Flashback: When Liberal Sites Mocked Otto Warmbier For Getting What He Deserved
Posted: June 20, 2017 Filed under: Foreign Policy, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Cincinnati, Huffington Post, media, North Korea, Ohio, Otto Warmbier, Radical Left, Salon, Student, Twitter, United States, University of Cincinnati, University of Virginia, White privilege Leave a commentUnreal.
Leah Barkoukis reports: After suffering 17 months of brutal captivity in North Korea, Otto Warmbier died Monday, having spent more than a year in a coma before his release last week.
After news of his death, Twitter users were quick to resurface articles from liberal sites Salon, Huffington Post, and Bustle in 2016 mocking the college student for getting what he deserved.
Warmbier was accused of stealing a propaganda poster from the hotel he was staying at in North Korea and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
This Huffington Post blog sure aged well. pic.twitter.com/8DSZ1uL6qe
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) June 19, 2017
Huffington Post: North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal
Source: townhall.com
Ohio State Knife Attacker Abdul Artan Was Taking a Class About Microaggressions
Posted: December 1, 2016 Filed under: Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Columbus, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Muslim, Ohio, Ohio State University, Police officer, Somali language, The Lantern, United States Leave a commentRobby Soave reports: Before he was shot dead while attempting to murder a bunch of people with a car and a butcher’s knife, Ohio State University student Abdul Artan—a Pakistani immigrant who reportedly became radicalized after learning about injustices committed against fellow Muslims—was enrolled in a class called “Crossing Identity Boundaries.”
[Read the full story here, at Reason.com]
In fact, he had a group project on “microaggressions” due later this week. The assignment, worth 15 percent of his grade, required students to find a dozen examples of microaggressions on social media and explain which identity groups were the victims, according to the syllabus.
The purpose of the class is to promote “intercultural leadership” and transform students into “actively engaged, socially just global citizen/leaders.” It seems to go well beyond merely educating students, though—it actually requires them to become social justice activists. Read the rest of this entry »
Ohio State Suspect Abdul Razak Ali Artan Left Cryptic Facebook Message Before Attack
Posted: November 28, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Religion, Terrorism | Tags: 2016, Active shooter, African Americans, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Americans, Anwar al-Awlaki, Campus police, Fort Hood, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Muslim, Nidal Hasan, Ohio, Ohio State University, Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, Somali, United States, United States presidential election Leave a commentAbdul Razak Ali Artan was killed by a police officer after the car-and-knife ambush.
“America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim Ummah… We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that.”
— Abdul Razak Ali Artan, on Facebook
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, wrote on what appears to be his Facebook page that he had reached a “boiling point,” made a reference to “lone wolf attacks” and cited radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
“America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim Ummah [community]. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that,” the post said.
Two hours before that, a cryptic post on the page said: “Forgive and forget. Love.”
Officials cautioned that they have not determined a motive for the ambush, which sent 11 people to the hospital Monday morning. A senior law enforcement official told NBC News that investigators are trying to determine whether Artan had personal problems or something else that might have pushed him over the edge.

A photo of Abdul Razak Ali Artan that accompanied an interview in the OSU publication The Lantern. Kevin Stankiewicz / The Lantern
“He told a campus publication that on his first day at OSU, he was ‘kind of scared’ to pray in public.”
A police officer was on the scene within a minute and killed the assailant, likely saving lives, university officials said. “He engaged the suspect and eliminated the threat,” OSU Police Chief Craig Stone said.
Law enforcement officials told NBC News that Artan was a Somali refugee who left his homeland with his family in 2007, lived in Pakistan and then came to the United States in 2014 as a legal permanent resident.
[Read the full story here, at NBC News]
He lived briefly in a temporary shelter in Dallas before settling in Ohio, according to records maintained by Catholic Charities.
Artan attended Columbus State Community College for two years, graduating cum laude with an associate’s degree before moving on to Ohio State to continue his studies. He told a campus publication that on his first day at OSU, he was “kind of scared” to pray in public.
“If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen.”
“If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen,” Artan was quoted as saying in the Lantern.
The violence unfolded just before 10 a.m. ET Monday near an academic hall on the Columbus, Ohio, campus, where 60,000 students are enrolled.
