IRS "Loses" Over Two Years of Lois Lerner emails...

[TexasTiger 14,069]

The fact that you actually believe what this administration offers up as an excuse for this is what I find really odd.

I wish I found the fact that you can't understand simple English odd.

What do you think, in the form of an opinion, happened here? Is it hard to believe this reeks of corruption?

I've said I don't object to an investigation and WH subpoenas. Let's get the facts and give the speculation a rest.

Finally a Democrat that understands the need for a Special Prosecutor. HOR has been denied access to these emails and thousands of other documents for over a year. The WH and the DOJ are involved and cannot be trusted to act without a Special Prosecutor and unabridged subpoena power.

I kinda feel sorry for Tex and the rest of these democrat apologists who'll try their best to rationalize this incredibly fantastical spin of a story. You gotta be pretty naive to think this is anything other than a massive cover up that makes Water Gate look tame. This is not going away even though the DoJ and the FBI have been completely compromised in their performance of duty by their undying allegiance to this administration. It is what it is and it aint over. Stay tuned.

And Blue remains so pathologically partisan that he has almost no reading comprehension.

[TheBlueVue 177]

The fact that you actually believe what this administration offers up as an excuse for this is what I find really odd.

I wish I found the fact that you can't understand simple English odd.

What do you think, in the form of an opinion, happened here? Is it hard to believe this reeks of corruption?

I've said I don't object to an investigation and WH subpoenas. Let's get the facts and give the speculation a rest.

Finally a Democrat that understands the need for a Special Prosecutor. HOR has been denied access to these emails and thousands of other documents for over a year. The WH and the DOJ are involved and cannot be trusted to act without a Special Prosecutor and unabridged subpoena power.

I kinda feel sorry for Tex and the rest of these democrat apologists who'll try their best to rationalize this incredibly fantastical spin of a story. You gotta be pretty naive to think this is anything other than a massive cover up that makes Water Gate look tame. This is not going away even though the DoJ and the FBI have been completely compromised in their performance of duty by their undying allegiance to this administration. It is what it is and it aint over. Stay tuned.

And Blue remains so pathologically partisan that he has almost no reading comprehension.

LOL "pathologically partisan" huh? Good one. Just hang in there Tex, this story hasn't even gotten good yet but its going to be really good before its over.

[TexasTiger 14,069]

The fact that you actually believe what this administration offers up as an excuse for this is what I find really odd.

I wish I found the fact that you can't understand simple English odd.

What do you think, in the form of an opinion, happened here? Is it hard to believe this reeks of corruption?

I've said I don't object to an investigation and WH subpoenas. Let's get the facts and give the speculation a rest.

Finally a Democrat that understands the need for a Special Prosecutor. HOR has been denied access to these emails and thousands of other documents for over a year. The WH and the DOJ are involved and cannot be trusted to act without a Special Prosecutor and unabridged subpoena power.

I kinda feel sorry for Tex and the rest of these democrat apologists who'll try their best to rationalize this incredibly fantastical spin of a story. You gotta be pretty naive to think this is anything other than a massive cover up that makes Water Gate look tame. This is not going away even though the DoJ and the FBI have been completely compromised in their performance of duty by their undying allegiance to this administration. It is what it is and it aint over. Stay tuned.

And Blue remains so pathologically partisan that he has almost no reading comprehension.

LOL "pathologically partisan" huh? Good one. :hellyeah:/> Just hang in there Tex, this story hasn't even gotten good yet but its going to be really good before its over.

I'm fine wherever it leads-- are you ?

[TheBlueVue 177]

The fact that you actually believe what this administration offers up as an excuse for this is what I find really odd.

I wish I found the fact that you can't understand simple English odd.

What do you think, in the form of an opinion, happened here? Is it hard to believe this reeks of corruption?

I've said I don't object to an investigation and WH subpoenas. Let's get the facts and give the speculation a rest.

Finally a Democrat that understands the need for a Special Prosecutor. HOR has been denied access to these emails and thousands of other documents for over a year. The WH and the DOJ are involved and cannot be trusted to act without a Special Prosecutor and unabridged subpoena power.

I kinda feel sorry for Tex and the rest of these democrat apologists who'll try their best to rationalize this incredibly fantastical spin of a story. You gotta be pretty naive to think this is anything other than a massive cover up that makes Water Gate look tame. This is not going away even though the DoJ and the FBI have been completely compromised in their performance of duty by their undying allegiance to this administration. It is what it is and it aint over. Stay tuned.

