And people are surprised that some of the wealthy are leaving France?  From Reuters:More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data. . . .
Les Echos reported that nearly 12,000 households paid taxes last year worth more than 75 percent of their 2011 revenues due to the exceptional levy. . . .

Why do I think that mental health experts have an incentive to keep expanding the number of people defined as having mental health disorders?
Nearly 1 in 5 children in the U.S. suffers from a mental disorder, and this number has been rising for more than a decade.
According to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up to 20 percent of American children are suffering from mental disorders such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression and autism.
The CDC’s first study of mental disorders among children aged 3 to 17 also found that the cost of medical bills for treatment of such disorders is up to $247 billion each year.
“This is a deliberate effort by CDC to show mental health is a health issue. As with any health concern, the more attention we give to it, the better. It’s parents becoming aware of the facts and talking to a health-care provider about how their child is learning, behaving and playing with other kids,” said Dr. Ruth Perou, the study’s lead author. . . . .

From Fox News:
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said he and his colleagues were "not the ones playing politics with this."
"We believe that the Legislature were the ones who were playing politics," he said.
Gun control opponents say the language in the regulations is unclear and doesn't provide safeguards to prevent people from inadvertently breaking the laws.
Ammunition magazines, for example, are easily converted to larger sizes, which the bill bans. Gun rights advocates also say the law expanding background checks doesn't provide enough exemptions for temporary transfers and that people conducting private transactions will have a difficult time getting appropriate checks.
Lawmakers allowed several exemptions in the background check legislation, including transfers between immediate family members, shooting events and temporary transfers of up to 72 hours.
State officials, including Attorney General John Suthers, have worked to defend the intent of the laws. Suthers, a Republican responsible for defending the law against the legal challenge, issued a statement Friday giving guidance to law enforcement on how the magazine limit should be enforced.
He said magazine features "must be judged objectively" and that magazines that hold 15 rounds or fewer can't be defined as "large capacity" simply because it can be modified to include more.
The state has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit. . . .

It has been troublesome that so much of the media is already arguing from the beginning of this last week that this wasn't like Watergate.  My question is: how could they already know that the Obama White House wasn't involved in these decisions?  What would have happened with Watergate if the media had shown the same quickness in drawing conclusions?  

Politico provides one of many examples of how the mainstream media.
Lew also defended Sarah Hall Ingram, a commissioner who has been targeted by Republicans for formerly overseeing the tax exempt division before heading to her current post helping the agency implement the health care law.
Ingram, Lew said, was not involved in the targeting program.
“Chronology matters in cases like this,” he said. “I’ve asked some questions since becoming aware of this, and my understanding is her responsibilities moved over from the tax exempt unit to implementation of the Affordable Care Act before there was any opportunity to be involved in this.”
Ingram served as the commissioner of tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. . . .Why not even list some obvious questions such as the events at the tax exempt division occurred during  early 2010, early in the 2009 to 2012 period when Sarah Hall Ingram was in charge of the division?  How could she have been involved in the implementation of the ACA in March of 2012 before it was signed into law on March 23, 2010?

