This particular crisis exploded after an investigation by the Treasury Inspector General revealed what many conservative groups have known and alleged for years; that the IRS is used by the administration as a political tool to go after its enemies. Though illegal this was rampant at the highest levels of the agency, as the inspector general’s scorching report indicates.

The IRS singles out groups with conservative-sounding phrases such as patriot and Tea Party in their titles when applying for tax-exempt status, the IG says. The probe determined that for more than 18 months the IRS “used inappropriate criteria” that singled out conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status. This has ignited outrage among lawmakers—both Democrat and Republican—as well as President Obama who called it “intolerable and inexcusable.”

At a congressional hearing this week, IRS chief Steven Miller apologized for the way his agency has treated conservative groups but he had the audacity to say that partisanship did not serve as a motivation. Rather he attributed his agency’s actions to “foolish mistakes” made by employees attempting to be “more efficient in their workload selection.” He must think Americans are really dumb.  

“Partisanship or the perception of politics has no place in the IRS,” Miller assured members of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is investigating the scandal. If that’s true, then it’s just a big coincidence that liberal groups aren’t targeted by the agency. In fact, liberal groups are spared scrutiny and one news report reveals that a foundation operated by President Obama’s half-brother got fast-tracked to become tax-exempt.

This appears to be the icing on the cake for an agency that’s made plenty of headlines over the years for its transgressions. One of the things the IRS is well known for is giving incarcerated criminals who prepare fraudulent returns tens of millions of dollars in refunds they’re not entitled to. The figure increases annually and at last count the IRS doled out north of $35 million to criminals, according to a federal audit.

A few years ago the IRS came under fire for allowing 1 million foreigners—many in the U.S. illegally— to improperly claim close to $9 billion in tax credits even though they did not provide valid Social Security numbers on their return.  Not long after that, the tax agency got in trouble for handing out $33 million in bogus electric car credits.

Just last month, on the heels of “Tax Day,” two dozen IRS employees got charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in government benefits, including food stamps, welfare and housing vouchers. The scheme fleeced U.S. taxpayers out of at least a quarter of a million dollars, according to federal prosecutors.  

Sebelius should have been dismissed for last year’s transgression, according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which issued a scathing report outlining how the Health Secretary violated the Hatch Act by participating in political campaigning in her official capacity. Sebelius publicly endorsed President Obama’s reelection during a taxpayer-funded public event and the Hatch Act specifically prohibits federal employees from using their official authority or influence to affect the outcome of an election.  

Shamefully, Sebelius became the first member of a president’s cabinet to be found guilty of violating the Hatch Act, earning a spot on Judicial Watch’s 2012 Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians list. Now JW is investigating her recent lapse, which involves hitting healthcare companies up for cash to fund Obamacare after Congress repeatedly rejected the administration’s requests for additional funds. JW has filed public records requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain documents related to the scandal.

The mainstream newspaper that broke the story earlier this month calls it an “unusual fundraising push” in which Sebelius has asked health industry officials to “make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark healthcare law.” Federal regulations don’t allow department officials like the nation’s Health Secretary to fundraise in their official capacity but they do allow cabinet members to solicit donations as private citizens if it doesn’t involve a subordinate or a company seeking business with the agency they head.

A growing number of lawmakers are expressing outrage, claiming that Sebelius is essentially pressuring private companies to support the president’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system. This week several members of the House requested a congressional probe, saying that “the Secretary’s actions show an apparent disregard for constitutional principles and may violate the Antideficiency Act, the prohibition against augmenting congressional appropriations, and executive branch ethics laws.”

The ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate committee that oversees health policy, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, compares this to Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal in which an administration official raised private funds to support Nicaraguan rebels after Congress had refused to appropriate money for the cause. Additionally, Sebelius’s “fundraising activities may violate federal laws prohibiting raising private funds from those she regulates,” Senator Alexander says.

After all, the feds ignored critical warnings from Russia about the older Chechen terrorist (Tamerlan Tsarnaev) and the FBI even kept the information from Boston Police, which could have kept a closer eye on him. Additionally, Judicial Watch reported days after the bombings that Tamerlan, 26, and not a U.S. citizen could have been deported years ago after a criminal arrest.