And Blue remains so pathologically partisan that he has almost no reading comprehension.

LOL "pathologically partisan" huh? Good one. :hellyeah:/> Just hang in there Tex, this story hasn't even gotten good yet but its going to be really good before its over.

I'm fine wherever it leads-- are you ?

Oh yeah. I understand only too well how difficult the job will be since the MSM is completely in this administrations back pocket and goes to absurd lengths covering for them. Not to mention how compromised the DoJ and the FBI have become in their performance of duty but, worst case scenario, I expect at the very least, a minimal increase in public awareness of the most corrupt presidential admin in a generation and Im cool with that.

Amazing how the prophet of hope and change who was going to run the most transparent admin in history has turned out to be one of, if not the biggest, phony to ever sit in the Oval Office.

[Strychnine 1,808]

So Tex, you do not find strange, odd, just freaking unreal that the 7 folks at the center of all these civil rights violations suddenly cant find one email from that period? REALLY?

That the DOJ & WH knew about this some time ago and didnt bother to tell Congressional Investigators about it, you dont find ODD?

That IT professionals across the nation are outright laughing at these just delusionary explanations, you dont find this the least bit curious?

I'm not laughing at these delusionary explanations. I have seen what constitutes "best practices" and network security at a few government agencies and military bases. My own personal speculation is that the workstation hard drive crashes were probably not accidental at all, though they are well within the confines of possibility. From what I can tell, they were not using an Exchange archive. Lacking an archive, I would also imagine they had the quotas set low on Dumpster, or that it was effectively disabled. If they were relying on tape backups, and doing what most people do with tape backup systems, then I would not be surprised if their tape backups were useless.

My most interesting experiences with backup tapes were with banks. While at one of the technical service companies I previously worked for, I frequently got called upon to perform a restore of a server that had been hosed during a software upgrade (SCO Unix could be moody with these). They all seemed to use the same backup strategy. A month's worth of tapes to use for daily and weekly backups, which were swapped out by whomever they appointed to do so. The problem was that they had been using the same tapes for this, for quite some time. Invariably, when they actually needed to use one of them, they were useless. It put me in the unfortunate position of having to explain to a bank executive that whomever performed the software update had made a mistake, and that their backups were worthless. If I recall correctly, this happened enough that FDIC started requiring a functional backup server, that was mirrored offsite.

After 20 years deploying network systems, correcting bad deployments, or improvisational breakfix on a multitude of systems, I have learned the following to be absolutely true: budget frequently dictates compliance, backup tapes should be replaced with hard drives whenever possible, and that multiplexers are genuinely the product of evil.

[cooltigger21 0]

The fact that you actually believe what this administration offers up as an excuse for this is what I find really odd.

I wish I found the fact that you can't understand simple English odd.

What do you think, in the form of an opinion, happened here? Is it hard to believe this reeks of corruption?

I've said I don't object to an investigation and WH subpoenas. Let's get the facts and give the speculation a rest.

Finally a Democrat that understands the need for a Special Prosecutor. HOR has been denied access to these emails and thousands of other documents for over a year. The WH and the DOJ are involved and cannot be trusted to act without a Special Prosecutor and unabridged subpoena power.

I kinda feel sorry for Tex and the rest of these democrat apologists who'll try their best to rationalize this incredibly fantastical spin of a story. You gotta be pretty naive to think this is anything other than a massive cover up that makes Water Gate look tame. This is not going away even though the DoJ and the FBI have been completely compromised in their performance of duty by their undying allegiance to this administration. It is what it is and it aint over. Stay tuned.

will give Tex the benefit of the doubt and say he is one of these people that just can't wrap his mind around the fact that wehave a President who does not really like this country.

[Tigermike 3,657]

On the IRS Emails, the Plot Thickens

It has emerged over the last few days that at the time of Lois Lerner’s hard drive crash, the IRS had a contract with a company called Sonasoft (“Email archiving done right.”) Sonasoft promoted its relationship with the IRS in 2009: “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your servers?”

So why doesn’t that solve the problem of the missing IRS emails? Because the IRS canceled its contract with Sonasoft in September 2011, a couple of months after Lerner’s hard drive crash. Everyone seems to assume that Sonasoft would have deleted whatever information it had gotten from the IRS at that time. That is certainly a logical assumption; in fact, it would make sense to require Sonasoft to get rid of any customer’s data once the business relationship ends. But it wouldn’t hurt for a House committee to lay a subpoena on Sonasoft to learn more about the IRS’s dealings with that company and make certain that it doesn’t still have any IRS records.

