It's All Irrelevant?

Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: By almost any measure, last week was a bad week for the Obama White House. Predictably, the White House did its best to spin the trio of scandals making daily headlines with a presence on every major Sunday talk show. But rather than sending out Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama's closest advisors, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough or Vice President Joe Biden, the American people were introduced to White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer.

Mr. Pfeiffer did not help the president's cause. Pfeiffer had one response to virtually every major question, "It's irrelevant."

We get a deluge of information whenever it suits the purposes of this administration. When Osama bin Laden was killed, President Obama wasted no time in going before the cameras. We got pictures of the president, Biden and Clinton in the Situation Room. We even have a picture of the president in the Oval Office being informed about the Sandy Hook shootings.

But we have virtually nothing about Obama's actions on the night Ambassador Stevens and three other brave Americans were murdered in Benghazi.

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace tried in vain to get some answers about Benghazi, repeatedly asking Dan Pfeiffer where was President Obama and what was he doing on the night of the attacks.

Pfeiffer initially tried deflection, saying, "The question here is not what happened that night." When asked if Obama was in the Situation Room, Pfeiffer responded, "That's a largely irrelevant fact."

Moving on to the IRS scandal, on ABC's "This week," host George Stephanopoulos asked, "What does the president believe? Does the president believe that [targeting conservative groups] would be illegal?" Pfeiffer's answered, "The law is irrelevant."

A stunned Stephanopoulos asked, "You don't really mean the law is irrelevant, do you?"

The evasiveness continued on CBS's "Face The Nation." But a fed up Bob Schieffer put Pfeiffer in his place. Schieffer pointed out the Obama Administration's habit of sending out people, like Susan Rice, who know very little about a given topic to say even less. Then Schieffer asked, "Why are you here today? Why isn't the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?"

The American people do not believe these scandals are "irrelevant." A new CNN poll finds that 84% of Americans believe Benghazi is an important issue, 85% say the same about the IRS scandal, and 87% believe the Associated Press phone records scandal is an important issue.

The "Rogue" Agents Speak
Those "rogue" IRS agents in the Cincinnati office who allegedly targeted conservative and Christian organizations for harassment and increased scrutiny are speaking out. I'm not surprised since higher-ups in Washington are trying to pass the buck and blame them. Here's what one IRS worker in the Cincinnati office told the Washington Post:
"We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. …That's why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don't have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive."We need to hear more from these folks so we can learn just how far up the ladder this scandal goes. We didn't get much from Commissioner Steven Miller's testimony Friday, and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) was furious.

If you missed Rep. Kelly's exchange with Commissioner Miller, watch it here. It is a rare thing for a member of Congress to get a standing ovation during a congressional hearing!

Later this week we will hear from Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS office at the center of this entire controversy. She certainly has a lot of explaining to do.

A Remarkable Coincidence
Some in the media have tried to argue that there is no IRS scandal because there is no evidence that President Obama ordered the IRS to do anything wrong or that he even knew about it. He said he learned about the outrageous and likely illegal activity at the same time the rest of the country learned about it.

But top White House officials, including White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, did know about it last month. Former Clinton White House Counsel >Lanny Davis
(a guy who knows something about scandals!) is calling for Ruemmler to resign.

But consider this: According to White House visitor logs, the president of the IRS employees' union, Colleen Kelley, met with President Obama at 12:30 PM on March 31, 2010. According to the inspector general's report, the IRS campaign to harass and intimidate Tea Party and other conservative groups was launched a day or two later, on April 1st or 2nd.

The visitor logs prove nothing by themselves. The timing is a remarkable coincidence. For her part, Kelley is standing by the Cincinnati agents, telling the Associated Press, "No processes or procedures or anything like that would ever be done just by front-line employees without any management involvement. That's just not how it operates." Stay tuned!

Fox Reporter Investigated
News is breaking today about another potential media scandal separate from the controversy surrounding the seizure of phone records from the Associated Press. According to the Washington Post, the Obama Justice Department spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010. The investigation was launched after Rosen broke a story on North Korea's growing nuclear weapons program and its likely response to new sanctions.

Like the massive seizure of AP phone records, the Rosen case stands out for the extent of the government's intrusiveness. In addition to seizing phone records and personal emails, the government tracked Rosen's movements in and out of the State Department using "security badge access records."

Even more outrageous, the FBI suggested Rosen was a potential criminal co-conspirator in the release of classified information in order to justify a warrant to seize his email and phone records.

Michael Clemente, an executive vice president at Fox News, blasted the allegation, saying, "We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter. …We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press."

In addition, we are also following the breaking news that the Department of Justice obtained emails from two other Fox News staffers, reporter William La Jeunesse and producer Mike Levine. Their emails reportedly turned up in an inspector general's report released today on Operation Fast and Furious.
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Gary Bauer is is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families where his articles are also shared.

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