The IRS’s ‘Lost’ Email Deception

My article from the June 20, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

The IRS’s ‘Lost’ Email Deception

By Matthew Vadum

Emails from disgraced former IRS tax-exempt division chief Lois Lerner that could throw light on the Obama administration’s thuggish crackdown on conservative nonprofit groups have been sucked into an electronic black hole, IRS officials now claim.

It is the latest outrage from the Obama administration which has been on a vindictive rampage in recent years, using the feared tax collection agency to vex and persecute its political enemies, especially those associated with the Tea Party movement.

Under hyper-partisan, left-wing Democrat Lois Lerner, the tax-exempt organizations branch singled out for harassment the heroic Catherine Engelbrecht, leader of the Houston-based good government group True the Vote. Earlier this year the IRS revoked the charitable status of Manassas, Va.-based Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a conservative nonprofit group, because it disseminated old statements critical of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry a decade ago.

Although President Obama claimed earlier this year that there has not been even “a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS under his watch, it is clear that “the dog ate my homework,” is becoming the excuse of choice for his lawless administration.

But in March the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee published an in-depth report detailing IRS targeting of right-of-center 501c4 nonprofit advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. (The full report is available in PDF form at the committee’s website.) Congressional investigators determined that Lerner orchestrated an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation.

As political pressure builds on Capitol Hill, it can finally be revealed that a mysterious, politically progressive electromagnetic pulse may have hit the hard drives of Lerner and six of her IRS underlings. Obama officials now claim the emails of all seven government employees to outside organizations and agencies including the White House have been consigned to oblivion.

Benghazi ‘Suspect’ Captured

My article from the June 18, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Benghazi ‘Suspect’ Captured

By Matthew Vadum

A man the Obama administration claims orchestrated the deadly attack on the American diplomatic complex in Benghazi, Libya, on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities is now in U.S. custody.

This means that — abracadabra! — a suspect is in U.S. custody even before anyone knew there was a suspect. After all, it was supposed to be a video that no one saw that mocked the Islamic prophet Mohammed that sparked spontaneous riots complete with attackers armed with military-grade weapons.

After the administration orchestrated a massive campaign of deception, spoon-feeding lies to its lapdog allies in the media, suddenly Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a senior leader of the Ansar al-Shari’a terrorist militia in Benghazi, is in American hands. Khatallah, who was not in hiding in Libya and who made himself available to visiting journalists, was  charged by U.S. authorities last year with murder in connection with the assault, according to newly unsealed court documents.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said he “anticipated” that the raid seizing Khatallah would happen but suggested that the importance of the capture is overblown.

“The administration would like to say, all right, we apprehended someone, isn’t that great, to deflect the attention away from the real Benghazi problem—that is, the president and, through [Ambassador Susan] Rice and the rest of them, knew full well that it was all a terrorist attack, and they tried to cover it up and got caught in a lie.”

“The big deal here,” said Inhofe, “is we have a president who lied to the American people.”

Whether Khatallah had anything to do with the attack on the diplomatic facility has yet to be shown. Khattalah told the New York Times in October 2012 that he was not part of the violence at the U.S. facility.

President Obama, who apparently went to sleep after being informed of the ongoing attack on Sept. 11, 2012, said yesterday he authorized a military operation to seize Khatallah.

Lionizing the Enemy

My article from the June 17, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine

Lionizing the Enemy

By Matthew Vadum

A project is underway to rehabilitate the self-exiled Sixties radical, anti-Semite and “black power” advocate Stokely Carmichael.

The opening salvo in this revisionist project of the Afro-centrist Marxist Left in academia is Stokely: A Life, by Peniel E. Joseph, which was recently published by BasicCivitas Books.

It is more infomercial than biography, calculated to transform its negligible subject into a towering figure of historic importance, and to whitewash the damage he did. Joseph’s central argument is that Carmichael was a “rock star” activist who inspired generations and who singlehandedly changed the course of American history.

Perversely, Joseph calls Carmichael a civil rights leader. If that fairly summarizes Carmichael’s work, he was a civil rights leader only in the bizarre modern sense that racial arsonist like Al Sharpton is a civil rights leader.

It is difficult to imagine an American civil rights leader making common cause with ruthless African dictators but that is what Carmichael did. He changed his name to Kwame Toure to honor two of them. 

In his self-imposed exile he was a courtier to brutal racist tyrants. He was a friend of Ugandan butcher Idi Amin, and rationalized away the relationship by reminding himself that Amin was anti-American and anti-Zionist. Carmichael even accepted Ugandan citizenship.

He was also a friend of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Libya came closest to accomplishing Carmichael’s vision of a socialist state, according to Joseph.

It is difficult to image an American civil rights leader going abroad to help hostile powers, but this is what Carmichael did.

Carmichael visited Communist Cuba, giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies abroad. While there he called Abraham Lincoln a racist and helped Cuba’s propaganda effort against the United States. 