Two observations about the Sonasoft story: first, the IRS’s cancellation of the Sonasoft contract occurred in the context of a $1.8 billion annual budget for information services, plus $330 million annually for “business systems modernization.” All of that, and the IRS couldn’t afford an email archiving service? Not only that, it had to recycle its backup tapes to save money? Ridiculous.

Second, I noted here that the IRS gave Senators Hatch and Wyden an email thread in which Lois Lerner talks with IRS technical employees about trying to recover materials from her crashed hard drive. The striking thing about the exchange is that Lerner begins the discussion by writing:

It was nice to meet you this morning–although I would have preferred it was under different circumstances. I’m taking advantage of your offer to try and recapture my lost personal files. My computer skills are pretty basic, so nothing fancy–but there were some documents in the files that were irreplaceable.

Lerner’s concern was about the “personal files” on her computer, nothing about emails. This would make no sense if her computer crash had destroyed the principal record of her work for the IRS over the previous two years, i.e. her email traffic. But it makes perfect sense for Lerner to be unconcerned about emails if she knew the IRS had a contract with Sonasoft and that her emails were safely archived. All she needed to worry about were her own personal files. That unconcern would have been entirely appropriate until two months later, when the IRS canceled the Sonasoft contract. Based on what we now know, that appears to be the moment when the record of Lerner’s dealings with other federal entities (like the White House and DOJ) was lost.

link

[Tigermike 3,657]

How are Obama and the IRS getting away with a blatant coverup?

To understand the latest outrage in the IRS scandal, mull over what might happen if regulators found significant evidence to implicate Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in an insider trading scheme.

Let’s say Blankfein asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to answer any questions. Say Goldman was subpoenaed to provide all of Blankfein’s emails. Goldman replied that, instead of complying with the subpoena, it was itself reviewing the emails in question and was considering which ones to release.

Now imagine that, nearly a year later, Goldman admitted that it had not, in fact, reviewed the emails in question, because they had been lost in a computer crash two months before it claimed to be reviewing them. Imagine Goldman also said copies of the emails were lost, because while under subpoena, it had destroyed the “backup tapes” (whatever those are) that held them and that it had also thrown away Blankfein’s actual hard drive.

The thing about dogs eating homework is, it could actually happen. This can’t.

This is “The dog ate my hard drive, broke into another building, ate the backup of the hard drive, then broke into six other top officials’ offices and ate their hard drives also.”

What we learned about the IRS this week is that there is an obvious criminal coverup that comes in addition to the possible underlying crimes. Prosecutions need to be brought against all of those involved.

Why isn’t this happening already?

Remember the O.J. Simpson trial, the one that consumed seemingly the entire mid-’90s? From crime to verdict, the whole thing took 16 months.

The IRS scandal? It’s already been 13 months, and no one has even been charged. And no one will be charged. Congress has called the cops — the Justice Department — and the cops simply don’t care.

It’s as if Goldman’s only regulator was an SEC that was being run by Blankfein’s poker buddies.

Modal Trigger

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd BlankfeinPhoto: Reuters

Yes, the IRS scandal differs from Watergate. In Watergate, the president appointed an independent-minded special prosecutor to investigate. It was considered a scandal when the president fired that special counsel, Archibald Cox, even though Cox was succeeded within less than two weeks by an equally ferocious prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.

President Obama? He hasn’t even appointed a special prosecutor in the first place. That’s far worse.

In Watergate, we were outraged that President Richard Nixon ordered the IRS to go after political foes — even though the IRS refused to do his bidding. A Nixon ally was forced to whine that the IRS was controlled by Democrats.

There was evidently little or no evidence that IRS power was abused, because the second Article of Impeachment against Nixon charged merely that he “endeavored” to sic the IRS on enemies.

In the Obama administration, on the other hand, we know that the IRS went after political foes. We don’t know whether the president was involved, but if Nixon’s IRS had targeted liberals because it believed it had an implicit go-ahead from the boss, wouldn’t that be fairly disturbing also? Would a breezy dismissal from Nixon make you feel better?

