Republicans are getting tripped up by the media when challenged about evidence of President Obama’s personal involvement in the IRS scandal. Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, who chairs the House committee looking into the IRS, “admitted there was no evidence” linking Obama to the IRS scandal, as MSNBC described his appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Camp said, “We don’t have anything to say that the President knew about it.” Michael O’Brien, a political reporter for NBC News, said both Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Dave Camp “admitted they lacked evidence that the targeting of conservatives was ordered by the White House.”

But a Democratic Administration or its president does not need to issue orders or directives or make telephone calls demanding that the IRS act against conservatives. History shows that it is simply how the federal bureaucracy operates. The “smoking gun” is liberal politics as usual, and it stretches back to the Kennedy Administration.

To illustrate this point, consider an article on a left-wing website attempting to distinguish between the Obama Administration’s IRS “affair” and Richard Nixon’s “Watergate-era IRS scandal,” The author is none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who insists that what Nixon did was far worse than anything that has been done under Obama. He advised Republicans not to fall victim to “anti-Obama hysteria” and to avoid talking about Obama’s impeachment.

“A principal distinction” between the use of the IRS by the Nixon and Obama Administrations, he said in his column, “is the ingredient of direct presidential involvement.”

He does acknowledge that Nixon, who resigned from office because he was threatened with impeachment, “was aware that the IRS had audited him in 1961 and 1962 and presumed those audits were politically motivated by the Kennedy White House.” He doesn’t provide any more details, probably because he doesn’t want to implicate his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, in the political use of the IRS. But that is exactly what they did. In fact, they did it before Nixon, and led Nixon to believe the practice was routine.

As noted by Victory Lasky’s book, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, the practice of using the IRS for political purposes began with the Kennedy brothers, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, when they were President and Attorney General, respectively. Not only were Nixon and others involved in his presidential campaign audited after John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election, “tax-exempt right-wing groups” were targeted by the Kennedy Administration’s IRS for special reviews and some lost their tax-exempt status.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article focused on a “Special Service” staff of the IRS under Nixon. What he does not talk about is a special project under President Kennedy dealing with “ideological organizations.” According to the staff report “Investigation of the Special Service Staff of the Internal Revenue Service,” prepared for the Joint Committee on Internal Taxation in 1975, “This program apparently was stimulated by a public statement of President John F. Kennedy and also a suggestion by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.”

In other words, initially there were no direct orders or direct presidential involvement. IRS officials simply responded to the President’s public statements and his concerns.

Here’s how it worked: President Kennedy, in November 1961, was asked at a news conference about financial contributions to right-wing organizations, and he expressed concern about “a diversion of funds which might be taxable.” He added, “I’m sure the Internal Revenue System examines that.” The Senate report says that the IRS directly responded to this statement by reviewing and auditing various organizations.

Not satisfied with the results, President Kennedy did subsequently call the IRS commissioner, telling him to move forward with an “aggressive program” against both right-wing and some left-wing groups. As Victor Lasky points out, this reflected Kennedy’s annoyance with left-wingers attacking him for his anti-Castro activities and military support for non-communist South Vietnam, under invasion from the Communist north.

The report adds that, in addition to President Kennedy’s statement, “there was interest shown in right-wing organizations by the Justice Department,” and that Mitchell Rogovin, then Assistant to the IRS Commissioner, had said he had received a telephone call from John Seigenthaler, then Special Assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The report goes on: “Mr. Rogovin said that Mr. Seigenthaler asked about the tax-exempt status of four or five organizations generally considered to be right-wing. Mr. Rogovin said that, in response, Mr. Seigenthaler was told whether or not these organizations were exempt and whether the organization had been audited recently.”

The key point is that the report links the so-called “first phase” of the IRS program to audit conservative groups to President Kennedy’s press conference statement. It was also linked to a “suggestion of the Attorney General” that the IRS review the tax status of certain groups.

It may be the case that Obama officials had a direct role in the IRS scandal, going beyond simple knowledge of what the IRS was doing. But it was not necessary for Obama to raise the issue personally with the IRS, as the Kennedy Administration example suggests. All he had to do was demonize the Tea Party and let his allies in and out of Congress demand IRS scrutiny of conservative groups.  

In addition to using the IRS, the Kennedy Administration used the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the “Fairness Doctrine” to intimidate and censor conservative and Christian broadcasters. The Fairness Doctrine was abolished under President Reagan, but liberal Democrats have talked about bringing it back in legislative form. They wanted to use it to muzzle conservative commentators. 

As we noted in the current scandal, the evidence appears to show that the Obama Administration and its allies used the IRS to enforce a version of the Fairness Doctrine through federal scrutiny and intimidation of religious and conservative broadcasters. For example, conservative Christian broadcaster James Dobson was told he had to be fair to President Obama to get his tax-exempt status. It is doubtful that Obama had any direct role in this. He didn’t have to get personally involved.

It is likely, however, that some White House or Justice Department officials were aware of and approved the IRS campaign. The media are already noting that the official line has been changing about which people in the White House knew what about the IRS campaign and when they knew it, and whether they informed the president. 