After spending three days with Fidel Castro he told reporters that the conversations he had with him were the “most educational, most interesting, and most enlightening of my public life.”

Carmichael praised the world’s most prolific mass murderer, Mao Zedong, as “a great Chinese leader, the greatest Chinese leader there is.” He palled around with Communist Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh and called for the U.S. to be defeated in Vietnam.

Shinseki’s Last Stand?

My article from the May 30, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Shinseki’s Last Stand?

By Matthew Vadum

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki is one step closer to falling on his sword as the deadly, politically explosive VA health care scandal forces even Democratic lawmakers to demand his removal.

The added political pressure came after a new interim report by the VA’s inspector general determined that the agency’s officials were involved in a massive conspiracy to cover up the long, life-threatening delays that America’s veterans have been subjected to in the assembly-line abattoir that is the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

In the words of the report, which followed audits of 216 health-care centers, there was a “systemic” push by VA officials to conceal the long wait times veterans faced. Veterans in Phoenix, Ariz., waited 115 days on average for a primary care appointment, which far exceeds what official VA statistics indicated. At least 40 veterans have died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system. Many of the dead had been put on secret waiting lists.

It’s the latest chapter in this sad but entirely predictable unfolding of events. The needless deaths, doctored documents, and all-around incompetence, are what necessarily happen when the government runs a single-payer health care system. The VA health care scandal provides real-life examples to the American public of the unspeakable horrors that await them if the Obamacare train is not soon derailed.

After the report came out Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who had resisted demanding Shinseki step down, joined the growing, bipartisan chorus seeking the secretary’s removal.

Billionaire Leftists Attack Your Gun Rights

My article from the May 28, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Billionaire Leftists Attack Your Gun Rights

By Matthew Vadum

Gun control advocates hoping to capitalize on the tragic incident this weekend in Santa Barbara, California have a powerful asset in their corner this year: Second Amendment-hating billionaires led by George Soros are gearing up for a fresh assault on your constitutional right to defend yourself, your family, and your property.

The Democracy Alliance, a donors collaborative of well over 100 far-left venture capitalists, heirs and heiresses, Hollywood moguls, and unethical bankers, is throwing millions of dollars at left-wing gun-control groups in hopes of preventing the increasingly likely Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate this November.

Soros and other progressive plutocrats plan to send upwards of $175 million to leftist organizations this year to push gun control and the rest of the Left’s agenda, according to documents left behind at a recent Democracy Alliance meeting in Chicago.

Some of the left-wing groups slated to receive hefty donations from Democracy Alliance members include: America Votes ($4 million); American Constitution Society ($1.5 million); Brennan Center for Justice ($2.7 million); Catalist ($750,000); Center for American Progress ($5.5 million); Center for Community Change ($3 million); Center for Budget and Policy Priorities ($2.5 million); Media Matters for America ($3 million); New Organizing Institute ($1 million); Organizing for Action ($1 million); Progress Now ($1.9 million); and State Voices ($2 million).

The mentally unstable head of fake watchdog group Media Matters, former journalist David Brock, himself reportedly has paranoid fantasies that conservatives are trying to kill him. Brock, whose group beats the drum loudly for gun control, also flouts the District of Columbia’s tough gun restrictions. Brock armed his assistant with weapons to protect him from would-be right-wing assassins, a felony in D.C. 

Other groups, many of which focus on the Second Amendment, were listed in a found document called “Democracy Alliance Progressive Infrastructure Map.” The document contains a roster of groups that have previously been approved for funding by the Alliance or that appear to have been deemed eligible for such funding.

VA Scandal: This Is What Death Panels Look Like

My article from the May 21, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

VA Scandal: This Is What Death Panels Look Like

By Matthew Vadum

The Veterans Administration hospital scandal that has claimed the lives of at least 40 U.S. military veterans continues to expand, adding to the image of a president who neither knows nor cares what happens to those who shed their blood on the battlefield for their fellow Americans.

With a little under six months before the crucial midterm elections, it is a helpful reminder to voters of the horrors that are not glitches, but essential features, of government-provided health care. The problems at the VA are omens, sneak previews of what the delivery of all health care in America will look like under Obamacare, and so it is fortuitous that the scandal should surface now.

President Obama is predictably, perfunctorily, outraged about these bad things that have been happening in the government he controls. He is shocked and promises to get to the bottom of the issue and do better in the future. It is tedious stuff.

The happenings at the VA are also more evidence, Obama critics say, that the president despises the military. Obama has been moving to reduce soldier pay and benefits and hollow out the military to mid-century staff levels. He has also been going on a human resources rampage, firing flag officers at a rate that alarms military observers. And like any good leftist, Obama believes that the only good American soldier is one who is functioning as a social worker, not a war-fighter.