Officials said Artan drove onto campus by himself and rammed the car past the curb and into a crowd on the sidewalk. Read the rest of this entry »
8 Dead, Including Children, After Apparent Execution-Style Killings in Ohio
Posted: April 22, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption | Tags: ballot, Execution, Mike DeWine, murder, Ohio, Ohio Attorney General, Pike County 1 CommentCNN WIRE reports: An eighth body has been found in Pike County, Ohio, where five adults and two children were killed in an “execution-style” shooting, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Friday…
..All of the victims are believed to be members of the same family, a statement from Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said.
Prior to the statement, a pastor told a local television station that two adults and five children had been killed.
They were found in three homes in Pike County, a rural community about 80 miles east of Cincinnati.
The situation is not being treated as an active shooting and no arrests have been made, the statement said. Read the rest of this entry »
Kentucky Fried Microaggression
Posted: December 18, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Mediasphere | Tags: Alice Walker, Anton Corbijn, Chadwick Boseman, Christina Hoff Sommers, Django Unchained, Jackie Robinson, Los Angeles, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oberlin College, Ohio, Pulitzer Prize, Rape culture, Reginald Hudlin, Scott Johnson, The Oberlin Review Leave a commentGastronomically correct students at an ultra-liberal Ohio college are in an uproar because the cafeteria food isn’t ethnically accurate enough.
Students at Oberlin College are so angered by the “insensitive” and “culturally appropriative” offerings at their Dascomb Dining Hall that they are filling screeds of protest in the school newspaper and even demanded a meeting with Campus Dining Service officials and the college president.
“When you’re cooking a country’s dish for other people, including ones who have never tried the original dish before, you’re also representing the meaning of the dish as well as its culture.”
At issue are foods such as General Tso’s chicken being served with steamed chicken instead of fried — which is not authentically Chinese, and simply “weird,” one student bellyached.
[Read the full text here, at New York Post]
Others were up in arms over Banh Mi Vietnamese sandwiches served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables on ciabatta bread — rather than traditional French baguette.
“How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”
“It was ridiculous,” Diep Nguyen, a freshman who is a Vietnam native, told The Oberlin Review, the school newspaper.
“How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”
“So if people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative.”
Not only that, but the sushi rice was undercooked in a way that was, according to one Japanese student, “disrespectful” of her culture.
That student, Tomoyo Joshi, a junior from Japan, was very offended by this flagrant violation of her rice. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Ohio Man Arrested for Alleged ISIS-Inspired Plot to Bomb U.S. Capitol
Posted: January 14, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Religion, War Room | Tags: ABC News, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Anwar al-Aulaqi, Associated Press, CNN, Complaint, D.C., Federal Bureau of Investigation, iPhone, Islamic state, Ohio, Pipe bomb, Terrorism, United States, United States Capitol, United States Department of Homeland Security, Washington 1 CommentAccording to government documents, he allegedly planned to detonate pipe bombs at the national landmark and open fire on any employees and officials fleeing after the explosions.
CNN: The FBI today arrested an Ohio man for allegedly plotting an ISIS-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol, where he hoped to set off a series of bombs aimed at lawmakers, whom he allegedly considered enemies.

Ohio authorities release booking photo of suspect arrested for plot to attack U.S. Capitol.
Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of Green Township, was arrested on charges of attempting to kill a U.S. government official, authorities said.
“I believe that we should just wage jihad under our own orders and plan attacks and everything. I believe we should meet up and make our own group in alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves.”
— Cornell, in an online message allegedly written to the informant
The FBI first noticed Cornell several months ago after an informant notified the agency that Cornell was allegedly voicing support for violent “jihad” on Twitter accounts under the alias “Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah,” according to charging documents. In addition, Cornell allegedly posted statements, videos and other content expressing support for ISIS — the brutal terrorist group also known as ISIL — that is wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.

JM Lopez/AFP/Getty Images. A flag of the Islamic State is seen on the other side of a bridge at the front line of fighting between Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Islamist militants in Rashad, on the road between Kirkuk and Tikrit.
