On May 21, 2013 the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent the IRS a Freedom of Information Act request asking for “any and all documents or records, including but not limited to electronic documents, e-mails, paper documents, photographs (electronic or hard copy), or audio files,” related to correspondence from January 1, 2009 and May 21, 2013 between thirteen different Democrat members of Congress and top IRS officials.
[…]Since that request was received by the IRS nearly one year ago, IRS Tax Law Specialists Robert Thomas and Denise Higley have asked for more time to fulfill the request six times.
“I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request dated May 21, 2013, and received in our office on May 30, 2013,” Higley wrote in a letter to NRSC Attorney Megan Sowards last year. “I am unable to send the information requested by June 27, 2013, which is the 20 business day period allowed by law. I apologize for any inconvenience this delay may cause.”
Thomas and Higley have sent six letters with the same language and different dates to Sowards requesting more time to locate information in order to fulfill the FOIA request. Most recently, the IRS has asked for a deadline of August 1, 2014 to produce information.
Earlier this week Judicial Watch released documents showing Democratic Michigan Senator Carl Levin was in contact with former Deputy IRS Commissioner Steven Miller repeatedly throughout 2012 and was working with the agency on how conservative groups, specifically those working against his reelection, could be targeted through IRS rules and regulations. Last month we learned the staff of Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee Elijah Cummings had been in touch with the IRS about voter fraud prevention group True the Vote, despite direct denials from Cummings any contact with the IRS had ever occurred.
I think that the Democrat cover-up of this IRS scandal is so egregious, and their refusal to be accountable to harmful, that the only solution is to abolish/dismantle the IRS and go with a flat tax or fair tax system. Government agencies are not supposed to be politicized like this, and if they are, then they need to go.
Disclaimer: I have reservations about Tim Keller. I consider him to be too liberal for my tastes, especially on scientific (intelligent design) and political/economic issues. However, I think he did a good job explaining marriage in the lecture below.
Here’s the the video:
Details:
Timothy Keller visits Google’s New York, NY office to discuss his book “The Meaning of Marriage.” This event took place on November 14, 2011, as part of the Authors@Google series.
Timothy J. Keller is an American author, speaker, preacher, and the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He is the author of several books, including “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.”
“The Meaning of Marriage” touches on topics that all readers can relate to, starting with the role of marriage in our culture, its history and the pessimism that is often associated with it. The Kellers also discuss the feelings of and acts of love, romantic relationships, gender roles, singleness, and the role of sex in a marriage.
I saw a lot of things in his lecture that echo my own views. One point where we agree is on not just looking for traits and virtues in the other person, but in seeing how they handle conflict and solve problems with you. You have to give the other person things to do and see if they make progress and work cooperatively with you. Wes, who linked me the lecture, introduced the link by saying that this is the way that Christians should explain marriage to non-Christians. I agree, and I’ve added the book to my cart.
In generations past, there was far less talk about “compatibility” and finding the ideal soul-mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for.
[…]The Bible explains why the quest for compatibility seems to be so impossible. As a pastor I have spoken to thousands of couples, some working on marriage-seeking, some working on marriage-sustaining and some working on marriage-saving. I’ve heard them say over and over, “Love shouldn’t be this hard, it should come naturally.” In response I always say something like: “Why believe that? Would someone who wants to play professional baseball say, ‘It shouldn’t be so hard to hit a fastball’? Would someone who wants to write the greatest American novel of her generation say, ‘It shouldn’t be hard to create believable characters and compelling narrative’?” The understandable retort is: “But this is not baseball or literature. This is love. Love should just come naturally if two people are compatible, if they are truly soul-mates. “
The Christian answer to this is that no two people are compatible. Duke University Ethics professor Stanley Hauerwas has famously made this point:
Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.
Hauerwas gives us the first reason that no two people are compatible for marriage, namely, that marriage profoundly changes us. But there is another reason. Any two people who enter into marriage are spiritually broken by sin, which among other things means to be self-centered—living lifeincurvatus in se. As author Denis de Rougemont said, “Why should neurotic, selfish, immature people suddenly become angels when they fall in love … ?” That is why a good marriage is more painfully hard to achieve than athletic or artistic prowess. Raw, natural talent does not enable you to play baseball as a pro or write great literature without enduring discipline and enormous work. Why would it be easy to live lovingly and well with another human being in light of what is profoundly wrong within our human nature? Indeed, many people who have mastered athletics and art have failed miserably at marriage. So the biblical doctrine of sin explains why marriage—more than anything else that is good and important in this fallen world—is so painful and hard.
