Berlin — The European Union moved closer on Monday to sanctioning the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah when the United Kingdom announced that it filed a formal request for Hezbollah’s military wing to be labeled a terrorist organization. The British move, which today gained German support, represents a distinction without difference.

In short, Hezbollah is a monolithic terror entity. There is simply no prudent way to take a cookie-cutter approach to its so-called political and military wings. This is why the United States, Canada, Israel, and the Netherlands have listed Hezbollah’s entire apparatus as a terror entity. Separating Hezbollah into military and political wings, in fact, sparked objection from one of the few voices in Europe that strongly supports outlawing Hezbolla, British member of parliament Michael McCann, who vehemently opposed the half-hearted listing in the House of Commons in early May.

“While the last [British] government proscribed Hezbollah’s military wing, its significant role in Lebanese politics is the often cited reason for why the U.K. has not gone further and proscribed the whole organization, which even its own leader says operates under a single command. The misplaced belief that Hezbollah’s politicians are legitimate and independent from its deadly terrorism is also behind the EU’s inaction,” McCann said.

Europe being Europe, the major powers have retreated to a stance of appeasement at a moment when Hezbollah is on the ropes. The organization has suffered major combatant losses in its bloody campaign to aid Syria’s Bashar Assad; the Washington Post reported that Syrian “opposition groups say that at least 28 Hezbollah members were among 90 people killed since Sunday.”

Their lifeline from Iran is being squeezed, too: David Cohen, the U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, recently said that “the sanctions on Iran are hurting Iran’s ability to support its militias and malign activity around the world. It’s affecting their ability to support Hezbollah for instance . . .”

European powers refuse to confront the interplay between Hezbollah and its chief financial sponsor, Iran’s radical clerical regime. Hezbollah has waged a relentless war against the United States since the terror group’s creation in the early 1980s, at the same time Iran has been doing the same. In 1983, Hezbollah launched a suicide-bomb attacks against U.S. and French military barracks in Beirut, murdering 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers. Hezbollah operative Ali Mussa Daqduq assisted in the killing of five U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2007. Iraq’s government permitted him — in defiance of the Obama administration’s objections — to return to Hezbollah’s base in Lebanon.

Back to Europe: The vast network of Hezbollah operations in Europe is best seen in Germany. The European Foundation for Democracy published a 2009 report titled ”Hizbullah’s Fund-raising Organization in Germany,” showing that Orphans Project Lebanon (Waisenkinderprojekt Libanon e.V.), situated in Göttingen, is “the German branch of a Hizbullah suborganization” which “promotes suicide bombings” and aims to obliterate Israel. This Hezbollah “charity” still operates today.

Years of European inaction against Hezbollah were part of the porous counterterrorism strategy that permitted Hezbollah operatives to blow up an Israeli tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, last July. That Hezbollah-Iran joint operation killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian national, and injured 32 Israelis.

The Obama administration has unique leverage over the Europeans. It should use the upcoming, unique opportunity of U.S.-EU free-trade talks and insist on the complete elimination of Hezbollah from Europe’s territories as a condition of any prospective agreement.

— Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter: @BenWeinthal.

Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s tax-exempt division during the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, may have waived her Fifth Amendment rights, meaning she could be recalled to testify before Congress. House oversight-committee chairman Darrell Issa closed today’s hearing by saying that when Lerner opted to give an opening statement she potentially waived her right to remain silent. 

Earlier in the hearing, Representative Trey Gowdy argued that Lerner had waived that right when she proclaimed her innocence in the statement, but she was ultimately excused from the committee room.

Lerner also authenticated a document presented by Issa, which may have counted as participating in the testimony. “The precedents are clear that this is not something you can turn on and turn off,” Issa told Politico.

Issa told the committee he will further look into the possibility of a recall, and the hearing will therefore stand in recess and not be adjourned.

“Can you answer the question? Did you do anything personally to make sure that this insidious practice was stopped?” a heated Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) pressed former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman about the agency’s targeting of conservative groups at today’s House Oversight Committee hearing. Gowdy tried to find out why Shulman never investigated the IRS after he became aware of the targeting; Shulman said he preferred to let the inspector general look into the issue.

Gowdy asked if Shulman would have handled the situation in the same way if he had learned the IRS was targeting applicants based on race, but he refused to answer a hypothetical.

It’s not the political targeting that should worry you when it comes to the IRS handling Obamacare, former IRS commissioner Doug Shulman told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today. It’s that the IRS is “underfunded.” Still, Shulman is “confident” that the bureau can more than handle – competently and fairly – this huge new task.

The question, as Representative Scott DesJarlais (R., Tenn.) points out, is whether Americans share that view.

