House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa may have let her leave the hearing, but he plans to drag her back in. Here is the statement Issa provided to POLITICO:

“When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”

I would expect this to be a top priority for Issa when Congress returns in June. And I expect Issa to attack the Fifth Amendment at that time. The legality of this area is very murky. Here is an excerpt from Doug Mataconis’s article on the subject:

In the end, all that Lerner’s statement constitutes is a declaration of her own innocence. Given that, the Reiner Court’s holding that the Fifth Amendment privilege still applies to people who claim to be innocent strongly suggests that she did not waive her rights merely be making a statement in which she states that she is innocent.. Indeed, to the extent there is any doubt on this issue I would expect that a judge is going to err on the side of protecting her rights at this stage, especially given the fact that this is a Congressional hearing and not a Grand Jury proceeding or criminal trial and the fact that there is an ongoing FBI investigation of this matter of which Lerner is likely to be, at the very least, a person of interest. A finding that Lerner waived her rights in this Committee hearing would, potentially, prejudice her ability to assert those rights in a law enforcement interrogation.

There will be more to come on this I am sure, but I submit that the default rule of erring on the side of liberty is one that people examining the issue would do well to apply.

I hope the Congressional Committee will rule on the side of liberty as Mr Mataconis suggests. Just because it appears someone appears to have violated other US Citizens First Amendment rights does not excuse violating her Fifth Amendment rights. Even if the Fifth Amendment does not match this situation perfectly (because it technically isn’t a court) it would be unwise for Congress to deny her the right to keep silent when she may self-in-criminalize. Such precedence would show Congress has no respect for the rights of citizens when they are ‘inconvenient’.

I will end this post in the way I find most appropriate, by posting the text from the Fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

PS. There are a couple more recent big stories in regards to Lerner. First she has refused to resign as asked, and second she apparently personally sent some of the letters to Tea Party groups being targeted.

Before the hearing yesterday Lois provided a two and a half-minute testimony before the Committee. The testimony can be seen here on Politico. At the end of her testimony she was dismissed by Rep. Issa since she made it clear she would not be answering questions. Apparently her counsel had advised her pleading the fifth would be best in this situation. The Fifth Amendment is used to protect citizens from self-incriminating themselves. Here is the exact text of the Fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

In my mind there are two important questions left after Ms Lerner chose to plead the fifth. First, can a person plead the fifth after providing testimony? Second, why does Ms Lerner still have her job after pleading the fifth?

For the first question I will defer to an excellent article over at United Liberty from Jason Pye. At the core of this issue is the fact Ms Lerner provided testimony (what she calls an opening statement) but then refused to allow cross-examination. Did Ms Lerner waive her right to pleading the fifth when she provided testimony? The Supreme Court in the past has ruled that the fifth cannot be utilized once testimony is given. It really comes down to the whether the opening statement is considered testimony. Mr Pye’s article explains this much better than I ever could.

Now, the second question I have no problems answering: Ms Lerner should be fired immediately. As the Director of the IRS’s Tax-Exempt Division she is in the employee of the American people. She must also answer to the oversight power provided to Congress. By choosing not to answer questions from the oversight committee she has proven herself to be an unfit employee. Pleading the fifth may protect her from testifying against herself in criminal matters; however it does not protect her job as a high-level manager working for the taxpayers. It is hard to comprehend how she still has her job. As a high-level manager she is accountable for her actions and for those that work in her division. By choosing not to take accountability she has proven herself unfit as a manger and should be excused from her job immediately.

Going forward this will be an interesting case to watch. Personally I think we will see Ms Lerner testify with immunity being provided. Once she is given immunity it is hard for Ms Lerner to publicly justify why she will not answer to Congress or the American people. But, as I said before, no matter what Ms Lerner should be fired and prevented from ever working on the taxpayer dime again.

I watched four and a half hours of this hearing while live tweeting (about 125 tweets during that time-frame). In this hearing Mr. Wolin got the least amount of attention. He basically admitted he gets his info the same place as the President: from the press. In fact at one time he said the Department of Treasure has no involvement in IRS affairs because it would be seen as political influence from the administration if he did so. Most of those asking the questions basically ignored Wolin (which likely suited him fine).

Mr George got a lot more attention. Early on Mr. George annoyed me in the proceedings by saying the IRS had the rights to target Americans based upon politics, although he didn’t really state if that was good or bad. But to make it worse he thought all the IRS should be held accountable for was lack of training. He appeared to hold the opinion that mistakes made were all training related. There was an interesting section where Representative Meehan was getting quite mad that Mr. George was avoiding his questions. Rep. Meehan said to Mr. George: ”no you can’t get back to me, he just whispered in your ear, what did he say!” This was just after Mr. George was speaking with his ‘counsel’. At one point during his testimony Mr. George did refuse to comment because “I don’t want to go to jail.” I expect to see this taken out of context many times going forth as it had to do with what info he can/can’t speak to and not what he was trying to hide.

