Just look at his pathetic excuse from last week:

President Obama said Thursday he had no knowledge about a report concerning controversial IRS practices under investigation until news outlets reported on the subject last Friday, and he vowed to “fix” problems plaguing the agency through a comprehensive examination of what happened and how.

“I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the [inspector general] report before the I.G. report had been leaked” to the press, Mr. Obama said Thursday, during a rainy press conference in the White House Rose Garden with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Now, compare and contrast with this:

I see a lot of similarities there, don’t you?

Of course, it might be closer to Mission: Impossible, where the staff is trying to allow the President to “disavow any knowledge of your actions.” That’s the way the last paragraphs (of course they buried this at the end) of this MSNBC story have me thinking:

Carney also said that the information wasn’t shared with the president, suggesting that this was done to avoid any chance of improper intervention in the IG report.

“The cardinal rule is that you do not intervene in an independent investigation,” Carney said.

It reminds me of:

Also of interest, Carney seems to be assuming that Obama would have attempted to intervene. That doesn’t speak very well of the President. Again, that might be why it got pushed to the bottom of the story.

Paul Bedard writes in the Washington Times:

Senior Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, who recently slapped Obamacare as a “train wreck,” believes that the IRS scandal is just beginning and that “a lot more” damaging information will be revealed, likely at congressional hearings.

“I have a hunch that a lot more is going to come out, frankly,” Baucus, whose pending retirement seems to have freed him up to speak bluntly, told Bloomberg Government’s “Capitol Gains” TV show.

“It’s broader than the current focus. And I think it’s important that we have the hearings, and I think that will encourage other information to come out that has not yet come out. I suspect that we will learn more in the next several days, maybe the next couple three weeks which adds more context to all of this,” added Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

We already have multiple damaging issues hovering around the IRS:

• The original targeting of conservative groups.
• Stalling conservative applications, while green-lighting leftist ones.
• The person in charge of the targeting is now running the section charged with enforcing ObamaCare.
• Oh, and she got over $100k in bonuses, as well.

If there’s more to come, it’s almost certainly not going to be good, and it will just add fuel to the fire.

Obama may wish he’d sat out the 2012 election in favor of spending time at the golf course and letting Romney move into the Oval Office.

(cross-posted on RedState)

Meet Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee:

Boustany characterizes the new Inspector General’s report, which reveals that the IRS began targeting these conservative political groups as early as 2010, as “very disturbing.”

“At the very least it’s ineffective management,” Boustany says. “We know some egregious abuses occurred at the IRS and whether it’s ineffective management, negligence, or deliberate political egregious violations of First Amendment rights for political purposes, we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

Boustany started investigating possible targeting of conservative groups by the IRS two years ago after he began hearing complaints from constituents and groups who “felt they were being targeted,” but says the IRS has been “evasive and misleading from the start.”

“We want to get to the bottom of who made the decision, who at the top whether it’s at the IRS or higher up,” Boustany says. “Could it have been someone at Treasury, or even perhaps at the White House, that made this decision to go forward. This is a flagrant abuse of power.”

I look forward to seeing what Boustany finds.

I’ve dropped a couple of comments in the comment thread there, but I think I’m going to write a longer response to the Senator here. I intend to email his office to let them know about this, and I’ll let everyone know if I get any response.

The Senate Minority Whip looks at three recent Obama Administration scandals in his article:

The events that have unfolded over the past week are showing big government at its worst. First we learned more details about the Obama administration’s coordinated attempt to misrepresent the September 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, which claimed four American lives. Then a senior IRS official acknowledged that her agency had deliberately targeted conservative groups for harassment. Meanwhile, the administration was forced to admit that its top health regulator has been soliciting industry funds to help implement Obamacare. Finally, we discovered that the Justice Department has cast an extraordinarily wide net to capture the phone records of several journalists who work for the Associated Press.

My question to you, Senator, is this: What are you doing about it?

We know you and your colleagues in the Senate are going to be making the rounds of the talk shows, both through the rest of the week and on Sunday. We know that you’ve penned an op-ed (I referenced it just above), and I’m sure that you’ll send letters to your constituents… containing pleas for more of their hard-earned dollars to re-elect you.

