IRS fears employees being “seized with spontaneous diarrhea”
That Legal Insurrection reader comment and another about “buggy whipping” used in court case to justify withholding IRS employee identities.
Hey, remember the Reader Poll we did about whether it was okay to follow and try to interview Lois Lerner in her neighborhood?
Do you approve of media confronting Lois Lerner in her neighborhood? (Reader Poll):
Jason Mattera of the Daily Surge recently filmed an unannounced confrontation with former IRS employee Lois Lerner in her own neighborhood.
Lerner fled his camera and tried (unsuccessfully) to seek refuge in a neighbor’s home:
… This may seem invasive and inappropriate, but as Jason Mattera asks her in so many words, is it any more inappropriate than the way Lerner used her position at the IRS to target average Americans?
So what do you think. After viewing the video, and considering how it must feel for any controversial public figure (do unto others?) to be confronted where s/he lives, was the questioning of Lerner a good thing?
The result of the Reader Poll was overwhelming:
Just another Legal Insurrection fun time, right?
Someone noticed the comments to the blog post. The IRS. And it’s not happy.
In a federal FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch seeking records of Lerner emails and IRS efforts to retrieve the emails, the IRS used two of the comments to the Legal Insurrection Reader Poll post to justify the IRS no longer disclosing the identities of IRS personnel.
Think about that. The IRS is reading our comments. Don’t they have anything better to do, like hassle conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status? On second thought, keep reading our comments and leave conservative groups alone.
It’s all set forth in the IRS’s opposition to Judicial Watch’s Motion to Compel Discovery. You can read the whole thing here.
The Legal Insurrection post is Exhibit D to the IRS affidavit.
Footnote No. 2 of the IRS brief explains why one of the comments constitutes a supposed threat to Lerner and IRS employees such that their names need to be kept private [note – the IRS mistakenly refers to the post as Exhibit C, but it’s really Exhibit D]
Here’s the full comment by reader “Orwellington“:
And by “C. Lashawn“:
Does the IRS really fear “public whipping with a buggy whip” and being in such fear its employees are “seized with spontaneous diarrhea”?
Where does one even find a buggy whip these days?
I think the commenters were just being snarky. You know, internet.
Now if they had wished to see Lerner hit over the head with a wet noodle resulting in spontaneous projectile vomiting, that would have had even me worried.
(added)
IRS officials have nothing better to do at work than read snarky blog comments criticizing them. http://t.co/l5h53KZ1rH @LegInsurrection
— Jason Mattera (@JasonMattera) November 19, 2014
Judicial Watch v IRA – IRS Opposition to Discovery Motion – Exh D Legal Insurrection
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Now that we have their attention, is it too much to ask for their compassion and sense of proportion when it comes to their many and morally depraved acts of throwing their weight around, threatening (and actually) ruining lives, stealing property from the elderly, garnishing wages, and all other sorts of ruination?
This they do, daily, and more as they cower behind “regulations” and seek the broadest and kindest interpretation of their life-long devotion to extracting blood from turnips.
Tar. Feathers. Rail. Some assembly required.
Good thing our taxes are a voluntary thing. We might be talking about real prison for tax evasion. Unless you’re Al Sharpton. Then it is just so much reparations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg
Paying income tax in America is Voluntary
Joan, there is a far better chance of just eliminating the entire IRS (corrupt arm of the Democractic Party that it really is now). That is a higher probability of closing the redundant IRS, than of their ever acting like normal humans.
Good Professor Jacobson, I’ll bet you’ve suspected the Obama administration has been closely monitoring your blog (and reacting to it) for at least the last couple of years. But you’re too professional and modest to admit. At least that is my opinion of the parnoid Obama adminsistration.
For your consideration….those “two comments” could very easily be planted comments from IRS employees.
My oh my. What thin skin. She didn’t exhibit such daintiness when she was threatening taxpayers and putting together fascist questionnaires. Maybe she should stay in her multi-million dollar home so she won’t be confronted with the cold, cruel, threatening world she helped create.
Maybe she should just move to North Korea.
Either you’re a big fish, Prof. J, or somebody with too much time on their hands is extremely paranoid. But then again, if part of my job description included harassing people, I suppose I’d be paranoid, too ~
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the ObamaBanana Republican Guard quite happy to name the names of the “rogue” Cincinnati employees they tried to scapegoat in the early days?
But, apart from that, EVERYBODY who touched this tyranny…just like with ObamaDoggle…NEEDS to be put very starkly in the public gaze.
IF they are innocent of wrong-doing, let them come forward with a full accounting, so we can separate the sheep from the goats. And let them name the goats.
