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Exploding IRS scandal.

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Balt said:
It's a shame that scumbag liar Issa couldn't keep cherry-picking from interviews for the next few months while refusing to release the full transcripts. He could have fueled irresponsible speculation and allegations for months.

Elijah Cummings completely ruined EVERYTHING. 🙁
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I'd like to see a special prosecutor, someone that both parties can agree on have an investigation. Do I think this Attorney General and this President will do it? No I don't.
 
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ivwshane said:
Lol another straw man. Do you guys have no shame?

What's the IRS scandal?
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I apologize. My inadvertent straw man came from the fact that I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. I really didn't think someone would be stupid enough to make the argument that the IRS's behavior here wasn't scandalous. Even with the testimonies now at hand. Especially someone who is so quick to label others as idiots. To think that someone who labels others as idiots is indeed an idiot would just be, well, idiotic. My mistake, I stand corrected.
 
If you look at the various definitions of scandal:

1. a disgraceful or discreditable action, circumstance, etc.
2. an offense caused by a fault or misdeed.
3. damage to reputation; public disgrace.
4. defamatory talk; malicious gossip.
5. a person whose conduct brings disgrace or offense.
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Definitions 3 and 4 have nothing to do with the act, but rather with people's perception of it and behavior toward it. A "scandal" is either the bad act or the reaction to it, whether the reaction is justified or not. This qualifies as a scandal merely because lots of people view it as such, and talk about it as such. There could have been no wrong-doing and it's still a "scandal" by those definitions.

That said, based on what we know, there does seem to be some wrongdoing so I'd have to say it qualifies as a scandal under those definitions as well. There appears to be a disagreement about the extent and magnitude of it, but it's a scandal under multiple definitions nonetheless.
 
1. a disgraceful or discreditable action, circumstance, etc.
2. an offense caused by a fault or misdeed.
3. damage to reputation; public disgrace.
4. defamatory talk; malicious gossip.
5. a person whose conduct brings disgrace or offense. 1. a disgraceful or discreditable action, circumstance, etc.

Given that definition, does Issa's behaviour rise to the level of scandalous?
 
woolfe9998 said:
If you look at the various definitions of scandal:



Definitions 3 and 4 have nothing to do with the act, but rather with people's perception of it and behavior toward it. A "scandal" is either the bad act or the reaction to it, whether the reaction is justified or not. This qualifies as a scandal merely because lots of people view it as such, and talk about it as such. There could have been no wrong-doing and it's still a "scandal" by those definitions.

That said, based on what we know, there does seem to be some wrongdoing so I'd have to say it qualifies as a scandal under those definitions as well. There appears to be a disagreement about the extent and magnitude of it, but it's a scandal under multiple definitions nonetheless.
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Certainly it qualifies as a scandal. We're still learning the extent and magnitude of that scandal and whether or not it extends into the White House, but it can be a scandal without applying to Obama or his administration other than his responsibility as head of all the Executive Branch.

This is the most blatant political abuse of government since Watergate. Hopefully those responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
 
werepossum said:
Certainly it qualifies as a scandal. We're still learning the extent and magnitude of that scandal and whether or not it extends into the White House, but it can be a scandal without applying to Obama or his administration other than his responsibility as head of all the Executive Branch.

This is the most blatant political abuse of government since Watergate. Hopefully those responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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I certainly agree it's a "scandal" which is the point of my post. However, it's a bit contradictory for you to in one breath acknowledge that there are unknowns regarding the magnitude of the scandal and in another, to call it "the most blatant political abuse of government since Watergate."

Without proof of White House involvement, and without yet knowing whether there was intent here, I don't think we can yet measure its magnitude or even begin to make those kinds of comparisons.
 
Poor Issa, it's going to be a lot harder to cherry pick and present out-of-context info in order to smear others now.