Earlier this week, in a feeble attempt at humor on Facebook, I posted: “If you haven’t been audited by the IRS during the Obama administration, can you even call yourself a conservative?” Given the scale of the abuses, I should probably just shorten it and say, “Only RINOs don’t get audited.” My wife and I got audited in 2011, with the IRS examining every inch of our adoption the previous year. The process was painful, but we got through it, and our refund may have been adjusted by a few dollars (the amount of the adjustment was so small, I don’t actually remember). In other words, the audit was a gigantic waste of time — for the IRS and for our family. A Facebook commenter, however, pointed me to a report that made me rethink the experience.

As we get word that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood, check out this statistic: In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent. More details from the Taxpayer Advocate Service:

During the 2012 filing season, 90 percent of returns claiming the refundable adoption credit were subject to additional review to determine if an examination was necessary. The most common reasons were income and a lack of documentation.

■ Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit.

■ Of the completed adoption tax credit audits, over 55 percent ended with no change in the tax owed or refund due in fiscal year 2012. The median refund amount involved in these audits is over $15,000 and the median adjusted gross income (AGI) of the taxpayers involved is about 64,000. The average adoption credit correspondence audit currently takes 126 days, causing a lengthy delay for taxpayers waiting for refunds.

While many returns had missing or incomplete information (more on that in a moment), what was the outcome of this massive audit campaign? Not much:

Despite Congress’ express intent to target the credit to low and middle income families, the IRS created income-based rules that were responsible for over one-third of all additional reviews in FY2012.

■ Of the $668.1 million in adoption credit claims in tax year (TY) 2011 as a result of adoption credit audits, the IRS only disallowed $11 million — or one and one-half percent — in adoption credit claims. However, the IRS has also had to pay out $2.1 million in interest in TY 2011 to taxpayers whose refunds were held past the 45-day period allowed by law.

So Congress implemented a tax credit to facilitate adoption – a process that is so extraordinarily expensive that it is out of reach for many middle-class families — and the IRS responded by implementing an audit campaign that delayed much-needed tax refunds to the very families that needed them the most. Oh, and the return on its investment in this harassment? Slightly more than 1 percent.

This audit wave got almost no media coverage, but what was the experience like for individual families? In a word, grueling. Huge document requests with short turnaround times were followed by lengthy IRS delays in processing, all with no understanding for the unique documentation challenges of international adoption. Here’s how one adoptive family described the experience:

It was early June when a letter arrived from IRS explaining that we (and lots of other adoptive parents, as it turns out) were being audited re: our adoption tax credit. The folks at IRS gave us 30 days to gather our receipts, invoices, cancelled checks, etc. to document our expenses and submit said documents to their tax examiner. If we couldn’t comply within the time limit, they would set aside our request for a credit and we would be out of luck, meaning no more of our money would be refunded to us. If we got them the paperwork, then they would review our records and decide how much more of our money they would refund to us. (Am I bitter? Just a tad bit . . .)

Anyway, this might seem to be an easy fix to those unfamiliar with foreign adoption. After all, if you adopt, you work with an agency and that’s a business, right? Businesses give receipts and invoices, right? And everyone has cancelled checks, rights? Um, not so much. See, we adopted from Kazakhstan…on the other side of the freakin’ earth…and it’s a cash economy…that uses its own currency…and English isn’t the language of Kazakhstan. The aforementioned issues presented a teensy problem to securing what IRS needed in a timely manner.

She went on to explain the challenges of documenting expenses (challenges we shared in our own audit, when I ultimately decided it was simply futile trying to document how we spent all the cash we took to Ethiopia). Her post concluded as she wrapped up the audit and waited for the IRS to respond:

Anyway, here we are, 30 days later. For the last several days, my dining room table has been covered with documents. I’ve been reliving my bad old times of adoption dossier preparation but in reverse this time. I finally got it all compiled, copies made, and the huge package of receipts, invoices, translations and conversions sent off to the IRS via Express mail. Now we wait for an answer…to see how much of our money the IRS will give us back. Let’s see if they can turn it around in 30 days like I had to. Bitter??? Nooooo, not me.

Is it the IRS’s job to frustrate and obstruct the intent of Congress by targeting vulnerable families? Once again, here’s the Taxpayer Advocate Service:

With respect to the Adoption Credit, and in particular the credit for adoption of special needs children, the IRS has failed abysmally to take into account that over 45 percent of adopting families are at or below 200 percent federal poverty level, presenting particular communication and functional literacy challenges even as they are desperately in need of the funds which Congress has sought to deliver to them.

