Carnuccio: When The Truth Really Hurts
Free Market Friday: When the truth really hurts
By Michael C. Carnuccio
Posted: 06:29 PM Thursday, May 30, 2013
We all suspected that President Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service was targeting American citizens expressing their First Amendment right for special scrutiny and delay in identifying tax-exempt status. Now we know the ugly truth: They not only asked invasive questions, they even passed on donors’ names and addresses to hard-left political groups. This is textbook Gestapo politics, where elements within the IRS operate like part of a political opposition research team. Even liberal Democrat U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill and Dick Durbin have assailed the unprecedented abuse of IRS powers.
Then came the revelations that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is shaking down health care businesses and groups, directly asking them to contribute to nonprofits that will attack Obamacare critics and encourage Americans to sign up for the unprecedented Affordable Care Act. Yes, this is the same bureaucrat who some Oklahoma lawmakers want to negotiate with in good faith.
Few were surprised to learn how much work the White House and State Department put into misleading the news media – and all Americans – about the malfeasance and incompetence that led to the horrific deaths of four Americans serving our country in Benghazi, Libya. Obama’s team created 12 redrafts of one set of talking points intended to mislead the whole world from the beginning.