Online Political BlogYour source for politics

ABC’s Jonathan Karl moves past “fake but accurate”-gate and demands answers from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney about why President Obama didn’t stop the IRS from targeting of conservative 501(c)(4) groups:

JON KARL: How was this allowed to go on for 18 months?  I mean, there were public reports while this was still happening of groups complaining that they had been asked these outrageous questions –

Yeah, why didn’t Obama stop the IRS targeting? As Jon Karl says, there were public reports about it while this was still happening, so clearly, Obama must have known about it and decided to cover it up in order to sway the election, right? As Jon says:
 

KARL: There were public reports that this stuff was going on almost a year before the presidential election.

And yet despite these “public report” from “almost a year before the presidential election” Obama did nothing. How deeply sinister! It’s clear there was a cover-up!

But I’ll admit that I’m confused about one thing. If there was a cover-up, why was the information about the targeting already public? And if the information about the scandal was already public, why didn’t Jon Karl or ABC run a single report about it until this month? Were they in on the cover-up that wasn’t a cover-up because it was public?

And just in case your head’s already hurting from trying to connect Karl’s nonsensical logic to facts, here’s another head-splitter: If Obama was covering up this thing that was in the public record that ABC was refusing to cover, why is that when Republicans in Congress learned about the IRS’s internal inquiry, they said nothing? Were they secretly on Obama’s payroll?

These are tough questions, but let’s give Karl one last chance to put Carney on the spot:
 

KARL: You’re missing the point of my question. Public reports almost a year before the election. Is there any responsibility from the administration of saying, hey, IRS, we don’t treat groups differently based on politics [instead of waiting] for the report after the election to make a comment?

Wait, suddenly it all makes sense to me. Jon Karl is part of Barack Obama’s conspiracy to make Republicans look like dolts. First, he uses nonexistent email quotes to convince Republicans that a nonexistent Benghazi scandal is actually the biggest thing ever, only to have the air popped out of that balloon. Now he’s trying to convince Republicans that the IRS scandal was already public knowledge in 2012, which totally explains why neither he nor ABC ever reported on it and why it was so easy for Obama to cover it up.

Now that I’ve figured out that Jon Karl is actually an Obama stooge, the one thing that’s perfectly clear is that Karl is doing all this to distract attention from the real scandal: President Obama was actually born in Benghazi, and The State Department sent the CIA there to cover the tracks of the ATF agents who had erased evidence of Obama’s real birth certificate.

Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, who leads the exempt organizations division under scrutiny for targeting conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, is refusing to testify before Congress, the Los Angeles Times reports. Lerner was supposed to appear before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday. The Times reports that Lerner’s attorney, William W. Taylor III, [...]

With a final committee vote on a comprehensive immigration reform bill finally in sight, proponents of immigration reform won the support of a key Republican panel member after hammering out a bipartisan compromise dealing with visas for high-skilled foreign workers.Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, long considered a Republican swing vote on the 18-member Senate Judiciary Committee, announced Tuesday nigh…

A top IRS official scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Oversight committee has notified Congress that she will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions.Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit which handled tax exempt organizations, won’t answer questions about what she knows about the improper screening of conservative groups or about why she repeatedly failed to tell Congre…

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, long considered a swing vote on immigration in the Senate Judiciary Committee, just said that he will vote the bill out of committee.He added that he could still oppose the legislation on the Senate floor if further changes are not made.His support comes after he and Gang of Eight negotiator Chuck Schumer hammered out a compromise relaxing some restrictions on how comp…

Wayne LaPierre’s NRA trying to oust Democrats in Colorado.

Hosting two of the biggest gun massacres in recent years, Colorado decided to get serious about gun safety and passed several strong control measures last March.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed three gun control measures into law on Wednesday.

Hickenlooper signed the bills restricting the size of gun magazines, expanding background checks for firearms buyers and adding a fee for background checks for gun transfers. The bills become effective July 1.

The gun lobby vociferously opposed these measures, and they’re now angling for revenge—recall efforts against several key legislative Democrats.

Three senators and one representative are targets by different groups across the state, but those organizing the recalls have an uphill battle. Under Colorado law, each recall petition needs to have 25 percent of all the votes cast in the previous election for the targeted lawmaker.

Senate President John Morse, who is term limited, is being challenged by two different groups, “I am surprised,” he said by phone Sunday. “It’s not really an affective, appropriate way to deal with political issues.”

I actually have no problem with recalls. I have a problem with the NRA trying to recall legislators. They’ve historically used their electoral heft to control wavering legislators, making it difficult for them to do the right thing. But that is now changing, with the public increasingly favoring stronger safety measures and big money entering the pro-control side.

I promised that 2014 would be the year we go to war against the NRA. Well, that timeline was accelerated in February when we took out their primary candidates in IL-02. Now we go head-to-head against them in Colorado.

They’re targeting state Senate President John Morse because he shepherded this legislation through his chamber. It’s up to us to send a similar message: That the days of one-sided NRA politics are over. Wherever they engage, we engage.

Give $3 to John Morse today, to show the NRA that they can’t bully legislators into voting against the American people.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday filled out his Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which was created to improve election systems in the United States. “As I said in my State of the Union Address, when any American, no matter where they live or what their party, is denied that right [to vote] simply because too [...]

Extremists will plug hard for Virginia’s premier extremist.

The anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony List plans to use Virginia’s statewide elections this year as a test-run for the nationwide congressional mid-terms in 2014. Months ago the organization pledged $1.5 million to the campaign of Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II in his contest for governor against Democrat Terry McAuliffe. But now, writes Ben Pershing, the organization is taking it one step further.

The SBA List says its “budget is comprehensive” and will include TV, radio and online ads, live phone banks and direct mail, among other elements, to develop an effective message that can be deployed to other states next year. In Virginia, the SBA List plan reads, “a longtime red state is shading purple, with liberal partisans claiming a shift in their direction.” [...]

But Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said the SBA List “represent[s] extreme politics out of step with the consensus of Americans who believe that women and families know what’s best for them.

SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in February: “Ken Cuccinelli’s record of fighting exploitation of the most vulnerable is not just a position that he takes, it is clearly an extension of who he is.”

Exactly.

Cuccinelli epitomizes the extremism that has intensified across states coast to coast in the past few years. He’s a climate-change denier, favors anti-gay discrimination and backed Arizona’s draconian immigration law. So his extremism isn’t just about abortion. But that plays a big role. Which is obviously why the SBA List is on board trying out its strategy for 2014 and, presumably, for the years beyond. Curtailing women’s reproductive choice has made great strides at the state level, with forced-birther groups lobbying successfully to get a record number of new laws enacted in 2011 and 2012.

Cuccinelli is more than a mere ally in Virginia’s anti-abortion efforts. As Katie J.M. Baker at Jezebel writes:

That’s why he’s the first attorney general in the country to file a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, supports letting employers decide whether a woman has access to affordable birth control, introduced an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood in Virginia, is opposed to safe and legal abortion even in cases of rape or incest, supported targeted regulations of abortion providers (TRAP) designed as a backdoor ban to eliminate access to safe and legal abortion in Virginia, and is a leading advocate for the “personhood” movement. Phew—a lady gets carpal tunnel syndrome just writing down all the anti-women endeavors he’s backed, and that’s not even a full list.

Cuccinelli’s extremism may turn out to be a liability come election day. And although a victory by his Democratic foe would be far from a progressive prize, it would at least move Virginia away from naked right-wing attacks on reason and likely reduce the number of casualties from the relentless undermining of women’s reproductive rights.