Timeline of Key Events Surrounding IRS Targeting of Conservative Groups March 1, 2010:  An IRS manager in Cincinnati, Ohio asks employees to begin searching for 501(c) tax exemption applications using the terms Tea Party, Patriots and 9/12 as their criteria. April 1, 2010:  Managers in Washington, DC and Cincinnati decide to send a “Sensitive Case Report” about the Tea Party cases up the chain in Washington. April 19, 2010:  The Sensitive Case Report is shared with two executives in Washington, DC, one of whom is Lois Lerner and the other her immediate subordinate.   August 12, 2010:  The IRS creates a “BOLO” (Be on the Lookout) listing instructing agents to identify Tea Party case files. December 13, 2010:  A manager for the Exempt Organizations (EO) group at the IRS in Washington informs the manager in Cincinnati that the processing of Tea Party cases would soon be reviewed with the Senior Technical Advisor to Lois Lerner, the Director of EO. 
June 1, 2011: The Acting Director of Rulings and Agreements in Washington, DC, Lois Lerner’s immediate subordinate, asks the manager in Cincinnati for the criteria used to identify Tea Party groups. June 29, 2011:  The Director of EO in Washington, DC, Lois Lerner, is briefed that the criteria being used by employees includes “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” “9/12 Project,” “Government Spending,” “Government Debt,” “Taxes,” “make America a better place to live,” and cases with statements that criticize how the country is being run. July 5, 2011:  The BOLO listing criteria is revised to search for “organizations involved in political, lobbying, or advocacy.” 
January 25, 2012:  The BOLO is updated to change the search criteria to “limiting/expanding Government,” “Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” and “social economic reform/movement.” March 12, 2012: Senator Chuck Schumer sends a letter to IRS Commissioner Shulman along with six of his Democrat colleagues, calling for the agency to impose a strict cap on the amount of political spending by tax-exempt, nonprofit groups. There is another problem.  Let's just say that Sarah Hall Ingram immediately started working on Obamacare when it became law even though she was still technically in charge and running the tax exempt division.  Why was that?  Was something being hidden by her not being officially assigned to Obamacare?  For example, where costs for Obamacare being shifted onto other programs?

Take another claim from something taken seriously by the mainstream media, Salon.com.  "No evidence of White House involvement . . . none is found in the IG’s report"

If the IG did not interview people in the White House, how could the report determine that there was no evidence of White House involvement?  If the IG did interview people in the White House, how could the Obama White House claim that they had no knowledge of IRS punishing conservatives?

As the state legislature’s veto session comes to a close, a vital pro-gun reform passed in the Kansas Senate yesterday by a 31 to 6 vote. House Bill 2162, which was recently amended to include the language in the NRA-supported Senate Bill 45, will now go to the state House of Representatives for a final vote which could be held as early as this Monday.

The American College of Physicians last put out their policy position on guns in 1996.  Among their positions is a ban on all semi-automatic "assault" weapons.
"favors strong legislation to ban the sale, possession, and manufacture for civilian use of all automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons""sale and possession of handguns should be restricted. Purchases of handguns should be subject to a waiting period, satisfactory completion of a criminal background check, and proof of satisfactory completion of an appropriate educational program on firearm safety"They are updating their previous positions and have made this announcement:

The American College of Physicians plans to issue an exhaustive, evidence-based review of firearms policy and gun violence later this year.The current policies are "a little dated," so "we’re going through an evidence-based review on firearms policy and gun violence [to] come up with more contemporary recommendations," said Dr. David L. Bronson, immediate past president of the ACP.
"We are aware that firearms are part of the American culture, and this can be a divisive issue for this country and for some of our members," said Dr. Bronson at the annual meeting of the ACP. He said that’s one reason why the college will take an evidence-based approach to formulating its new recommendations. . . .
Dr. Bronson noted that opponents of proposals to rein in firearms may also find ways to reassert their rights and desires in legislation unrelated to gun violence. "You have to keep your eye on the ball," he said, adding, "they have a relentless lobby."

