"To the President’s other men and women -- in the White House and elsewhere -- who took risks to provide us with confidential information. Without them there would have been no Watergate story told by the Washington Post.” Dedication, "All the President’s Men,” Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
May 22, 2013
By: Linda Case Gibbons
I’ve been watching the hearings on the IRS and Benghazi on CSPAN and keeping up with coverage on all of Obama’s scandals and I’ve decided: Forget about Congressional Committee hearings. They’re getting us nowhere.
Like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, everyone moves to the left even if they haven’t finished their tea and crumpets, leaving their messes behind.
None of the government muckety-mucks are willing to tell us anything. By the time anyone who knows anything is called upon to testify, they already have one foot out the door and don’t remember anything, or at least say they don’t.
And when the smoke clears, the only thing that has changed is the bad guys get promoted upward, are "punished” by being placed on administrative leave with pay or like the Fort Hood Muslim terrorist, get paid while waiting out his trial for killing Americans.
Using government to hammer conservatives, it’s not a pretty sight.
Take today’s IRS Congressional Hearings. Douglas Shulman, former IRS commissioner who left the post in November, found a comfortable place at the tea table by repeating over and over again how "saddened" he was about targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
He also said he acknowledged that it did indeed happen on his watch, but that he refuses to take responsibility for any of it.
Refuses.
That’s about the best it ever got with this former IRS department head.
The man received 132 letters from United States Congressmen asking about IRS targeting, there had been 42 news stories about the issue during the same time period and, as Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan revealed, Shulman made 118 visits to the White House over a two-year period, yet Shulman never checked out anything about targeting practices at the IRS.
He did no research. He did nothing. And he denies speaking with the president about targeting on any of his 118 visits or how the practice would impact on the 2012 re-elect Obama election. Or so he says.
From what we heard during the hearings, Shulman didn’t do much of anything while he headed up his department at the IRS.
During the proceedings today, whatever questions were asked, Shulman just seemed puzzled. And when he did speak, he said he did not have the full story on IRS targeting until Inspector General George’s report was issued last week, a report which stated that the IRS had engaged in "inappropriate” targeting of conservative groups for years.
Even when it was disclosed that IRS officials knew about the targeting practices since at least May 2012, Shulman remained puzzled.
If he heard about a "list” of targeted groups, and he guesses he did, Shulman said he didn’t know who or what was on that list, so he decided to do nothing and let J. Russell George, Treasury Department inspector general run with the investigation.
As for the White House visits Shulman says he recalls going there for an Easter egg hunt, but that was about it.
In his seeming amnesia of events and lack of responsible action, Shulman was the quintessential Obama government official that we have seen repeatedly in this administration, from Hillary Clinton on down.
This was in bold contrast to Lois Lerner, at least the Lois Lerner of May 10, 2013.
Head of the Tax Exempt Division of the IRS, Lois blew the lid off the IRS targeting "scandal” by curiously "leaking” information about it at an American Bar Association conference on May 10.
While it was true conservative groups and conservative donors were targets for years, this was the first time the agency acknowledged the practice and Lois was tasked with getting out the word.
Scuttlebutt is that it was less about candor and remorse and more about timing. Get it out there now, get it done with now and have it forgotten before the 2016 election. Some say the real aim of the targeting was to warn whistleblowers and sources "this could happen to you.”
Some say.
But nonetheless Lois apologized. The agency singled out conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status by using search terms such as "Tea Party,” and "Patriots,” she said, and subjected them to additional scrutiny.
She learned about the practice in June 2011, but had not revealed the information before, she said, because she was never asked. When the Congressional Committee did ask, Lois decided she didn’t want to talk, at least not to a Congressional Committee.
If called, she announced, she would exercise her Constitutional rights by invoking the Fifth Amendment, accessing rights she had ironically denied to the people she targeted while she performed her duties at the IRS.
I know, I know. You’re used to seeing mob bosses with Joisey accents on the witness stand invoking the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate themselves; criminals, not innocent heads of the IRS.
But at the IRS Congressional Hearings today, Lois clammed up and refused to answer House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) questions.
Before invoking her Constitutional rights, however, Lois tersely made an opening statement denying any wrongdoing and professing pride in her years of government service.
For some reason she also volunteered she wasn’t guilty even when no one asked.
"I have not broken any laws,” she said, flanked by her counsel, perhaps not realizing "invoking” presupposes criminality; perhaps not realizing that in making an opening statement she may have lost her right to invoke at all.
"You don’t get to tell your side of the story and not be subjected to cross examination,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) bellowed at the hearing. "That’s not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement, she ought to stand here and answer our questions.”
But Lois didn’t answer questions and may or may not be called upon to answer any in the future.
So here’s what I think we the people should do. I think we should discontinue committee hearings and the White House press conferences and fire all the people who "advise” the president wherever they are, State Department, Homeland Security. Who needs them? He never talks to them.
Instead we should do what the president does to learn about his various escapades and scandals: read it in the newspaper.
That’s the place, or so he tells us, where the president learns about everything that’s going on, granted a little bit late, but he does finally learn about what’s going on in America and particularly in his administration.
This week in fact he said as much about IRS targeting.
"I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday.
He "thinks?”
Relying on the newspapers, though, you may not learn about "facts” per se, but really what have facts done for us lately, anyhow?
And we know he skips briefings and he’s probably right. It really is a waste of time when, as president, all you have to do is just pick up the New York Times or the Washington Post and get firsthand from your press what you did, what went on and when it happened.
After all that’s where Shulman, a highly placed employee in the IRS, said he learned about Gov. Romney’s tax records being "leaked” so Harry Reid could talk about them on the floor of the Senate before the 2012 election -- in the newspaper, same as the president.
We know for sure Kathryn Ruemmler, Obama’s head counsel isn’t going to tell him about the IRS "scandal” even though she knew about it back in April and was back and forth, talking to folks in the Treasury Department. So why do we need her?
We know for sure Obama won’t hear it from his attorney general who is busy using government to chase reporters, so why do we need him?
Oh, that’s right, Holder has now been placed in charge of investigating "leaks” in the government and will basically be investigating himself once again, just like in Fast and Furious.
By and large, staffing the government with these types of people is just a big waste of taxpayer money and time as Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) said at today’s hearing.
"In all the scandals we hear the same thing from time after time by the government officials that are involved -- Benghazi, IRS, AP reporters, Fast and Furious -- time after time we’re hearing people ‘wasn’t my job, I don’t know, it was the other office, I recused, I didn’t find out about it until you found out about it.’
"Where does the accountability begin?”
Well, I have the answer.
If you want clarity on accountability to get up to speed on the Obama administration, all you have to do is pick up a copy of "All the President’s Men,” by Bernstein and Woodward and John Dean’s "Blind Ambition."
It’s all there, step by step, what happened in the days before a president was forced to resign because of the abuse of his presidency.
It’s all there, the excuses, the denials, the seeming ineptitude, and the line-up of possible expendables in Obama‘s inner circle.
And I think Bob Woodward may very well have a second shot at replaying his Watergate expose.
Hold the line, America.