Obama’s assertion that there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” in the IRS’ attacks on right-wing groups does not reassure. Obama cannot have known there was no corruption given the mountain of evidence that has yet to be produced and now appears to have been destroyed. He could believe there was no corruption because he has faith in everyone who works under him, or he could know there was corruption and be lying about it, but he can’t know there was no corruption. It’s impossible.

For all he knows, there’s a Lois Lerner email that says, “I want you to go after these Tea Party bastards with everything you got. Use every trick you can to keep them on the sidelines for this election cycle. Nuke those fascists.”

Modal Trigger

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is sworn in during a congressional hearing on the missing emails from the hard drive of former director Lois Lerner.Photo: Getty Images

Lerner wouldn’t have pleaded the Fifth unless she had reason to believe that there was potential illegality and it could be tied to her.

A likely explanation for Obama’s bizarre “smidgeon” remark is that his well-known fondness for left-wing opinion writers led him to simply parrot their dismissal of the scandal: If it’s good enough for Jonathan Chait, our president thinks, it’s good enough for me!

And here we come to a third major difference between the IRS’ apparent gross abuse of power and criminal coverup and Watergate: Watergate was a much bigger deal simply because the press was relentless about following up on every detail.

Today the media’s reasoning is roughly as follows: The IRS went after some conservative groups and is engaged in an illegal coverup. We also don’t like these groups, also believe they deserve special scrutiny, and also think there’s something inherently shady about conservatives (but not liberals) who try to buy political influence. If White House staff says they weren’t involved, we’ll take their word for it. Pardon us if we’d rather cover something more relevant to American lives today. Like the 82-year-old name of the football team that plays in DC.

link

They could care less how outraged most citizens are, they know nothing is going to happen to them. Big government at it's worse.

[TheBlueVue 177]

How are Obama and the IRS getting away with a blatant coverup?

To understand the latest outrage in the IRS scandal, mull over what might happen if regulators found significant evidence to implicate Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in an insider trading scheme.

Let’s say Blankfein asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to answer any questions. Say Goldman was subpoenaed to provide all of Blankfein’s emails. Goldman replied that, instead of complying with the subpoena, it was itself reviewing the emails in question and was considering which ones to release.

Now imagine that, nearly a year later, Goldman admitted that it had not, in fact, reviewed the emails in question, because they had been lost in a computer crash two months before it claimed to be reviewing them. Imagine Goldman also said copies of the emails were lost, because while under subpoena, it had destroyed the “backup tapes” (whatever those are) that held them and that it had also thrown away Blankfein’s actual hard drive.

The thing about dogs eating homework is, it could actually happen. This can’t.

This is “The dog ate my hard drive, broke into another building, ate the backup of the hard drive, then broke into six other top officials’ offices and ate their hard drives also.”

What we learned about the IRS this week is that there is an obvious criminal coverup that comes in addition to the possible underlying crimes. Prosecutions need to be brought against all of those involved.

Why isn’t this happening already?

Remember the O.J. Simpson trial, the one that consumed seemingly the entire mid-’90s? From crime to verdict, the whole thing took 16 months.

The IRS scandal? It’s already been 13 months, and no one has even been charged. And no one will be charged. Congress has called the cops — the Justice Department — and the cops simply don’t care.

It’s as if Goldman’s only regulator was an SEC that was being run by Blankfein’s poker buddies.

Modal Trigger

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd BlankfeinPhoto: Reuters

Yes, the IRS scandal differs from Watergate. In Watergate, the president appointed an independent-minded special prosecutor to investigate. It was considered a scandal when the president fired that special counsel, Archibald Cox, even though Cox was succeeded within less than two weeks by an equally ferocious prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.

President Obama? He hasn’t even appointed a special prosecutor in the first place. That’s far worse.

In Watergate, we were outraged that President Richard Nixon ordered the IRS to go after political foes — even though the IRS refused to do his bidding. A Nixon ally was forced to whine that the IRS was controlled by Democrats.

There was evidently little or no evidence that IRS power was abused, because the second Article of Impeachment against Nixon charged merely that he “endeavored” to sic the IRS on enemies.

In the Obama administration, on the other hand, we know that the IRS went after political foes. We don’t know whether the president was involved, but if Nixon’s IRS had targeted liberals because it believed it had an implicit go-ahead from the boss, wouldn’t that be fairly disturbing also? Would a breezy dismissal from Nixon make you feel better?

