Trampling the First Amendment

From both stories it would appear that DOJ's search for the source of the leaks extended to subpoenas for telephone records for phones used by Congressional representatives - whose phone conversations (and with whom they speak) might be more sensitive than many other conversations.

The concept that their phone records were examined by DOJ is unlikely to sit well with any number of Congressmen and women. Not only will they likely be no happier than the AP reporters at the prospect, but unlike the reporters the Congressmen likely can do something about it.
 
Hokey Dokey.

I started a conversation with the Staff, earlier this morning, about this thread in particular. Mostly because I could see no way we could actually discuss the goings on, whether it be the IRS targeting or the subpoenaed phone logs, without delving into the politics of the actions.

So, we will open this thread, and this thread only, to such politics. I will quote Tom Servo as to the scope of the political discussion:

It's one thing to describe the political process; it's another to discuss the merits of individual politicians. Some politics are bound to seep into any discussion of civil rights. If the balance turns the wrong way, we can always close it.
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Heed the above well. Because as yet, despite any personal perceptions or suspicions, we don't know who is actually behind all of this.
 
To me the fundamental issue isn't whether or not the .gov can find a suitable scapegoat to throw under a bus, it's the fact that it could happen at all. The AP "investigation," in particular, seems to me to offer a demonstration of yet another increment in the inexorable march toward micro-parsing words while ignoring the intent of the Constitution.

What does the 1st Amendment say?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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In this case, the Congress did not "make a law," so a Bill Clinton "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" protege would argue that the 1st Amendment has not been violated. But if you take broad view that the intent of the 1st Amendment is to tell the government not to interfere with the press ... then it becomes obvious that we are not just approaching a slippery slope, we are on the toboggan and careening over the precipice at breakneck speed.

The same argument holds regarding the IRS using audits to stifle political dissent. The Congress didn't pass a law saying "Thou shalt not be a conservative," so on the literal level there's no Constitutional violation. On a wider, moral/ethical level, if the intent of the 1st Amendment was to protect political speech from government retribution, then the current government (regardless of who is sitting in the Casa Blanca) is perilously close to the point of no return.
 
But if you take broad view that the intent of the 1st Amendment is to tell the government not to interfere with the press ...
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There have been a ton of court cases on this.

Unless whatever they were publishing regarded:

publication of sailing dates of transports or the number or location of troops
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The government is not allowed to interfere as I understand case law.

Seems unlikely since the government won't even say what it was. If people were placed in peril over the publication then they should have approached the editors and worked through them. This looks like something else.



With the IRS case it appears to be a much broader and more clear case of suppression.

They fired the current head of the IRS Non-profit group. Another meaningless gesture. He had been there eight days. The old head is now in charge of the tax office for Affordable Health Care Act.


The ObamaCare official now drawing scrutiny had been serving as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations from 2009 to 2012 -- the division included the group that targeted Tea Partiers -- and has since left to serve as director of the IRS' Affordable Care Act division. That unit is responsible for enforcing parts of the health care law, including the fines associated with the so-called individual mandate -- the requirement to buy health insurance.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...-revelation-on-another-scandal/#ixzz2TYS7EGG3



While I understand this issue is highly political it is also bipartisan. If one side allows the other to openly abuse the office of the executive the other shoe will drop eventually.
 
Alabama Shooter said:
publication of sailing dates of transports or the number or location of troops
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The government is not allowed to interfere as I understand case law....
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Nope. In Near v. State of Minnesota Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 51 S.Ct. 625, 75 L.Ed. 1357 (1931) the Supreme Court expressly recognized that as one of a number of possible exceptions to the rule against prior restraint.
 
Unlike Benghazi these are real scandals. They should be investigated to the fullest.

But don't get your hopes up about this leading to the fall of the government.

The basis of the procurement of phone records is a claim by the government that, failing getting a subpoena through regular channel, a warrant can be issued on the signature of the AG.
That line of reasoning is the same used by the Bush administration for by passing the FISA Court and other governmental over reaches. The Bush administration wasn't held to account for its action and in some cases it was upheld by the courts.

