Senators Carl Levin and John McCain have written a letter calling for IRS employee Lois Lerner to be removed from office:
Mr. Daniel Werfel
Acting Commissioner
Internal Revenue Service
1111 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20224
Dear Acting Commissioner Werfel:
We are writing to urge you to suspend immediately Lois Lerner from her office as Director of the Office of Exempt Organizations at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). We believe that Ms. Lerner failed to disclose crucial information concerning the IRS’s inappropriate targeting of some conservative 501(c)(4) organizations during the course of a Subcommittee investigation into how the IRS enforces the 501(c)(4) law, leading to an incomplete account of the full operations of her unit.
Since March of last year, the Subcommittee has been examining whether the IRS adequately and appropriately enforces tax code provisions and implementing regulations regarding the extent to which tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups may engage in political campaign activity. The Subcommittee asked the IRS why it was not enforcing the 501(c)(4) statute which states that social welfare organizations should be used “exclusively for the promotion of social welfare” and instead enforcing the more lenient IRS regulation which states that a social welfare organization may be used “primarily” for social welfare. It also asked the IRS about how they reviewed applications filed by certain Democratic and Republican leaning 501(c)(4)s. Our investigation has included a year’s worth of correspondence between the Subcommittee and the IRS, as well as document productions and repeated consultations with IRS staff.
On April 30, 2013, Ms. Lerner and seven IRS colleagues spent six-hours being interviewed, on a bipartisan basis, by Subcommittee staff. That interview covered, among other topics, how the IRS determines which groups to review, what actions are taken in connection with the IRS reviews, and how the laws and regulations are used to examine those groups. Ms. Lerner failed to disclose the internal controversy over the search terms used by the Cincinnati office to identify 501(c)(4) groups for further review, the actions taken by that office in reviewing the identified groups, the investigation and imminent findings by the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA); and TIGTA’s conclusion that the IRS had used inappropriate criteria to target Tea Party and other conservative groups. Ms. Lerner also failed to disclose that she was fully aware of these issues as early as June 2011, and, according to TIGTA, had been personally involved in reviewing questionable actions taken by the Cincinnati office.
Given the serious failure by Ms. Lerner to disclose to this Subcommittee key information on topics that the Subcommittee was investigating, we have lost confidence in her ability to fulfill her duties as Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS. Ms. Lerner’s continued tenure in the office she holds, where she is responsible for overseeing 1.6 million tax-exempt organizations, would erode public trust and confidence in the IRS and its professional integrity. We believe that the immediate removal of Ms. Lerner from office would be a vital step in helping to restore public trust in the agency.
Veteran Michigan congressman Dave Camp has all but ruled out running for an open Senate seat next year. The Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means committee told reporters Thursday morning at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor that he is focused on getting Congress to pass comprehensive tax reform.
“I’m not taking a serious look at the race,” said Camp. When asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD about his interest in running, the Michigan Republican laughed.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid helped set the precedent for looking into foreign backers when, in 2002, he demanded that Henry Kissinger reveal the source of his funders before serving on the 9/11 Commission. Kissinger refused to release his own documents, and therefore did not serve on the commission.
Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, tells Politico reporter Manu Raju that the committee will not vote on the nomination of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense on Thursday, as planned:
Hagel vote won't be tomorrow in Armed Services. Levin: "The committee’s review of the nomination is not yet complete."
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“The responsibility of combat commander in that kind of situation is to provide options to the president to implement his stated policy,” said Petraeus. “And that’s what I did.”
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Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said this morning that he doesn't object to surveying the troops' opinions on repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and that repealing the law would result in the full integration of gays in all areas of the military, including combat roles.
The Moscow Treaty signed by George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in 2002 did not require the actual destruction of a single U.S. or Russian warhead. All that it mandated was that warheads be taken from operational status—say, sitting on the tip of an ICBM—and moved to storage. Although the treaty was ratified by the Senate by a vote of 95 to 0, along the way Senate Democrats unrelentingly slammed the Bush administration for this deficiency.
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