candidates, or like kinds.'

'Please state whether you provide any advocacy training to your members and to the general public,' another question read. 'If yes, describe in detail your advocacy training and provide copies of any publications concerning such training.'

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents all three groups, provided MailOnline with a letter from the IRS in Washington, D.C. in which the agency said it still had not decided whether to award the Albuquerque Tea Party tax-exempt status.

That letter was dated April 16, 2013, more than three years since the group filed its initial application.

Jay Sekulow, the ACLJ's chief counsel, scoffed at the idea of the IRS scapegoating a pair of its Cincinnati employees, given the letters he has seen from offices three time zones apart.

'The IRS's assertion that this scheme was launched by a couple of rogue employees in the Cincinnati office is absurd,' Sekulow said. His organization represents 27 tea party organizations, all of which were targeted, he said, with partisan attacks.

'To suggest that a couple of low-level employees decided to launch this unprecedented conduct of intimidation does not square with the facts,' he added.

Sekulow said his group plans to sue the IRS if it has not granted all 27 groups their tax-exempt statuses by Friday.

'The action and conduct of the IRS is not only intolerable and unconscionable, it is actionable. We continue to move forward with our plans to file a federal lawsuit which could come as early as next week."

Sekulow showed MailOnline an IRS letter to his group's tea party client in Wetumpka, Alabama. That letter, which did originate in Cincinnati, was similar to the Washington, D.C. and California letters, and identical in some places.

The similarities suggest a program of national scope, tied together with standardized texts and applied from IRS offices nationwide.

If that's the case, the IRS's explanations to date will be left wanting.

A timeline included in the Inspector General's report describes the agency's attempt to retrain its employees after the politically partisan program was discovered.

'Training was held in Cincinnati, Ohio, on how to process identified potential political cases,' one timeline entry reads.

Two days later, according to the same timeline, an IRS team 'began reviewing all potential political cases began [sic] in Cincinnati, Ohio.'

The report describes nothing about remedial action taken anywhere else.

MailOnline asked an IRS spokeswoman to comment on whether the IRS or the Office of Inspector General interviewed employees in its California offices as part of preparing the report released Tuesday. MailOnline also asked if the Inspector General's office questioned anyone who worked in the Washington, D.C. headquarters, including political appointees.

The IRS had no response, despite providing a specific email address for those questions during a phone call.

In March 2012, Douglas Shulman, then the IRS Commissioner, testified before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight that the tax agency did not investigate organizations differently according to their political ideologies.

'As you know, we pride ourselves in being non-political, non-partisan organization,' Shulman said then. 'There is absolutely no political targeting.'

Lois G. Lerner, the woman who leads the IRS division that evaluates and monitors tax-exempt organizations, learned in June 2011 - nine months earlier - that this was not true, according to the Inspector General's report.

Given that letters originated in Washington, Cincinnati and southern California, and may have come from other IRS offices as well, it will become a greater challenge for Shulman to explain why he was mistaken when he testified on Capitol Hill last year.

Both Lerner and Shulman will testify in a house Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on May 22.

'The IG report indicts IRS for a colossal management failure, but leaves many questions unanswered,' said California Rep. Darrel Issa, who chairs that committee, in a statement.

In a separate hearing on May 17, the House Ways and Means Committee will hear testimony from Steven Miller – now the former Acting IRS Commissioner – and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George.

'The IRS absolutely must be non-partisan in its enforcement of our tax laws,' said Michigan Republican Rep. Dave Camp, who chairs that committee, in a statement.

'The admission by the agency that it targeted American taxpayers based on politics is both shocking and disappointing. ... We will hold the IRS accountable for its actions.'

Obama announced Miller's departure during a brief dinnertime announcement before news cameras in the East Room of the White House. The IRS, the president conceded, 'improperly screened conservative groups.'

Referring to the Inspector General's report, Obama said 'the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable. It's inexcusable and Americans are right to be angry about it. And I am angry about it.'


SOURCE http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325068/Documents-IRS-letters-harassing-conservative-groups-came-Washington-DC-headquarters-California-offices-despite-Inspector-Generals-focus-Cincinnati-employees.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department is investigating the Internal Revenue Service for targeting tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday, widening a probe that includes investigations by three committees in Congress.

Ineffective management at the IRS allowed agents to improperly target tea party groups for more than 18 months, concluded one investigation, by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The inspector general's report, released Tuesday, lays much of the blame on IRS supervisors in Washington who oversaw a group of specialists in Cincinnati who screened applications for tax exempt status.

The report does not indicate that Washington initiated the targeting of conservative groups. But it does say a top supervisor in Washington did not adequately supervise agents in the field even after she learned the agents were acting improperly.

"The report's findings are intolerable and inexcusable," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "The federal government must conduct itself in a way that's worthy of the public's trust, and that's especially true for the IRS. The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity. This report shows that some of its employees failed that test."

