Lois Lerner, the IRS official in charge of tax-exempt groups, took her too-clever-by-half act to Congress yesterday and may have waived her right to claim her Fifth Amendment privilege in the process. Appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, she couldn’t resist citing a little history, bragging on her public service, instructing the committee as to the purpose of the Fifth Amendment, and proclaiming her innocence of everything the committee might be interested in — all before asserting her Fifth Amendment privilege.

Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) was a bit taken aback. He had never seen anybody try that before. Neither had I. Witnesses and lawyers know, or should know, that you can’t selectively invoke the Fifth Amendment — that is, partially testify. That is why, if a decision is made to take the Fifth, a lawyer will instruct his client to invoke it after almost every question, after identity is established, out of an abundance of caution. You don’t want your client to unintentionally waive the privilege.

The reason for the “selectivity” rule is to prevent the distortion of the record or the perversion of justice. What if a witness testified as to his side of the story and then took the Fifth on cross-examination? No fair. So now Issa is planning to call her back and take the position that she waived the privilege and must testify or, presumably, face contempt charges. So did she waive the privilege? As you might expect, the matter is not quite as simple as it appears.
As best I can remember, there is no case on point involving a congressional hearing. Although court cases, both criminal and civil, are applicable, though somewhat different standards are applied, the general rule as to waiver is as I’ve stated. Even in the court decisions, however, there is probably no case on point. As I stated, people simply don’t usually get themselves in this position. Also, the cases are very fact-specific.

No two cases are alike. However, in light of the purpose of the waiver rule, I think Ms. Lerner has a real problem. And it’s not just because of the statement she made yesterday. Apparently, Ms. Lerner made statements to the committee or committee staff before yesterday, either in person, answering written questions, or both, regarding the committee’s IRS-targeting investigation. The courts have held that a person can be deemed to have waived the privilege in prior testimony if the testimony was part of the “same proceeding.” Seems pretty clear that it was: For example, one court has held that grand-jury testimony was part of the same proceeding as the subsequent trial. So if, in prior testimony, she revealed an incriminating fact, the privilege cannot be invoked to avoid discussion of the details.

Then add the fact that Issa got her to verify at least some of her prior written statements yesterday, and supplement that with her statement as to her innocence, etc., and one must conclude that she may pay dearly for her little moment of indulgence. It was about as clever as planting a question in an out-of-the-way conference on a Friday afternoon in order to have the scandal dribble out mainly unnoticed. It may well get the same results.

- Fred Thompson

Axelrod:Obama ignorant of scandals “because the government is so vast” Really? This administration seems more half-vast to me. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 21, 2013

Watch the video below:

Here’s the report:

The government is simply too big for President Obama to keep track of all the wrongdoing taking place on his watch, his former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told MSNBC. “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast,” he explained.

Axelrod also defended the administration against criticism of the Department of Justice’s decision to seize reporters’ phone records, noting that Joe Scarborough had criticized the administration for the number of national-security leaks that had occurred. Scarborough was having none of it: ”I’ve heard the president’s defenders trying to say this, and I congratulate you guys for going off into a room, calling each other, and coming up with this bogus argument, but never did I suggest that 100 AP reporters have all of their phone records seized, their cell-phone records seized, their home phone numbers seized.”

Read more here.

Obama: Republicans are “still telling tall tales” about Obamacare. Not as tall as that 20,000-page stack of Obamacare regulations. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 20, 2013

Here’s the story:

President Obama urged Americans not to read “some blog” or rely on Republicans to describe Obamacare, because they are telling “tall tales” about the law’s provisions.

“Don’t just read a blog or some commentary from some pundit that has a political agenda, make sure you know what the actual facts are,” Obama said Friday, moments after saying that Republicans are “still telling tall tales about [Obamacare's] impact.”

For instance, Obama issued this fact check: “Whenever insurance premiums go up, you’re being told it’s because of Obamacare, even though there’s no evidence that it’s the case,” he said, blaming insurance companies and employers instead.

Those Republicans apparently fooled one of their top political opponents, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who was asked if Obamacare is driving up insurance premiums just a couple weeks ago.

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Obama: we should expect some “hiccups” with implementing Obamacare. Too bad there won’t be any doctors left to treat them. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 20, 2013

Watch this video below:

Undoubtably there will be some mistakes and hiccups as the thing gets started up, but we’re already learning from them.

Kiefer Sutherland’s anti-terrorist TV series “24″ will return to Fox this season. In the opening episode, Jack Bauer gets audited. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 17, 2013

Read the report below:

Jack Bauer will be back to smash more terrorist cells, but will TV’s toughest crime fighter still pull out all the stops to save innocent lives?

Fox is expected to announce a new, limited series version of the popular terrorism drama 24 today, May 13, with showrunner Howard Gordon and star Kiefer Sutherland returning to the franchise.