It’s a Leftist trademark that they don’t want what they do to others done to them.
AMEN Rags! While I don’t wish bodily harm upon them I do believe that every last one of them involved in this scandal is due a very large, very nasty legal smackdown by the courts for what they’ve done to the American people and specifically these conservative groups.
So the IRS doesn’t like getting a taste of its own medicine. No sympathy.
If a judge grants their wish, the judge is enabling and encouraging government bullying of taxpayers. After all, if you’ll be able to hide your behavior permanently, why not do it, and do MORE of it.
Sunlight IS the best disinfectant.
BTW, that was a great post. Watching video of Lerner being uncomfortable, not as uncomfortable as her victims, but still, uncomfortable, was hugely satisfying.
Just look at this headline and think… what has this administration come to?
Or perhaps more importantly “Where as this Administration came from????”
To paraphrase our third president, ‘When the government fears the people we have liberty. When the people fear the government we have tyranny.’
We’d be making progress if the IRS employees were REALLY quaking in their boots.
But they’re not. They are the government. They have a monopoly on coercion. They target who they want to target. They create incomprehensibly complex rules so they always win and Joe Schmo loses. It takes enormous brass ones to even pretend that they are intimidated by anonymous internet bluster.
Life is fat in Capital City.
The Internal Revenue Code does not define ‘income’, as verified by the Court in U.S. v. Ballard (535 F2d 400, 404): “The general term ‘income’ is not defined in the Internal Revenue Code.”
The wages from your labor are your income, your personal property. They are not profits and they should not be taxed as profits. And, there is a cost to my labor.
Right now, if in one day I make $250.00 for my day’s labor the cost of my labor is valued at zero. I am taxed on $250.00.
The income tax and the IRS should be abolished. The Constitution, the 16th Amendment and the courts are being ignored by the IRS.
The IRS is operating illegally.
Fair Tax. Gets rid of the 16th, replaces our ginomous tax code with something the average taxpayer can understand, and best of all, ABOLISHES THE IRS! Just imagine, the single most hated government institution gone for good! Probably have to wait for Zero to be gone from office and replaced by a (hopefully) conservative republican. In the meantime, supporters of the FT probably ought to be quietly building support with their Congress members so that it has a chance of being passed in a few years. Really, now is a great time to build that support with all the scandals of the last few years exposing just how corrupt the IRS truly is.
Why should we have an income tax or a tax to substitute for it?
We did without it for about 125 years. For good reasons.
If the Fed was abolished, and gold reinstituted as money, we might find the government didn’t have a need.
Leaving aside the technical difficulties of a gold standard, you should be aware that we had far more volatile currency under it. There was inflation, deflation, panics, bank runs, recessions, and the Great Depression while on the gold standard.
The Gold Bugs never mention any of that.
Political reality prevents switching over to a gold standard anytime in the near future. Our government debt/spending is currently just too big to have it’s monetary supply backed by just gold itself. Much of this size is due to federal welfare/entitlements. These programs would have to be gradually shrunk and eventually eliminated before we could even begin to contemplate going back to something like the gold standard.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf
OK. “Wages, salaries and other earnings.”
The IRS form is saying the same thing I am saying – whatever you take in is considered income, whether as your labor or as X. As I mentioned above the Constitution and the courts do not define “income” The IRS uses Gruber-esque terms despite the court’s undefined term.
Your “income,” your private property, in IRS terms, is considered taxable. Just because it is on an IRS form doesn’t make it ultimately legal and Constitutional.
Let’s say I work forty hours at $40.00/hr. In exchange I receive $1600.00 at the end of the week. I break even. The labor cost me forty hours of my life plus previous massive amounts of education, clothes for the work place enforced dress codes, etc., etc.
According to the IRS, though, I have basically created taxable income from my “wages, salaries, and other blah, blah, blah, compensation”.
Though not a corporation I have somehow made a taxable profit. That is because the IRS attributes no value whatsoever to my effort, to my labor. I don’t care about their ‘goodwill’ rule exceptions.
Using that argument you could make a case for writing off the cost(s) of any food and/or lodging you require to nourish and rest your body, in order to maintain your ability to provide your labor. The cost becomes a necessary expense, exempt from taxation.
The IRS would never go for it.
Don’t forget the cost of education that makes it possible for you to get your foot in the door and earn wages (unless you majored in gender studies).
Gruber understands this.
Professor, that poll garnered 6673 responses. It doesn’t surprise me that one of them might have been an IRS employee.
Consider this a feather in your cap.