The key point is the Tea Party movement was handicapped during a critical election year. The democratic process was undermined for political reasons in order to guarantee Obama’s re-election. House Republicans will have to decide whether they consider this an impeachable offense.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

By Cliff Kincaid

Jeffrey Lord’s story in the American Spectator about a “smoking gun” in the IRS scandal has backfired. He implied that the head of the IRS union had personally met with President Obama to plot against the Tea Party when there is no evidence of such a meeting or such plotting. Instead, as the Daily Caller and U.S. News & World Report have reported, the union chief had been part of a “Workplace Flexibility Forum” in the Old Executive Office Building attended by 200 people and featuring Obama as a speaker.

Lord is a fine columnist, but Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel had previously pointed out that the smoking gun evidence of presidential wrongdoing has been right in front of us all along, in the form of various statements by the President and other administration officials attacking and demonizing the Tea Party, as well as demands from Democrats and their allies that conservative groups be scrutinized by the IRS. This was pressure from above that had its intended effect—to disable the Tea Party movement during the 2012 elections.

“The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies,” Strassel commented. “But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.”

In fact, the pressure came not only from the Democratic Party, but from various George Soros-funded groups and journalists, one of whom, Seth Rosenfeld, obtained personal financial information about filmmaker Joel Gilbert and his financial backers. The Gilbert case, which involves a massive invasion of privacy and harassment of donors to an anti-Obama film, is potentially even more serious in a legal sense than scrutiny of Tea Party groups by the IRS. In addition, the IRS reopened Gilbert’s 2009 tax return, and simply denied all of his business expenses, even though they were well-documented.

Amy Pyle of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) asked that I correct my article on this aspect of the scandal, saying that, “While Seth has done some freelance work for us in the past, as for many other outlets, he is not an employee here nor is he on any contract with us.”

I had reported that Rosenfeld “works” for the CIR and in fact he is listed on its website as a “correspondent” for the group. That suggests an on-going relationship. I told Pyle there would be no correction. In fact, why doesn’t the CIR help us get to the bottom of this scandal? 

The CIR is funded by the Open Society Institute of George Soros and other liberal foundations. Its “media partners” include the Arab government-funded Al Jazeera English—a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood—The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio and PBS.

With these collaborators, it would appear that an investigation of Rosenfeld and his methods would have to come from Congress, rather than the media. Such a probe might help get to the bottom of the IRS scandal, although he would undoubtedly refuse to identify his sources in the government.

The progressives understand that Obama did not need to personally order this probe and are trying to discredit any reports or suggestions to the contrary. In this manner they hope to save Obama from impeachment, as various scandals continue to grow and implicate the White House in lies and cover-ups.

Jeffrey Lord was justified in asking why National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) president Colleen Kelley was at the White House. His mistake was assuming that her listing in a White House visitors log suggested some kind of high-level, one-on-one meeting with the President. His other mistake was assuming he could ever discover what they discussed, if such a meeting took place.

He won’t retract his story, saying “it is crystal clear there is a relationship between the NTEU and the Obama White House,” adding that Kelley has described her view of this relationship as being about “collaboration.”

He added, “As an ex-White House aide myself it makes no sense that someone in her position has as much access as she does to the White House and the President…speaks glowingly of ‘partnership’ and ‘collaboration’…yet has zero communication on a subject on which the President, his staff, and his congressional allies (Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Franken etc etc) have been loudly emphatic—The Tea Party.”

But communications of that nature, because of the relationship he described, was not necessary. Obama’s allies got the message without a smoking-gun meeting or memo. I think Strassel was making this same critical point in her column that was appropriately titled, “The IRS Scandal Started at the Top.”

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

Israeli Chief of Staff Lt General Benny Gantz (with binoculars)

Lt Gen Benny Gantz, Israeli chief of staff, said there would be “consequences” if Syria tried to move the conflict into the Golan.

Tuesday’s exchange came two weeks after an Israeli aerial attack on strategic Syrian military sites outside Damascus, targeting stores of Iranian-made long-range missiles en route to Hizbollah.

Israeli analysis has explained Tuesday morning’s fire as “stray bullets”, interpreting the Syrian government’s new policy of claiming responsibility as an attempt to open a new front along the Israeli border following April’s strikes.

As old tensions between the Assad regime and Israel crackle, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported mounting anxiety among the 80,000 Druze living in the Golan Heights where an overwhelming majority of the sect consider themselves Syrian nationals but are divided between support for the regime and rebels.

“Israel operates in keeping with its own national interests, and that’s why the Jewish residents here feel protected. But who’s protecting us? We haven’t got any faith that the Israelis are going protect us, but we don’t have any faith that the Syrian regime will protect us either,” one Golan resident told the paper.

Israel’s attitude to the Syrian conflict is finely poised – on the one hand, the revolution has weakened a key Israeli enemy, member of the “Axis of Resistance” and backer of its main foes, Hamas and Hizbollah. On the other, Mr Assad at least kept the peace on the border, while the war has brought both Iran and, in the rebel-held north, al-Qaeda-linked groups very close.

Near the Lebanese border, the Syrian regime, bolstered by hundreds of Hizbollah fighters, relaunched its attack on the town of Qusair, which had appeared to stall on Sunday. Activists from the town said there had been a heavy bombardment by shelling and air power overnight, and posted gruesome video of a young boy whose body had been cut in half. The total casualty figure was not clear.

The town is a strategic point for rebels resupplying militias operating in the centre of the country, and is close to the road connecting Damascus to the north. Its recapture from rebel hands would be the regime’s biggest success in the war to date, but would cause a major humanitarian crisis as it has threatened to treat all 20,000 people thought to be still inside the town as combatants.