As an adoptive family, it’s sometimes difficult to describe the immense challenges in gathering paperwork, opening your lives to social workers for home studies, then expensive travel to sometimes-corrupt foreign locales to then launch a new life with a child you love immensely but who is also experiencing his or her own culture shock and adjustment. All of this places a great strain on family finances and emotions. To then face an audit on the other side? All so the IRS can collect a whopping 1 percent additional revenue? It’s beyond the pale. If the IRS is concerned about fraud, it can audit random samples, not the vast majority of adoptive families claiming the credit.

The IRS is a broken institution. Yet despite its moral and legal corruption, it still wields immense power. As Congress investigates wrongdoing, it’s past time to consider fundamental tax reform. In other words, starve the beast. It has proven it can’t be trusted with power.

Yesterday, I attended a memorial service in New York for a pioneering philanthrophist who passed away last month at the astonishing age of 106. Kathryn Davis was active until the end of her life, skiing into her 80s, playing tennis into her 90s, and taking up kayaking after she hit the century mark.

In her extraordinary saga, she was an author, scholar, Ph.D., mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, world traveler, and a mentor to hundreds of people. Along with her husband, the late Ambassador Shelby Cullom Davis, she made the bequests that established the Heritage Foundation’s foreign-policy credentials. A former ambassador to Switzerland, Ambassador Davis also served as Heritage’s board chairman from 1985 to 1992, before dying in 1994 at the age of 85.

The Davis Institute at Heritage employs 35 scholar and researchers. One of its major products is the Index of Economic Freedom. Co-published with the Wall Street Journal, the Index – which measures the relative freedom of economies around the world – has become a must-read for foreign leaders, market watchers, and policy makers. More than one head of state has publicly praised – or chastised — Heritage for its rankings of economies.

Davis was proud of her efforts to build Heritage’s standing. But she had so much more to be proud of. One of the first women to graduate with a doctorate from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, she traveled to the Soviet Union or Russia some 30 times. In 1929, following her graduation from Wellesley College, she rode on horseback through the Caucasus Mountains in search of an obscure Muslim tribe. Her Ph.D. thesis was published as a book in 1934, Soviets in Geneva. She was a trustee of her alma mater for 18 years and actively supported the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. For her 100th birthday, she created Davis Projects for Peace, which funds 100 individual student programs seeking to increase global understanding.

I had the privilege of meeting Kathryn Davis many times and if anyone could convince you of the ability of people to remain vital in old age, she took away the prize. At the memorial service, a friend recalled telling her recently that she had done so many things she would have made a great professor. She then leaned down to hear Davis reply: “It is never too late.”

This week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week struck down Arizona’s law prohibiting abortion at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy – a law that was based on uncontroverted medical evidence that abortion’s risks to maternal health increase dramatically at 20 weeks gestation.

It is universally accepted that risks to maternal health from abortion increase as pregnancy progresses. There is no debate on that fact, and peer-reviewed evidence utilized by the Arizona Legislature demonstrated that abortion imposes significant risks of harm beginning at 20 weeks gestation. 

In fact, in his concurring opinion in this case, Isaacson v. Horne, Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld noted that the risks are indeed considerably greater after 20 weeks, and that the state presented substantial medical evidence to support its legislative findings.

In other words, a woman seeking an abortion at 20 weeks is 35 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester. At 21 weeks or more — still before the child becomes viable — she is 91 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester.

These are the same numbers relied upon by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. In fact, in its “Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States,” Guttmacher emphasizes the increased risk of death by setting it apart in the text, because the numbers are actually quite startling:

The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every one million abortions at or before eight weeks to one per 29,000 at 16–20 weeks — and one per 11,000 at 21 or more weeks.

But these data did not matter to the three-judge panel in Isaacson. That panel strictly applied the “viability” rule stemming from Roe v. Wade, claiming that no state can prohibit abortion before viability (around 23 to 24 weeks), regardless of whether later-term abortion substantially increases the mother’s risk of death. 

The Ninth Circuit’s stance, albeit incorrect, is clear: Despite the fact that both sides agree that abortion at or after 20 weeks greatly increases the risk of maternal death, the “right” to abortion is more important than the lives of women.

But such adherence to a strict “viability” rule is not at all what the U.S. Supreme Court intended.

In fact, the Court made clear in Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Gonzales v. Carhart that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting maternal health from the outset of pregnancy — not just from the time the unborn child reaches viability.

And this legitimate interest in protecting maternal health is emphasized by the Court’s reasoning in the Gonzales decision, which concluded that state legislatures are to be given “wide discretion” to regulate abortion when there is “medical uncertainty” as to the safety of the procedure.

Here, there is no “medical uncertainty.” It is undisputed that the risk of complications and even death increases substantially at and after 20 weeks gestation. But the Ninth Circuit clung to the outdated “viability rule” while ignoring portions of Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence that did not comport with its desired result.