Adding insult to injury, the other bomber, little brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was rewarded with American Citizenship on September 11, 2012 in Boston, according to a JW source. The 19-year-old was granted asylum in Arlington Virginia on September 27, 2002, JW’s source reveals. This week a mainstream media outlet reports that Dzhokhar left a note claiming responsibility for the bombings as retaliation for America’s actions against Muslims.

Americans have the right to know how their government handled the immigration applications of these two Muslim terrorists. At least that’s the argument used by the Boston newspaper that requested the information from DHS. The paper asked for the records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a tool often used by Judicial Watch to force transparency in government. In fact, JW is also investigating the Boston bombings and has filed several FOIAs in the case.

As is the common in many of these situations, obtaining records will be an uphill battle because the government can utilize a number of excuses to withhold information from the public. In this particular case, DHS is claiming an exemption in federal law that shields records or information “compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

In a rejection letter to the paper, the senior director of FOIA operations at DHS writes that he has determined that the records are part of an open and ongoing law enforcement investigation. “Accordingly, those documents are being withheld,” he says. The DHS FOIA director did not elaborate on how the release of the terrorists’ civil immigration records could possibly interfere with the criminal probe, especially in the case of the dead brother.

Thankfully, the media and independent watchdog groups like JW work to keep the government in check by using important tools like FOIA as well as the legal system. The job is getting tougher and tougher because the Obama administration is using unprecedented intimidation tactics behind the scenes. This includes using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a political tool against conservative groups like JW and unscrupulous spying on a major news conglomerate (Associated Press).

This crazy story comes via the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is giving several academic institutions the cash to support research, education and other activities associated with climate solutions in agriculture. The goal is to uncover the impacts of climate variability and change on dairy and beef cattle, according to an agency announcement released this week.

“We have seen the impact that variable climate patterns have had on production agriculture for the past several years,” according to Obama’s USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack. “These projects will deliver the best tools available to accurately measure and respond to the effects of climate on beef and dairy production.” This is the same guy who heads President Obama’s special White House Rural Council that among other things is supposed to expand “ecosystem markets” and develop “renewable energy projects.”

Vilsack has also overseen the distribution of billions of reparation dollars to minority farmers that claim they were discriminated by the government and under his leadership the USDA spends a record $80.4 billion annually on food stamps. Like his boss, Vilsack is dedicated to combatting global warming and has dedicated tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to a variety of green energy projects. Among them is a $30 million initiative to advance “biofuels, bioenergy and high-value biobased products” and a $12.2 million experiment to “accelerate bioenergy crop production.”

This month’s $19.5 million allocation aims to develop methods that will “increase the resiliency of dairy production systems while reducing greenhouse gas emissions” and “better understand vulnerability and resilience of Southern Great Plains beef in an environment of increased climate variability.” The academic teams will also develop an agricultural education curriculum with an “urban foods focus.”

In an apparent effort to justify spending large sums of taxpayer dollars on these experiments the government has published a variety of alarming reports over the years exposing the ills of climate change. One claims global warming is the “most visible environmental concerns of the 21st century” and could lead to a worldwide increase in mental illness and cancer. Others have determined that climate change will threaten the world’s food and water supplies and another asserts that it will destroy the Washington D.C. area and surrounding government infrastructure.

Other taxpayer-funded studies have claimed that global warming is a threat to national security because it will spread disease among people and animals and that it’s destroying infrastructure, crops and shorelines. Just a few days ago several members of Congress sponsored a resolution asserting that climate change will actually drive millions of poor women into prostitution!

This month alone two states—Oregon and Maryland—passed measures that allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and a third (Colorado) is close to doing the same. For years Washington State and New Mexico were the only to offer illegal immigrants driver’s licenses. That changed earlier this year when Illinois passed a law, with strong bipartisan support, that’s expected to give about a quarter of a million illegal aliens the right to apply for a valid state driver’s license simply by providing a photo identification from their native country and some sort of proof that they’ve lived in Illinois for a year.

