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Tax Court: Geithner/TurboTax Defense Doesn’t Cut It

June 23, 2010 by

I am not a tax professional. I do use Turbo Tax and have for over ten years. That said, if you have a complicated situation, it is best to seek the advice of a tax professional (CPA or Enrolled Agent).

Otherwise, you could face the situation that this taxpayer faces:

Tax Court Rejects Geithner/TurboTax Defense

The Tax Court specifically reject the Geithner defense saying:

Regardless of the facts and circumstances relating to the case to which petitioner refers involving U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, petitioner is required to establish on the basis of the facts and circumstances that are established by the record in his own case that there was reasonable cause for, and that he acted in good faith with respect to, the underpayment for each of his taxable years 2005 and 2006 that is attributable to his failure to report self-employment tax.

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Time to Bork Kagan?

June 22, 2010 by

The Bork judicial confirmation hearings were where civility and respect were first thrown out the window by the liberal members of the Senate including our current Vice President Joe Biden.

To say that they were a good thing for “constitutional democracy” is ludicrous. Serious inquiry was replaced with ideological fervor and we as a nation have paid for it ever since. Serious jurists with strong opinions as judges in lower courts have been replaced by shadowy figures whose true intellect and true judicial philosophy never comes to fore until after they are appointed to a lifetime position.


The National Review has examined papers released by the Clinton Presidential Library from the time that Elena Kagan served Bill Clinton as Deputy White House Counsel. Amongst these papers were notes that said the NRA and the KKK were equivalent organizations. While not signed by Kagan, the handwriting appears to be very similar to her handwriting. I’m sure a handwriting expert could say for sure. Robert VerBruggen who broke the story has more here and here. Nonetheless, to equate the NRA with the KKK is repugnant.

Kagan seems to have no regard for Second Amendment rights nor the organizations that defend them. Moreover, she has no judicial experience, no trial court experience, and a mediocre research record. And, finally, she doesn’t seem to understand the United States is a representative republic and not a constitutional democracy.

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Awaiting the McDonald v. Chicago Decision

June 21, 2010 by

McDonald v. Chicago, the case that we hope will incorporate Second Amendment rights at the state and local level, is still one of the few cases yet to be decided for the Supreme Court’s current term. Custom has it that each justice is assigned at least one opinion per two-week sitting.

The February sitting has two unresolved cases – the Chicago case and one involving the former Enron CEO Jeffery Skilling – and two justices who have not authored an opinion for that sitting. They are Justices Alito and Ginsburg. Dave Hardy has more at the Of Arms and the Law Blog.

The SCOTUS Blog has the statistics on each of the sittings for this October term of the Supreme Court. Note that this “stat-pack” hasn’t been updated to include decisions released today.

It should be noted that Justice Alito was in the majority on the Heller Case and Justice Ginsburg voted against the Second Amendment as an individual right. However, we could all end up being surprised by having Justice Ginsburg write an opinion incorporating the Second Amendment based upon the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment. And pigs can fly, too.

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A Pact with the Devil

June 16, 2010 by

On August 23, 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union was unofficially known, was approved by Stalin and Hitler. Less than two years later, Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa upon Stalin’s Soviet Union. Russian losses in the first few months, including killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, ran into the millions. This is what happens when you make a pact with the devil.

The NRA has made such a pact with the House Democrats on HR 5175, the DISCLOSE Act, in which in return for a carve-out exempting them from it provisions they will not oppose it. Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC 11) has submitted an amendment to the DISCLOSE Act that will reportedly exempt 501(c)4 nonprofit political organizations that have “more than one million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations”. The DISCLOSE Act is the Democrat’s reaction to the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case.

According to the Center for Competitive Politics, the DISCLOSE Act proposes legislation that:

would ban many companies from airing political ads, give candidates a windfall subsidy in ad time to respond to independent ads, regulate long-protected issue advocacy with more restrictive coordination rules and force nonprofits and trade groups to disclose their donors-even if donors don’t intend their funds to be used for influencing elections.

The NRA has obviously started to feel heat from conservative groups as well as their members. The NRA Institute for Legislative Action released this statement by email yesterday evening:

Statement From The National Rifle
Association On H.R. 5175, The Disclose Act


The National Rifle Association believes that any restrictions on the political speech of Americans are unconstitutional.

In the past, through the courts and in Congress, the NRA has opposed any effort to restrict the rights of its four million members to speak and have their voices heard on behalf of gun owners nationwide.

The NRA’s opposition to restrictions on political speech includes its May 26, 2010 letter to Members of Congress expressing strong concerns about H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act. As it stood at the time of that letter, the measure would have undermined or obliterated virtually all of the NRA’s right to free political speech and, therefore, jeopardized the Second Amendment rights of every law-abiding American.

The most potent defense of the Second Amendment requires the most adamant exercise of the First Amendment. The NRA stands absolutely obligated to its members to ensure maximum access to the First Amendment, in order to protect and preserve the freedom of the Second Amendment.

The NRA must preserve its ability to speak. It cannot risk a strategy that would deny its rights, for the Second Amendment cannot be defended without them.

Thus, the NRA’s first obligation must be to its members and to its most ardent defense of firearms freedom for America’s lawful gun owners.

On June 14, 2010, Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives pledged that H.R. 5175 would be amended to exempt groups like the NRA, that meet certain criteria, from its onerous restrictions on political speech. As a result, and as long as that remains the case, the NRA will not be involved in final consideration of the House bill.

The NRA cannot defend the Second Amendment from the attacks we face in the local, state, federal, international and judicial arenas without the ability to speak. We will not allow ourselves to be silenced while the national news media, politicians and others are allowed to attack us freely.