Summarizing Mr. Shulman’s testimony can be done with a few words: incompetent, clueless, and liar. All three of these words were either used or alluded to throughout the hearing, and Mr. Shulman did nothing to change those characterizations. Early on Mr. Shulman refused to answer if it was OK for the IRS to lie to Congress. It all went down-hill from that point. An interesting point to note is that more than one Representative had to ask Mr. Shulman if he understood he was under oath. Also worth mentioning is the fact that Mr. Shulman apparently gets so many letters from Congress and meetings with the President that he can’t remember any of them. Finally the final kicker to show how worthless Mr. Shulman was/is as management: he would not accept responsibility for anything that happened under his time as management, but does acknowledge it happened. Hopefully this guy never gets a job on the taxpayer’s dime ever again in his lifetime!

Another thing worth mentioning in this proceeding was the behavior of some (not all) of the Democrat Representatives. Many of the Dem Reps kept hounding upon the fact that Citizens United is the root cause of this IRS scandal. I guess the theory goes like this: “it’s OK if the IRS broke the law and trampled on First Amendment rights of American citizens because it was caused by a Supreme Court decision I disagree with”. Representative Grisham was particularly bad on this Citizens United misdirect. She honestly didn’t seem to care if the IRS did anything illegal. In fact she was saying any of these organizations should be forced to reveal the donor list despite what the current law says.

I have many more notes. However I am so disgusted with the pure amount of “I know nothing” that came out of the hearing that I’ll end my post here. This hearing also confirmed what I’ve believed for quite some time: the IRS has too much power.

Update: Here is a link to the complaint signed by the Park Ranger being used to charge Adam.

Today Adam Kokesh was able to go in front of a federal judge after being arrested for resisting arrest this last Saturday. There is very little information available. Here is a post by Lucas on the Adam Kokesh Facebook page:

Adam has appeared in front of a judge and from the looks of it he is in good health… He remained silent throughout the entire process not even speaking to the lawyer that I coordinated with earlier… He has a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday at 13:30… The reason for the detention hearing is because Adam will not speak on if he owns fire arms or his address. More to come. – Lucas Jewell

Below is a video of an eye-witness after today’s hearing:

According to this video he was charged with felony assault on an officer. Huh? As I stated in my post yesterday he was arrested for “resisting arrest”. Now it appears they are adding the charge of assaulting an officer. There are a couple of problems with both of these charges that can be confirmed with multiple cell-phone videos of the event. First, the officers charged in and grabbed him. Second he did not resist at all. He kept his hands out in a “I surrender” motion. Nowhere in any of the continuous footage does it show Adam actively resisting or assaulting any law enforcement official.

We also learn in the above video that Adam will continue to be detained until his hearing on Thursday. The reasoning behind being denied is on the “basis of excessive drug use”. Apparently it doesn’t matter he wasn’t actually using any controlled substances when arrested. There is also no proof of this “excessive drug use”. However little things like facts and due process are meaningless in many federal courts. We will see if they allow bail on Thursday.

It is not surprising that he is being charged with felony assault of an officer. Many believe he was arrested to hinder and/or stop the Open Carry March on Washington this upcoming Independence Day. I believe the federal officials involved are betting that charging him with a felony will prevent him from taking part in the march as an armed participant. Now we will just have to see how the federal prosecutor can proceed with a lot of evidence showing Adam is not guilty of either resisting arrest or assaulting an officer.

To see if this impression was correct I did some research on the No Labels website. Here is a very relevant excerpt from the “Who We Are” section:

No Labels promotes its politics of problem solving in three ways: by organizing citizens across America, providing a space for legislators who want to solve problems to convene and by pushing for common-sense reforms to make our government work.

You will notice that the author of this document emphasized three phrases within the paragraph. Let’s look at these three statements, in reverse order.

pushing for common-sense reforms

This is the main phrase to be afraid of. It is phrases like this that have driven the progressive movement for over a century. Make no mistake about this phrase: reform means social engineering. The purpose of the progressive movement has been to engineer society in their Utopian image without regard to constitutional restrictions, state rights, or individual rights. As I continue to watch Representatives on CSPAN talk about No Labels there is an obvious progressive nature present.

providing a space for legislators who want to solve problems

Hmm, providing a space for legislatures to solve problems. This sounds very familiar. Oh, I know: it’s another group like ALEC, NCSL, or CSG (I’ve previously blogged my opposition of taxpayer dollars to these groups before). No Labels is going to become another place politicians can get pre-made bills to pass in order advance the progressive No Labels movement. It is ironic. At the very same time progressives are attacking ALEC they are putting forth a new group that will do many of the same things of their most hated organization.

organizing citizens across America

This section makes sense for any political organization: they will want to educate voters about their cause. While it makes sense, I believe the liberty movement must watch out! This No Labels group calls itself “non-partisan”. Many believe non-partisan is the same as “without an agenda”. It is quite clear No Labels has an agenda. They will be “educating” voters about their agenda as if it is “the truth”. This is no different from how many political movements act. However it is being done in a dis-honest way: the No Labels movement makes itself appear to be non-political in nature. Hopefully people will see through their deceit.