“I believe that we should just wage jihad under our own orders and plan attacks and everything,” Cornell allegedly wrote in an online message to the informant in August, according to the FBI. “I believe we should meet up and make our own group in alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves.”

Anwar Al-Awlaki at Dar al Hijrah Mosque on Oct. 4, 2001 in Falls Church, VA. Tracy Woodward/The Washington Post/Getty Images
In the message, Cornell said that such attacks “already got a thumbs up” from radical cleric Anwar Awlaki “before his martyrdom.”
Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, but his online messages calling for attacks on the West live on.
U.S. officials considered Awlaki an operational leader within al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based terror group tied to the deadly assault on a satirical magazine in Paris last week. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Watch What I’m Going to Do’
Posted: December 21, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Law Enforcement, New Jersey, New York City Police Department, Ohio, Police officer, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rafael Ramos, Springfield, Trenton, Vice president Leave a comment“Brinsley’s family is Muslim; however, they say he has never expressed any radical sentiments at all. They report that he has had a troubled life; he has attempted to hang himself in the past and may have been on medication for mental illness.”
New York police held a press conference Sunday afternoon shedding further light on the murders of officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos on Saturday, revealing a troubled young man had driven from Maryland that morning and boasted to two men that he was about to do something big right before the execution-style shooting.

Vigil on Tompkins and Myrtle
The perpetrator Ismaaiyl Brinsley, age 28, was born in New York, went to high school in New Jersey, and went back and forth from Georgia through the later part of his life. His father currently lives in New Jersey and mother lives in Brooklyn.
“He has a child but is estranged with the mother; she does not appear to be the same woman as his ex-girlfriend, who he shot early Saturday morning before driving to New York City.”
Brinsley has a history of run-ins with the law. He has 15 prior arrests in Georgia for assorted crimes: misdemeanor assault, larceny, shoplifting, and gun possession, dated from 2004 to 2013. He was arrested 4 times in Ohio from May 2009 to September 2009–robbery and misdemeanor theft. He served over 2 years in various prisons, mostly from a 2-year sentence for the Georgia case of criminal possession of a weapon.

2009 booking photo from the Springfield, Ohio Police Department: Brinsley after an arrest on a felony robbery charge.
Law enforcement stated that Brinsley had been broken up with his ex-girlfriend for a year, he entered her home in Maryland yesterday with a key he was not supposed to have. At 5:50 AM, Baltimore police received a report of shots fired, and when they arrived, the ex-girlfriend IDed him–he had already left. Baltimore police tracked him as he was driving on I-95, and he called police to say he shot his ex accidentally and hoped she survived. He also called the woman’s mother several times while driving, apologizing to her. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Body of Missing OSU Athlete Found Near Campus, Police Say
Posted: November 30, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, U.S. News | Tags: Announcer, Associated Press, Association football, Body, Columbus, Lineman (American football), Michigan, Missing person, Ohio, Ohio State Buckeyes football, Ohio State University 1 CommentA body found near the Ohio State University campus today has been identified as that of Kosta Karageorge, the OSU athlete who has been missing since Wednesday, police said.
Police and volunteers in Columbus have been searching for Karageorge, an OSU wrestler and football player who has not been seen since he left his apartment at 2 a.m. Wednesday.
More to come…
[VIDEO] ‘The Wizard of Oz’: Ohio State University Marching Band Sept. 27, 2014 Halftime Show vs. Michigan Marching Band Nov. 2010 Halftime Show
Posted: October 2, 2014 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere | Tags: Cincinnati, Guy Benson, Marching band, Michigan, Ohio, Ohio State, Ohio State University Marching Band, The Ohio State University Marching Band, Wicked Witch of the West, Wizard of Oz Leave a commentOhio State’s marching band performs during the Sept. 27 Buckeyes game versus Cincinnati. Theme: The Wizard of Oz
The Michigan Marching Band performs:
“The Wizard of Oz”
Michigan v. Illinois Game
h/t Guy Benson, Hot Air
Judge Strikes Down Ohio Law Criminalizing False Political Speech: Amicus Curiae Brief Filed on Behalf of the Plaintiff by P.J. O’Rourke
Posted: September 13, 2014 Filed under: Censorship, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Amicus curiae, Cato Institute, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Ohio, Ohio Election Commission, P. J. O'Rourke, Susan B. Anthony List, Timothy Black, United States district court 1 CommentOver at The Corner, Ian Tuttle has two items concerning an Ohio free speech court ruling:
An Ohio federal judge landed a blow for free-speech advocates on Thursday, striking down a law that gave the state government the right to regulate political speech it deemed false.
