…because “we have to pass it before you can see it” worked out so well with 404care. And this idiot was once a vice-presidential candidate:

Paul Ryan’s Pelosi-Esque Obamatrade Moment: ‘It’s Declassified And Made Public Once It’s Agreed To’

Chief Obamatrade proponent House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted during Congressional testimony on Wednesday evening that despite tons of claims from him and other Obamatrade supporters to the contrary, the process is highly secretive.

He also made a gaffe in his House Rules Committee testimony on par with former Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)’s push to pass Obamacare, in which she said infamously said: “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

“It’s declassified and made public once it’s agreed to,” Ryan said of Obamatrade in Rules Committee testimony on Wednesday during questioning from Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX).

That tears it. I needed to change the address on my voter registration anyway…might as well go independent (or third-party) as well if crap like this is what the Republican majority in Congress is going to continue to deliver. They were sent to Washington to put the brakes on the Democrats’ disastrous agenda, but this is what they’re delivering instead:

How Five Republicans Let Congress Keep Its Fraudulent Obamacare Subsidies

The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on April 23: Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health exchange — the document that facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from Obamacare by allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies.

The application said Congress employed just 45 people. Names were faked; one employee was listed as “First Last,” another simply as “Congress.” To Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter, who has fought for years against the Obamacare exemption, it was clear that someone in Congress had falsified the document in order to make lawmakers and their staff eligible for taxpayer subsidies provided under the exchange for small-business employees.

But until Vitter got a green light from the Small Business Committee to subpoena the unredacted application from the District of Columbia health exchange, it would be impossible to determine who in Congress gave it a stamp of approval. When Vitter asked Republicans on his committee to approve the subpoena, however, he was unexpectedly stonewalled.

The elections office isn’t far from the office, so it’s no big deal to swing by there on the way home from work, or maybe even around lunchtime.

Want to get away with cheating on your taxes?  Just go to work for the IRS:

IRS gave promotions to tax cheaters

The IRS refused to fire most of its own employees found to be cheating on their taxes — and in some cases even quickly turned around and promoted them within the year, according to an audit released Wednesday.

In about 60 percent of cases of “willful violations,” IRS managers found mitigating circumstances and refused to fire the employees, even though the law calls for that penalty. In some of those cases, the managers didn’t even document why they had overridden the penalty, said Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George.

Thomas Sowell on the warmists’ attempts to silence dissent, and how it relates to their racist past:

Don’t Let Science Be Settled with Political Intimidation

How long will this country remain free? Probably only as long as the American people value their freedom enough to defend it. But how many people today can stop looking at their electronic devices long enough to even think about such things?

Meanwhile, attempts to shut down people whose free speech interferes with other people’s political agendas go on, with remarkably little notice, much less outrage. The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting the tax-exempt status of conservative groups is just one of these attempts to fight political battles by shutting up the opposition, rather than answering them.

Another insidious attempt to silence voices that dissent from current politically correct crusades is targeting scientists who do not agree with the “global warming” scenario. Congressman Raul Grijalva has been writing universities, demanding financial records showing who is financing the research of dissenting scientists, and demanding their internal communications as well. Mr. Grijalva says that financial disclosure needs to be part of the public’s “right to know” who is financing those who express different views.

[…]

Some of us are old enough to remember when this kind of game was played by Southern segregationist politicians trying to hamstring civil-rights organizations like the NAACP by pressuring them to reveal who was contributing money to them. Such revelations would of course then subject NAACP supporters to all sorts of retaliations, and dry up contributions.

The IRS is operating above the law, and nobody in the 0bama regime is willing to rein it in…not much surprise there, unfortunately:

DOJ: No contempt charges for former IRS official Lois Lerner

The Justice Department will not seek criminal contempt charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner, the central figure in a scandal that erupted over whether the tax agency improperly targeted conservative political groups.

Ronald Machen, the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a seven-page letter this week that he would not bring a criminal case to a grand jury over Lerner’s refusal to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in March 2014. The House approved a criminal contempt resolution against Lerner in May 2014, and Machen’s office has been reviewing the issue since then.

Lerner and other IRS officials, however, are still under investigation by the FBI for the tea party targeting matter — which is a separate probe entirely.

…and if you believe they’ll ever prosecute her for targeting conservative organizations, maybe you’ll be interested in this bridge I have for sale.