However, if I was one of your constituents, I’d be asking, “why should I re-elect you when you don’t do anything about these abuses of power beyond the stereotypical UN-style ‘strongly worded letter’?”

I’m sure you know the old adage that actions speak louder than words. I’ve seen (and heard) lots of words, Senator, but precious little action out of the Senate. I know, you’re the minority, but there are still things you could do, I am sure. I haven’t even seen a non-binding resolution out of any of the GOP Senators denouncing the Administration for their actions. That at least would be something, though very little.

In short, Senator, your words are very pretty, but I gotta ask, in the words of the 80s TV commercial, “Where’s the beef?”

“I don’t think there’s anybody back there,” pretty adequately summarizes my feelings about the GOP in the Senate right now.

The LA Times reports:

According to a copy of the report obtained Monday by The Times, the investigators said their findings are “the best information available as of now” about the flawed gun operation that last month led to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. being found in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents.

The results of the investigation — so far — are:

They found that William Newell, the special agent-in-charge in Phoenix, exhibited “repeatedly risky” management and “consistently pushed the envelope of permissible investigative techniques.” The report said “he had been reprimanded … before for crossing the line, but under a new administration and a new attorney general he reverted back to the use of risky gunwalking tactics.”

His boss, Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations William McMahon, “rubber stamped critical documents that came across his desk without reading them,” the report alleged. “In McMahon’s view it was not his job to ask any questions about what was going on in the field.”

They added that McMahon gave “false testimony” to Congress about signing applications for wiretap intercepts in Fast and Furious.

His supervisor, Mark Chait, assistant director for field operations, “played a surprisingly passive role during the operation,” the report said. “He failed to provide oversight that his experience should have dictated and his position required.”

Above Chait was Deputy Director William Hoover, who the report said ordered an exit strategy to scuttle Fast and Furious but never followed through: “Hoover was derelict in his duty to ensure that public safety was not jeopardized.”

And they said [Acting ATF Director Kenneth] Melson, a longtime career Justice official, “often stayed above the fray” instead of bringing Fast and Furious to an “end sooner.”

Personally, I still suspect that it goes even higher than Melson, but perhaps Issa and Company can now use this report to pressure Melson and the other four named to provide more information in exchange for considerations if/when prosecution happens.

This one is far from over, and with any luck, it will dog Obama and his coterie from now until November.

Politico:

Felix Roque, 55, the Democratic mayor of West New York, N.J., and his son Joseph, 22, are alleged to have accessed and cancelled the domain registration for Recallroque.com, a website that was critical of the mayor and associated with a movement to recall him, in early February.

But the hacking wasn’t enough, he had to send a message to those who were so nervy as to try to weaken his grasp on the levers of power:

After RecallRoque.com was taken down, the criminal complaint says, Roque placed a telephone call to the proprietor of the website — “Victim 1,” a government official in Hudson County, N.J. — to say that the page had been taken down by “high government officials and that everyone would pay for getting involved against Mayor Roque.”

Roque also allegedly tried to intimidate those involved with the website, telling “Victim 1” that he had a friend on the CIA: “A friend of mine. he works in the — I can’t tell you — three letters — CIA. You know. That’s how I get information. So what I’m doing is not very kosher.”

Think we’ll see Democrats decrying this? Not likely, and not unless it starts to get traction nationally… which won’t happen without a fight given the leftymedia’s bias. If it was a Republican mayor, however, you’d be treated to lots of coverage of it.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76723.html

The General Services Administration’s inspector general issued a 16-page “management deficiency report’’ on Monday outlining its findings concerning the 2010 Western Regions Conference in Las Vegas. The report concluded that the five-day event for 300 attendees in October 2010 at the M Resort Spa Casino cost more than $822,751.  It added that many expenditures were “excessive and wasteful.”

In the wake of the report, the head of the GSA resigned and two of her deputies were fired. (The GSA is  the federal agency that manages U.S. government buildings.)

This is about par for the Obama Administration course; to them, taxpayer dollars are infinite and eternal, so spend all you want!