Gee, couldn’t Lois just turn over those two rogue agents in Cincinnati? The White House (Carney) said it was just those two, and the amount of corruption is less than a smidgen, Obama swore.
So many IRS commissioners, making so many obstructive statements.
Lerner’s people are afraid due to some obscure blog comments? Yet Lerner and others aren’t afraid of Congress in the least, as they vie for the biggest whopper prize, even under oath.
Bush’s IRS guy visited once, as the bureaucratic lifers are mostly Democrat operatives, regardless of who is elected. Lerner was active way back in 1996, helping Durbin win.
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2013/05/lerner-intrigue-goes-back-to-96-durbinsalvi-us-senate-race.html
Salvi and his brother were lawyers and didn’t back down, later being cleared fully. But he lost to Durbin under the smear of being investigated by the IRS.
Lerner and Gruber represent the entrenched operatives that use our own government to terrorize the non-submissive. Tea partiers are their targets, it is the LIV that they chuckle about deceiving.
If the IRS is watching this website, then I guess the only thing to say is:
BBBBBBBBBBPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!
Do these people really believe that these blog comments are “verbal attacks and threats to their persons”?!?!?! Even taken out of context they are innocuous.
Does the law really apply so broadly that such comments (especially the first one) are legally considered verbal “attacks” and “threats” as if they were mailed to the person – or said to their face – with real assertions of action to follow up the words?!
What would (will) a judge say to such (IMHO) idiocy?!
Question, Professor: since your blog is being used as “evidence” of “verbal attacks and treats” to IRS personnel, will you file a brief? Or ensure the lawyers have the FULL CONTEXT to present to blow this nonsensical assertion out of the water? (Hmmmm……I wonder if THAT comment will be taken as a “verbal threat” since I used a metaphor for naval cannon fire? What NONSENSE!)
They’re laying the foundation for future efforts to regulate the internet and stifle our free speech here.
Perhaps Planned Government? This is a burden resolution supported by Obama, all Democrats, not a few Republicans, anti-war people, anti-capital punishment people, and other “decent” folks. I would love to read the IRS response.
Gosnell is the patron savage of the abortion industry.
Anyway, it’s a government-approved method to reduce unwanted or encumbering burdens. How can it be controversial? Evolution following conception and approaching death are an equivalence established by law and [women’s] right. Morons.
Boy, I’d hate to be the professor’s tax accountant this April.
The Treasure Department, and its militant branch, IRS, take no pleasure in countenancing their hypocrisy. They will project and displace their emotional burden.
Which is exactly where the spontaneous diarrhea comes from. Case closed.
Not spontaneous diarrhea. The counterpart to spontaneous conception is spontaneous abortion. Is that deductible? I wonder if we can enlist Planned Parenthood to advise us of our legal and moral rights.
This is your friendly, neighborhood Liberal telling you that it is a fundamental principle of our government that its citizens receive equal treatment under the laws and by the agencies of this government.
Lois Lerner’s actions are repugnant to Americans generally, not just the people she abused, which is why your poll numbers are so high in this instance.
Since Big Brother is watching, I would like to state that I wish Lois only the best.. I mean average. May her actions be scrutinized only as much as the average taxpayer undergoing a full audit, may her records be examined only as much as the average Republican attempting to run for office against a long-term liberal Dem, and may her walks with her dog be as untroubled by reporters as possible. After all, that poor dog doesn’t deserve such treatment.
Darrell Issa is out as House Oversight Cmte Chairman, to be replaced by Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).
Let’s hope Chaffetz can bring what Issa could not or would not.
Let’s hope Chaffetz has climbing gear sufficient to scale the stonewall the Obama administration put up in front of Issa.
Are C. Lashawn and Orwellington aware they gave IRS employees “spontaneous diarrhea”?
I am so damn jealous.
Seems like a proper response would be copies of the demand letters that Lerner sent for membership lists and “copies of prayers”.
(At least you’ve got their attorney’s attention!)
Personally, I favor the return of public stocks (head not feet).
The value of public shaming can not be overrated.
If IRS employees are afraid for their safety, perhaps they ought to examine their attitude and actions. Being a paid thug for the state ought to carry some risk.
Thugs for the state is bad, but worse is the Democrat operative thug.
It’s the agents that use police power to attack honest conservatives, on behalf of far left Democrats, that is at issue. But their arrogance may equate tyrannical leftists with “the legitimate state”.
heh heh I blame Rags.
Hes really an IRS agent.
Damn! Busted. I’ve been out-narked…
I missed that orgiginal post with the comments but I find them rather mild. I would bring back public executions just for people like Lerner. I favor the firing squad myself.
