Tea Party News

Tea party activists waving flags and signs, singing patriotic songs and chanting anti-IRS slogans held rallies outside federal buildings across the country Tuesday to protest the agency's extra scrutiny of conservative groups.

MAY 17: Former Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George testify during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee May 17, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Citing a lack of leads, a police agency said Monday that it is closing the active investigation of the disappearance of Susan Powell, a Utah mother whose now-dead husband was a prime suspect The lawyer for the family of a missing Utah woman said Tuesday there's an ongoing federal investigation into Susan Powell's disappearance.

Rescue crews are working through the night after a monstrous tornado barreled through the Oklahoma City suburbs, demolishing an elementary school and reducing homes to piles of splintered wood.

Senate lawmakers took their turn Tuesday grilling IRS officials over the agency's targeting of conservative groups, as they called them to account for a "scandal" they say has undermined the public's trust in government.

President Obama's chief of staff and the White House's top lawyer got wind of an inspector general's investigation into the IRS' singling out of tea partiers and conservative groups several weeks before the report went public.

A report out Monday indicates that President Obama met with the president of the union that covers IRS employees the day before they began targeting tea party and other conservative groups.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., listens as Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder the Tea Party Patriots, speaks during a news conference.

As the IRS-Tea Party scandal continues to balloon, Grass Valley attorney - and ol' school Tea Party leader - Mark Meckler is filing a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Nor Cal Patriots - and potentially other organizations whose tax status applications were processed IRS.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, argued that had the IRS been around during time of the Boston Tea Party, it probably would have shot them, along with at least half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Catherine Engelbrecht has been telling people for years she's been targeted and harassed by the federal government.

A detailed fact-check published Monday tore into an IRS official's claim that the agency's scrutiny of conservative groups started in response to an influx of nonprofit applications, showing the practice started well before the forms started flooding in.

Why do Conservatives insist on getting in their own way? They couldn't have asked for a better week, one White House scandal following another like so many tumbling dominos.

Long story short: the IRS isn't supposed to let any old group be exempt from paying taxes.

Before it was revealed earlier this month that the IRS has been scrutinizing conservative groups seeking a tax-exempt status, the biggest issue the agency has dealt with in the past year is refund fraud and identify theft - a problem that has exploded in the Tampa Bay area.

A few weeks back, the Tea Party was little more than a relic of political history, and its former superstars such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were lost in a sea of irrelevance.

Remember all the headlines during the election, wondering what happened to the Tea Party, the liberal crowing that it had gone silent? NPR, February 2012: "Strong in 2010, Where Is the Tea Party Now?" - "what's most striking about the movement this election has been its notable absence." Mother Jones, "The Tea Party is Dead." ." ABC: "What Happened ... (more)

As second top Internal Revenue Service official has announced plans to leave the agency amid the controversy over the targeting of tea party groups.

Is the tea party getting its groove back? Shouts of vindication from around the country suggest the movement's leaders certainly think so.

A top White House adviser staked out a defiant defense Sunday on a series of scandals that have hit the Obama administration, going so far as to say it was an "irrelevant fact" where the president was the night of the Benghazi terror attacks and saying the Obama administration wouldn't cooperate in "partisan fishing expeditions" over IRS officials ... (more)