GSA spent $146,527.05 on catered food and beverages during the WRC. That spending included $5,600 for three semi-private catered in-room parties and $44 per person daily breakfasts. GSA also paid $30,207.60 – or roughly $95 per person – for the closing reception and dinner; attendees at that dinner included 27 guests of GSA employees and seven contractor employees. GSA obtained repayment for guests’ meals, but only for 23 of the guests and not for the entire cost of the meal.

Ya know, I’m in my mid-40s and I don’t remember ever eating a meal that was $95 just for me.

An administration official said the expenses also included about $3,000 for a mind-reader to entertain attendees, though the inspector general’s report made no mention of it.

They should have hired a fortune teller, maybe she could have warned them about this, though it really doesn’t take much precognition to figure out that these sorts of expenses aren’t really responsible. One wonders, though, if the bigwigs would have resigned if this report hadn’t been written.

I guess what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas.

A California solar energy company that was unable to meet a deadline for an Energy Department loan guarantee last year has sought bankruptcy protection in Delaware.

Solar Trust of America’s Chapter 11 filing on Monday listed assets between $1 million and $10 million, and liabilities between $10 million and $50 million.

And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s been touting this company:

Salazar, California Gov. Jerry Brown and other elected officials were in attendance in June when Solar Trust of America broke ground on its 1,000-megawatt Blythe solar project in Southern California. The project has been touted as the world’s largest solar power plant and a keystone of the Obama administration’s efforts to promote solar energy.

Last month, the company announced the project was being delayed for at least a year to accommodate a major technology change, from solar thermal troughs to photovoltaic solar panels that convert the sun’s power into electricity.

Salazar called the setback a normal part of the industry’s evolution and said it would not deter him from approving more solar projects.

Solyndra didn’t stop him, the Solar Trust delay didn’t stop him, wonder if their bankruptcy will stop him?

Probably not. He’s too much of an ideologue, like his boss.

According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, more than 20,000 people say they were evicted from their homes here in recent years to make way for a tree plantation run by a British forestry company, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.

“Too many investments have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods,” Oxfam said in the report. “This interest in land is not something that will pass.” As population and urbanization soar, it added, “whatever land there is will surely be prized.”

Across Africa, some of the world’s poorest people have been thrown off land to make way for foreign investors, often uprooting local farmers so that food can be grown on a commercial scale and shipped to richer countries overseas.

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.

So, rich lefties in America buy carbon credits, or do business with companies that buy them… and poor Africans get pushed off the land they’re farming. As for the statement that the farmers were there illegally:

Tensions brewed. The company and government said the residents were living illegally in a forest. Residents said they had rights. Community members took the company to court in 2009 and a temporary injunction was issued, barring evictions. Nevertheless, Oxfam and residents say, evictions continued.

So now who’s acting illegally, i.e. in violation of a court order?

AGW has been nothing but a money-grubbing scam since Day One–just look at the mansions Al Gore has been able to purchase with what he’s pocketed from it–so things like this are to be expected, and will probably continue until people rise up and tell the Church of Global Warming what circle of Hades to go to.

A judge Wednesday slapped the defunct grass-roots community organizing group ACORN with a maximum $5,000 fine for its role in a voter registration compensation scheme in the 2008 election cycle.

District Judge Donald Mosley was confined by statute to only fine the corporation, which pleaded guilty in April to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters.

Mosley said if there was an individual standing before him, and not a corporation, that person would have been given a 10-year prison sentence, “And I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

The judge chastised the now-bankrupt corporation for making a “mockery” of the nation’s election process. “This isn’t a banana republic,” Mosley said.

The state will have a difficult time recouping the fine. When the national organization closed its doors in April 2010, the group had assets totaling less than $4,000 and “liabilities of more than $4 million,” according to court records.

Of course, as has been reported here before, ACORN is still getting federal dollars, so perhaps Nevada can get some of that fine after all.

The fact that they’re still around, of course, emphasize the importance of all conservatives voting in November 2012… we need to make the Republican candidate’s margin of victory larger than the margin of fraud likely to be perpetuated by ACORN and other lefty voter-fraud machines… unless you want another 4 years of Obama.