*original*
Lois Lerner is just like Bernie Madoff.
I came to the realization a long time ago that if you are a fan of Legal Insurrection or similar sites that cover what MSM white washes for the dems, then much of the government will consider you a dangerous person.
… and by danger, I don’t mean any act of violence as that is far far far down in the bag for people like us (unlike the Dem base stoked up outside of Ferguson).
The danger of people like us assembling, publishing, monitoring org charts of government organizations that are essentially the KGB under a different name is a threat to their existence. Sunlight is a deadly disinfectant to their way of doing things.
THEY SHOULD BE VERY AFRAID OF US, BECAUSE WE ARE A DANGER TO THEIR AGENDA AND A THREAT TO THE REALITY THEY WISH TO IMPOSE ON AMERICA.
…yes I put that in all caps. I hope they read it. I’ve paid a lot of money in taxes to be tracked as an enemy.
Well, given that Legal Insurrection definitely has a place in lots of little databases in Washington DC, I suggest that for Video Of The Day on Thanksgiving, Prof. Jacobson selects Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie, which is already a Thanksgiving tradition, but more so now because of this lyric:
“He looked at me and said, ‘Kid, we don’t like your kind! We’re gonna send Your fingerprints off to Washington’!”
——-
Is anyone else seeing more white windowless vans sitting around than usual?
WOOT!Living rent-free in the head of IRS officials. Congrats Professor. You just became larger than life.
It’s a good thing the comment didn’t mention “explosive diarrhea”. The FBI would probably be investigating the blog for terrorist threats.
Uh oh, I hope I didn’t get myself or anyone else into trouble for this comment…
Wouldn’t that be a job for the ATF?
Lerner is a mid-level enforcer, an easy target. More to the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Hall_Ingram
So the government organization that illegally released the names of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, thereby exposing at least one individual living in Los Angeles to targeting and harassment (from same sex marriage supporters) and eventual firing by his employer, is now highly concerned about the privacy of their own employees (who may well have been responsible for the illegal release of other’s personal information) and is seeking to shield said employees from having their identity being revealed to the public in a legally requested FOIA? Yeah, that is not a reasonable request on the part of the IRS and I sincerely hope that the judge handling the case tells them to go to hell – in very non-threatening legalese, of course!
To answer your other question, prof. Like everything else you find buggy whips at amazon,
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=buggy%20whip&sprefix=buggy+wh%2Caps
If I caught someone chasing my wife around the neighborhood, harassing her, I’d punch them in the mouth, regardless of how her professional behavior merited censure. Lerner deserves the full measure of punishment that her illegal activities warrant, but that doesn’t make invading her personal life right. I understand that journalists commonly do this to all manner of people, and I’m not placing Lerner on a special snowflake pedestal. Nobody should be hounded at home. It is a refuge whose borders should be respected.
News media has been known to literally camp out on the sidewalks at the homes of people who are the subjects of controversial events. They have been doing this for decades and it has been considered an acceptable tactic. That is, until the subject of the stake-out is a flunky for a radical, left-wing administration; then all hell breaks loose.
You are correct. The home is inviolate. But when a public figure goes out in public, he or she no longer benefits from the shelter of the home, and becomes fair game for journalists. Lerner cannot use her status now as “private citizen” to shelter from journalistic inquiries into her actions as a public servant. She blew that cover herself. I don’t feel sorry for her.
Wouldn’t granting the request have “chilling effect” on freedom of speech? If the government can hide its employees because of political speech practiced in anonymous comments on the Internet, won’t that have a tendency to prevent some from speaking their minds for fear of loss of transparency and accountability in government?
Well, I for one am afraid of being abused by our current president, given the kind of rhetoric he has deployed consistently for at least 8 years in public, on record. For example, “… punch back twice as hard.”
Of course with the current president there are the now infamous comments about having the IRS audit people he disagrees with.
Thus, I will continue to withhold any identifying information about my humble self.
While I’m at it, were should I sue? How about an inventory of these threats be attached to every single action regarding executive authority or action from now on, plus of course all surveillance and information gathering initiatives whatever the source. Of course I don’t want them knowing where to find me. Look at what they’ve said.
(Don’t get me started on the rhetoric deployed by Madam Former Speaker, the departing Majority Leader, or various advisers, commissioners, assistants and sundry other there but not there members of the administration. Every time one of them calls me a “criminal” without the benefit of trial, or even charge, just conviction, I believe I am at risk of unlimited sanctions.
At least an individual can only pummel you their own self, as an amateur, vs. the government deploying effectively unlimited numbers of trained, practiced pummellers at will.)