Michael Barone

Noemie Emery has an excellent article in the latest Weekly Standard on the case of Kermit Gosnell, the abortion provider who has been sentenced to life in prison on three counts of murder.

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Charlie Spiering

Despite all the White House scandals this week, President Obama is more concerned about a Buzzfeed article listing things that will make you feel old.

This spoof video was put together by Jimmy Fallon and the ‘Late Night’ show crew.

Conn Carroll

After one full week of votes in the Senate Judiciary Committee, it is now clear that no major changes will be made to the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill before it reaches the Senate floor.

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Charlie Spiering

Speaking at Ellicott Dredges’ factory in Baltimore this afternoon, President Obama joked that he couldn’t wait to have a dredge named after him.

After taking a tour of the factory, Obama explained that a customer of the factory once named a dredge after former President Bill Clinton.

“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” he joked.

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Sean Higgins

Deirdre McCloskey, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is set to be honored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading Washington, D.C., free market/libertarian think tank, with its annual Julian Simon Award at a major dinner event in June.

CEI advocates for several issues and causes that are associated with the right, like skepticism about climate change, shrinking the size of government and opposing federal regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley.

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Charlie Spiering

During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing today, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., grilled outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller about the IRS targeting a pro-life group in Iowa.

“Their question, specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers,’" Schock declared.

“Would that be an inappropriate question to a 501 c3 applicant?” asked Schock.

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Michael Barone

Higher education enrollments this spring are down 2.3 percent  from spring 2012, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.

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Philip Klein

On Thursday, House Republicans once again voted to repeal President Obama’s health care law. I don’t think it’ll be a major spoiler to predict that the repeal bill won’t go any further

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Charlie Spiering

During the congressional hearing Friday morning with outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, Rep.

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Charlie Spiering

During a House Ways and Means Committee Hearing this morning, acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller explained that he never claimed to have done anything wrong.

Miller made the comment during an exchange with Rep.

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Charlie Spiering

During a congressional hearing with the House Ways and Means Committee, outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller admitted that the IRS provided "horrible customer service" by targeting Tea Party groups.

"I can say generally, we provided horrible customer service, I will admit that.

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Conn Carroll

“The government generally has to conduct itself in a way that is true to the public trust,” President Obama said from the East Room of the White House Wednesday.

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Charlie Spiering

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has come under heavy fire this week as journalists grilled him about the three scandals hitting President Obama’s administration at once.

On CNN Thursday night, however, Carney explained to Piers Morgan that he has actually enjoyed his job this week.

“Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve kind of enjoyed it,” Carney said, as Morgan asked him how his week has been.

Carney has hosted only two press briefings this week.

Carney added that the week had been “challenging” but that he enjoyed “inspiring reporters to ask hard questions” as Obama’s press secretary.

“I think that it’s part of our democracy and part of what makes the process great,” he continued.

Carney asserted that in his opinion, the three scandals within the Obama administration were not scandals.

“I dismiss the premise, the idea that these are scandals,” Carney said flatly, calling the controversy over Benghazi a “total concoction by Republicans,” and the IRS scandal merely “inappropriate behavior” by the IRS.

On the Associated Press scandal, Carney explained that even as a former journalist, he supported President Obama’s position on national security leaks and journalism.

“I very strongly believe, as does the president, in the need for the press to be able to pursue investigative journalism freely,” Carney explained, although he refused to comment specifically on the case with the Associated Press.

Charlie Spiering

Jon Stewart mocked the media Thursday night on “The Daily Show” for having “the attention span of a concussed goldfish,” suggesting that their distracted news coverage were Obama’s only hope for beating the scandals weighing down his second term.

Stewart played several clips of cable news hosts speculating about 2016 race more than 1,000 days before the party primaries.

Additionally, Stewart ridiculed pundits for suggesting that Hillary Clinton has already won the Democratic primary.

“With zero states reporting or caring, I feel very comfortable calling the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton,” Stewart declared mockingly.

Mark Tapscott

Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative tea party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harrassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.

More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency's Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the IRS vast expansion of its regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.

Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year for a total of $103,390.

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Michal Conger

Department of Homeland Security officials are refusing to release immigration documents for ­Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, citing the agency’s ongoing investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing allegedly carried out by the Chechen brothers.

Both the Boston Globe newspaper and nonprofit watchdog Judicial Watch have requested immigration records and other records related to the bombings through Freedom of Information Act requests.

James Holzer, a senior FOIA officer for DHS, told the Globe on Tuesday he witheld the records based on a law enforement exemption that shields information “compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

DHS  may also be using the exemption to conceal information that could embarrass the government over its handling of evidence about the brothers, ­Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told The Washington Examiner. 

“This administration is less transparent than the Bush administration,” Fitton said.

Michal Conger

Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Bob Perciasepe has asked the Inspector General for the EPA to investigate claims the agency hindered inquiries by conservative groups by charging fees routinely waived for watchdog and media groups.

Perciasepe announced the request for an audit of the agency’s Freedom of Information Act request fee decisions at a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel hearing on the EPA’s fiscal year 2014 budget Thursday morning.

In response to lawmakers’ concerns that the EPA targeted conservative groups in a manner similar to the IRS, Perciasepe said the EPA does not treat people differently when reviewing requests for information, regardless of their political leaning, according to the Hill.

Perciasepe also the shift to an online system means the EPA doesn’t always charge fees even when they are not formally waived, according to the Hill.

An EPA spokeswoman told The Washington Examiner the EPA makes its decisions based on legal requirements that are applied to all fee waiver requests, not on the identity of the reporter.

Documents obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute earlier this week showed the EPA waived fees for almost all FOIA requests from environmental groups friendly to its mission, but denied the majority of requests by conservative groups seeking to hold the agency accountable.

The real issue of the investigation is how the EPA treats groups like CEI whose interest is in broadly disseminating information valuable to the public, CEI Senior Fellow Chris Horner told The Washington Examiner. Many groups whose purpose isn’t the public benefit don’t get their fees waived, he explained, but the real problem is when watchdog and media groups are hindered by the fees.

“And the answer is they’ve stonewalled us, serially, in stark contrast to the groups they are colluding with to impose a shared agenda,” he said.

Horner disputed Perciasepe’s comment at Thursday morning’s hearing that the agency’s FOIA office is made up of career employees, not political appointees.

“This is a highly politicized body through and through, largely though not exclusively populated with environmentalist activists, that will not be cured with an election,” he said.

For 92 percent of requests from liberal groups, the EPA cooperated by waiving fees.

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Michael Barone

My American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray came to the defense of our former colleague Jason Richwine, who resigned from the Heritage Foundation amid protests about his Harvard Ph.

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Michal Conger

Several known terrorists in the Department of Justice witness protection program were allowed on commercial flights even though they were on the “no-fly” list intended to help track and restrict their activity, a report by the DOJ Inspector General released Thursday.

The witness protection program offers a new identity to known and suspected terrorists cooperating with counterterror investigations.

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Charlie Spiering

Critics of Obamacare took to Twitter Thursday to describe the burdensome health care law in just three words using the hashtag #ObamaCareInThreeWords.

It wasn’t long before the Obama administration responded using the official White House Twitter account.

"The Administration's response is telling," said Justin LoFranco, the Digital Director for Chairman Darrell Issa.

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