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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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 Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 5:38 pm Post subject: TONY SNOW'S AMERICA--Cover Up??? |
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WELCOME BACK, TONY!!!
You've got a hot story here! Keep on it!!
I for one, want to know what the heck is in this report that the Dems
are so desperate to bury!! After a $21 Million (our tax dollars) investigation
we the people should see it!!!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154770,00.html
| Quote: | TONY SNOW'S AMERICA
Cover Up???
By Tony Snow
Senators Byron Dorgan, John Kerry and Richard Durbin pulled a fast one last week on their congressional colleagues. They tried to bury forever documents alleging that senior government officials tried to transform portions of the IRS and the Justice Department into a goon squad for attacking political enemies and aiding political friends.
Naturally, they didn’t declare their intentions openly. Instead, Sen. Dorgan attached an innocent looking amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill that will fund government operations after September 30. The last-minute amendment read:
“At the end of the bill, add the following:
“SEC. __ . (a) None of the funds appropriated or made available in this Act or any other ACT may be used to fund the independent counsel investigation of Henry Cisneros after June 1, 2005.
“(b) Not later than July 1, 2005, the Government Accountability Office (sic) shall provide the Committee on Appropriations of each House with a detailed accounting of the costs associated with the independent counsel investigation of Henry Cisneros.”
Before detailing the sleight of hand, let’s consider the background. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh insisted on the appointment of an Independent Counsel in 1995 after learning that then-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros shuttled payments to his mistress without reporting them to the IRS. Once the news went public, Cisneros resigned from office, his previously promising political career in tatters. He later admitted to a misdemeanor and paid a fine of $10,000. President Clinton pardoned him in 2001.
Dorgan’s bill would shut down the 10-year probe conducted by Independent Counsel David Barrett’s investigation, but it would add something unprecedented in the case of special or independent counsels: it would prevent the publication of the counsel’s report on the case. A decade’s worth of investigations — sworn testimony, documentation of alleged abuses, grand-jury proceedings, etc. — would vanish without a trace.
In this instance, that would mean burying charges that key officials in the Justice Department and the IRS abused their power by going easy on Cisneros and targeting political opponents of Bill Clinton. Those charges — not the Cisneros case — have served as the focal point of Barrett’s investigation for the last several years. While Senator Dorgan and his colleagues may not know this, lawyers for Henry Cisneros and other Clinton-era public servants do. They also know that Barrett is the first man ever to receive grand-jury subpoena power to look at the inner workings of the IRS.
A Dorgan press release summarizes the senator’s case for quashing the report: “The Independent Counsel was appointed ten years ago, but has failed to file a report and continues to spend millions of dollars, despite the fact that the subject long ago resigned from office, pled guilty to a misdemeanor, paid a $10,000 fine, and received a presidential pardon.”
The argument has unmistakable appeal, especially since Barrett has gotten less bang for the buck than any previous independent counsel (one conviction for $20 million dollars).
Nevertheless, the claim is misleading. Barrett isn’t responsible for dragging out the investigation or adding to its cost. As the Wall Street Journal noted in an April 22 editorial, “any blame for this delay lies mainly with Mr. Cisneros’ lawyers at Williams and Connolly, who have filed more than 190 motions and appeals; one single appeal took some 18 months to deal with. The 400-page-plus report has been largely done since last August, and awaits only a requisite period for review and response by those named in its pages. The only thing threatening a hold-up past June are further defense motions seeking still more delay.”
Barrett also stands accused of wasting money, even though he has claimed in a letter to members of Congress: “This Office undergoes a complete GAO audit not once, but twice a year, to which we provide full assistance and cooperation. I have never received a complaint from the GAO. To my knowledge, the only person to whom a GAO official expressed a concern was to a Washington Post reporter for a Washington Post article on April 1, 2005. The Washington Post article was relied upon by Senator Dorgan in introducing SA 399.”
Yet, even if Barrett were profligate, wouldn’t the public have a right to know whether government officials abused the IRS and its extraordinary powers for political purposes? Why not insist on publishing the report, and conducting a GAO audit of the independent counsel, rather than singling out the counsel while burning his work?
This gets us to the heart of the issue: Senators Dorgan, Kerry and Durbin have been lured into sponsoring a cover-up of what could be a hair-raising case of governmental malfeasance. As the Journal noted, “abuse of the taxing power is about as serious as corruption can get in our democracy.”
One would assume that senators of any party not only would want to know more about allegations of this sort, but would insist on going after agents responsible for such a breach of the public trust, especially if the bad actors worked for the IRS, Justice Department or the White House. After all, once a federal agency decides to engage in political chicanery, it’s not likely to stop just because an administration changes.
Whatever abuses Barrett may have found in the Clinton era very well could persist into this administration, only with a pro-Republican tilt. Yet, the sponsors of the midnight amendment have adopted the Sgt. Shultz defense: They know nothing — and they want the American public clothed in ignorance as well. (Compare this behavior to the alacrity with which Senate Democrats have retailed unsworn, over-the-transom complaints about John Bolton.)
The Dorgan-Kerry-Durbin amendment made it past Democratic and Republican Senators because they had no idea the trio had added the cover-up language to a measure that, among other things, finances continuing military and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fortunately, Congress still has an opportunity to ensure that the Barrett report sees the light of day. Members of the House-Senate conference, which must produce a final version of the appropriations bill for the president’s signature, still can strip out the report-killing amendment.