Judge Kleinfeld’s concurring opinion provides some hope that future abortion bans predicated on medical evidence and legitimate concern for women’s health will be upheld. He implied that his hands were tied by the “viability rule,” but noted that it is an odd rule because viability changes as medicine advances. The judge also acknowledged that the state and its amici made good arguments as to why the timeline of viability should not be the standard in abortion law.

In the meantime, what we see in the Isaacson decision is what we have expected all along: Medical data and techniques are vastly outpacing the outdated assumptions of Roe and its progeny — and many on the bench are refusing to catch up, instead clinging incoherently to the “right” to abortion at the expense of women’s health and welfare.

— Mailee R. Smith is staff counsel for Americans United for Life.

Senator Ted Cruz spoke out against his own party on the Senate floor this afternoon as John McCain urged Republicans to move forward in naming a budget conference committee to reconcile differences with the House’s budget. Cruz worried that the negotiations would lead to raising the debt ceiling, which Democrats support.

“The senior senator from Arizona urged this body to trust the Republicans,” the Texas senator said. “Let me be clear: I don’t trust the Republicans, and I don’t trust the Democrats.”

He warned of the risks if Senate Republicans vote to go to a conference committee without requiring more than a 50-vote threshold to raise the debt ceiling. “If we go to conference without the debt ceiling being taken off the plate, it is 100 percent certainty that the debt ceiling will be raised,” he said.

Today, I wrote about the president’s desire to “go Bulworth,” and compared one blogger’s account (based on conversations with former Obama aides) of what Obama would say — you know, if he weren’t bound by political correctness or obligated to systematically mislead the public – with things the Actual Barack Obama has actually said. 

Spoiler: Actual Obama is almost indistinguishable from fearless fictional truth-teller Fake Obama. 

And there are more reservations coming in every day for the National Review 2013 Norwegian Fjords Cruise. It is going to be a blast. Join us this August 1–8 as our merry band of vast right-wing conspirators sail the gorgeous Norwegian coast on Holland America Line’s luxurious Eurodam. We’ll have over 30 top conservative speakers coming — now including ACORN nemesis James O’Keefe. Get complete information about what will be (if you come) the experience of a lifetime at www.nrcruise.com.

Former IRS chief Doug Shulman told a congressional hearing this morning that he “absolutely” did not inform the White House of the IRS’s targeting operation and investigation. 

Citing evidence that Shulman visited the White House 118 times between 2010 and 2011 and received information about IRS political targeting from 132 members of Congress, Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) asked whether Shulman had ever mentioned this information to White House officials.

“Absolutely not,” replied Shulman. “It would not have been appropriate.”

Moments later, Shulman testified that, despite the complaints from Congress, he never felt it was necessary to visit the Cincinnati IRS office — the office that handles the bureau’s tax-exempt-organizations operation, and which has been identified as Ground Zero in the political-targeting scandal.

You’ve heard here before about Andrew Cuomo’s push to expand abortion in New York under the guise of a grab-bag of “women’s equality” and “health” claims.

Yesterday, New York’s Cardinal Dolan wrote:

We also have the threat of an expansion of abortion here in New York, under the rubric of “women’s equality”.  Many of the governor’s proposals being advanced under that title are worthy of support, and we have not yet seen the actual details of his “Reproductive Health Act.”  However, some of the advocates continue to insist that abortion is a central part of “women’s equality.”  Their proposals include defining abortion as a “fundamental right”, as if it were equal in significance to the right to vote.  They are also pressing to permit non-doctors to do abortions, and allowing risky late-term procedures to be done outside of hospitals.  All this would expand the number of late-term abortions, and prevent many common-sense regulations, like ensuring that parents are involved in a decision made by a minor.

In the wake of the Gosnell trial — and his not-for-the-first-time criticism of President Obama’s appearance before Planned Parenthood – Dolan continued:

One abortion is too many, but every year we have over 100,000 in New York, and over a million in the United States.  Over half of the African-American children conceived each year in New York are aborted, as much as 60% in some areas. So expansion of abortion is hardly something that anyone needs.  I’m glad that more and more of our political leaders, including Governor Cuomo, are urging creative ways to decrease the number of abortions by assisting pregnant women, their unborn and newly-born babies. 

Nor is there any reasonable way to consider abortion as good for “women’s health” or “equality”.  Half of the aborted children are women, some of whom are aborted for no reason other than their sex.  Women who have experienced abortion sometimes die from complications, or suffer psychological and physical effects for years afterwards.  It is utter madness to treat the gift of a woman’s fertility as if it were a disease, and her unborn baby as if it were a tumor to be eliminated.   

It started there. Where does it end? When doctors in clean clinics in wealthy parts of town are willing to let newborns die? When doctors see patients with challenges as something less than human, less worthy of their medical efforts to preserve and protect?