Foreign Secretary William Hague, and John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, are due to visit Israel on Thursday for a two-day visit, with Syria at the top of their agenda.

They, along with Russia, are trying to organise a peace conference to prevent the further disintegration of Syria and the spread of sectarian violence to Lebanon, Iraq and beyond. But the Syrian National Coalition indicated yesterday it was still demanding a commitment that this would lead to Mr Assad’s removal from power, a condition he and the Russians have both rejected.

“Bashar al-Assad and his security regime are not a part of any transitional phase, and they have no role in Syria’s future,” an opposition statement said. It demanded international guarantees for Mr Assad’s departure.

Western Macedonia in Greece had the highest level of youth unemployment in the European Union

Western Macedonia in Greece had the highest level of youth unemployment in the European Union, with the number of 16 to 24 year-olds out of work jumping to 72.5pc in 2012 from 52.8pc in 2011, according to Eurostat. Total youth unemployment in Greece stood at 55.3pc last year, more than double the EU average of 22.9pc.

By contrast, regions in Germany and Austria had the fewest people out of work, with the lowest unemployment rates recorded in Salzburg and Tirol in Austria (2.5pc).

The data showed that nine out of the ten regions with the highest unemployment rates were in Spain or Greece, while the regions with the lowest rates were all located in the northern states of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Czech Republic.

In Britain, the West Midlands had the highest unemployment rate, at 11.7pc, while the number of women out of work stood at 11.3pc. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of jobless women in the UK is now at its highest level since records began.

North East Scotland and the Highlands had the lowest unemployment rates, Eurostat said, at 4.7pc and 4.6pc respectively.

Europe’s leaders have called for more action to tackle joblessness in Europe. Earlier this month, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso urged Europe’s leaders to come up with “a more ambitious plan to fight youth unemployment” at a next month’s EU summit.

“We must give revive hope, specially for young people,” he said. “We cannot wait for long, we are all aware this is urgent.”

Lebanese soldiers have been patrolling major roads in the city

At least 10 people have died and 70 have been wounded in the latest round of sectarian violence in Tripoli in Lebanon.

Four people were killed overnight in fighting between Alawite supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Sunnis, who back the Syrian opposition.

The death toll since fresh fighting broke out on Sunday includes two Lebanese soldiers.

Earlier this month, five people were killed in violence in the city.

The Lebanese media says that residents had to take shelter from shelling and sniper fire, as the clashes entered a fourth day.

Fighting in Tripoli has been concentrated in the predominantly Sunni Bab al-Tabbana area and the Jabal Muhsin area, which is populated mainly by Alawites.

Lebanese army troops were seen patrolling major roads in Bab al-Tabbana hours before the fresh fighting broke out, reports the AP news agency.

Earlier in May, violence erupted after Sunni cleric Shadi al-Moulawi was arrested on terrorism charges. His supporters claimed he was held because of his help to Syrian refugees and his support of the Syrian opposition.

Tripoli is a largely Sunni city but is also home to a small community of Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad belongs.

The city has recently become home to thousand of Syrian refugees fleeing violence.

Community leaders in Lebanon had repeatedly warned of the possibility that the violence in Syria would spill over the border, says the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Istanbul.

In February at least two people were killed in Tripoli as supporters and opponents of Mr Assad clashed.

Lois Lerner

The threat was addressed to all the witnesses but it was obvious the congressman had just one in mind, the woman at the center of the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., loudly threatened in his opening statement that if witnesses refused to testify it would leave Congress no option but to appoint a special prosecutor to look into abuse by the IRS.

“There will be hell to pay if that’s the route we choose to go down,” he warned.

But that’s just what Lerner did, refusing to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, by invoking her constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Lerner said that’s because the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the IRS scandal but it may also be because she wasn’t telling the truth.

Lerner has blamed abusive IRS practices on low-level employees in the Cincinnati office. But IRS sources told National Review, “From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status.”

Lerner heads the IRS unit that oversees applications for groups seeking tax-exempt status. She triggered an uproar nearly two weeks ago when she announced the IRS began targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny in 2010.

Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., subpoenaed Lerner to testify Wednesday.  He has accused her of lying to Congress four times last year when lawmakers began looking into complaints of IRS agents asking intrusive questions to tea party groups looking for tax-exempt status.

Lerner presented her side of the argument while making an opening statement. She claimed she is innocent of wrongdoing and said because members had accused her of lying to the committee, she was taking the advice of her attorney to not answer questions.

“I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws or provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” she said.

Lerner also said she had not violated any IRS rules or regulations.

By refusing to testify, Lerner said, “People may assume I have done something wrong.”

“I have not,” she insisted.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., then insisted she had waived her Fifth Amendment right by telling her side of the story during an opening statement that Issa said made “assertions.”

“That’s not the way it works,” Gowdy said, and applause broke out in the hearing room.

Issa then tried to ask Lerner two questions but she refused to answer both times.

Issa then excused Lerner and her counsel.

That left former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, Treasury Department Inspector General J. Russell George and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin to testify.

Shulman testified before the Senate on Tuesday and basically pleaded ignorance of the entire situation, saying that he first learned about the investigation into the targeting of conservative groups in the spring of 2012.