That’s great news for fans of the show, which featured Sutherland’s character doing anything and everything necessary to prevent terrorist attacks on the home front.

Torture? Sure. Harsh interrogations? Of course. The series featured that worst case, ticking time bomb scenario that turned some doves into hawks on the matter of televised terrorism.

That didn’t sit well with the Left, although the show’s popularity overshadowed most of the outrage. The series came of age before the Twitter revolution, and by the time 24 wrapped its final season in May of 2010 the social networking site hadn’t yet assumed its full clout. Plus, the series has lost some of its pop culture might in its final episodes.

We’re living in an age when the current administration dubs terrorism “workplace violence” and overseas attacks are scrubbed of their terrorist roots.

Can we expect a kinder, gentler Jack Bauer? Or will Fox executives realize the formula which made 24 such an unrelenting thriller should be left alone?

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Pelosi: blame sequester for keeping her from visiting troops on Mother’s Day. Ironically, troops credit sequester for same reason. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 13, 2013

Watch Pelosi below:

“Every year for the past few years, on Mother’s Day, I’ve gone–I’ve taken a delegation–into Afghanistan or Iraq, we’re alternating now, now Afghanistan–for Mother’s Day to say thank you to our moms and, by the way, our grandmothers, who are serving there. Some young grandmothers. But, nonetheless, grandmothers. To also thank all of our troops for what they do to protect America’s families. I won’t be going this particular weekend because we don’t have–you know, under sequestration, we don’t have codels.”

US military admits losing track of Syria’s chemical weapons. They’re probably somewhere near the F-16s we sold to Egypt. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 9, 2013

Here’s the story:

As the White House mulls whether Syria has crossed President Obama’s red line and used chemical weapons, the U.S. military and intelligence community are quietly acknowledging that the United States does not know where many of those weapons are located.

The judgment comes from top U.S. military commanders and is supported by recent intelligence community assessments, according to three U.S. officials who work closely on Syrian intelligence matters. At the heart of the concern is that the Syrian military has transferred more and more of its stock of sarin and mustard gas from storage sites to trucks where they are being moved around the country. While U.S. intelligence agencies first saw reports that Syria was moving the weapons last year, the process has accelerated since December, according to these officials. Also worrisome, said two of the officials, is intelligence from late last year that says the Syrian Scientific Research Center—an entity responsible for Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile—has begun to train irregular militias loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in how to use the chemical munitions.

The assessment that Syria is moving large amounts of its chemical weapons around the country on trucks means that if Obama wanted to send in U.S. soldiers to secure Syria’s stockpiles, his top generals and intelligence analysts doubt such a mission would have much success, according to the three officials. “We’ve lost track of lots of this stuff,” one U.S. official told The Daily Beast. “We just don’t know where a lot of it is.”

The large-scale movement of weapons, if it is in fact occurring, would violate one of Obama’s earliest declared red lines concerning Syria. Last August he said, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is, we start seeing a whole bunch of weapons moving around or being utilized.”

Continue reading here.

Dem Rep Elijah Cummings on Benghazi: “death is a part of life”. So are break-ins, but we’ve been dealing with Watergate for 40 years. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 9, 2013

Here’s a story:

During the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings on Benghazi Wednesday morning, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the committee’s ranking member, said some not-so-comforting words to those testifying before the committee about the terrorist attacks that killed the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans last September 11.

“As I listen to your testimony I could not help but think about something that I said very recently – about two years ago now – in an eulogy for a relative,” Cummings said in response to the testimony provided by Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the attack.

“I said that death is a part of life, but so often we have to find the way to make life a part of death,” he continued. “I guess the reason that I’m saying that, I want to go back to something Mr. Nordstrom said, when he was…umm…he said that he wanted to make sure that….and all of you have said it pretty much…you want to make sure we learn from this, so that…umm…your comrades and our four members of the diplomatic core who sadly passed away…so that this never happens again. And I appreciate it, I know this was difficult, I know this is…we all feel your pain.”

Watch Cummings’ remarks here:

Click here for more.

Since last September, many Americans have had the sick feeling that their government was getting away with a cover-up of massive proportions. Four Americans representing our country in Libya were left unprotected by their own government, and then abandoned during the terrorist attack that would eventually claim their lives. It seemed the problem would never be rectified and accountability would never be assessed.

All of that changed last week with the testimony of three courageous State Department employees before the House Oversight Committee. Their statements, along with e-mails leaked from the White House, the State Department, and other agencies, provided damning evidence of an administration cover-up in the months before the 2012 election. No longer able to ignore the obvious, major media organizations now are asking serious questions about the Obama administration’s behavior.