Here is a list of names and phone numbers for the Senate conferees:
Senate:
Sen. Thad Cochran (202) 224-5054
Sen. Ted Stevens (202) 224-3004
Sen. Arlen Specter (202) 224-4254
Sen. Pete Domenici (202) 224-6621
Sen. Kit Bond (202) 224-5721
Sen. Mitch McConnell (202) 224-2541
Sen. Conrad Burns (202) 224-2644
Sen. Richard Shelby (202) 224-5744
Sen. Judd Gregg (202) 224-3324
Sen. Robert Bennett (202) 224-5444
Sen. Larry Craig (202) 224-2752
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (202) 224-5922
Sen. Michael DeWine (202) 224-2315
Sen. Sam Brownback (202) 224-6521
Sen. Wayne Allard (202) 224-5941
Sen. Robert Byrd (202) 224-3954
Sen. Daniel Inouye (202) 224-3934
Sen. Patrick Leahy (202) 224-4242
Sen. Tom Harkin (202) 224-3254
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (202) 224-4654
Sen. Harry Reid (202) 224-3542
Sen. Herb Kohl (202) 224-5653
Sen. Patty Murray (202) 224-2621
Sen. Byron Dorgan (202) 224-2551
Sen. Diane Feinstein (202) 224-3841
Sen. Richard Durbin (202) 224-2152
Sen. Tim Johnson (202) 224-5842
Sen. Mary Landrieu (202) 224-5824
Share your thoughts with Tony. E-mail him at tonysnow@foxnews.com. |
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Fri May 06, 2005 12:31 am Post subject: |
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The attempted cover up failed.
Can't wait to see what's revealed in the report.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_050505/content/rush_is_right.guest.html
| Quote: | Clinton/Cisneros Cover-Up Fails
May 5, 2005
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This goes back maybe two weeks ago. There was an attempt in a piece of Senate legislation to shelve forever a scandal involving the IRS and Henry Cisneros and a number of other things. Well, enough attention was called to this that it has failed, the effort to cover it up has failed. (story) "A Senate rider inserted in an emergency appropriations bill in the dead of the night, which would close a rare window into political foul play at the Internal Revenue Service, was quietly removed Tuesday in Senate-House negotiations. That offers full disclosure of a major scandal that has been percolating for a decade. The rider would have de-funded the investigation begun in 1995 of then-Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros by Independent Counsel David Barrett. The amendment was sponsored by three highly influential Democrats, purportedly to stop leakage of federal money in a run-on program and end persecution of a no-longer-prominent Democratic politician. In fact, Barrett's investigation is the first independent probe, with subpoena power, of the IRS... The report, described as 400 pages long with over 2,000 footnotes, is sealed by court order. So are Barrett's lips. But enough has leaked from sources familiar with its content to suggest political dynamite. Sources indicate an IRS whistle-blower contends the tax fraud investigation was transferred from a regional office to Washington, where the IRS and the Justice Department suffocated it. That raises the question of whether Cisneros, then a rising Democratic star, was improperly protected by Clinton administration officials." By the way, this might also involve Mrs. Clinton. "The investigation has been so protracted because of delaying motions by the Williams & Connolly firm, attorneys for Bill and Hillary Clinton. These lawyers, headed by David Kendall, are described as poring over the sealed Barrett report, according to sources, because clients are named."
This is a report that could really damage ten or so, maybe even more, members of the Clinton administration. We talked about this a couple weeks ago. A couple Democrats, including John Kerry, were trying to squelch this by defunding it, by putting it in another piece of Senate legislation. The word leaked out that this was happening, Tony Snow wrote a column about it, we talked about it on this program, enough attention was brought to bear, the effort to bury this report and to defund it has failed. Now, it's still under seal, but the likelihood is there will be a report made public on this at some point and that means that there are people cowering in fear and quivering in the corners even as we speak. This is a real under-the-cover effort here, folks, to try to get this investigation quashed, or the report quashed, and they came close. They came very, very, very close to doing this. That, too, I predict is going to be a story, how they almost got this investigation totally quashed, defunded, and therefore buried.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I want to clarify one thing. Senator Kennedy was not part of the Democrat effort to quash the bill. It was Senator Byron Dorgan. "Sen. Byron Dorgan, Senate Democratic Policy Committee chairman, in the middle of a long floor speech on April 5, gave notice he would try to amend the emergency money bill 'to shut off the funding' for Barrett. Dorgan was the amendment's principal sponsor. Co-sponsors were Sen. Richard Durbin, the minority whip, and Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 nominee for president." So it was Dorgan, Durbin, and Kerry that attempted to get this investigation buried.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Articles...
(JWR: Cover Up??? - Tony Snow)
(RealClearPolitics.com: Investigating the IRS - Robert Novak)
(Houston Chronicle: No free ride for IRS in late-night rider in the Senate)
(Boston Herald: Cisneros probe tab: $21M and counting) |
I can't figure out why Kerry would want it quashed, as it would apparently
be damaging to Hillary.
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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rparrott21
Master Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 760
Location: Mckinney, Texas
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| Posted: Fri May 06, 2005 4:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Enemies of Hillary and Bill were targets of IRS audits.... |
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