It appears to have started a trend. Now Connecticut and the District of Columbia are considering laws to let illegal immigrants drive in the state. Rhode Island was contemplating the same, but put the bill on hold for the year when a 39-year-old illegal immigrant struck and killed a 6-year-old boy while driving a pickup truck without a license. The illegal alien, Andres Morales, is being held by the feds on immigration charges.

That doesn’t mean Rhode Island’s bill is dead, however, because lawmakers have indicated that it will be introduced during the next legislative session. Connecticut’s proposal will likely become law, according to media reports, because it has widespread support from state and local leaders, including the governor, legislators and a number of mayors. In fact, last month they held a news conference at that state capitol to endorse the initiative.

In D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray introduced a bill just a few days ago to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses in the nation’s capital. This would happen via a two-tiered system in which illegal aliens would receive a card that wouldn’t be accepted on the federal level, to board a plane or enter a government building. In 2011 Gray, who has been embroiled in a variety of scandals, signed an executive order to make D.C. a sanctuary for illegal immigrants by forbidding police and other city agencies from asking people about their immigration status.  

Also this month, Colorado passed a bill granting illegal aliens discounted tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities. About a dozen other states—including California, Illinois, New York, Utah and Texas—already offer the perk which annually costs U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars. To celebrate the law’s passage, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper attended a rally at one of the state’s public universities and said the measure will grant illegal students with a “path forward.”

For a period of two months, the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) secretly obtained the phone records of reporters and editors at one of the nation’s largest news organizations, the Associated Press (AP), in an apparent effort to pin down the source of a leak. This includes records for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters and editors as well as general office numbers for the news organization in several states.

It constituted a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather news, according to the AP’s president. In a letter to Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, the AP’s top executive blasts the DOJ saying “there can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of telephone communications” and that the communications disclose information about the AP’s operations that the “government has no conceivable right to know.”

No one ever imagined that Big Brother would watch this closely. Even the president’s staunchest supporters, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has colluded with the DOJ on a variety of matters, chastised the administration. In a statement posted on its website the famously liberal civil rights group reminds that the media’s purpose is to keep the public informed and it should be free to do so without the threat of unwarranted surveillance.

“The Attorney General must explain the Justice Department’s actions to the public so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again,” said Laura Murphy, the director of the ACLU’s Washington D.C. branch. The head of the group’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, Ben Wizner, called the DOJ’s violation “an unacceptable abuse of power,” pointing out that freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy.   

Indeed the Obama administration’s actions “shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” according to the Newspaper Association of America, the nonprofit that represents thousands of publications in the U.S. and Canada. “Americans demand a full accounting,” the group’s president says.

Here are a few excerpts from newspaper editorials—big and small—across the nation; The Dallas Morning News writes that the DOJ broke political, legal and ethical rules and wonders if Attorney General Holder signed off on the tactic.  The Connecticut Register Citizen writes that the administration attacked the “basic First Amendment right to a free press” and the San Francisco Chronicle accuses the DOJ of a “serious overreach of government power and a genuine threat to independent journalism in the United States.”

Ironically, President Obama loves to celebrate World Press Freedom Day by calling on governments around the globe to protect the ability of journalists, bloggers and dissidents to write and speak freely without retribution. In fact, around the time that his Justice Department was violating—rather than protecting—those rights the commander-in-chief issued a statement chastising governments that commit any indirect forms of censorship to suppress the exercise of the media’s “universal rights.” After all, Obama believes a free press plays a huge role in “creating sustainable democracies and prosperous societies.” At least that’s what he says during World Press Freedom Day celebrations.  

This cost American taxpayers an astounding $2 billion last year, according to figures released by the government agency—the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—that distributes the benefit. The information was originally obtained by a conservative news website that reports up to 25% of the $2 billion is untraceable because it’s distributed in cash and there’s no way to verify that the funds are actually spent on food.

The USDA does confirm, however, that an average of 1.37 million people received food stamps in Puerto Rico each month in fiscal year 2012. The island, which is a U.S. territory, has a population of 3.7 million, which means that 37% of Puerto Ricans get food stamps from Uncle Sam. Though the figure of 47.7 million in the U.S. shatters records, it still marks only 15.2% of the nation’s population of 313 million.