Under the law, it was illegal to “post, publish, circulate, distribute, or otherwise disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not, if the statement is designed to promote the election, nomination, or defeat of the candidate.” According to U.S. District Court judge Timothy Black’s decision: “We do not want the government (i.e., the Ohio Elections Commission) deciding what is political truth – for fear that the government might persecute those who criticize it. Instead, in a democracy, the voters should decide.”
Politico reports the details of the suit here.
Then there’s this:
P. J. O’Rourke’s Defense of Truthiness – O’Rourke’s brief here
I noted [above] U.S. District Court judge Timothy Black’s ruling yesterday striking down an Ohio law that allowed the state election commission to censor “false” political speech.
The judge’s decision is a good one, but the best reading in the case is an amicus curiae brief filed on behalf of the plaintiff — by none other than right-wing humorist P.J. O’Rourke. “The case concerns amici,” he writes, “because the law at issue undermines the First Amendment’s protection of the serious business of making politics funny.” Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE: T.J. Lane Captured
Posted: September 12, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption | Tags: Andy Green, Life imprisonment, Lima, Lima Ohio, Ohio, Ohio State Highway Patrol, Prison, Robbery Leave a commentLane captured after an search that involved a helicopter and several law enforcement agencies
A 19-year-old Ohio man serving life in prison for killing three students in a high school cafeteria in 2012 briefly escaped from prison on Thursday, the authorities said.
The man, T. J. Lane, who was serving three life sentences for the murders, escaped with two other inmates from the Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio, said Sgt. Andy Green of the Lima Police Department. Early Friday morning, the Ohio State Highway Patrol announced that Mr. Lane had been captured after an search that involved a helicopter and several law enforcement agencies.
The police had said the men, who escaped on foot, were unarmed but dangerous, and that a search was being conducted in the area around the prison. Read the rest of this entry »
What ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws Actually Mean
Posted: June 28, 2014 Filed under: Education, Law & Justice, Self Defense | Tags: Duty to retreat, Eugene Volokh, Florida, murder, Ohio, Stand Your Ground law, Washington Post 2 CommentsFor the Washington Post, Eugene Volokh writes: Seems to me that there’s either a lot of misinformation about what “stand your ground” means, or attempts to sow misinformation.
Here’s the deal:
1. In all states, shooting someone who is simply impeding you, shouting at you, and moving towards you loudly and aggressively (absent more), is a crime. The crime is called, assuming you shoot and kill the person, “murder.” (It could also be attempted murder if you miss, or aggravated assault if you hit and injure the person.) Yup, same crime as if the person wasn’t impeding you, shouting at you, or moving towards you loudly and aggressively (though in some states, it’s conceivable that if the person is shouting insults at you and that is viewed as “adequate provocation” — unlikely, but conceivable — you’d get lucky and get off with a voluntary manslaughter charge).
This is because “stand your ground” simply means that, if you reasonably believe that you face imminent death, serious bodily injury, rape, kidnapping, or (in most states) robbery, you can use deadly force against the assailant, even if you have a perfectly safe avenue of retreat. In non-stand-your-ground states, when you face such threats outside your home (and, in some states, your business), you can only use deadly force against the assailant if you lack a perfectly safe avenue of retreat. In no states are you allowed to shoot someone who is simply shouting at you or moving towards you loudly and aggressively, unless you reasonably believe that you’re in danger of death, serious bodily injury, or the other harms I listed. (When the person is coming into your home, in many states you can indeed shoot, but that doesn’t apply to confrontations on the public street.) Read the rest of this entry »
University of Virginia Bans Unconstitutional Campus ‘Free Speech Zones’
Posted: April 9, 2014 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Law & Justice, U.S. News | Tags: Campus, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Free speech zone, Friday, Greg Lukianoff, Ohio, Terry McAuliffe, Virginia 3 CommentsFor Ricochet, Greg Lukianoff writes: On Friday, April 3, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a first-of-its-kind bill that effectively designates all outdoor areas on Virginia public campuses as public forums. This has the practical effect of not allowing campus speech to be quarantined into ‘free speech zones.'(read more)
Bonus: In this video, note how some libertarian students in Ohio defeated one such zone:

The Largest Submarine in The U.S. Navy
Posted: April 1, 2014 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Science & Technology, Self Defense, War Room | Tags: Ohio, YouTube 2 CommentsUSS Pennsylvania is a United States Navy Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine which has been in commission since 1989. The Ohio class is a class of nuclear powered submarines used by the United States Navy.