Obama’s assertion that there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” in the IRS’ attacks on right-wing groups does not reassure. Obama cannot have known there was no corruption given the mountain of evidence that has yet to be produced and now appears to have been destroyed. He could believe there was no corruption because he has faith in everyone who works under him, or he could know there was corruption and be lying about it, but he can’t know there was no corruption. It’s impossible.

For all he knows, there’s a Lois Lerner email that says, “I want you to go after these Tea Party bastards with everything you got. Use every trick you can to keep them on the sidelines for this election cycle. Nuke those fascists.”

Modal Trigger

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is sworn in during a congressional hearing on the missing emails from the hard drive of former director Lois Lerner.Photo: Getty Images

Lerner wouldn’t have pleaded the Fifth unless she had reason to believe that there was potential illegality and it could be tied to her.

A likely explanation for Obama’s bizarre “smidgeon” remark is that his well-known fondness for left-wing opinion writers led him to simply parrot their dismissal of the scandal: If it’s good enough for Jonathan Chait, our president thinks, it’s good enough for me!

And here we come to a third major difference between the IRS’ apparent gross abuse of power and criminal coverup and Watergate: Watergate was a much bigger deal simply because the press was relentless about following up on every detail.

Today the media’s reasoning is roughly as follows: The IRS went after some conservative groups and is engaged in an illegal coverup. We also don’t like these groups, also believe they deserve special scrutiny, and also think there’s something inherently shady about conservatives (but not liberals) who try to buy political influence. If White House staff says they weren’t involved, we’ll take their word for it. Pardon us if we’d rather cover something more relevant to American lives today. Like the 82-year-old name of the football team that plays in DC.

link

They could care less how outraged most citizens are, they know nothing is going to happen to them. Big government at it's worse.

Sadly, that's about the size of it.

[DKW 86 7,866]

Liberals are loving this. Were it the Bush admin doing it to the liberal groups, they would be having an absolute come-apart right now. But since it's one their own and conservative groups appear to be the target, they are tickled pink.

You so do not understand those you perceive to be on "the other side."

You're right they're not cheering it on but they sure aren't being very vocal about condeming it. It seems they'd rather criticize Republicans as being over-zealous and making this political than actually admit this whole thing was made political by the IRS. Most Democrats would rather fight with Republicans and drag this out than actually find out the truth and get justice.

I guess Democrats aren't as divisive when they sit on the hands and don't comment when they're side is facing wrongdoing. They only comment to criticize Republicans. That makes it less "extreme" in your view.

I'm very comfortable in an environment that favors objective, dispassionate criticism of all sides. When I'm in an environment where hyperpartisan rants dominant the discussion and frame the "debate," it's hard to find anyone on the other side with which to have a real discussion.

For example, this is a situation in which the known facts look very suspicious, ie "where there's smoke there's fire! " Of course, the same was true with Cam Newton's father and few folks in the general public had much interest in taking an objective, dispassionate assessment.

According to this article,

http://www.politico....ils-108044.html

standard operating procedure was followed in this case-- hard drives are routinely destroyed and data was only backed up to tape for 6 months at the time. Thus, what is claimed appears to square with standard operating procedure. Had SOP not been followed, that would be particularly suspicious.

Was something in those emails? I don't know-- and neither do you. I would think that a computer forensic specialist should be able to determine if they still exist somewhere at the IRS and whether there were actions inconsistent with SOP. I would also think they can subpoena any emails from to the White House-- it's not just the sender in this equation.

Typing this real slow so even YOU can understand it.

THE DAY LL LOST HER HDD AND THE OTHER 6 HDDS THERE WAS 6 MONTHS OF BACKUP ON TAPE. THEY BACKED THE HDDS UP FROM THAT SIX MONTHS OF BACKUP. THREE MONTHS LATER THEY STILL HAD THREE MONTHS OF BACKUPS. ETC. THEY HAD TO HAVE THE EMAILS RESTORED TO THE HDDS. THAT WAS WHAT THE BACKUP TAPES WERE FOR. THATS HOW THIS SYSTEM WORKED. TEX I AM TELLING YOU THAT THE DELETIONS WERE MANUALLY DONE, COORDINATED, AND TOOK SOME TIME. THIS IS A HUGE COVERUP. THEY HAD 6 MONTHS OF EMAIL ON TAPE WHEN THE HDDS CRASHED. THE HDD CRASHES LOGICALLY MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Question:

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz asked Koskinen a question he couldn't answer: Why didn't the IRS restore Lerner's emails from a six-month 'disaster recovery' backup tape?

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Answer: