Lois Lerner, an Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the scandal over the agency’s extra scrutiny of conservative groups, was put on administrative leave on Thursday after she refused to resign, a senator said.
Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa said new acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel asked for Lerner’s resignation.
An IRS spokesman declined to comment on Lerner’s status, citing privacy concerns. However, an internal memo supplied by the agency named Lerner’s replacement.
An aide to Grassley said Werfel spoke with Grassley’s office on Thursday afternoon and conveyed the information.
A bipartisan chorus in Congress had been calling for her to go. Democratic Senator Carl Levin and Republican Senator John McCain had written to Werfel earlier on Thursday calling for her to be removed.

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A TX man, who was in the process of moving to Maine, made a very simple mistake, and never made it to his hew home. Dustin Reininger is serving a 3-5 year prison sentence in the Garden State because he made a mistake, he stopped to take a nap in NJ during his multi day drive from Texas to Maine.

Police approached Reininger’s car when he was taking a nap near a bank in Readington, NJ.

Police then searched the suspect’s vehicle after seeing gun cases laying in the back seat and found the man’s personal gun collection, which was being transported in the car. This included 14 rifles, 4 shotguns and 3 handguns along with hollow point ammunition (which is extremely illegal to possess in public in NJ). Reininger was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 5 years in prison, with a chance for parole after 3.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT WWW.gunssavelives.NET

At a congressional hearing yesterday with Gary Cohen, the Health and Human Services official charged with managing the implementation of Obamacare, Republican legislators charged that Cohen’s agency may be improperly allowing some states to run “assister” programs that pay people to help individuals sign up for the health law’s coverage options. Republicans charged that HHS may not have the statutory authority to fund those programs in states running their own exchanges. That includes states like California, which plans to use a significant part of the $910 million it has received so far in federal implementation grants to pay 21,000 such assisters $58 for each person successfully enrolled in new Obamacare coverage.

To most observers, this probably looked like a strictly technical dispute over the rules governing Obamacare’s implementation funding. But at the heart of the dispute is something much larger—the growing liberal concern over what might be called the Obamacare Nightmare Scenario: that too few people, who are too sick, will sign up for coverage under the law, that premiums will rise in the exchanges, and that this will reinforce public skepticism of the law as an unworkable burden whose primary effect is to cause costs to rise.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT WWW.reason.COM

The Obama administration has gotten itself into a fix between its contradictory stories about the Benghazi incident, reports of the IRS targeting conservative groups, and the Justice Department’s grabbing of phone records from AP reporters. There are few things more fun to watch than arrogant political leaders — folks who spend their lives bossing everyone around — getting a comeuppance.

My favorite take wasn’t from any serious commentator but from comedian Jon Stewart, who noticed that the president routinely claims ignorance about embarrassing events by saying that he learned of them while watching the news: “I wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama learned Osama bin Laden had been killed when he saw himself announcing it on television.”

I take a bipartisan approach to Washington, DC’s political scandals and find myself savoring them all, regardless of the party that is in control of the White House. Any sane person would conclude that all administrations and bureaucracies essentially are corrupt given that they thrive on the exertion of power of other people. We know about the corrupting influence of power, and DC has become like ancient Rome that way. It’s a magnet for those seeking favor, money, or a big title administering some pointless program.

I visited DC last week and was astounded at the booming economy, the endless new construction, the astronomical prices, and garish displays of wealth everywhere — not to mention the haughty attitudes of every pissant assistant to the whatever. That’s what Other People’s Money buys you. When Ronald Reagan talked about the Shining City on the Hill he was speaking metaphorically about America, but the new shining city is DC — funded on the backs of all those Americans who blithely vote for people who promise to solve their problems.

That’s the main lesson from this latest mess: the federal government is an untamable beast. These superficial scandals are nothing compared to the things we will never learn — i.e., the way the CIA conducts its business overseas.

Still, there are so many things to savor as President Obama circles the drain. Obama has always exuded an intellectual arrogance. Yet if he’s so smart, why would his Justice Department target reporters? The national media has fawned over the president, but the quickest way to end that love affair is to go after their personal records.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT www.reason.com/

Prompted by Peggy Noonan’s claim in The Wall Street Journal that “we are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate,” Andrew Sullivan steps forward to defend Pres. Obama’s honor. “Can she actually believe this?,” he asks incredulously. “Has this president broken the law, lied under oath, or authorized war crimes? Has he traded arms for hostages with Iran? Has he knowingly sent his cabinet out to tell lies about his sex life? Has he sat by idly as an American city was destroyed by a hurricane? Has he started a war with no planning for an occupation? Has he started a war based on a lie, and destroyed the US’ credibility and moral standing while he was at it, leaving nothing but a smoldering and now rekindled civil sectarian war?”

An Obama critic, having overplayed her hand, gave Sullivan an opening to respond with what amounts to, “It isn’t as bad as Watergate, nor as bad as George W. Bush.” Let’s concede those points. I don’t much care what Obama’s Republican critics say about him. The scandals they’re presently touting, bad as two of them are, aren’t even the worst of Team Obama’s transgressions.

I have a stronger critique. Sullivan hasn’t internalized the worst of what Obama’s done, because his notion of scandal is implicitly constrained by whatever a president’s partisan opponents tout as scandalous. If they criticize Obama wrongly, he defends Obama proportionately.

To see what he’s forgotten as a result, let’s run once more through the first questions in Sullivan’s latest Obama apologia.

Has this president broken the law, lied under oath, or authorized war crimes?

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT www.theatlantic.com/

A Texas startup has developed a “smart rifle”that barely needs to be aimed.

The maker of the gun, being shipped to stores this week, brags that “even a novice shooter can become an elite long-range marksman in minutes.”

The company, TrackingPoint, has said its “world’s first” long range Precision Guided Firearms (PGF) integrate precision hardware, digital optics, and tracking technology to deliver an unmatched shooting experience. The line of rifles starts at about $22,500 and each comes packaged with an iPad mini including the interactive TrackingPoint mobile app.

“We’re taking centuries old tech, firearms and ammunition, and introducing 21st century technology to it,” TrackingPoint CEO Jason Schauble told ABC News.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT www.libertycrier.com/

Congressman Mike Kelly Slams IRS In Hearing And Gets Standing Ovation.