SMIDGEN REPORT: IRS Reports NEW Round of Computer Crashes
Posted: July 21, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, U.S. News | Tags: Cincinnati, Daily Caller, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Lerner, Lois Lerner, Patrick Howley, Twitter, United States Congress 1 Comment“There is an issue as to whether or not there is a ‑‑ that all of the backup recovery tapes were destroyed on the 6‑month retention schedule.”
— IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane
For The Daily Caller, Patrick Howley reports: IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane said in transcribed congressional testimony that more IRS officials experienced computer crashes, bringing the total number of crash victims to “less than 20,” and also said that the agency does not know if the lost emails are stillbacked up somewhere.
“So some of those backup tapes may still exist?”
— Investigator
“I don’t know whether they are or they aren’t, but it’s an issue that’s being looked at.”
— Kane
EMAILS: Democratic Senator Pressured IRS To Target Groups
Posted: May 14, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Politics | Tags: Carl Levin, Daily Caller, Douglas Shulman, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Levin, Patrick Howley, Republican National Committee 3 CommentsFor The Daily Caller, Patrick Howley writes: The IRS’ Washington, D.C. headquarters targeted conservative groups in part due to pressure from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, according to emails obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch and reviewed by The Daily Caller.
Levin, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote a March 30, 2012 letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman discussing the “urgency” of the issue of possible political activity by nonprofit applicants. Levin asked if the IRS was sending out additional information requests to applicant groups and citing an IRS rejection letter to a conservative group as an example of how the IRS should be conducting its business.
A top IRS official replied that the agency could send out “individualized questions and requests.”
“Some entities claiming tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations under 26 U.S.C.&501(c)(4) appear to be engaged in political activities more appropriate for political organizations claiming tax-exempt status under 26 U.S.C.&527,” Sen. Levin wrote. “Because of the urgency of the issues involved in this matter, please provide the following information by April 20, 2012.” Read the rest of this entry »
Obama Administration Wants to Require Companies to Give Workers’ Numbers, Addresses to Unions Before Labor Elections
Posted: April 21, 2014 Filed under: Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Daily Caller, Fred Wszolek, National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, Obama, Obama administration, Patrick Howley, Trade union, Twitter 2 CommentsFor The Daily Caller, Patrick Howley reports: The Obama administration is poised to change regulations to allow for union “ambush elections” in which workers have less time to decide whether or not to join a union — and in which workers’ phone numbers and home addresses are provided to unions.
The administration’s National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) proposed rules would allow for union elections — in which workers at a company vote whether or not to unionize — to be held 10 days after a petition is filed. And what, exactly, would be happening to the unions during those 10 days? The new rules require employers to disclose workers’ personal information, including phone numbers, home addresses, and information about when they work their shifts.
Insiders close to the situation believe the new rules will almost certainly go into effect with few or no fundamental changes. Read the rest of this entry »
Democratic Congressman: My Wife Beat Me Up
Posted: March 6, 2014 Filed under: Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Alan Grayson, Daily Caller, Democratic Party (United States), Domestic violence, Grayson, Lolita, Lolita Grayson, Mark NeJame, Patrick Howley, Windermere 1 CommentIt could be true, as much as I hate to give any credit to Alan Grayson. If you were his wife, Lolita Grayson (great name, isn’t it?) and had to live with this guy, wouldn’t you want to slap him upside the head?
The Daily Caller‘s Patrick Howley writes:
Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson’s lawyers claimed that Grayson was the victim of domestic violence and not the perpetrator.
Grayson’s wife Lolita accused Grayson of pushing her against a door and injuring her during a confrontation that occurred at the Graysons’ home near Windermere, Fla., Saturday.
Grayson called the allegation “an outright lie.” An Orange County Sheriff’s Office investigation is underway.
Here’s a local news report that includes some of the cell phone video footage:
…Grayson’s attorney Mark NeJame said at a press conference Wednesday that Lolita assaulted the congressman and not the other way around…
David Mamet talks War
Posted: December 28, 2013 Filed under: Art & Culture, History, War Room, White House | Tags: David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross, Iran, Mamet, Patrick Howley, Pulitzer Prize, United States, Vietnam War Leave a comment
Writer and director David Mamet speaks about actors Felicity Huffman and her husband William H. Macy at the Hollywood Walk of Fame March 7, 2012. REUTERS/Gus Ruelas
“Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime,” playwright David Mamet told The Daily Caller in a wide-ranging interview.
Patrick Howley writes: He was paraphrasing Balzac, by way of the first page of Mario Puzo’s Godfather, but he might as well have been quoting any of the modern writers who call themselves Mamet disciples. His new book “3 War Stories” is a trifecta of short novellas dealing with war, crime, and history in ways that avoid easy moral conclusions.
The stories deal respectively with a 19th century writer/spy (“The Redwing”), religion within the context of the American Indian Wars (“Notes on Plains Warfare”), and a peculiar crime committed against the backdrop of the start of the Israeli War of Independence. But through them all runs themes consistent to Mamet’s work since his early plays in the 1970′s: criminality, ethics, and the dysfunctional ways people treat each other in societies.
War, it could safely be said, is just the most extreme example of the casual violence that has always colored David Mamet’s world. And his views on the matter are just as complex as his work would suggest.
“You can’t write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people,” Mamet said. ”What is criminality and what is government is a theme that runs through every history. You can even see it today with John Kerry in Vietnam. He was highly decorated for his service then he came back and decided the Vietnam War was a crime. Now he’s doing the same thing in Iran.”
Mamet, an observant Jew who believes Kerry’s recent easing of sanctions on Iran represents the Obama administration turning its back on Israel, is a rare outspoken conservative in show business, crediting the economist Milton Friedman as having helped him transform from a typical Baby Boomer liberal.
“Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country and the president is in charge of the government. He’s taken an imperial view of the presidency,” Mamet said.
“I don’t think war is inherently necessary. It used to be thought that a country shouldn’t go to war unless it is absolutely necessary,” he said. “War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It’s the failure of diplomacy. “War and Peace,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Those are some of the greatest tragedies.”
But in the event of tragedy, according to Mamet, compromise is off the table.
Daily Caller: A Modest Critique of Crossfire’s Stephanie Cutter
Posted: September 15, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: CNN, Daily Caller, Darwinism, Patrick Howley, Stephanie Cutter Leave a comment
Cutter: A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics? Or typical Democrat.
Patrick Howley offers this measured, scholarly, respectful characterization brilliantly disturbed, over-the-top hatchet-work on Stephanie Cutter in his review of the new edition of CNN’s Crossfire:
“A loathsome creature like Stephanie Cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul, can push her way onto national television to sit next to a former Speaker of the House and two sitting U.S. senators. A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an empty shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of self-awareness Read the rest of this entry »