Lois Lerner, the head of the Exempt Organizations division of the IRS, just took the fifth amendment at the House Government Oversight Committee refusing to testify on the grounds that she might incriminate herself. Despite taking the fifth, Learner protested her innocence of any wrongdoing. “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken [...]

White House Spokesman Jay Carney’s earlier statements regarding White House knowledge of the IRS scandal failed to disclose that the President’s Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, knew about the situation weeks before the IRS report was published adding another name to the list of people who surrounded President Obama that knew about the report while [...]

The Republican Party, despite making its one salient point (politicizing intelligence during an election) long ago, simply refuses to let the Benghazi attack fade. Whether the motivation to continue comes from some vague hope in snagging Hillary Clinton in a 2016 attack ad worthy story or just a lingering fetish from the Bush years of [...]

After revelations that conservative groups were receiving different treatment from the Internal Revenue Service, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked for and was given the resignation of the Acting IRS Commissioner. President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew requested and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, [...]

The Internal Revenue Service decided to target conservative groups for higher scrutiny while processing mainstream liberal groups without incident a review of IRS data shows. The IRS had already confirmed earlier allegations of political bias. As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as [...]

I haven’t heard too much from the Rolling Jubilee, Occupy Wall Street’s idea to cancel debt after purchasing it from collectors, since the initial announcement. But Yves Smith is absolutely right to address this threat of potentially making things worse for the borrowers the Rolling Jubilee (under the name Strike Debt) means to help. It [...]

Talking Points Memo picks up on Eric Schneiderman’s investigation of Bain Capital’s tax avoidance strategies, and asks a couple questions about why the New York Attorney General is probing something clearly within the purview of the IRS. “[W]hat the hell is the Attorney General doing here?” asked Ed Kleinbard, a tax expert at USC’s Gould [...]

I have a piece in Salon about an under-the-radar issue I’ve discussed here before. Here’s a long excerpt: The letter from Bank of America Home Loans got right to the point. “We are pleased to inform you that we have approved your Home Equity Account for participation in a principal forgiveness program offered as a [...]

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog 19th Century German statesman Otto von Bismarck once said, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.” The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), put on the map by the Center for Media and Democracy in its “ALEC Exposed” project, is the archetype of von Bismarck’s truism. So too are the fracking [...]

A Cross-Post from DeSmogBlog The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as covered previously by DeSmogBlog, is the “Trojan Horse” behind mandating that climate change denial (“skepticism,” or “balance,” in its words) be taught in K-12 classrooms. Well, ALEC is at it again, it appears. Facing an IRS complaint filed by Common Cause, one of the leading advocacy groups working to [...]

With a Jewish holiday coming up tonight thoughts turn to what I should be neurotic about. Matt Yglesias says I should freak out about Europe, and he’s right. But that’s been the case for two years. And the powers that be over there are religiously opposed to the proper steps to take to end the [...]