Nevertheless, the food stamp rolls continue to rise under President Obama who is committed to eradicating what he believes is a national epidemic of “food insecure” households. In 2012 the government spent an unprecedented $80.4 billion on the program, marking an unbelievable $2.7 billion increase from the previous year. The figure doesn’t even include other taxpayer-funded food programs for low-income populations like “Child Nutrition Programs” that received an additional $18.3 billion last year.

As is typical with these types of bloated government programs, fraud and corruption has tainted the USDA’s grocery giveaway. Just a few weeks ago Judicial Watch obtained documents from the USDA detailing how the agency is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program. The effort includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA ensuring that Mexicans in the U.S. don’t need to declare their immigration status to get financial assistance from Uncle Sam.

It turns out that illegal aliens have received food stamps by the vanload for decades, according to a former certification case worker who contacted J W after reading the documents. The retired assistant case manager, Craig McNees, was in charge of vetting food-stamp applicants in north Florida and Indiana in the ’80s and says the program was infested with fraud and corruption that was perpetually ignored by management. “Illegals would come in by the vanload and we were told to give them their stuff,” McNees said. “Management knew very well they were illegal. It was so rampant that some employees would tell their illegal relatives to come get food stamps.”

Previous to that JW has reported extensively on the fraud that has plagued the food-stamp program even as the Obama administration continues to promote it. For instance last spring the USDA Inspector General revealed that many food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors. Some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of cash. The fraud cost taxpayers nearly $200 million, according to the USDA watchdog, which provided various examples during testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

A separate federal audit revealed last year that many who don’t even qualify for food stamps receive them under a special “broad-based” eligibility program that disregards income and asset requirements. This is sticking American taxpayers with a multi-million-dollar tab to feed hundreds of thousands of people who can well afford to feed themselves.

This includes being the highlight of “karaoke nights” during burdensome congressional sessions, “when things got tough or extremely difficult on the House floor.” The corrupt congressman, Jesse Jackson Jr., pleaded guilty to fraud earlier this year for illegally using $750,000 in campaign money to finance his lavish lifestyle. He hasn’t been sentenced and his buddies in Congress are trying to help him out by appealing to the federal judge that will determine how much time he serves.

This particular request for leniency in Jackson’s sentencing comes from Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, a Cleveland Democrat who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus. In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Robert Wilkins Fudge describes Jackson Jr. as “highly intelligent” and reminisces about the disgraced lawmaker’s karaoke skills and one-man skits. “He made us realize that we could still have fun while addressing important national issues,” Fudge writes.  

The congresswoman also tells the judge that Jackson Jr. is a “tireless advocate for the poor and underserved” who is known for his efforts to redevelop decaying neighborhoods. In short, Fudge claims Jackson Jr. is a “loyal public servant with so much more to give” and she humbly tells the judge that “Jesse is worth saving and I know he can continue to have a positive impact on the lives of others as he has with my colleagues and me.”

Here is a more accurate version of this not so loyal public servant, whose many transgressions landed him on Judicial Watch’s list of Washington’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians. Before getting busted for illegally financing his extravagant lifestyle with campaign money, Jackson Jr. was embroiled in a massive political scandal for attempting to bribe his way into the U.S. Senate.

The brazen scheme was exposed during the corruption trial and retrial of convicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is serving a 14-year sentence in Colorado. JW covered both trials live in a Chicago federal court where major political drama that reached all the way up to the White House unfolded daily.

According to court testimony, Jackson Jr., who represented the Chicago area in the U.S. House for nearly two decades, and his top fundraiser offered to buy the Illinois seat that opened up in the U.S. Senate when Barack Obama got elected president. The son of the world-renowned “civil rights” con man met with the disgraced ex governor’s representative in late 2008 and offered to pay $1 million in exchange for the appointment, which was to be made by the governor.

The news comes just weeks after a separate company that got nearly $200 million from the government to develop hybrid vehicles folded. That fly-by-night company, Fisker Automotive, had been heavily touted by the administration as an innovator that would develop two lines of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that could run up to 300 miles on a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. Before doling out the cash, Obama’s Energy Secretary assured the cars “will save hundreds of millions of gallons of gasoline and offset millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.”