Want to Have Sex? Sign This Contract
Posted: February 21, 2014 Filed under: Education | Tags: Antioch College, Bernice Sandler, Cathy Young, New York Times, Ohio, Pomona College, Sexual assault, Whitman College 1 CommentCathy Young writes: The idea that sexual consent requires an explicit “yes”–one step beyond “no means no”–has long been the dogma of feminist anti-rape activists. In the early 1990s, when Ohio-based Antioch College incorporated this principle into its code of student conduct to mandate verbal consent to each new level of intimacy, it was widely ridiculed as political correctness gone mad. Yet policies similar to Antioch’s, though not as detailed, were even then spreading to college campuses across the country. In 1994, a senior at Pomona College in California was nearly prevented from getting his diploma because of a sexual assault complaint brought with a two-and-a-half year delay, in which the alleged victim admitted that she never said no but claimed that she never gave consent, which the college policy defined as “clear, explicit agreement to engage in a specific activity.”
Now, for the first time, this standard may be codified into law–not criminal law (as yet), but law regulating sexual assault investigations on college campuses. SB-967, a bill proposed in the California state legislature in response to the “crisis” of campus rape, would establish “affirmative consent” as the standard for disciplinary proceedings for sexual assault complaints. The bill allows that “willingness to participate” in sexual activity can be conveyed through “clear, unambiguous actions” as well as words, but also cautions that “relying solely on nonverbal communication can lead to misunderstanding.”
Bench Update: Judicial Watch, True the Vote Reach Historic Settlement with State of Ohio in Lawsuit over Clean Voter Rolls
Posted: January 13, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Jon Husted, Judicial Watch, Kansas Secretary of State, National Voter Registration Act of 1993, NVRA, Ohio, True the Vote, Voter registration 1 CommentFrom the Judicial Watch Press Room (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch and True the Vote announced today that they have reached a settlement in an August 30, 2012, lawsuit against election officials in the State of Ohio, resulting in an agreement by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to take or continue to take a series of actions to further ensure that the state is in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
Under the terms of the settlement, which extend through November 2018, the State of Ohio specifically agreed to take or continue to take the following nine actions relating to voter roll list maintenance and NVRA compliance:
Cleveland Kidnapper Ariel Castro Found Dead in Jail Cell
Posted: September 3, 2013 Filed under: Breaking News | Tags: Castro, Cleveland, KTLA, Life imprisonment, Ohio, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Orient, Orient Ohio Leave a commentConvicted Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro was found dead Tuesday inside his cell at the Correction Reception Center in Orient, Ohio, according to corrections officials.
JoEllen Smith of the Ohio Department of Corrections released the following statement.
Inmate Ariel Castro was found hanging in his cell this evening at 9:20 pm at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient. He was housed in protective custody which means he was in a cell by himself and rounds are required every 30 minutes at staggered intervals. Upon finding inmate Castro, prison medical staff began performing life saving measures. Shortly after he was transported to OSUMC where he was pronounced dead at 10:52 pm. A thorough review of this incident is underway and more information can be provided as it becomes available pending the status of the investigation.
Castro, 52, was sentenced last month to life in prison plus 1,000 years in the abductions of Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus.