Meanwhile, Obama VA officials have been working overtime covering up the various waiting list atrocities that have been popping up cross the country.

Big Labor Taking Over Soros Piggybank

My article from the May 8, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Big Labor Taking Over Soros Piggybank

By Matthew Vadum

An ultra-secretive left-wing money machine for super rich radicals is bringing more representatives of Big Labor into the fold in order to prevent the likely Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate this November.

Thanks to a Democracy Alliance member’s oversight, Americans are getting a sense of what the nation’s wealthy left-wingers have in store for the fall elections and beyond.

As Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon reported, leftist billionaire George Soros’s son Jonathan left behind a partial membership list of the Democracy Alliance at a meeting in a fancy Chicago hotel last week.

The names on the document suggest that organized labor is becoming increasingly influential within the left-wing plutocrats’ invitation-only club.

New Democracy Alliance members from the labor movement include Noel Beasley, president of Workers United, a textile union affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Keith Mestrich, president of the union-owned Amalgamated Bank. 

Other new members from Big Labor include Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. CWA senior director George Kohl and Michelle Ringuette, Weingarten’s assistant, also secured memberships in the Democracy Alliance.

But not all new members are professional parasites. Business people joining the Democracy Alliance recently include Adam Abram (insurance and real estate), Rick Segal (financial services), and Paul Boskind (psychology, behavioral health).

Hillary, the Left-Wing Money Machine and a New IRS Crackdown

My article from the April 25, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Hillary, the Left-Wing Money Machine and a New IRS Crackdown

By Matthew Vadum

The Internal Revenue Service has revoked the charitable status of a conservative nonprofit group that disseminated statements critical of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry a decade ago.

This is President Obama’s unambiguous warning shot calculated to intimidate conservative activists ready to work against Hillary Clinton if she decides to seek the presidency.

And it is the latest outrage committed by an administration that has been on a vindictive rampage in recent years, using the feared tax collection agency to vex and persecute its political enemies, especially those associated with the Tea Party movement. And yet, absurdly enough, President Obama claimed in a Super Bowl weekend interview that there has not been even “a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS under his watch.

All of this is a sobering reminder of how the scales are tipped in favor of the Left. Left-wing nonprofit groups, many of which rely on radical billionaires for funding, vastly outspend conservative groups, which tend to rely more on grassroots donations. Leftist organizations operate with almost complete impunity nowadays, unimpeded as they influence and pervert American politics in an effort to fundamentally transform our republic.

No Mere “Hate Crime”

My article from the April 17, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

No Mere “Hate Crime”

By Matthew Vadum

Former KKK leader Frazier Glenn Cross’s Sunday shooting spree that left three dead outside a Jewish retirement home and a Jewish community center in the Kansas City, Mo., suburbs was a heinous atrocity, and the reflexive “hate crime” label being applied to it diminishes the true scope of the evil at its core. 

Calling Miller’s acts hate crimes trivializes anti-Semitism, the evil that was Nazism and the monstrosity that was the Holocaust. The “hate crime” designation is over-relied on nowadays and this overuse has diluted its meaning. Spray-painting graffiti on a church or defacing a statue can be considered hate crimes.

The bar has been set so low that refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple is a hate crime in the eyes of many left-wingers. Miller’s acts hardly belong in the same category.

Although all three apparently randomly selected victims were Christians, not Jews, the feds appear to be leaning in the direction of a hate crime prosecution. The attack “strikes at the core fundamental freedoms … of how our country was founded and what we live by every single day,” said FBI agent 

Michael Kaste. “We’ve now determined that the motivation behind this was a hate crime. The acts that this person committed were the result of beliefs … that he had.”

Labor Fascism in Chattanooga

My article in American Thinker from April 18, 2014:

Labor Fascism in Chattanooga

By Matthew Vadum

As the labor movement tells the story, two months ago, the silly, ungrateful Volkswagen factory workers in Tennessee foolishly rejected the generous invitation of the company and the United Auto Workers to welcome the Detroit-killing union with open arms.

In an election supervised by the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the workers in VW's Chattanooga plant rejected UAW representation by a vote of 712 to 626.

Amazingly, the UAW and the automaker both refuse to take the workers' "no" for an answer.  The two sides are acting in unison to overturn the democratically expressed will of the workers.

Nullifying an election by fiat with the collusion of corporate management and organized labor is something we would expect to see in a nation dominated by fascism, a dangerous foreign ideology embraced by President Obama and the so-called progressives of the early twentieth century and today. 

And this push to eviscerate the legal rights of VW employees is yet more proof that the management philosophy of the automobile manufacturer founded by Adolf Hitler hasn't evolved much since the fall of the Third Reich. 

Many Americans don't know that in 1937, Hitler's government created the then-government-owned automobile manufacturer originally called Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH (German for "Society for the preparation of the German People's Car").  It was soon renamed Volkswagenwerk (German for "The People's Car Company").