Holder said he ordered the FBI to investigate Friday - the day the IRS publicly acknowledged that it had singled out conservative groups.

"Those (actions) were, I think, as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable," Holder said. "But we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations."

Three congressional committees already are investigating the IRS for singling out tea party and other conservative groups during the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election. But Holder's announcement takes the matter to another level, if investigators are able to prove that laws were broken.

Holder said he wasn't sure which laws may have been broken.

The agency started targeting groups with "Tea Party," ''Patriots" or "9/12 Project" in their applications for tax exempt status in March 2010, the inspector general's report said. By August 2010, it was part of the written criteria used to flag groups for additional scrutiny.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, had been briefed on the matter in June 2011. She ordered the initial tea party criteria to be scrapped but it later evolved to include groups that promoted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

IRS agents were trying to determine whether the political activities of such groups disqualified them for tax-exempt status. These groups were claiming tax-exempt status as organizations promoting social welfare. Unlike other charitable groups, they can engage in political activity. But politics cannot be their primary mission.

It is up to the IRS to make the determination.

But by using improper criteria, the IRS targeted some groups, even though there were no indications that they engaged in significant political activities, the report said. Other non-tea party groups that had significant political activities were not screened, the report said.

"The criteria developed by the Determinations Unit gives the appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its mission," the report said.

In all, IRS agents identified 296 applications for additional, sometimes burdensome scrutiny. Ninety-one of them should not have been targeted because they did not indicate they were engaged in significant political activities, investigators concluded.

Of the groups that were not engaged in significant political activities, 17 were tea party, patriot or 9/12 groups, the report said.

The additional screening resulted in long delays as IRS agents asked intrusive, sometimes inappropriate questions, or merely let applications languish, the report said. Inappropriate questions included requests for lists of donors and the political affiliation of officers.

As of December, the delays averaged 574 days, which probably made donors reluctant to contribute, the report said. No group has had their application denied, though about half are still waiting, the IRS said.

"Unfortunately, the report raises more questions than it answers," said House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. "What we do know for sure is that the IRS personnel responsible for granting tax exemptions systematically targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny, and that officials in Washington, D.C., were aware of this practice, even while publicly claiming that it never happened."

Obama said he is ordering Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to implement all of the inspector general's recommendations to improve oversight at the IRS.

"But regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is, it was wrong," Obama said.

The practice of targeting conservative groups ended in May 2012, the report said.

"After seeing issues with particular cases, inappropriate shortcuts were used to determine which cases may be engaging in political activities," the IRS said in a statement Tuesday evening. "It is important to note that the vast majority of these cases would still have been centralized based on the general criteria used for other cases."

"It is also important to understand that the group of centralized cases included organizations of all political views," the statement said.

The IRS has said the improper reviews were limited to a Cincinnati office where a special team was assembled to screen them. The inspector general's report does not contradict the agency on this assertion.

However, documents obtained by The Associated Press suggest the targeting of conservative groups could be more widespread. Documents sent from the IRS to tea party groups show that IRS offices in California and Washington, D.C., also sought extensive information from tea party groups who requested tax-exempt status.

In letters provided by the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 27 tea party groups that have sought tax exempt status, IRS officials from two cities in California - El Monte and Laguna Nigel - as well as officials in Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati contacted groups seeking extensive information.

The law center's chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, said he was astonished the IRS said activity was limited to Cincinnati.

"To me, that was what was mind-boggling, they tried to create a narrative," he said.

On Monday, the IRS said acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller was first informed on May, 3, 2012, that applications for tax-exempt status by tea party groups were inappropriately singled out for extra scrutiny.

At least twice after the briefing, Miller wrote letters to members of Congress to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status without disclosing that tea party groups had been targeted. On July 25, 2012, Miller testified before the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee but again did not mention the additional scrutiny - despite being asked about it.

On Tuesday, the IRS said, "While flaws in our process were corrected last year based on our own review, we only recently discussed this publicly as there had been a concurrent ongoing (inspector general) audit of the situation. There was no intent to hide this issue, but rather we waited until (the inspector general) completed their fact finding, made recommendations, and we reviewed their findings.

Miller was a deputy commissioner at the time. He became acting commissioner in November, after Commissioner Douglas Shulman completed his five-year term. Shulman had been appointed by President George W. Bush.

Miller is scheduled to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee at a hearing Friday.

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Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

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Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SOURCE http://www.wnct.com/story/22241720/top-irs-official-didnt-reveal-tea-party-targeting

America is facing a jihadist enemy. It is an enemy that has proven it can inflict more civilian casualties on the United States than any other foreign enemy in almost 200 years.

Just last week this enemy killed 3 innocent people, wounded more than 100 and paralyzed a major American city.

Yet, our obsession with political correctness, with a strong desire not to offend our enemies makes our self-defense immeasurably more difficult.