As time goes on independent thinkers and liberty-minded individuals must keep an eye on this group calling themselves “No Labels”. For those of that can see the damage progressiveness has already done to constitutional, state, and individual rights this does not bode well. But I still have faith real common sense will win over the deceitful ”common-sense” proposed by No Labels.

But I think that critiques that focus on the government’s size miss an important factor. This isn’t just a problem of bigness or smallness. It’s a problem of power.

When public servants have the power to make life difficult for narrowly defined groups of people—their political enemies, or disfavored causes, or people on the wrong side of a national discussion—they’ll end up using, and abusing, that power. It’s all but inevitable, whatever the reason. Sometimes they’ll do it because they’re out to punish their foes. Sometimes because they honestly believe it’s the fairest and most reasonable way to do their jobs. Sometimes because they’re mean and petty people. Sometimes because they think they’re making the nation a better place for all. Sometimes because they’re instructed to do so from on high. Sometimes because they’re not given enough instruction. Sometimes because they’re just plain incompetent.

It’s not that the reasons don’t matter at all. They do. But in some ways the particular reasons miss the larger point. Power will find a reason. It always does.

This is an important concept for anyone that thinks the government has gotten too large. It is the power used by government officials that stifle social and economic freedoms. There is no direct correlation between the size of the government and the amount of coercive power that same government uses upon its citizens.  For example, if half of all government employees were removed from the taxpayer payroll tomorrow that would not mean the coercive power of the government had been reduced by half. Actually the opposite may be true. The coercive power of each government official or employ would have actually increased because there are fewer entities to share that power with.

Going forward those fighting for ‘small government’ must keep in mind that power must be reduced along with the size of government. In regards to the IRS scandal this lesson is very important. Freedom activists should now be fighting to reduce the overall power of the IRS, and not simply trying to ‘hold someone accountable’. Without power being removed from the IRS these same scandals will continue to happen time and time again.

If you look at his Facebook page you will see his brief thoughts on every vote along with how he voted. Here is an example for HR807 (which I blogged about previously) :

I voted no on H R 807, Full Faith and Credit Act, which effectively raises the debt ceiling by exempting certain items from its calculation. I cosponsored the original text of this bill, which required the Department of the Treasury, in the event we reached the statutory debt limit, to simply prioritize its spending and use daily revenues to pay the principal and interest due on the national debt. This type of prioritization is appropriate and would prevent a sovereign default.

The Committee on Ways and Means decided to strip out this language and replace it with a partial debt ceiling elimination bill. Under the amended bill, when the debt limit is reached, the Treasury *must* continue borrowing and increasing the national debt to pay debt service and Social Security, even though revenues are more than enough to cover these items. And this borrowing—more than $300 billion in 2013 and over $800 billion (estimated) by 2021—would be *exempt* from the debt limit. In short, this bill eliminates the debt ceiling with respect to two large (and growing) areas of the budget, and it’s the first step toward eliminating the entire debt ceiling—the most important structural restraint we have on government borrowing.

Unfortunately, House Rules prevented me from removing myself as a cosponsor of this legislation, despite my opposition to the Committee-amended version. (Cosponsors may not be changed after a bill is reported from Committee.) And my amendment to mitigate some of the problems with this bill was (inexplicably) ruled out of order by the Republican-controlled Committee on Rules.

It passed 221-207.

He then posts a followup link showing how everyone voted. The above post has a follow-up link of http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll142.xml.

The pure amount of information he has in this post is great. He explains his understanding of the bill. In this case also explained why voted no, despite the fact he was originally a co-sponsor of the bill. I would love to see the explanation of other elected officials and why they voted yes or no on it. If I had not read his comments I wouldn’t have realized how much the bill had changed from its original form.

In addition to posting his votes he will also reply to questions in regards to those votes. Here is a post about an amendment he voted yes for on HR807:

I voted yes on the Camp of MI Amendment to H R 807, Full Faith and Credit Act. Comically, the amendment prohibits any of the debt obligations that the bill requires to be issued to pay principal and interest on the debt or Social Security from being used to pay the salaries of Members of Congress. There’s nothing in the underlying bill that allows such obligations to be diverted for this use, so this part of the amendment makes no sense.

