Tuesday, August 26, 2014
From: Gary L. Bauer
Backups & Blackberries
There may be a breakthrough concerning the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal. Judicial Watch, which is currently engaged in a legal battle with the IRS, is claiming that Lois Lerner’s emails are not missing.
In a statement yesterday afternoon, the organization said that IRS attorneys acknowledged Friday that “Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe.” But it would be “too onerous” to retrieve them.
The implication of the statement is that — contrary to all previous testimony — Lerner’s emails still exist.
Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch told Fox News: “So everything we’ve been hearing about scratched hard drives about missing emails of Lois Lerner, other IRS officials, other officials in the Obama administration, it’s all been a pack of malarkey.”
Fitton went on to accuse the IRS of “massive obstruction of justice.”
IRS officials are pushing back, saying that Judicial Watch mischaracterized their statement.
“There was no new back-up system described last week to Judicial Watch,” an administration spokesman said. “Government lawyers who spoke to Judicial Watch simply referred to the same email retention policy that Commissioner (John) Koskinen had described in his Congressional testimony.”
The IRS claims that its backup tapes are routinely recycled, so any backups of Lerner’s emails were lost too. That may well be true. If so, then why say at all that the database is “too onerous” to search? There would be no point in searching it.
Nevertheless, the Treasury Department’s inspector general is investigating the backup system and whether data can be retrieved from recycled backup tapes. This confusion will likely lead to another round of sworn statements regarding who said what and exactly what was meant.
But wait…there’s more.
Potentially more damaging to the IRS is the revelation that Lois Lerner also had a Blackberry, which should have contained all the missing emails. But, according to this report, “The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway.”
Lerner was issued a new Blackberry in February 2012 — just as news began to break about the IRS targeting conservative groups. Her previous Blackberry would be the one with the missing emails on it. But guess what? The IRS says it has no protocols for retrieving data from such devices because it only backs up computer hard drives!
Middle East In Chaos
More than 100 rockets fired from Gaza slammed into Israel yesterday. A preschool was hit, and 28 Israelis were injured when a home in Ashkelon was struck. Amid new fighting today, another truce was announced. We’ll see if this one holds.
It’s amazing to think about all the effort that Obama, Kerry and Clinton devoted to pushing a two-state solution in recent years. For all the pressure they put on Israel to make concessions, ultimately it all came down to the willingness of the Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. But they refused.
The next administration must stop the fruitless search for a fake peace until a real peace partner emerges willing to accept the one Jewish state in the world.
The failure of Obama’s foreign policy is on full display in Libya. You may recall that Obama eagerly embraced the Arab Spring and backed revolutions in Egypt and Libya. The radical Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt, and Islamists have been on the march in Libya. Benghazi has fallen and Tripoli is under siege.
Fed up Egyptians eventually kicked out the Muslim Brotherhood and now they are taking matters into their own hands, trying to clean up the mess in Libya. The New York Times reports that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have bombed Islamist targets in Libya twice in the past week — without even notifying Washington.
Meanwhile, there are mixed messages coming out of Washington regarding efforts to combat ISIS. While Obama is reportedly considering bombing ISIS targets in Syria, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, told reporters he would recommend against it and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine (D) is insisting that Obama lacks the authority to do so.
“There’s Something Wrong”
Missouri teenager Michael Brown was laid to rest yesterday. At his funeral, attended by three White House officials, Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy in which he said,”…there’s something wrong, that we have money to give military equipment to police forces, when we don’t have money for … public education.”
We can debate the militarization of the police and funding for public education another day. But I do agree that there is something wrong in America today.
There’s something wrong when 42 people in Chicago get shot in three days, killing six people including two teenagers, and no one says a word.
Where was Reverend Al then? Where was Jesse Jackson? Where were Eric Holder and the other White House aides?
There is something wrong when the deaths of dozens are overlooked but days of riots and rage at the police follow the death of one teenager.
There is something wrong when Michael Brown’s death becomes world news but Dillon Taylor’s is ignored.
There is something wrong when artists make millions off songs with violent lyrics.
The breakdown of the black family is a terrible wound to the fabric of American society that no government program, no amount of funding for public education, will ever completely fix.
Yes, Reverend Sharpton, there is something wrong. But the solution is not more redistribution of wealth or bigger government.
America needs a revival of our Judeo-Christian values — respect for the sanctity of life, respect for the family, respect for our communities, respect for law and order and respect for one another.
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