The former IRS chief says that was when he was told IRS workers were using a list of key terms, such as “tea party” and “patriots” to determine which groups seeking tax-exempt status should be given extra scrutiny.

Shulman resigned in November, but before that, he repeatedly and incorrectly told lawmakers the IRS had not targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny.

From 2011 through the 2012 election, members of Congress repeatedly asked Shulman about complaints from tea party groups. Shulman continually refused to acknowledge that IRS agents had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny, often relaying his denials through deputies.

However, inspector general for tax administration George said he told Shulman about the investigation into the abuse on May 30, 2012.

Shulman was adamant in denying any special targeting of conservatives at a congressional hearing March 22, 2012.

“There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens” to those who apply for tax-exempt status, said Shulman.

When asked at the House Ways and Means Committee hearing Friday morning about Shulman’s March 2012 statement, Miller said it was “incorrect, but not untruthful.”

The White House said Monday that Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other senior officials learned last month about the Treasury Department inspector general’s inquiry into IRS abuse. The White House said the officials did not inform President Obama about the review and that he did not learn of the abuse until news reports May 10.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler learned of the investigation April 24 and then informed the chief of staff and other aides about the inquiry’s findings.

The controversy is just one of a list of scandals plaguing the Obama White House now. Others include the still-unanswered questions about the Benghazi terror attack that killed four Americans, and the pursuit of the telephone records of a number of reporters covering Washington.

A path of heartbreak, violence, lies and finally confessions has led Jodi Arias to where she is now — at the mercy of jurors deciding whether or not she should live.

On Wednesday they convene again to consider the death sentence for the passionate crime of murdering of her former boyfriend. A day before, she pleaded with them to spare her life.

Earlier this month, the same jurors said Arias was “exceptionally cruel,” when she stabbed Travis Alexander 29 times in 2008, slit his neck from ear to ear and shot him in the face.

They pronounced her guilty of first-degree murder on May 8.

Arias’ plea to jurors Tuesday to let her live was a stark reversal from two weeks ago, when she told a journalist she preferred death to life in prison.

“I believe death is the ultimate freedom, so I’d rather just have my freedom as soon as I can get it,” she told CNN affiliate KSAZ after her conviction.

But her family implored her to change her mind, she told KSAZ late Tuesday. Now she wants to spare them further heartbreak, she said.

“One of my cousins really drove it home for me and told me how much it would affect them, if I did anything to myself,” she said.

Her mother pleaded with her, she claimed. “Please don’t give up; please don’t give up,” Arias said she told her.

Well-planned presentation

Her life seemed to pass before her, as she delivered a slideshow presentation — mostly of family photos — to the jury on Tuesday. It started off with toddler pictures of herself wearing pigtails and showed several images from holidays and vacations with family members.

She read a prepared statement for nearly 20 minutes, at times crying.

She told jurors that she had been a victim of abuse as an adult and as a child. She had claimed she killed Alexander in self-defense after he hurt her, something evidence failed to substantiate.

She called his murder “the worst mistake” she’d ever made, “the worst thing I’ve ever done.” She couldn’t have imagined herself capable of such a grisly crime she told the jury.

“But I know that I was,” she said. “And for that I’m going to be sorry for the rest of my life — probably longer.”

Arias pledged to make herself useful to other prisoners and humanity by performing acts of charity from behind bars, if spared. She told jurors Tuesday that she could teach people to read in prison.

She told them she would suffer for what she did.

“I’m not going to become a mother because of my own terrible choices,” she said. “I won’t be at my sister’s wedding, when she ties the knot next year.”

Arias pledged to dedicate her life to good causes.

She noted she could bring “people together in a constructive and positive way” by participating in various programs, including prisoner literacy initiatives; by her “Survivor” T-shirts, which would benefit victims of domestic violence; and by donating her hair, so it could be used to make wigs for sick children.

She claimed she was a gentle person who caught spiders in cups and took them outside rather than kill them. And she showed the jurors several pieces of her artwork.

Beginning about 90 minutes later than scheduled, Arias, 32, said she never wanted the “graphic, mortifying, horrific details (of her and Alexander’s relationship) paraded out into the public arena.”

“It’s never been an intention of mine to malign his name or character,” she said.

She acknowledged that her plea stood in contradiction with her previous publicly expressed wish to die. “Each time I said that, though I meant it,” she said, “I lacked perspective.”

Attorneys argue life and death

Defense attorney Jennifer Willmott argued Tuesday that Arias’ life should be spared.

“We’re not talking about whether or not to convict. We’re talking about whether or not to kill. And so when we talk about that, it matters that she was 27 years old and she had no criminal history,” she said. “It matters that she hadn’t done anything wrong in her life before that.”

Prosecutor Juan Martinez said pointing to Arias’ artwork as evidence that her life should be spared wasn’t a valid defense.

“It’s an entitlement road that they want you to travel when they talk to you about the fact that she’s a good artist,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything. All it means is: give her special or preferential treatment.”

He argued that jurors should sentence Arias to death.

“You have a duty, and that duty really means that you actually do the honest, right thing, even though it may be difficult,” he said.

For Arias to be sentenced to death, the jury’s decision must be unanimous. In the case of a deadlock, a new jury would be chosen for this phase only.

If Arias is given a sentence of death, she would be the fourth woman on death row in the state of Arizona.