As serious as the cover-up is, it may be overshadowed by what happened before and during the attack. There is already substantial reason to believe that gross negligence, as well as shocking political and military timidity, may have been directly responsible for the loss of our ambassador and the three others, creating an international crisis in one of the most politically sensitive regions of the world.

Although it has taken eight months for us to get answers to a very few questions, those answers make one thing abundantly clear: Now is the time for the House of Representatives to form a relatively small, special bipartisan committee with broad subpoena power to focus on this matter.

The special committee should hire respected, experienced counsel. The counsel should be responsible for the committee staff, and have the authority to question all of the public witnesses. Giving the counsel 30 or 45 minutes in which to question each witness will ensure all of the appropriate facts see the light of day. The current practice of giving each committee member five minutes, with each usually having his own line of questioning, is not designed to get to the bottom of anything. A hostile or reluctant witness doesn’t even have to be especially clever to avoid having to answer anything of substance in just five minutes.

The present situation, with five or so different standing committees that have other responsibilities (which seem to be expanding, with the IRS scandal, etc.), is time-consuming and runs many unnecessary security risks. After last week, the House may feel that it has the wind at its back, but that feeling may be fleeting.

Expectations are now higher than ever before. There is likely to be competition among the committees to try to quickly follow up with more big witnesses, but this would be a mistake. The investigation must be built from the bottom up, not the top down — based upon exhaustive interviews and thorough investigation of e-mails and documents. Only then will the committee be ready to publicly question the so-called big witnesses.

Benghazi involves the State Department., military operations, foreign relations, intelligence, and government operations. There are standing committees for each of these areas, but no committee with jurisdiction over all of them. The special committee, which has been utilized regularly for important matters throughout our history, could use expertise from all of these committees while avoiding the mess created by five committees’ competing for witnesses, running separate investigations, while at the same time attending to their normal committee responsibilities. Further, history tells us that a select committee such as the one I describe is much more likely to attract whistleblowers with knowledge of important facts. Good work has already been done on Benghazi, but a committee of members selected because of their standing with their peers or their expertise, a committee with a specific congressional mandate, will simply have more credibility.

Today’s media will turn on Republicans at the first sign of disorganization and highlight every witness who does not produce a smoking gun. They will pounce on the first comment made by a member that shows it’s “all political.” These are pitfalls that can be better handled by a smaller, disciplined committee.

The stakes are extremely high for the administration, and it is likely to use everything at its disposal to thwart any investigation and resist disclosure. There are several well-worn tactics available to them, including ongoing criminal investigations and the veil of security clearances.

The administration may purposefully direct information to the intelligence committee because they know it cannot be shared with other committees. When the White House and other executive offices are probed, claims of executive privilege can be expected. Legal battles may ensue. Material will be withheld with the excuse, “We’ve already turned over thousands of documents,” regardless of their relevance or the importance of what is being withheld.

There will be delay, delay, delay, then the release of select information late on Friday afternoon, to be called, when it is subsequently brought up in the committee, “old news.” Or there will be information turned over to the committee then leaked, so the committee can be blamed, providing an excuse to slow walk or deny them further information. Every attempt will be made to discredit an investigating committee and its members.

The obstacles are higher than they may look today. All of this can best be overcome with a unified effort, a single strategy, and a specific congressional mandate. That kind of effort has the best chance of reaching the truth. The American people, and especially the relatives of those who lost their lives for our country, deserve nothing less.

- Fred Thompson

Study: US has 2x the oil & 3x natural gas as previously thought. Bad news for Obama. Wind reserves estimates turned out to be spot on. #tcot

— Fred Thompson (@fredthompson) May 8, 2013

Read the story below:

The United States has double the amount of oil and three times the amount of natural gas than previously thought, stored deep under the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, according to new data the Obama administration released Tuesday.

In announcing the new data in a conference call, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell also said the administration will release within weeks draft rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing, technology that has come under scrutiny for its environmental impact but that is essential to developing all of this energy.

“These world-class formations contain even more energy-resource potential than previously understood, which is important information as we continue to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil,” Jewell said in a statement.

The formations, called Bakken and Three Forks, span much of western North Dakota, the northern tip of South Dakota and the northeastern tip of Montana. The last time the United States Geological Survey assessed this area for its oil and gas reserves was in 2008. But that assessment did not include the Three Forks formation, which explains the substantial increase in the estimates. USGS estimates that these two formations together hold 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered—but technically recoverable—oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The estimates were requested by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., in early 2011. “This is clearly great news for North Dakota and great news for the nation,” Hoeven said in a statement. “It will further serve to enhance our state’s role as an energy powerhouse for the nation.”

The energy boom’s impact on North Dakota’s economy is undeniable. The state has the lowest unemployment in the country, at 3.3 percent.

Click here for more.