Using the IRS for political purposes happened under Nixon, Reagan, and the second Bush. Afaik there weren't any political or legal consequences.

At any rate I would like to see a special prosecutor appointed for each case. In both cases I'd like to see that a prosecutor would have a wider mandate than the specific case. They should investigate all cases of government bypassing the courts and all instances of using the IRS as a political tool.

Powerful institutions will continue to abuse their powers as long as no one goes to jail.
 
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Using the IRS for political purposes happened under Nixon, Reagan, and the second Bush. Afaik there weren't any political or legal consequences.
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That is hardly a fair and unbiased statement. Nearly every administration has done so to a degree since the founding of the IRS:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/03/m...the-abuse-of-power.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

The question is to what degree? This is the first time a such widespread pattern of abuse has been noted.



ETA- Interesting update.

Apparently the AG's argument that lives were at risk on the AP phone records is being shown to be without much merit:

But the argument doesn’t hold up, some say, because the day after it was released, the White House’s top counterterrorism adviser went on “Good Morning America” and talked about how successful the operation had been. John Brennan, now CIA director, praised the work of U.S. intelligence officials and said that the Al Qaeda plot was never an active threat to the American public.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...-risk-is-false/?test=latestnews#ixzz2TfLPsAY6

Both these statements can not be true.
 
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That is hardly a fair and unbiased statement. Nearly every administration has done so to a degree since the founding of the IRS:
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I admit to bias, but it is fair to contrast previous instances to what's happening now.
Yes previous administrations have abused their power. To quote Bob Barr, If you give government power it will use it.

The question is to what degree?
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I believe that there is no instance where abuse of power is tolerable. When we don't go after corruption we set a precedent. That precedent, the camel's nose, was when Ford pardoned Nixon.
That is why I'm not too sanguine about the current scandal leading to a big pay off for the administration's opponents.

This is the first time a such widespread pattern of abuse has been noted.
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Are you sure of that? I'll wait till the investigation is over before going that far.
 
That is why I'm not too sanguine about the current scandal leading to a big pay off for the administration's opponents.
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The really sad part is that has been the focus of nearly all of the media reports. Who will benefit from the scandal? how to minimize the damage to the administration? Investigative Journalism in defense of civil rights died long ago.
 
Buzzcook
That precedent, the camel's nose, was when Ford pardoned Nixon.
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Exactly. I don't often agree wholeheartedly with Republicans nor Democrats, but I think it was Boehner who said "who's going to jail for this?" If gov't employees don't start fearing what might happen if they knowingly break the law and commit institutional discrimination (against any group), then we're all done.

Unfortunately, most of the talking heads seem to have begun treating this less as a real-live issue with a smoking gun and more as a Republican versus Democrat "gotcha" scandal.

It's an understandable rut. How often have we seen parties fabricate "really important issues" from non-issues? After decades of this, people tend to lose perspective.
 
A story from CBS today suggests that the real scandal may be not so much a partisan one, but rather the fact that the IRS has targeted small, local groups instead of going after the major, "deep-pockets" organizations that have sprung up as 501(c)(4)s since the Citizens' United decision on both sides of the political divide, and which are dedicated to political spending rather than social welfare, which is supposed to be their primary purpose.
A Senate investigative panel led by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican John McCain of Arizona has been reviewing the use of social welfare groups for political causes for the past year and now is examining the agency's handling of the tax-exempt reviews.

And in a letter to congressional investigators Thursday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., urged the House Ways and Means Committee not to ignore the influx of groups that may be abusing the tax code as part of its upcoming IRS probe, saying: "I hope we can remove the incentive for any group, regardless of its political orientation, to seek 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status to engage in significant political campaign activities while hiding their donors."​

It was clear from the get-go that this kind of abuse and corruption would follow from the Citizens' United decision. If the current IRS scandal brings this to light, some good may come of it.
 