Source: KTLA 5Ariel only Had 999 1/2 Years Left To Go on His Prison Sentence…
Student admits to posting anti-Islam fliers and Nazi flags around liberal college
Posted: August 26, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Academia, anti-islam, campus security, hate speech, hoax, liberal college, Marxism, Oberlin, Ohio, race, Scott Wargo Leave a commentOBERLIN, Ohio — An Oberlin College student acknowledged posting anti-Islam fliers and racist cards around the campus of the historically liberal Ohio university earlier this year, saying he meant them as a “joke” to provoke a reaction, according to statements he made after being detained by campus security.
The student also took credit for the display of a large Nazi flag, which he also said he meant as a joke, and posting the face of Oberlin’s president onto a picture of Adolf Hitler, according to the statements contained in an Oberlin city police report.
The student, detained after allegedly being seen posting anti-Islam fliers in the college’s Science Center Feb. 27, denied involvement in other, earlier racist postings and said he was trying to show people had overreacted to them.
The student, whose name was blacked out, said the people who put up earlier fliers were just looking for attention.
“I put out these fliers to get a similar over-reaction to prove this point,” the student said, according to the report. Read the rest of this entry »
Reports: IRS Spared Liberal Groups as Tea Party Languished, More Conservative Orgs Targeted Than First Thought
Posted: May 18, 2013 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere | Tags: Cincinnati, Facebook, Inspector General, Internal Revenue Service, Ohio, Politico, Tax exemption, United State Leave a commentRemember what we were told when this explosive story first broke less than a week ago? The IRS official in charge of tax exemptions for organizations said the improper methods employed within her division were executed by “low level workers” in Cincinnati who weren’t motivated by “political bias,” and impacted roughly 75 organizations? Wrong, wrong and wrong:
“Low Level” – Officials within the highest echelons of the agency were aware of the inappropriate targeting, including the last two commissioners — at least one of whom appears to have misled Congress on this very question. Now Politicoreports that Lerner herself sent at least one of the probing letters to an Ohio-based conservative group.
The director of the Internal Revenue Service division under fire for singling out conservative groups sent a 2012 letter under her name to one such group, POLITICO has learned. The March 2012 letter was sent to the Ohio-based American Patriots Against Government Excess (American PAGE) under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division…at the time of the letter, the group was in the midst of the application process for tax-exempt nonprofit status — a process that would stretch for nearly three years and involve queries for detailed information on its social media activity, its organizational set-up, bylaws, membership and interactions with political officials. The letter threatened to close American PAGE’s case file unless additional information was received within 60 days.
These burdensome requests were apparently designed to bury the victimized groups in paperwork. Carol reported last night that some 58 percent of these applicants were asked for unnecessary information and data, according to the Inspector General’s review. Some inquiries asked for screenshots of organizations’ Facebook posts and even lists of what books (!) its members were reading.
“No Political Bias” – This claim was laughable on its face from the start, in light of the agency’s surreal criteria for added scrutiny and the “red flag” words and phrases that triggered investigations. Now add to the mix this scoop from USA Today:
In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked. That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months. In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows. As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like “Progress” or “Progressive,” the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.
Lerner also reportedly fast-tracked an approval for a foundation operated by President Obama’s half brother, taking the extraordinary step of granting it retroactive tax-free status.
“Seventy-five organizations effected” – That number almost immediately swelled to 300. Now it’s closer to 500…
More >> Via Guy Benson
Ohio county elections chief quits, citing stress
Posted: October 20, 2012 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: 2012 Presidential election, Election, Obama, Ohio, Romney Leave a comment(AP)
DAYTON, Ohio
An Ohio county’s director of elections has resigned because he says work on the coming presidential election was too stressful.
The Dayton Daily News reports ( http://bit.ly/QwGPJb) that Miami County elections director Steve Quillen cited “the stress of the upcoming presidential election” in his decision.
The county election board accepted Quillen’s resignation Friday, just weeks before the election. He is a Republican so the county Republican Party in the key presidential battleground state will recommend his successor.
The county had experienced delays in getting absentee ballots to voters, but the board chairman says that played no part in Quillen’s departure.
A Republican on the board said the shuffle won’t affect the integrity of the election.
The board asked Quillen’s deputy to contact the state elections chief for help.
___
Information from: Dayton Daily News, http://www.daytondailynews.com