Mary Eberstadt’s earlier book remains an important one.

More from the cardinal: 

We frequently hear calls for a “national conversation” about serious issues, yet our leaders never seem to want to talk frankly about abortion.  It has become the great taboo, the subject that we must never mention.  When we do raise the subject, we are accused of “imposing our values” on others.  

Really, who is imposing values?  When our cultural leaders deny or avoid the truth about abortion, isn’t that imposing a view of reality?  When the government forces taxpayers to pay for abortion, isn’t that an imposition of anti-life values? What about the unborn babies — how do they feel about having the value of “choice” imposed on them in the most permanent way possible? 

As Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput recently put it, as the Gosnell trial was occurring in his backyard: “A consequence of the fact that we have a growing culture of disrespect for human life as a result of the decision of the Supreme Court here those many years ago.” He continued: “If we can treat unborn children this way, it means we’re capable of treating born children this way, and the elderly this way. Unless there’s a deep profound respect for human life at all levels, people will see a gradual disintegration of respect for human life at all.”

Cardinal Dolan continued:

Deep in our hearts, there are truths that cannot be erased, that cannot be completely clouded by ideology, or utilitarian calculations, or by our own weaknesses and self-delusions.  Our lives are an awesome gift, they are precious and must be safeguarded and nurtured.  But not just our own — every human life is just as important, and must be preserved and protected as well.  We are all called to be a gift of self, a loving servant, to our brothers and sisters, particularly those in need.  And we know, at the core of our being, that abortion contradicts these truths. 

Our society is once again challenged to recognize these fundamental truths, to discuss them candidly, to deal with the hard and challenging decisions that they entail, and to support those who struggle with them.  The days of denial have to come to an end.  We can no longer hide behind euphemism and distraction. 

Can we all finally agree that things have gone way too far, and begin to make corrections?  Can we start to talk common sense?

Those last two are excellent questions. I share Steve Hayes’s sense of urgency that was on display the night of the Gosnell trial. I share Daniel Henninger’s. I also am sobered by the reality of Kirsten Powers’ pessisimism. We have a moral imperative not to look away. And yet. We had a Gosnell moment, where Anderson Cooper paid attention, then it seemed to pass. And so we’re back on abortion expansion and attacking those seeking to err on the side of life.

Did you read Henninger’s column last week? He wrote, in part: 

The Gosnell case is a chance for people of reasonable mind, assuming any remain on this subject, to come to grips with abortion in America. . . .

After Gosnell, all reasons for having an abortion do not carry equal weight.

Across the 40 post-Roe years, the idea of a deeply personal decision, or choice, has taken a back seat to the hard face of public politics. The partisans in the abortion battles will deny they have demoted personal concerns, and that may be true. But when every nominee to the Supreme Court must run the abortion gauntlet, when every presidential convention must include strict nightly commitments to “choice” or “life,” when bishops battle politicians, and “litmus test” means only one thing, then abortion’s public politics have overwhelmed its human tragedies. After 40 years, we still have too much of both.

Can the Gosnell case change that? If it doesn’t, we’re in trouble.

If we still remember what conscience is, ours should be rocked.

Paul Ryan is writing a book.

But don’t expect Game Change.

According to a source close to Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican is working with attorney Bob Barnett to release his first major book next year, and it’ll feature a mix of autobiography, political analysis, and policy prescriptions.

So far, Ryan has been doing the writing by himself. The early theme of the draft is a broad discussion of American renewal, with an emphasis on the Republican future and the party’s need to articulate what he calls the “American idea.”

Behind the scenes, Ryan is worried that the GOP is losing its connection with working Americans, and he has been writing about how the party needs to speak more to those in poverty about empowerment and economic freedom. His recent speeches at the American Enterprise Institute’s Kristol dinner and at Benedictine College have touched on this issue, and Ryan is eager to broaden the argument into chapter form.

On a personal level, the book will highlight his childhood in Janesville, Wis., his time as an aide to Jack Kemp, and his rise through the congressional ranks. Kemp, especially, will have a special place in the book, and in many ways, Ryan’s effort will likely echo Kemp’s book, An American Renaissance: A Strategy for the 1980s.

The Romney-Ryan campaign will also be part of the book, but there will only be kind words and appreciation for Mitt Romney, who put Ryan on the GOP ticket. They remain close and Ryan has assured his friends that he won’t write a tell-all memoir.

Ryan previously coauthored Young Guns, a 2010 campaign book, with his House colleagues, Kevin McCarthy and Eric Cantor.

Ryan’s allies are mum on where the book fits into the congressman’s 2016 calculus, but a presidential run, to be sure, has not been ruled out. For now, though, this still-untitled book is seen as the next step in his push to shape the national debate.