The NRA will continue to fight for its right to speak out in defense of the Second Amendment. Any efforts to silence the political speech of NRA members will, as has been the case in the past, be met with strong opposition.

 The NRA thinks of its own needs first and I understand that. They didn’t get to be the 800-pound gorilla of gun rights by being selfless. However, and I say this as a Life Member of the NRA, they are thinking in “Inside the Beltway” terms which may be tactically sound but strategically unwise. Local and regional gun rights groups who are much more agile in responding to state and local threats to gun rights will be hung out to dry.

Instead of playing with the Democrats, the NRA should heed the advice of Niccolo Machiavelli.

A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves.

The Prince, Chapter XVIII

Those proposing the DISCLOSE Act are nothing but wolves and the NRA should make the vote on HR 5175 a graded vote. They need to be the Lion and quit trying to play the Fox.

UPDATE:  Pelosi has pulled the DISCLOSE Act.

UPDATE #2: Put up for a vote on June 24th and it passes.

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Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-NC Channels his Inner Dale Earnhardt

June 15, 2010 by

From Snarky Bytes comes a video of Democratic Congressman Bob Etheridge assaulting a student who asks him a question on the streets of DC.

I guess Congressman Bob Etheridge who represents the Second District of North Carolina is trying to become known as “The Intimidator” a’la the late Dale Earnhardt.

Mr. Etheridge is rated F by both the NRA and the Gun Owners of America. He must be trying to make sure that those he assaults cannot fight back.

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Parade Magazine Puff Piece for Lautenberg’s “Terrorist” Bill

June 13, 2010 by

This Sunday’s Parade Magazine ran a puff piece of Senator Frank Lautenberg’s attempt to use terrorism as excuse to suppress gun rights.

Convicted felons and the mentally ill aren’t generally allowed to buy weapons, but suspected terrorists are. Now city mayors and politicians on Capitol Hill are working together to change that policy.

 They fail to note that the “city mayors” are Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. They refer to them as a non-partisan coalition of big city mayors.

They also are running a poll asking if “suspected terrorists should be allowed to buy guns?” Fortunately, at this time the majority of people are seeing through this biased poll.

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It’s the Habitat (and Marshes), Dummy

June 11, 2010 by

Since the Deepwater Horizon disaster how many pictures of oily pelicans struggling and dead porpoises have you seen on TV? Probably a whole lot. It is sad and heart-rending and misses the whole issue.

Tom Gresham on his weekly radio show, GunTalk, gave an impassioned explanation of why it is the marshes and other habitat that is the critical issue and not the pelicans. (starts at about the 23 minute mark) Tom’s dad, the late Grits Gresham, did his masters degree in wildlife conservation at LSU. His thesis topic was on the marshes of Louisiana. Later Tom assisted Grits on article decrying the destruction of the marshes in Louisiana and the impact it would have on wildlife as well as the human population. Remember Katrina?

Today’s Outdoor Wire had an interview with Dr. Bob Shipp of the University of South Alabama who also serves as Chairman of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.

He makes many of the same points about the importance of habitat and the marshes that Tom did.

“The thing that’s scary is the habitat. If you destroy the habitat, then they won’t be able to snap back. That’s what we’re worried about over the long term – destruction of habitat. If we lose a year class of snapper, it’s bad, but next year we’ll have another year class. The same is true for blue crabs and mahi mahi. If the sargassum or grass beds or oyster reefs are destroyed, then we have a really, really bad long-term problem.

Shipp thinks the focus now is to do whatever we can to save the habitat and not worry too much about what’s going on with individual species.

Shipp then speculates on what will happen if the spill isn’t stopped quickly.

“Let’s say they don’t get control of this until August,” he said. “I suspect almost all the Gulf will be closed to fishing. I think most of the estuaries and inshore waters will be closed to fishing. I don’t know about Texas, but I suspect they will catch it. The (Florida) Keys will catch it. They’re already talking about the Tortugas being closed. Then some of it will go up the East Coast. So if it’s not closed until August, there’s going to be no fishing this year.

“And that’s just the beginning, because it’s going to destroy a tremendous amount of habitat. It will take years to recover is this leak isn’t stopped in the next week or so.”

Shipp expects the impact of the spill will show up initially in the marshes, oyster reefs, grass beds and sargassum.

“I think the offshore reefs won’t be impacted as much early on,” he said. “The hard-bottom stuff won’t be impacted as quickly. That will be OK for a longer period of time. The impact there will be the species themselves – the juveniles, the larvae during the spawning season. But that habitat will be the least damaged and quickest to restore compared to the vegetative-type habitat.

“With grass beds, if the blades die and roots stay alive, they can come back fairly quickly. But if the roots die, it takes a long, long time for the grass beds to come back. It’s similar to the marsh. The one positive about the marsh, is it’s very, very deep. Even if you lose the outside part of it, the inside may be OK.”

Shipp said major complications would occur if a tropical storm or hurricane churns into the Gulf and makes landfall in any of the areas affected by the spill.

“If it overcovers the marshes and beaches, it’s going to be a major problem,” he said. “The oil could go way back up into the marshes or even up into freshwater habitat. If you get a funnel of bad water going up Mobile Bay or Pensacola Bay, suddenly we’re talking about freshwater habitat being impacted.

“It’s just so complex. There are so many variables. None of the outcomes appear to be particularly good.”

And so while all of this is going on, President Obama is threatening to kick asses, blaming George Bush, having three major parties at the White House, and still hasn’t called Tony Hayward, CEO of BP.