The evil nature and intentions of our jihadist enemies are already clear. They hate us enough to pack pressure cookers with ball bearings, to hijack airliners and turn them into weapons of mass destruction, to wear underwear bombs, shoe bombs, and any other kind of bomb they can smuggle onto aircraft.

Yet we still can’t face facts.  Consider these recent events:

- Despite screaming “Allah Akbar!” when he opened fire on unarmed fellow soldiers at Fort Hood – and despite his own long history of radicalism, including communicating with Anwar al-Alwaki, the American Al Qaeda terrorist – the Obama administration still calls Nidal Hasan’s deadly attack an act of mere “workplace violence.”  In fact, the Army’s after-action report said nothing about radical Islam.

- We spent crucial days blaming the deadly Benghazi terror attacks on a video, and even now have treated the filmmaker much more harshly than the actual terrorists who killed our ambassador.

- The Associated Press Stylebook recently revised its definition of “Islamist” to render it more benign, classifying Islamists as mere supporters of a “political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam.”

- Even after the Boston bombing suspects radical beliefs became well-known, commentators continue to insist that their beliefs are just one part of their personality no more relevant than, say, tastes in music or the influence of violent movies.

- A commentator at one of our nation’s most influential magazines even went so far as to write an essay entitled, “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?”

As key figures in government and the media continue to minimize the threat of radical Islam, one wonders if it’s having a direct impact on investigations.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the oldest of the two Boston bomber suspects, is now the fifth suspected terrorist to be questioned by the FBI before they attempted their acts of terror.  

Why are we questioning and releasing future terrorists?

Who are we trying to impress with our political correctness?  

Our enemies simply don’t care. Even worse, they view our hand-wringing as a sign of weakness, and it encourages further attacks.

Don’t forget that plotting for the 9/11 attacks began during a Clinton administration that was so eager to appease Middle Eastern jihadists it invited Yasser Arafat, one of the world’s foremost terrorists, to the White House again and again.  

He even received the ultimate tribute from the international politically correct left: the Nobel Peace Prize.  Arafat was so impressed by this tribute that he launched the Second Intifada – complete with wave after wave of deadly suicide bombings – just a few years later.

Yet we not only persist with political correctness, we now go so far as to actually arm our enemies.  

The Obama administration persists in giving F-16s and advanced tanks to Egypt, even after the Muslim Brotherhood (motto: “Jihad is our way”) took power.  

The United States just pledged $500 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority, a government that is even now unifying with Hamas, one of the world’s worst terror organizations.

While we revise stylebooks and debate the power of movies and music over the power of jihad, our enemies laugh – and plan future attacks.

Political correctness kills.

Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). Follow him on Twitter@JaySekulow.


SOURCE http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/04/23/boston-marathon-bombing-lesson-political-correctness-kills/

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents nearly 30 Tea Party organizations nationwide against an assault by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), called today's apology by the IRS a "significant victory for free speech and freedom of association."

The ACLJ began representing Tea Party groups after the IRS launched an effort to intimidate Tea Party organizations by demanding information that is outside the scope of legitimate inquiry and violated the First Amendment. The IRS demanded that groups reveal the internal workings of their organizations - including the identification of members, how they are selected, who they associate with, and even what they discuss.

Today, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, issued an apology and said that practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and inappropriately focused on groups that included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, singling them out for additional reviews. Today, she said the practice was wrong and should not have occurred.

"We knew from the very start that this intimidation tactic was coordinated and focused directly on specific organizations," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. "This admission by the IRS represents a significant victory for free speech and freedom of association. There was never any doubt that these organizations complied with the law and applied for tax exempt status for their activities as Americans have done for decades. And for the many tax-exempt groups we represent, this is an important day – and underscores the need to stand-up and defend your constitutional freedoms."

The ACLJ represents 27 groups in more than 18 states across the country. To date, 14 groups have been granted tax-exempt status by the IRS, the others are pending and no organization has been denied.

"The IRS admission and apology should have come much sooner," said Sekulow. "It took the threat of legal action to get the IRS to make this admission. And while many of the organizations we represent have finally been granted tax-exempt status, we demand the IRS immediately approve the pending applications for the remainder of our clients."

The ACLJ said the IRS information demands sent to the Tea Party groups are not in response to complaints of wrongdoing, but instead in response to applications by the organizations for 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) tax exempt status.

Sekulow, who served as a trial lawyer with the Office of the Chief Counsel for the IRS earlier in his career, said many of the questions were simply inappropriate and fall well outside the scope of legitimate IRS inquiry. A sampling of the problematic questions are posted here.

The ACLJ also called for Congressional oversight hearings on this issue. The ACLJ has heard from more than 50,000 Americans urging Congress to conduct hearings concerning the IRS actions in this matter.

Led by Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), focusing on constitutional law, is based in Washington, D.C. and is online at www.aclj.org.

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SOURCE American Center for Law and Justice