On Monday, I mentioned how one of the unintended responses by employers to Obamacare–specifically the fact that a vast majority of them may avoid the law’s penalties by buying flimsy health insurance for their employees — may be a serious challenge to the implementation of the health-insurance exchanges.

Today, another implementation difficulty (or a “bummer, we didn’t think of that when we designed the law”) is surfacing. According to a new report, millions of Americans who are expected to be eligeable for tax subsidies to purchase private insurance on the new health-insurance exchanges may not be able to do so after all because they don’t have a checking account. Over at Kaiser Health News, Sarah Varney reports: 

One in five households in the United States, or about 51 million adults have only a tenuous relationship with a traditional bank, relying instead on check-cashing stores and money lenders, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The new federal health law which requires most Americans to carry health insurance starting in January presents a particular problem for those households, since most health plans accept a credit card for the first month’s premium payment and then require customers to pay monthly with a check or an electronic funds transfer from a checking account.

Those options won’t work for the so-called “unbankables” looking to purchase health coverage with federal subsidies through online insurance marketplaces, said Dan Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a firm that is advising private insurers and states on how to comply with the law. “You don’t want to take these millions of unbankable people through the entire enrollment process and then at the end of line say, ‘Ok the only way you can pay for your share of the premium is with a bank account number,’” he said.

The Washington Post’s Sarah Kiff adds:

The Jackson Hewitt report, first reported by Kaiser Health News, focused on uninsured Americans between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty line, who are eligible to receive tax subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

It found that, in this demographic, the ranks of the unbanked tend to be highest among states that also have high uninsured rates. In Florida, where 24 percent of the non-elderly lack insurance coverage, Jackson Hewitt estimates that 34 percent of those likely eligible for premium subsidies do not have a regular bank account.

The unbanked rate tends to be higher among minority groups. Thirty-three percent of African Americans in the demographic Jackson Hewitt studied did not have a checking account, compared with 23 percent of whites. Among Hispanics, that number stood at 32 percent.

For now, it is hard to tell how much of a problem it will be. For one thing, it will depend on what the different insurance companies’ payment policies are and what the law requires them to do. It’s too bad the drafters of the law didn’t think of that before. 

“Sir, you misled Congress — make no question about it,” Democratic congressman Stephen Lynch shouted at former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman for not informing Congress that he had learned of the agency’s targeting of conservative organizations.  

“After telling Congress that absolutely no one is being targeted, you learned that there’s a list,” Lynch said at today’s House Oversight Committee hearing. “And what did you do after that point? You did nothing — you did nothing to straighten out the impression that you had left by your testimony before Congress.”

“When you learned that our suspicions were true, when you learned that there was a list, you did nothing,” the Massachusetts congressman said.

Representative Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.) slammed the lack of preparedness and conduct of IRS employees in earlier congressional hearings, and threatened a special counsel if that conduct continues. He accused the agency of stonewalling Congress by claiming to not recall names and other important pieces of information.

“If this committee is prevented by obstruction or refusal to answer the questions that we need to get to the bottom of this, you will leave us no alternative but to ask for the appointment of a special prosecutor or appointment to special council,” Lynch said at today’s House Oversight Committee.

“There will be hell to pay if that’s the route that we choose to go down,” Lynch warned. 

E-mails between staff members of the House Oversight Committee and the office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) suggest that the findings of a report on IRS targeting of conservative groups were initially scheduled to be released in September 2012, before the election. It was not formally released until May 14, 2013.

“You mentioned your report would be ready in September. Any update for us?” a committee staff member wrote a TITGA employee on September 24, 2012. The employee responded that same day, explaining that “field work for this audit is still on going.”

Committee staff followed up on December 18, 2012, but the TITGA employee did not reply until December 20 — “Sorry for the delayed response. I was studying for a final,” the employee wrote in an e-mail. “We will be able to offer a substantive briefing, i.e., the facts, findings, recommendations, and outcomes by March.” 

When the committee followed up again on February 20, 2013, TITGA indicated days later that the briefing would be further delayed “until late April/early May.” 

“Frankly, it is disappointing and frustrating that it is taking this long,” committee staff wrote in response.

Additional emails show that TITGA was aware in July 2012 that an internal IRS investigation had found evidence of inappropriate targeting.

IRS official Lois Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment at this morning’s House Oversight Committee hearing and asserted that she did not break any laws during her time as director of the agency’s Exempt Organizations Unit.

“I have done nothing wrong,” Lerner said. ”I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

She then told committee chairman Darrell Issa that she will not answer any questions on the advice of her attorneys.