When Alexander died

Arias was living in Yreka, California, when she met Alexander at a business convention in Las Vegas in September 2006. That November, he baptized Arias into the Mormon faith, a ceremony Arias said was followed by anal sex.

Arias became his girlfriend two months later, she testified. They broke up in the summer of 2007, and Alexander began dating other women.

Alexander’s naked body was found crammed in a stand-up shower in June 2008 after he missed two appointments, prompting friends to go to his house. He had been stabbed 29 times in the back and torso and shot in the head. His throat was slit from ear to ear.

After her arrest, Arias told an elaborate lie about masked intruders breaking into Alexander’s house, killing him, before she narrowly escaped.

Relatives who spoke with police described her as mentally unstable.

Anthony Weiner running for NYC mayor

After months of speculation, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner announced in a YouTube video posted to his campaign website late Tuesday that he is running for mayor of New York City.

“Look, I’ve made some big mistakes and I know I’ve let a lot of people down.  But I’ve also learned some tough lessons,” Weiner says in the video.  “I’m running for mayor because I’ve been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it for my entire life. And I hope I get a second chance to work for you.”

His campaign told CNN he does not have any events planned for Wednesday.

Now that Weiner is in the race, the Democrat will undoubtedly face questions from voters and fellow candidates about the 2011 scandal that eventually led to his resignation from Congress.

His political career was derailed after he was found sending lewd photos and messages to multiple women. At first he lied, claiming his Twitter was hacked, but he later admitted to the indiscretions and left the House of Representatives.

But the former congressman from Brooklyn says he’s hoping for a second chance, and has been not-so-quietly testing the waters about a mayoral bid in recent months.

Rumors began swirling in January, after a filing with the New York City Campaign Finance Board revealed that Weiner’s mayoral campaign committee, created ahead of his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2005 race, had a healthy $4.5 million cash pile.

Weiner later admitted in a lengthy, repentant New York Times Magazine profile in April that he was eyeing the mayor’s race, and confirmed that his political committee had spent more than $100,000 on polling and research.

Also in April, Weiner released a detailed plan outlining his ideas for the city. Called “Keys to the City,” the document, which appears to be a reworked version of a plan Weiner released during his 2009 campaign, lays out 64 ideas to revitalize New York City’s middle class.

Weiner asks New Yorkers for feedback on his plan in his video announcement, which also features a rare appearance from his wife Huma Abedin.

A longtime aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Abedin stayed mostly silent throughout her husband’s scandal, but has been publicly expressing support for his political comeback of late.

“We love this city, and no one will work harder to make it better than Anthony,” Huma says in the video.

This will be Weiner’s third run for mayor of the Big Apple – he ran in 2005 and launched a bid in 2009, but later dropped out when the city council extended the mayor’s term limits, allowing incumbent Michael Bloomberg to run again.

Two polls conducted in April indicated that Weiner would jump to second place in the race for Democratic nomination, but would still trail by double digits frontrunner Christine Quinn, the city council president.

Suspects tied to Boston bombings

A man fatally shot overnight by an FBI agent in Orlando was being investigated for a possible connection to the Boston bombings, a U.S. law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the Boston Marathon case told CNN.

The man who was shot, Ibragim Todashev, knew both of the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, the official said.

The agent shot in self-defense in an incident at Todashev’s house, the official said.

Agents were led to Todashev, who had once lived in Boston, “through investigative leads,” the official said.

Todashev was from the Chechnya region, as were the Tsarnaev brothers. He had been living in the United States as a legal resident since approximately 2008, the source said.

The source added that the FBI had been investigating Todashev for about a month; the bombings occurred on April 15.

The FBI had followed Todashev for days, his friend told CNN affiliate Florida News 13.

Khasuen Taramov told the TV station that Todashev was living in Boston a couple of years ago when he became acquainted with Tsarnaev; after the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, the FBI began questioning and following Todashev and Taramov.

Todashev “wasn’t like real close friends (with Tsarnaev), but he just happened to know him,” Taramov said. “But he had no idea that they were up to something like that, like bombings and everything, you know what I mean?”

He told CNN affiliate WESH that Todashev and the elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had spoken by telephone about a month before the bombings.

“It was a complete shock to him,” Taramov said.

The two met in Boston, where Todashev had lived and where there is a small, closely knit community of Chechens, said Taramov.

Their telephone conversation before the bombings contained nothing but routine pleasantries, he said. “It was ‘How are you doing, how’s your family?’ That’s all.”

Taramov said he himself was questioned by the FBI for three hours Tuesday night. Asked what he was asked, Taramov said, “Different kind of questions like what do you think about bombings, do you know these guys, blah blah blah, what is my views on certain stuff.”

He said Todashev was not a radical. “He was just a Muslim. That was his mistake, I guess.”

Taramov said his friend had told him he had a bad feeling about the direction the investigation was heading. “He felt like there’s going to be a setup … bad setup against him. Because he told me, ‘They are making up such crazy stuff, I don’t know … why they doing it. OK, I’m answering the questions, but they are still making up some, like, connections, some crazy stuff. I don’t know why they are doing it.’ ”

Before meeting with the FBI for a 7:30 p.m. interview Tuesday, Taramov said, his friend asked him to take his parents’ telephone numbers. “He just told me, ‘Take the numbers, in case something happens, if I get locked up, or whatever, call them.’ You know what I mean?