The amendment also clarifies the Department of the Treasury’s reporting requirements under the bill. The amendment passed 340-84.

When looking in the comments of this post someone asks “So… why did you vote yes then?”. Here is his reply:

The second part is good. The first part has no legal effect. That means there’s a marginal improvement to the bill.

Can you imagine? A politician actually taking time to answer questions. Especially since Justin has no idea if a person asking the question will/won’t vote for him. He simply posts every vote and answers questions (within reason) because it’s the right thing to do.

No matter how people feel about Rep. Amash’s political views they should be applauding his voting record communication. There is no doubt as to why he votes yes or no. He has done this since first elected as a state legislature years ago and continues to do so now that  he is in the House of Representatives.

The only question I have now is: Why don’t more elected officials do this?

PS. I left this post with a highly rhetorical question. I understand why politicians wouldn’t want their voting records posted along with the reasoning.  That’s exactly why voters should be hounding elected officials to do so!

The Open Carry March on Washington is being promoted through the hashtag #OpenCarry130704. Information about this event can be found on the AdamVsTheMan website and the Facebook event for this planned civil disobedience. It should be noted that this event will be well-choreographed and there will be no resistance to anything done by law enforcement officials. I’ve seen it insinuated in the mainstream media news that those in attendance “will resist no matter what”. This simply is not true. There will be no aggression at this event that will begin with the participants.

It’s quite obvious that the Obama administration and law enforcement in DC do not want this event to happen. The arrest of Mr. Kokesh yesterday looks like an attempt to shut down the event before it can even be fully planned. This approach by the federal government will fail. Government officials (along with some mainstream media sources) seem to be believe this event revolves around Mr. Kokesh. What they fail to realize is that Adam simply got the ball rolling by providing some logistic planning and marketing of the idea. Mr. Kokesh could be kept in jail for the next few months and it would not stop the event. This event simply is not about Adam.

Liberty is the purpose of this event. Those marching with weapons as part of the civil disobedience will be making a statement that unconstitutional attacks on the 2nd amendment is not OK. If this procession is stopped, it will show the government cares more about controlling its citizens than upholding the 2nd amendment and freedom of speech. Throwing the organizer of this event into jail does nothing to stop people wanting to show their support for liberty. 

To that end I would suggest anyone looking for a truly patriotic way to celebrate Independence Day show up in Virginia this July and take part in the event. If you do not feel comfortable marching with a weapon that is OK. Every liberty-loving individual is welcome to attend and support the cause.

One final thought: do not trust what you may have heard about this event in the media. The mainstream media has been passing a lot of bad information about the event. Instead go to the AVTM website, the Facebook event, or watch the video below of Adam speaking to misinformation about this event.

PS. Right now I hope to join this event (if I can change my Independence Day plans and still keep the wife/kids happy). I am not sure yet if I will attend as a participant or a supporter. 

This statement was left on Adam’s Facebook page by Brotha Lucas:

Yoah they won’t tell us why he’s locked up but the only thing that we know is he’s being locked up for “resisting arrest” that’s all that will bw comfirmed… adam is allegedly refusing to process for “resisting arrest” and I can confirm he does not have ID with him – Brotha Lucas

Being locked up for “resisting arrest” is really the bad part of this story. It still has to be confirmed this is what he was arrested for. However it seem unlikely he was arrest for marijuana use because an eye-witness posted on his Facebook page “I can personally testify that he hadn’t even smoked yet.”

I have an old friend in the Minneapolis area that was arrested for basically the same thing at an anti-globalization rally (he’s liberal, but I don’t hold that against him). The charge of “resisting arrest” has been used as a blank check for law enforcement many times. My friend who had been charged with resisting arrest had been asked by a police officer to show his ID. When my friend asked “why” he was thrown in cuffs and charged with “resisting arrest”. The charges were later dropped and he was set free. He never did get an explanation as to why he was singled out and taken in by a police officer.

Below is a video Mr. Kokesh’s arrest. See if you can spot him “resisting arrest”:

It does not appear that Mr. Kokesh is resisting arrest at all. He has his hands out at his side to show he has no weapons and that he is not putting up resistance. It does appear he may be resisting being thrown to the concrete, but I can hardly blame him for that. It is worth noting that the only violence present at this event came from the officers that performed the arrests (although they did appear to try keeping a professional demeanor). In fact after Mr. Kokesh was hauled away the crowd began shouting “no victim, no crime”.

Personally I don’t think this arrest has anything to do with the rally Mr. Kokesh was in attendance at. I believe instead Mr. Kokesh is being preemptively arrested for the Open Carry March On Washington that has been organized by Adam to occur on Independence day.

On Monday Adam will post bail and be released. At that time we will hopefully get more information about his arrest.