When you are courting, don’t worry about appearances and feelings and passion so much, because that is all subject to change over time, and those things won’t help you with the real challenges you’ll face in a marriage. Worry about whether they are the kind of person who can make commitments and love other people self-sacrificially – even if they are unlovable. In the long run, their ability to read and understand issues, to care for others and serve them, to keep promises, to be respectful and supportive, to argue respectfully and reasonably, and to solve problems constructively, will all be far more important than appearances and feelings and passion.
And let me be clear again: give them things to do that challenge them during the courtship and see how they handle being given responsibilities – giving a person hard things to do is a much better way to test a person than recreational nights out with recreational drinking, recreational dancing and recreational sex. Marriage means commitment and hard work, not recreation. And that’s what you should test for – the ability to work hard at the relationship and to keep promises and commitments and to communicate reasonably and to work through difficulties fairly.
Dina tweeted this article from the UK Daily Mail. I don’t really have much sympathy for student, since my rule is NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE, and I’m twice his age and still a virgin. Still, the article had some interesting things in it.
Excerpt:
A teenager at one of the country’s most prestigious private schools has outed himself as a virgin and is encouraging his classmates to employ the same restraint to avoid getting their hearts broken.
Phin Lyman, 18, a sixth former at Wellington College, Berkshire, wrote an article in his school magazine warning peers that ‘casual sex never works in the long term’.
Mr Lyman – a pupil at the £30,000-per year school which counts author Sebastian Faulks and broadcaster Peter Snow among its alumni – described sex as ‘the glue’ which connects two people ‘physically and emotionally’.
And now the interesting parts:
The pupil’s comment comes just days after it emerged nearly one in ten students at British universities admit they first had sex at the age of 14 or younger.
The shocking survey of more than 6,000 students at 100 universities, carried out by Student Beans, found nine per cent of students admitted they lost their virginity before they reached their 15th birthday, with two per cent saying they had sex before they turned 14.
By the time they reached 16 – the legal age of consent – that figure had risen to almost one in four.
The survey also found that more than half have had unprotected sex while 61 per cent used camera phones to send explicit pictures or videos of themselves to partners, known as ‘sexting’.
After starting university, more than half admitted to having one-night stands and six per cent said they had already had more than 20 partners. Just eight per cent said they were still virgins.
Norman Wells from the Family Education Trust, which promotes traditional moral values, said: ‘The survey underlines the failure of contraceptive-based sex education to prepare young people for lifelong marriages.
‘Contrary to the claims of those who assert that marriage is an outdated institution, the overwhelming majority of students expect to get married, with only six per cent saying they do not wish to marry.
‘Yet the casual attitudes towards sex suggested by high levels of one night stands and multiple sexual partners indicate that students are ignorant of the character qualities they will need.’
Meanwhile, the latest figures from the NHS published in 2011 show 27 per cent of men aged between 15 and 24 had not had sex, compared with 22 per cent in 2001.
Those who admitted drinking alcohol in the previous week had also dropped by a quarter in that same ten-year period.
Of those aged 11 to 15, one in eight said they had drunk the week before, according to the 2011 NHS figures.
In my case, I am concerned about sex simply because I more interested in love, romance and a lifelong commitment. I believe that one of the best (and most risky) ways for me to make an impact for God would be to have a marriage that can be used as a base of operations from impacting the public square. A married couple united in purpose is able to work together to impact the church and the university, and raise influential and effective children. But to do that the bond has to be tight. I believe that refraining from premarital sex is my way of giving my future wife the gift of security in the marriage. Whatever happens, she will always know that I am not the kind of person who thinks that sexual activity is an appropriate form of communication between people who do not know each other, are not committed to each other, are not committed to their children and do not share a common purpose of serving God over the long-term.
I have no regrets about not being married yet, because you can train hard, save a lot of money and do a lot of good as a single person. But my chastity expresses the hope that one day the right girl will come along to know me and my plan, and want to participate in it in a self-sacrificial, submissive way. Until then, I’ll keep serving God in a disciplined, focused way and keep waiting for her to commit to me.
WINTERY KNIGHT 