According to an article in today's New York Times, the scandal over the IRS' handling of tax-exemption applications is likely to boil down to simple bureaucratic incompetence and overwork:
Overseen by a revolving cast of midlevel managers, stalled by miscommunication with I.R.S. lawyers and executives in Washington and confused about the rules they were enforcing, the Cincinnati specialists flagged virtually every application with Tea Party in its name. But their review went beyond conservative groups: more than 400 organizations came under scrutiny, including at least two dozen liberal-leaning ones and some that were seemingly apolitical.

Over three years, as the office struggled with a growing caseload of advocacy groups seeking tax exemptions, responsibility for the cases moved from one group of specialists to another, and the Determinations Unit, which handles all nonprofit applications, was reorganized. One batch of cases sat ignored for months. Few if any of the employees were experts on tax law, contributing to waves of questionnaires about groups’ political activity and donors that top officials acknowledge were improper. ​
It's also telling that critics of the administration have switched their emphasis from the actual behavior of the IRS to the administration's handling of the scandal, and even that is becoming an uphill struggle: Republican leaders have acknowledged that they have no evidence that President Obama ordered the IRS to target conservative groups. From this article from NBC news:
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said the IRS controversy amounted to evidence of a "culture of intimidation" by the administration. But he and Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., admitted they lacked evidence that the targeting of conservatives was ordered by the White House.

"We don't have anything to say that the president knew about it," said Camp, who chairs the House committee looking into the IRS controversy, on NBC's "Meet the Press."​
It's unfortunate that the critics' focus is on making political hay from this, rather than on the legitimate questions raised by the behavior of the IRS in this instance:
  • Why have they not gone after the major 501(c)(4)s on both right and left, which spent half a billion dollars on the last election?
  • And do we really want the IRS, of all agencies, to become the arbiter of political speech?
 
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Will Morning Joe recant on his statement that he doesn't see why we should have ARs, etc. as he doesn't need a clip with 30 cop killer bullets to take his six year old hunting?
 
There's some interesting observations from the National Journal about the current Scandalgate(s). The National Journal is evidently pro-administration most of the time:
First, there is some element of “spin," . . .

Second, there is almost comical bungling. While denying involvement in high crimes and misdemeanors, the Obama administration appears to be pleading guilty to lesser crimes of bureaucratic incompetence. But that is an unsustainable position for a president who wants Americans to believe again in the power and grace of good government, particularly as it relates to the implementation of Obamacare.
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(emphasis added).

So, even if successful at spinning these scandals as bureaucratic blunders, they nevertheless weaken the administration because they foster less trust from the masses. The article suggests several ways for the administration to "restore the public trust," including the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the IRS probe.
 
I know of the monster Fast and Furious thread but thought a quick mention here was relevant --
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson.

The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to be inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.”
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Govern...ments-to-smear-Fast-and-Furious-whistleblower.

The IG is referring the matter to the Office of Professional Responsibility to determine if Burke violated the Rules of Professional Conduct in the states in which he is licensed.

Given everything else going on with the administration right now, this probably won't get much play. Yet, Burke's actions seem consistent with the method of the administration to intimidate opponents. information leakers, and whistle blowers.
 
DOJ Inspector General's Report on smears

Surprise, surprise...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/20/DOJ-Inspector-General-confirms-US-Attorney-DOJ-headquarters-leaked-documents-to-smear-Fast-and-Furious-whistleblower

... so Dennis Burke actively tried to smear John Dodson, and the director for public affairs worked with Media Matters to smear whistleblowers, Congress, and any investigating journalists.

Bet this won't even make page 32 in the NYT and similar...

Let your fence sitting acquaintnces know about this report; heck, tell the antis, too.
 
Yup. And if you think that happened without the express approval of one Eric Holder, esq., you'd be quite mistaken.
 
Should add that the AP scandal is a 4th amendment question more than 1st.

With the war on drugs and now the terrorism excuse the 4th is almost moribund.
 
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