Oh well.
 
woolfe9998 said:
I certainly agree it's a "scandal" which is the point of my post. However, it's a bit contradictory for you to in one breath acknowledge that there are unknowns regarding the magnitude of the scandal and in another, to call it "the most blatant political abuse of government since Watergate."

Without proof of White House involvement, and without yet knowing whether there was intent here, I don't think we can yet measure its magnitude or even begin to make those kinds of comparisons.
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For over two years the most powerful and most feared federal government department was blatantly used to benefit one political party at the expense of the other. Surely you can't imagine that happened without intent, even absent the testimony from IRS agents. Remember that this was a concerted effort throughout the IRS which included obtaining and leaking donor lists to progressive organizations, leaking pending applications to progressive organizations, and improperly going after donations to conservative not-for-profit groups as gifts for which the donors must pay taxes. We know this was improper because the IRS admitted so and dropped their demands after the light of day was applied.

You are correct that we cannot yet measure its magnitude, yet what we already know places it beyond any political abuse since Watergate even absent any White House involvement, unless I'm forgetting something major.
 
werepossum said:
For over two years the most powerful and most feared federal government department was blatantly used to benefit one political party at the expense of the other. Surely you can't imagine that happened without intent, even absent the testimony from IRS agents. Remember that this was a concerted effort throughout the IRS which included obtaining and leaking donor lists to progressive organizations, leaking pending applications to progressive organizations, and improperly going after donations to conservative not-for-profit groups as gifts for which the donors must pay taxes. We know this was improper because the IRS admitted so and dropped their demands after the light of day was applied.

You are correct that we cannot yet measure its magnitude, yet what we already know places it beyond any political abuse since Watergate even absent any White House involvement, unless I'm forgetting something major.
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If what you say is true, why did a conservative Republican go along with this scheme to hurt the Republican party?
 
berzerker60 said:
Cases that actually did involve the White House:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Contra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
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Lol, the only one of those that comes at all close in magnitude to this scandal is the Iran-Contra affair and in it the administration was trying to rescue American hostages, not using the IRS to punish political enemies here in the US. Come on Berzerker you're going to have to do better than that.
 
I consider the VP exposing a CIA agent and putting her life at risk because he was pissy about her husband's op-ed to be pretty damned serious. I also consider the overt politicization of the Justice Department by the president to be pretty damned awful. Those are real life abuses of executive power to punish political enemies, not some low-level IRS people acting badly and the IRS coming forward with this information voluntarily. They were way, way worse.

I also limited myself to post-Watergate since you started there, but there are plenty of other truly awful abuses of power in American history going back to its earliest days that are way, way worse than this IRS thing.

Iran-Contra was one of the most despicable scandals in American history. Sitting president consciously violates the law, negotiates with and sells weapons to Islamic terrorists, funds nun-raping terrorists in Latin America, and Congress lets him off scot-free, and then America's gnat-size memory allows a PR campaign to turn one of our worst presidents into today's St Reagan mythology. The selective tax-exempt status approval decisions of some IRS employees is a laughable, pale little comparison.
 
berzerker60 said:
I consider the VP exposing a CIA agent and putting her life at risk because he was pissy about her husband's op-ed to be pretty damned serious. I also consider the overt politicization of the Justice Department by the president to be pretty damned awful. Those are real life abuses of executive power to punish political enemies, not some low-level IRS people acting badly and the IRS coming forward with this information voluntarily. They were way, way worse.

I also limited myself to post-Watergate since you started there, but there are plenty of other truly awful abuses of power in American history going back to its earliest days that are way, way worse than this IRS thing.

Iran-Contra was one of the most despicable scandals in American history. Sitting president consciously violates the law, negotiates with and sells weapons to Islamic terrorists, funds nun-raping terrorists in Latin America, and Congress lets him off scot-free, and then America's gnat-size memory allows a PR campaign to turn one of our worst presidents into today's St Reagan mythology. The selective tax-exempt status approval decisions of some IRS employees is a laughable, pale little comparison.
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The VP did not expose Plame's name. That was Richard Armitage, the anti-war State careerist. Plame's behavior comes much closer to a political scandal than does Armitage's, and in any case she was not a "CIA agent", she was an analyst.
 