After Lerner’s statements, Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) argued she “waved her right to Fifth Amendment privilege” by making those statements and urged that she stay and answer questions: ”You don’t get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross-examination.” Lerner was ultimately allowed to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights and leave the hearing.

In his opening statements at today’s House Oversight Committee hearing, Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) was highly skeptical that the IRS’s targeting was the work of “two rogue agents” as the White House claims. He pointed out that the timing of the targeting coincided with the passage of the president’s health-care law.

“This administration, this agency, the very agency charged with enforcing Obamacare systematically targeted groups that came into existence because they opposed Obamacare,” Jordan said. “And they started the targeting the very month — March 2010 — that Obamacare came into law expects us to believe it is the work of ‘two rogue agents.’”

National Public Radio’s Cokie Roberts slammed the Obama administration and the Department of Justice for its seizure of reporters’ phone records and for potentially prosecuting Fox News reporter James Rosen.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department monitored Rosen’s phone records, e-mails, and movements in and out of the State Department; yesterday, Fox News anchor Bret Baier revealed the department also seized Rosen’s parents’ phone records.

“This is an attack on the American press big time,” she said on Morning Joe today. She pointed out that the Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many government employees for leaks than all past administrations combined, “and there’s still more to go.” 

“This reporter is being prosecuted for what?” Roberts asked in defense of Rosen. ”He’s basically being prosecuted, if he is prosecuted, for doing his job.”

Senator John Thune (R., S.D.) is suspicious of Lois Lerner’s decision to take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify at this morning’s House Oversight Committee hearing. Lerner served as director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations division during the time of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

“One thing is Lois Lerner is taking the Fifth . . . which would suggest there’s an admission of guilt right there,” Thune said on Fox News last night. He also criticized other IRS officials for giving “more non-answers than answers” at yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing.

An IRS internal investigation concluded that the agency was improperly targeting conservative groups a year before an inspector general’s report revealed the same practices. 

House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa said Wednesday that committee investigators interviewed the IRS’s Director of Exempt Organizations, Rulings and Agreements, Holly Paz, who indicated she participated in the agency’s internal review, which concluded in May of 2012.  

“Think about it,” Issa said. “For more than a year, the IRS knew that it had inappropriately targeted groups of Americans based on their political beliefs and without mentioning and in fact without honestly answering questions that were the result of this internal investigation.” 

Paz, who National Review Online previously reported is a donor to Barack Obama, was yesterday interviewed privately by investigators of the House Oversight Committee. She reports to the Director of Exempt Organizations, Lois Lerner, who today invoked her Fifth Amendment right and did not testify before the committee. 

Jonah, re that Tweet from that DNC Communications guy, aside from the general flouncey huffiness of it, like a bitchy waiter when you send back the monkfish drizzled with aubergine coulis on a bed of organic Belgian endives, his point is just ridiculous:

@GOP has FOIAed the IRS. How original. And political.

Ooh, Obama critics are politicizing everything, aren’t they? You can just about credit the same old lame old when it comes to, say, Benghazi. The death of a US ambassador and three other Americans oughtn’t to be “political”: It’s a national security disgrace, and an international humiliation.

But the IRS stuff is about the Government of the United States treating American citizens differently according to whether they’re conservative or liberal. If that’s not “political”, what is?

Brad Woodhouse, Communications Director for the DNC, seems a bit overwhelmed. In what I gather is an attempt to change the narrative (man, do we need a new word for that) into a story of GOP “overreach” he tweeted out the following:

I keep staring at this tweet like one of those posters with the hidden flying saucer in it. Maybe if I just relax my eyes enough, the outlines of his argument will come through? From what I can gather, FOIing the IRS is outrageous because doing so doesn’t include the Democrats in the inquiry. Of course FOIing the IRS will only result in getting facts, which are not partisan either way. But according to Woodhouse getting facts is “political” and a sign of GOP overreach which is “typical” i.e. bad (hiding the facts, meanwhile, seems to be the essence of good government according to this administration). Also, using the Freedom of Information act is unoriginal, which is also bad because apparently the GOP should use really clever and novel ways of getting the facts, or something. 

I think Woodhouse needs to sit out the next few plays. 

Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city, elected a liberal Democrat as its new mayor yesterday. But the fact that winner Eric Garcetti was opposed by public-employee unions is a hopeful sign for the city’s future.

City unions plowed some $5 million into the election behind Wendy Greuel, dwarfing the union support that went to Garcetti. During the time both candidates have spent on the LA City Council, it became clear the unions would rather negotiate with Greuel. While both candidates backed an infamous 2007 deal that raised city-employee pay by 25 percent over five years, Garcetti has been more willing in recent years to confront the unions over the need for compromises.