“We were expecting to get him locked up, but not getting him killed. I can’t believe it.”

Todashev was unemployed and had been living off of insurance money after surgery for an accident. “He used to be a fighter, MMA fighter,” Taramov said in an apparent reference to mixed martial arts.

Todashev had recently gotten his green card and had been planning to visit his parents in Chechnya, and then return to the United States, but canceled the plans, Taramov said.

Now, he added, he was planning to call his friend’s parents.

An FBI post-shooting incident review team was expected to depart Washington and arrive within 24 hours in Orlando, said Special Agent Dave Couvertier, an FBI spokesman. Such reviews are standard when an agent is involved in a shooting.

The mayor of tornado-ravaged Moore, Oklahoma, will push for a law requiring storm shelters or safe rooms in new homes, he told CNN Wednesday.

“We’ll try to get it passed as soon as I can,” Glenn Lewis said.

The ordinance would apply to single-family and multi-family homes.

At least 24 people, including nine children, were killed in Monday’s mammoth tornado, the state medical examiner’s office said.

Lewis said he does not expect the death toll to rise.

But some loved ones are still missing after the twister ripped through 17 miles of central Oklahoma and pummeled 2,400 homes.

Cassandra Jenkins has no idea what happened to her grandparents, more than a day after the twister struck their hometown of Moore.

“All we know is that their home is still left standing. However, they have not been seen or heard from since the storm hit,” she said as her daughters clutched photos of their great-grandparents.

“We’ve tried to locate them at every hospital, every shelter, every Red Cross. Anything we could possibly reach out to, we have.”

Young lives remembered

One of the most heartbreaking scenes in Moore is the pile of wreckage where Plaza Towers Elementary School once stood.

Seven of the nine children killed in the storm were inside the school when it collapsed.

The children were in a classroom, Moore Fire Chief Gary Bird told CNN Wednesday. He also said their deaths “had nothing to do with flooding, from what I understand.” On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb told CNN the youngsters had drowned in a school basement.

Ja’Nae Hornsby, 9, was one of them.

“There’s no other kid like her,” Ja’Nae’s aunt Angela Hornsby said. “She’s the sweetest thing, the bossiest thing, the most fun, always trying to make us laugh.”

Ja’Nae’s father, Joshua Hornsby, isn’t ready to accept that his little girl is gone.

“I’m still hoping for that call to say, ‘We’ve made a mistake,’ ” he said. “I just pray that’s what it is.”

Destruction on a colossal scale

Damage assessments Tuesday showed the tornado had winds over 200 mph at times, making it an EF5 – the strongest category of tornadoes measured, the National Weather Service said.

Lewis said the devastation was so catastrophic that city officials rushed to print new street signs to help guide rescuers and residents through the newly mangled and unfamiliar landscape.

The financial impact will be monumental. Insurance claims will probably top $1 billion, said Kelly Collins of the Oklahoma Insurance Commission.

Craig Fugate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, told CNN the agency is in “good shape” to support the recovery in Oklahoma and in other disaster zones, such as rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York. “We got full allocation last year with the Sandy supplemental funds. We are looking to continue the response here as well as the previous disasters.”

But “if we have another hurricane, we may need more money,” he said Wednesday.

Those helping in Moore include police and firefighters from Joplin, Missouri — a city all too familiar with grief and devastation.

Wednesday marks the second anniversary of the tornado that pulverized Joplin, killing at least 158 people. It was the deadliest single U.S. tornado since federal record-keeping began in 1950.

“We remember the amount of assistance that we received following the tornado two years ago, and we want to help others as they helped us,” Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr said.

“We know too well what their community is facing, and we feel an obligation to serve them as they have served us.”

‘Still can’t believe this’

Some residents of Moore ventured back to where their homes once stood, only to find unrecognizable scraps of their lives.

“You just want to break down and cry,” Steve Wilkerson said, his voice trembling.

He held a laundry basket that contained the few intact belongings he could find.

“I still can’t believe this is happening. You work 20 years, and then it’s gone in 15 minutes.”

Teachers lauded for saving students

Amid the trauma and grief, tales of heroism and gratitude sprouted up across Moore.

Several teachers at Briarwood Elementary shielded their students with their bodies or distracted them with impromptu games as they took cover from the tornado that demolished their school.

Suzanne Haley was impaled by the leg of a desk while protecting her students.

“We crowded the children under desks, and me and a fellow teacher put ourselves in front of the desks that the children were under,” she told CNN’s Piers Morgan.

The roof and walls collapsed around them as the tornado’s fury enveloped the school. The leg of the desk pierced her right calf, jutting out on both sides.

“By the grace of God, I kept it together,” she said. “I couldn’t go into hysterics in front of my children, in front of the other students. I had to be calm for them.”

Miraculously, everyone at Briarwood survived.

While many describe the teachers as heroes, Haley dismisses the title.

“It’s nothing anybody wouldn’t do,” she said. “These children — we see their smiles, their tears, every day, in and out, and we love them.”

Photo: Greg Nash

An unwelcome sequel is scheduled for January release and it’s titled Sequester: Part 2.

It is increasingly likely that this second round of indiscriminate cuts will reprise the first sequester, with concomitant public frustration about Washington’s inability to budget rationally.

The first sequester, triggered by the 2011 Budget Control Act, required agencies to cut $80 billion equally from across their operations.