Really?

berzerker60 said:
I consider the VP exposing a CIA agent and putting her life at risk because he was pissy about her husband's op-ed to be pretty damned serious.
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The Special Prosecutor investigated it. The VP did NOT expose her. It was the pudgy Democrat guy over the State Dept.

I won't go into the whole 'expose' thing.


berzerker60 said:
I also consider the overt politicization of the Justice Department by the president to be pretty damned awful.
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You do realize that Bill Clinton fired ALL the DoJ lawyers and replaced them with his own?

In any case, it's the President's prerogative

berzerker60 said:
Iran-Contra was one of the most despicable scandals in American history. Sitting president consciously violates the law, negotiates with and sells weapons to Islamic terrorists, funds nun-raping terrorists in Latin America, and Congress lets him off scot-free, and then America's gnat-size memory allows a PR campaign to turn one of our worst presidents into today's St Reagan mythology.
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From the NY Times:

the investigation found no credible evidence that President Reagan violated any criminal statute. The O.I.C. could not prove that Reagan authorized or was aware of the diversion or that he had knowledge of the extent of North's control of the contra-resupply network.
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http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-transcript.html

If you're so pissed about Reagan selling weapons to Iran I'll bet you're literally apoplectic about Obama just giving them away for free to AQ in Syria.

BTW: The Iran govt probably shouldn't be referred to as "Islamic terrorists" given they were using weapon to pound Saddam and Iraq in a war.

Fern
 
Fern said:
the investigation found no credible evidence that President Reagan violated any criminal statute. The O.I.C. could not prove that Reagan authorized or was aware of the diversion or that he had knowledge of the extent of North's control of the contra-resupply network.
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Heh. That resembles the outcome of the Plame investigation, where ol' Scoot took the fall while sealing off the investigation. Much the same occurred wrt Iran-Contra, with GHWB later pardoning several who had been convicted, while several won on appeal because of congressional grants of immunity-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair#Indictments

Ollie North is a hero of the Right, and Poindexter advised GWB, so figure it out. The Tower commission graciously accepted Ronnie's poor memory as an excuse ("I don't recall") for not knowing that so many of his close advisors were willfully breaking the law, but it's different somehow when potential IRS lawbreakers rather remote from Obama are implicated....
 
werepossum said:
The VP did not expose Plame's name. That was Richard Armitage, the anti-war State careerist. Plame's behavior comes much closer to a political scandal than does Armitage's, and in any case she was not a "CIA agent", she was an analyst.
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If this IRS business can be tracked all the way up to Obama's Chief of Staff, would you just be willing to assume that it stopped right there and Obama had nothing to do with it? I guess so, since Obama himself apparently didn't physically do the dirty work, just like Cheney didn't.
 
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woolfe9998 said:
If this IRS business can be tracked all the way up to Obama's Chief of Staff, would you just be willing to assume that it stopped right there and Obama had nothing to do with it? I guess so, since Obama himself apparently didn't physically do the dirty work, just like Cheney didn't.
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Actually Libby was Cheney's chief of staff, not Bush's, and he was never charged with leaking that least kept of secrets, Plame's name, so it's hardly analogous. Libby was charged with and convicted of perjury for claiming not to remember a conversation with a journalist who said she gave him Plame's name and he supposedly replied "That's what I've heard too." The jury decided he was lying and did remember it; being one of those crimes for which no proof is necessary, that was sufficient to convict.

If however Obama's chief of staff is implicated, I will indeed assume Obama is behind it. I highly doubt that will be the case though; the benefit-to-risk ratio just doesn't seem reasonable for a first-term President who is reasonably popular (especially in spring 2010 when this started) and wants a second term - but doesn't want to spend it defending himself in an impeachment trial.
 
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