Instead the southern California startup manufactured a measly 2,700 vehicles, sold a laughable 2,000 and failed to build one for nearly a year before laying off three quarters of its employees. That’s after getting $192 million from Uncle Sam. Highly unlikely that any of the money will ever be recovered since Fisker is almost certainly headed for bankruptcy. Last year Judicial Watch sued the Obama administration for documents related to the Fisker scandal but there appears to be a cover up of epic proportions. Check out the mostly blacked out document the administration provided as part of the lawsuit.  

This week’s green-energy fleecing du jour is like a pathetic sequel to the Fisker scandal, except the hemorrhaging got plugged sooner, after only $50 million. It involves another startup called Vehicle Production Group (VPG) that makes special vans for the disabled that run on compressed natural gas. Here’s how the Obama administration justified funding this experiment with public dollars: “This project invests in a socially and environmentally responsible product that will create new jobs, promote the use of alternative fuels, and help the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the automotive industry.”

Instead VPG has ceased operations and fired almost all of its employees, according to a news report. The same story quotes a Republican congressman saying that VPG’s closing is another sign the clean-car program is a failure and a burden on taxpayers. No kidding! Instead of filling the ozone with hot air, why not do something about it? “We don’t have a good record and it needs to stop,” said the congressman, Jeff Flake of Arizona, who not surprisingly failed to offer any concrete solutions.

It’s a sure bet that Obama’s green ventures will continue swindling taxpayers because the administration has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars for a number of projects. The painful consequences extend beyond the car industry. Remember Solyndra, the northern California solar panel company—bankrolled by Obama fundraiser George Kaiser—that folded after getting $529 million from the government?

Despite the “serious concerns” of U.S. Treasury officials about the risky infusion, a federal audit exposed how the controversial deal was suspiciously rushed through for a politically-connected entrepreneur that had raised large sums for Obama. Judicial Watch is investigating the Solyndra scandal and has sued the administration for records related to the shady deal.

As if it weren’t bad enough that the measure, known as the Schumer-Rubio bill after the New York Democrat and Florida Republican pushing it, already offers 11 million illegal aliens instant amnesty. A nonpartisan group dedicated to researching legal and illegal immigration into the U.S., discovered the provision in the course of dissecting the monstrous legislation, which at last count spans 844 pages.

The group’s Director of Policy Studies, a former State Department foreign service officer, found this interesting little tidbit that the mainstream media is unlikely to mention; the bill expands an old visa criteria by adding three new categories of family-sponsored immigrants that will instantaneously be allowed into the U.S. They include single and married adult sons and daughters as well as siblings.

This will allow more than 1.4 million family visa applicants to bypass the current waiting list and be admitted immediately and will permit an additional 2.9 million visa hopefuls to enter the U.S. as temporary visitors. This is outrageous since we all saw what “temporary visitors” did on 9/11. It’s fair to assume that this can only weaken national security, which isn’t all that strong to begin with.

This expansion is found in Section 2308 of the legislation, on “V Non-immigrant Visas”. Originally, the V visa was created to allow the eligible kids and spouses of legal U.S. residents (green card holders) to enter the country if they had been waiting a minimum of three years. The change will reward a much larger group with immediate U.S. entry under a perk intended for children and spouses of those living in the U.S. legally.

Here’s another interesting detail; a chunk of the new immigrants can get work permits upon admission and will be processed similarly to immigrant visa applicants, with pro forma fingerprint and medical screenings. Those not entitled to a work permit can still stay in the U.S. up to 60 days a year and it’s likely many won’t leave. “Why should they? After all, they have already discovered that following the rules is not rewarded (many have been on the waiting list for several years) and overstaying is a better deal,” the immigration research group points out in its analysis.

Earlier in the week another well-known D.C. organization published a report asserting that the pending immigration legislation will cost American taxpayers an astounding $6.3 trillion. That’s because newly legalized immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits—such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and workers’ compensation—and services while paying only $3.1 trillion in taxes.