Lawmakers in both parties said they wanted to avoid using this blunt fiscal ax and criticized it for cutting the good with the bad. Agency heads decried worker furloughs and warned of economic pain.

The second year of the 2011 Budget Control Act was supposed to be easier.

From 2014 on, the act imposed spending ceilings on the government that were meant to force appropriators to make considered decisions on spending cuts instead of across-the-board slashing.

But it appears likely that Congress will fail to agree to specific cuts, and will punt the decisions to agencies.

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday adopted top-line figures for each of the 12 appropriations bills. These are so different from the Senate’s likely bills that it will be all but impossible to reconcile them, lawmakers say.

“It is too early in the year to condemn us to an inevitable CR [continuing resolution] — it’s progressing in that direction. That’s the message we have been putting out loud and clear,” Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said Tuesday, adding, “We don’t want a long-term CR. We are boxed in, which I don’t like.”

Unless President Obama and congressional leaders reach a deficit grand bargain, experts say Congress is on track to put most spending on autopilot with another continuing resolution.

The government is operating under a continuing resolution set at $1.043 trillion, but the Budget Control Act would set the fiscal 2014 spending level at $967 billion. That would require a cut of about $76 billion across the government.

That cut would need to be made 15 days after Congress adjourns at the end of the year. Implementing it without furloughs or layoffs could be very tough for agency heads, who have already struggled to find one-time savings this year, aides said.

Rogers called the sequester situation “idiotic” but said his hands are “tied” by the Budget Control Act, the House-passed budget and House rules.

Under the House budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Rogers must keep the 12 bills at $967 billion in total spending. Ryan’s bill increases funding for defense, compared to the Budget Control Act forcing deeper cuts to social programs.

The Senate budget allows Senate appropriators to spend a total of $1.058 trillion.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) on Tuesday offered an amendment in committee to replace the 2013 and 2014 automatic cuts with a combination of tax increases and cuts to future defense and farm spending, but it was defeated after Rogers argued against any new tax increases.

Rogers’s committee then adopted top-line spending numbers for each of the 12 appropriations bills for 2014, cutting job and healthcare funding 18 percent below the current sequester and foreign aid and environmental programs by some 15 percent.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who heads the Senate Appropriations Labor subcommittee, argued the cuts would be devastating.

“Do they intend to eliminate the entire National Institutes of Health? That wouldn’t be enough to achieve their proposed cut,” he said. “Do they plan to eliminate all funding for special education, Title I, after-school centers, and teacher quality? Again, that wouldn’t be enough to achieve their proposed cut.”

Rogers said producing some of bills, such as the noncontroversial Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs spending measures, is better than producing none.

“It is my sincere hope that there will soon be a budget compromise that will undo the damaging sequestration law and give us a single, common top-line allocation with the Senate,” he said. “However, until that time, we cannot sit by the wayside waiting for a deal to be made.”

Ranking member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) predicted that the committee would only produce those two bills plus defense and agriculture measures this year.

The rest of the bills, because they require such embarrassingly deep cuts, would not even be marked up.

“It’s inevitable that we’re going to head toward a CR,” she said.

Another factor making a CR increasingly likely is the surprise extra revenue that has come into government coffers from tax hikes and an improving economy. That means Congress won’t have to lift the debt ceiling — the likely vehicle for a grand bargain —until sometime around November.

Lowey said that means no grand bargain talks will be coming before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

She also pointed to confusion among Democrats on how to handle the train wreck.

“We don’t know what the president is thinking, we don’t know what [the Office of Management and Budget] is thinking,” she said.

For Republicans, the cuts to defense are the hardest to swallow, so there has been some talk of reversing the 2013 sequester and raising the 2014 budget cap for defense as part of a July debt-ceiling bill.

Rogers said there have been preliminary discussions on the content of that bill, which sources say could also address tax reform and issues like the stalled Keystone XL oil pipeline. But he said no decisions have been made.

Even if the House replaces part of the defense cuts in its July bill, it is unlikely Senate Democrats would go along if domestic agency cuts remain in place.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) is expected to begin moving bills at the Senate’s higher level of spending in June, aides said. There is little expectation in the Senate that a sequester, part 2 can be avoided.

“Agencies have been emptying the cupboard to deal with the first sequester … if you ask them about the next round, especially on the defense side … they are afraid,” an aide said.

Mikulski told The Hill on Tuesday that she is still reviewing the House spending allocations, but she would try to avoid a CR by passing an omnibus package of detailed changes to all federal agencies.

“I am going to try for regular order or for an omnibus,” she said.

Doing that would be a tough lift. Mikulski tried and failed to enact an omnibus to deal with the 2013 sequester.

The Washington Post apparently doesn’t care how ridiculous it looks as it embarks on the process of destroying Ken Cuccinelli and other Republican candidates for top statewide offices in Virginia.

After Cuccinelli won the gubernatorial nomination, the Post stories looked like press releases from the Democratic Party. The front-page online Washington Post headline proclaimed, “Virginia GOP leans far to the right, nominating staunch conservatives.” The summary of the story by Laura Vozzella said, “After election losses, state Republicans are largely resisting advice to move to the middle.”

“Democrats made it clear that they view the GOP ticket as too extreme,” the Post reported, in a follow-up story. This is the way the Post views the GOP ticket. And this is the way the Post wants readers to view it, too.

