May 13 - Is the DOJ's Snooping on the AP an Attack on Freedom of the Press?; The President Tries to Slap Down Benghazi; Did the IRS Target the Tea Party?

Full Program

Part 1

Part 2

Then we assess the two stories in the news that the Republicans and Fox News have seized on and amplified, inviting further Congressional hearings by the Republican Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa. A former Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence, Wayne White, a friend and colleague of the slain American Ambassador to Libya, joins us to discuss the President’s remarks at today’s White House press conference with the British Prime Minister where Obama castigated Republicans for dishonoring those who died at Benghazi by turning it into “a political circus”.  Having called it “a sideshow”, we discuss the President’s effort to dismiss the trumped up cover-up story that the Republicans are trying to keep alive to apparently damage Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee in 2016.

Part 3

Then finally, with talk of impeaching Obama and charges of political thuggery in the air, we look into the other major trumped up scandal that is brewing over an effort by mid-level IRS employees to deal with the flood of 501c-4 tax-exempt applications from largely Republican front groups claiming to be involved in “social welfare” that have been unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. Ellen Aprill, a professor of tax law at Loyola Law School, along with Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Boston College of Law, join us to discuss whether the IRS’s apology for flagging tax-exempt applications from groups using the words “tea party” or “patriot” that was more extensive than the IRS Commissioner Douglas Schulman first reported to Congress, will dampen Tea Party threats to sue the IRS.