“You can invoke the Fifth whenever you want”

No, you can’t invoke the 5th whenever you want. Without getting into naunces regarding self-incrimination and pleading the 5th, the 5th doesn’t protect you from incriminating others.

“From what I understand, the T-baggers weren’t ‘targeted’ or singled out for investigation”

Your understanding is incorrect. If an applicant specifically had ‘Tea Party,’ rather than ’9/11′ or ‘Puppies’ their name itself was used to target them.

“In addition, it wasn’t because they were right-wingers, it was because the IRS has a duty to determine if any organization applying for this exemption meets the legal requirements. As already pointed out, these ass-hats were flooding the IRS with applications, so of course large numbers were being scrutinized. That doesn’t signify any sort of profiling.”

What you are saying is based upon your misunderstanding of events. They were not picked due to sampling of them being a larger part of the overall size, but instead were targeted because of the name of the applicant. If many of them were subjected to additionally scrutiny purely because they made up a large part of the overall population, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

“Am I the only one who believs that the IRS job is to verity non-profit corps ARE indeed non-profits?”

Actually I’m not seeing anyone contesting that.

“The fact that the IRS received hundreds of applications in a short time frame and that they were mainly from one particular segment of society doesn’t mean they discriminated against anyone.”

And the IRS auditing would have favored that particular audience by virtue of blind statistical sampling, if what you say is true. There’s no reason to look for groups by name and also just because there’s many similar sounding names, it doesn’t many there’s anything wrong, like after 9/11 having charities related to 9/11 isn’t automatic proof that something is fishy. There may be questionable 9/11 charities, but they can found via stastical sampling rather than singling out charities that have 9/11 in their title.

IANAL either, but how the self-incrimination rules work varies a great deal depending on where you are and the circumstances that you’d be testifying. Lerner could be considered a ‘compelled witness,’ rather than a ‘voluntary witness’ or a ‘defendant’…the rules aren’t the same for everyone in all circumstances. This is why I raised the issue of how she could be compelled to the point of self-incrimination for ‘regulatory’ purposes with this being checks-and-balances testimony.

“Also, we know it’s bullshit because Obama responded to it and fired someone.”

If there was no “there” there, there’d be reason to fire someone – what you’re saying is self-contradictory.

“Shouldn’t we want the IRS to be as stringent as possible on everyone?”

Yes, we do, but the problem is that’s precisely what the IRS didn’t do. Rather than statistically pulling X number of filings out of a hat, they targeted specific groups. A random blind sampling of filings would have done precise that, but the IRS went out of their way to not do blind statistical sampling.

Even if she didn’t make an opening statement, the 5th amendment only protects you from self-incrimination and not others. Asking her a question about her boss, Obama, etc on whether or not they did anything illegal isn’t protected.

I don’t think SCOTUS has ever directly addressed checks-and-balances related 5th claims with Congress exercising oversight, but for ‘regulatory’ purposes the 5th amendment doesn’t apply – the government can compell businesses and individuals to self-incriminate, for instance if you’re a bootlegger, you have to report that to the IRS because that is considered ‘regulatory’:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CONAN-1992/pdf/GPO-CONAN-1992-10-6.pdf

If the Obama and the Democrats can’t Grand Bargain away the social safety net, they’ll try some other way until they get their way.

Also these oligarchs probably have much of their money in commercial accounts, which are unaffected by this bank robbery.

Not that I agree with this bank raid in the first place, but they’re only raiding individuals’ accounts rather than businesses. Businesses pay 0% on this ‘tax’ while retirees pay 6.75%+. If Cyprus wants to call this a ‘tax,’ then everyone should be taxed.

“Can someone explain to my why the Dow Jones hitting 36,000 is desirable? Or even worth mentioning?”

I think it is worth mentioning only in regards to showing how what goes on in Wall Street isn’t reflective for what’s good for Main Street. Stocks jump when layoffs are announced, but I hardly think those touting the stock market levels would say we should cheer when thousands of people lose their jobs.

“I just find it incredible that all those on the Right were so absolutely certain Obama’s re-election would utterly destroy the economy and put us into a complete tailspin that would start before the inauguration.”

That train has long since left the station. We’ve been in a tailspin for a long time with Obama perpetuating it. Our economy is on life support with the Fed doing QE Infinity and keeping interest rates at next to zero.

“Today, the market is at historic high levels, the sequester is in place, and we added just over 150,000 jobs in the last month.”

What a Wall Street-centric view – the stock market isn’t Main Street, adding 150K jobs is actually a bad thing – that just keeps us flatlined – where there are less people working now than when Obama took office which this won’t change if we’re only getting 150K jobs per month. However, what has been going on is increasing wealth inequality where whatever jobs have returned are paying less than the jobs people had previously as Obama continues to gut the middle class.

“However, we certainly haven’t seen the economic Armageddon that was so breathlessly warned about for almost a year leading up to November 2012.”

We are in it already. Everytime the Fed does QE – which they do this every month – they’re giving everyone a pay cut and lowering the minimum wage. If the economy was healthy, the Fed wouldn’t be in a permanent loop of debasing the currency.

“The market has already said it is ignoring the US government”

That is categorically not happening. The market hangs on every word and everything the Fed does, like if the Fed announced they’re ending QE Infinity, raising interest rates and unwinding their $3 trillion balance sheet, the market would tank. Any number of things the government does the market pays attention. However, what is good for “the market” doesn’t it mean it’s good for the general public.

Yes, I do think Obama has been surprisingly stupid on his “Washington Monument” type cuts – it leaves Obama wide open to criticism when he does cuts that clearly aren’t across the board at the White House. Obama cuts things that hurt the public while he spends money on himself…it’s one thing if you’re doing it at a generic agency where something like that can be pulled off, but when you’re the one personally benefiting from the cuts you do, it just looks like Obama is being the Grinch out robbing kids and tourists of their Washington DC experience so that he can live lavishly.

Like many great American presidents be it Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans, or Obama’s kill list – Chavez overreached in the heat of political combat.

Ah, so Obama is a great President who assassinate citizens, but his assassination policy isn’t really his fault due to politics. I don’t see why brining up Obama’s assassinations has to do with Chavez, except that you’re comparing Chavez’s leadership to Obama’s, which I’d say that makes Chavez look worse rather than better.

I wondered what happened to Father Guido Sarducci

The thing is that Obama et al want to privatize everything, like if they’re cutting budgets, they’ll just expand self-regulation to meat like what they’ve already done with poultry:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/04/05/usda-seeks-to-let-poultry-companies-self-inspect-their-product/
The assumption on this thread seems to be that this part of the austerity will end because only federal employees can do a certain job, but this is part of the whole scheme to privatize and deregulate everything…the solution to this will be self-regulated meat plants rather than re-funding government inspection employees.

I’m sure this was just a coincidence:
http://freebeacon.com/duke-energy-loan-becomes-gift-to-dnc/
http://freebeacon.com/democratic-national-cronyism/

It’s a Look At The Wookie strategy. Time and time again Obama and the Democrats could have achieved their stated goal of revenue increases by simply doing nothing so that we’d automatically revert back to prior Democratic economic policies. Instead Obama and the Democrats argue for Republican policies as an excuse to go after Medicare, Social Security, etc.

Not entirely unrelated all this, Duke Energy is quitely giving the DNC a $10 million dollar gift:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-duke-energy-democratic-convention-20130213,0,3763176.story
Our government is for sale with the White House open for business.