The extreme rhetoric apparently includes Cuccinelli’s statement, “Our country was founded on the belief that our rights don’t come from the government, they come from our Creator. The Constitution was set up to limit the size and scope of government, not the liberty of individuals.”

There is nothing new here, in terms of the paper’s coverage of politics. But despite losing readers and money, the paper still carries some clout among those unaware of how media bias works and how the paper demonizes conservative Republicans. It is important to document this bias as it is taking place so that the Post is aware that the public understands these media tricks.

Fortunately, the Cuccinelli campaign recognizes the problem and is fighting back. Cuccinelli campaign manager Dave Rexrode said, “…we need to break through the biased and unfair actions of Washington, D.C.’s largest newspaper.”

“Over the past few months,” he explained, “The Washington Post has launched numerous misleading and false editorials attacking Ken Cuccinelli. They are basically taking the Democrats’ talking points and turning them into editorials.”

The presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Terry McAuliffe, “appears to have The Washington Post in his back pocket,” Rexrode pointed out. He also talked in detail about a push-poll that was nothing more than the paper’s “next attempt to attack Ken and prop up Terry McAuliffe.”

In a column headlined, “Ken Cuccinelli must say whether he’d still pursue tea party agenda if elected governor,” Post columnist Robert McCartney demanded that the candidate accept the label of extremist, which is how the paper wants to depict him. He said Cuccinelli “is trying to distract voters from the very positions that made him famous,” insisting that “In his acceptance speech Saturday at the Richmond Coliseum, Cuccinelli made only brief, passing references to his antiabortion position and his unsuccessful fight as attorney general against health-care reform.”

This is the “passing reference” to abortion: “It also means defending those at both ends of life—protecting the elderly from abuse as well as the unborn. We should encourage a deep and abiding respect for all human life.”

Rather than duck the issue, this is an unmistakable addressing of the abortion problem. 

On the matter of “health-care reform,” which is what the Post calls socialized medicine, the fact is that Cuccinelli led a successful legal fight against Obamacare and a federal judge ruled in his favor. However, the Supreme Court ultimately decided on spurious grounds in favor of the law. Hence, the battle to repeal it rests with Congress.

At the same time, Cuccinelli says, “While states are severely constrained by federal law, I believe that state governments can reform their markets in ways that allow more competition and better choices for consumers. As Governor, I will pursue changes to open up Virginia’s markets, attract the nation’s best medical professionals, improve patient safety by modernizing the health care information systems, and get timely, accurate information to families and businesses to empower them to make the best possible health care decisions.”

Rather than running away from the issue, Cuccinelli is addressing this one, too.

McCartney claimed that Cuccinelli had led a high-profile battle as Attorney General against “environmental protection,” making him out to be a proponent of dirty air and water. In fact, as noted by his own website, Cuccinelli’s record is clear:

• He sued the EPA for illegally creating a cap-and-trade scheme to regulate the gas we all exhale as a danger to human health;
• He stopped the federal Office of Surface Mining from attempting to shut down coal mines in Southwest Virginia; and
• He sued the EPA for its unprecedented and illegal attempt to regulate storm water as a pollutant in Virginia.

In regard to the latter, Cuccinelli won the case and the EPA backed down. The Post itself admitted the decision was a “victory” for Cuccinelli and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which signed on to the suit and was dominated by Democrats angry with the EPA. 

On the matter of personal disclosure, Cuccinelli opened eight years of tax records—a total of 225 pages—to the media. McAuliffe refuses to release his tax returns. Instead, he has issued “abridged tax information,” which conceals sources of income, for three years. 

“During the 2012 presidential election cycle,” the Cuccinelli campaign points out, “The Washington Post ran a number of articles and editorials calling on Mitt Romney—for the sake of transparency—to release his tax returns.”

The Cuccinelli campaign noted these examples:

• “Mitt Romney’s Contemptuous Attitude Toward The Importance Of Public Disclosure Is Increasingly Troubling.” (Editorial, “Mr. Romney’s Secret Life,” The Washington Post, 4/23/12)

• “Mitt Romney Owes The Public A Look At A Substantial, Representative Series Of His Tax Records.” (Editorial, “The Romney Standard,” The Washington Post, 1/22/12)

• “…As Much As Mr. Romney Might Want To Limit Disclosure To A Year Or Two, That Would Be Unfortunate.” (Editorial, “Mr. Romney’s Tax Returns,” The Washington Post, 1/19/12)

• “Tax Information Could Be Especially Revealing In The Case Of Mr. Romney And His Extensive Investment Income, Which May Be Why He Has Been Reluctant To Release It.” (Editorial, “Mitt Romney’s (Still) Secret Money,” The Washington Post, 1/12/12)

• “Now Mr. Romney Has Doubled Down On This Lack Of Transparency…” (Editorial, “Mitt Romney’s Secret Money,” The Washington Post, 12/26/11)

The Cuccinelli campaign says the Post’s argument then was that the public deserved a full picture of Romney before casting their votes. It asks, “Shouldn’t the same apply for Terry McAuliffe?”

McAuliffe himself had said to Romney, “If you have nothing to hide, then release the tax documents.”

For the Post, McAuliffe and his questionable sources of income and controversial business deals must be concealed and protected. On the other hand, Cuccinelli must be savaged for being open, honest and aboveboard about his finances and views. 

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.