The city has been paying expenses in recent years by cutting back on services and deferring maintenance. It has a backlog of 60 years when it comes to street repairs. Since 90 percent of the city’s budget is spent on current personnel or pensions for retired employees, excessive union demands are considered an obstacle to the city’s quality of life. Within five years, the cost of retiree benefits will consume 25 percent of the city’s entire budget.

Especially unpopular are workers at the Department of Water and Power, where the average salary is $100,000 and the water bills are punishingly high.

In the end, Greuel’s overwhelming union support tainted her in the eyes of voters. A Los Angeles Times poll found 46 percent of eligible voters said Greuel cared more about powerful public-employee unions than the city as a whole. Only 26 percent said the same about Garcetti.

The new mayor will face problems beyond greedy city unions and a budget bleeding red ink. Los Angeles has been losing jobs at the same time it has been gaining population. Garcetti’s biggest challenge will be to try to reverse the city’s anti-business reputation and try to kick-start real economic growth that will generate taxes that can pay the city’s bills.

Buzzfeed has it from two White House sources that chief White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler played a key role in the president’s (non)responses to both the Benghazi and the IRS scandals:

BuzzFeed has learned that key members of President Obama’s national security team, including deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, pushed to release a comprehensive timeline of events documenting the attack that would also synthesize the views of the various government agencies into one report. The CIA also wanted the White House to put out such a timeline, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Those plans were quashed, however, when the White House Counsel’s office, which is led by Kathryn Ruemmler, advised the officials to not release any information to the public out of fear it could be used against them in any subsequent investigations and other legal complications.

The White House told BuzzFeed any suggestion that Ruemmler shot down the release of the Benghazi timeline was “off base” — but an official said the White House would not comment “on leaks out of purported internal deliberations.”

BuzzFeed’s sources said the legal advice proved frustrating for a number of officials in the president’s orbit, who felt they would have better served to put to rest controversy that has lasted nine months.

“It was aggravating,” one administration official said. “It comes back to Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler. I hate to say it, as it sounds like piling on, but it’s on her doorstep too.”

Ruemmler has also come under fire this week for not making the president and others aware of the IRS investigation.

A few things about this:

1) It is generally bad news for administrations when people learn the names of the president’s lawyers.

2) If you read the whole thing, you’ll notice that BuzzFeed’s anonymous White House source sure makes unanonymous White House staffer Ben Rhodes look great. #OckhamsRazor

3) If Ben Stein isn’t at this very moment recording a video of him saying “Ruemmler. . . ? Ruemmler . . . ? Ruemmler . . . ?” then the universe is a cold and indifferent place. 

Brian Cates with a big catch. Here’s the Times’ headline for its coverage of the IRS hearing, as originally printed:

Treasury Knew of IRS Inquiry in 2012, Official Says

And here’s the headline after a massage from the Washington bureau’s Jeremy Peters:

Republicans Expand IRS Inquiry, With Eye on White House

Peters also changed the lede, dramatically. Worth reading the whole thing.

Anthony Weiner makes it official: he’s running for mayor:

There’s an alarming testimony in the Guardian today about life under the National Health Service in Britain:

all too many people with disabilities end up being killed by the health service – the very institution supposedly dedicated to saving their lives.

The latest case is distressing and disturbing: Tina Papalabropoulos, a young woman scarcely older than my own child dying after a series of blunders by two NHS organisations – a hospital and out-of-hours GP service – in Essex. Quite rightly, her mother, Christine, is angry. “When your child becomes ill and you need professional help from doctors, you and your child are looked at and you can see their mind working, ‘Is there any point in trying to save this child’s life?’ You can see that they think, ‘This child has an existence and not a life’,” she said.

The loss of this young life was a needless tragedy. But it is far from an isolated one. Each week 24 disabled people are killed by such prejudiced presumptions; indeed, there was a case at my local hospital recently. These shocking figures are based on a government-commissioned inquiryinto one region of the country, which found people with disabilities 37% more likely to be killed by incompetence or inadequate care – and their lives end on average 16 years earlier than they should. The more serious the disabilities, the higher the risk.

This is the same health service celebrated during the most recent Olympics’ opening ceremony? Let celebration stop and a recommitment to celebrating and protecting life begin. When doctors don’t see human life as human life, with a dignity they have a duty to protect, we’re in trouble. Especially as we seem not to notice or care all that much. This is a culture moving beyond “death panels,” to a conventional medical wisdom that does not see all people as having an inherent dignity. 

“We’re a republic of laws,” Charles Krauthammer reminded his audience; “we have a Constitution.” But he suggested that the Obama administration forgot or ignored that fact when it targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen and his colleagues. “It is not illegal for a member of the press to seek information, and if you make it illegal, then you are really making a huge dent in, a huge assault on, freedom of the press.”