OK, so senior Obama officials were told of IRS probe last year, but they did nothing with this information?  Now we are told how upset and outraged they are by this information, but if they were so outraged, wouldn't they have said something publicly about this last year?  
“We have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior,” [Jack] Lew said.Isn't the proof of their lack of outrage shown by their lack of action?  From The Hill newspaper:Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general (IG) for tax administration, testified that he told the department’s general counsel and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin about the probe in June of 2012 — months after media reports started detailing Tea Party complaints about the IRS. . . .
But the attention is quickly shifting to Wolin, who is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee and Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday, where he will be grilled on what he and other Treasury officials knew — and when.
Treasury confirmed Friday that George’s office told Wolin about the forthcoming audit last year, and that the inspector general personally told Treasury Secretary Jack Lew about it in March. Lew confirmed that timeline in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
But the Treasury department also says neither Lew nor Wolin found out about the inspector general’s findings until they started filtering out to the public last week. . . .NBC's Lisa Myers "reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election."  Obama administration officials clearly knew what the scandal was about (conservative groups being targeted) in June 2012.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has apparently been less than forthcoming in his answers to questions about the scandal.  It looks as if Lew knew about the scandal while he was Obama's chief of staff, which means it is quite possible that Obama knew about it as well.  Examples of how difficult Lew is with speaking openly about what he knew can be seen here:
. . . Bloomberg's Al Hunt asked Lew, whose Treasury Department oversees the IRS: “When were you first notified that IRS agents were targeting conservative groups like the Tea Party?”
Instead of answering Hunt’s question directly, however, Lew instead chose to answer when he first learned about the IG report, a tactic President Barack Obama also used earlier this week during a press conference.
“I learned the substance of this report last Friday when it became a matter of public knowledge,” Lew claimed. “Before that, in mid-March [2013], I had had a conversation, just a getting-to-know-you conversation, with the inspector general right after I started, and he went through a number of items that were matters they were working on. And the topic of a project on the 501(c)3 issue was one of the things he briefed me was ongoing.”
Hunt then asked whether former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Lew’s deputy, Neal Wolin, or the general counsel knew about the IRS’s political profiling of conservative groups.
“I think that there was-the heads-up that I got was something that was a matter of public knowledge,” said Lew. “It was posted on the IG's website in the fall of 2012. I believe that other is typically the practice that an inspector general notify the agencies when matters are opened. I was not aware of any details.”
It is possible that "fall of 2012" could refer to a period of time before the election. Regardless, Lew would have discovered the investigation in his capacity as President Obama's chief of staff, meaning that it is possible the president knew of the investigation in 2012 as well. . . .A very different take on the same interview is available from Politico.  Others, such as acting IRS director Steve Miller, are having massive memory failures.
. . . That’s the kind of week Miller is having. To make matters worse, he spent most of the hearing saying he didn’t remember things — like the details of how he first learned of the targeting — and insisting he didn’t mislead Congress by not telling lawmakers.Over and over again, Miller swore he just answered the questions lawmakers asked him in various letters. “I answered the questions as they were asked,” Miller told Charles Boustany of Louisiana.
At times, Miller struggled to find phrases that wouldn’t sound politically tone deaf. He tried to pick a fight over whether the IRS search terms should even be called “targeting” — even though they included terms like “tea party,” “Patriots” and “9/12,” and the inspector general report says specialists were told to look specifically for tea party applications. . . .Miller also made laughable claims such as the targeting of conservative groups, and conservative groups only, was simply an effort to make IRS agents "more efficient in their workload selection." 

Now we learn that since the IRS knew that a critical IG report was coming out, the Obama people asked a member of the press to raise the whole issue in a press presentation a week ago.

The Obama administration apparently views an unwelcome request for a data as serious as rape? In a letter to the University of Montana, the Obama administration defined sexual harassment this way:
"an unwelcome request for a date . . . need not be 'objectively offensive' . . . regardless of the reasonableness of her feelings, and school administrators may be legally required to discipline her 'harasser.'"Seriously?  From the WSJ:

The letter rejects the requirement, established by legal precedent and previous Education Department guidance, that sexual harassment must be "objectively offensive." By eliminating this "reasonable person" standard—which the Education Department has required since at least 2003, and which protects the accused against unreasonable or insincere allegations—the right not to be offended has been enshrined in a federal mandate. The letter further states that campuses have "an obligation to respond to student-on-student harassment" even when that harassment occurs off-campus. In some circumstances, the letter says, universities may take "disciplinary action against the harasser" even "prior to the completion of the Title IX and Title IV investigation/resolution." In plain English: Students can be punished before they are found guilty of harassment. . . .

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
At about 1:55 into the video the host notes that Fiat is losing $10,000 for each of the Fiat 500es that are sold.

These audits just didn't represent the costs of lawyers' fees and delayed refunds, but also all of the time and emotional drain that was spent personally dealing with the audits.  From Kimberly Strassel in the WSJ:
. . . Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. "He put a target on our backs, and he's now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?" asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.
Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a "wealthy individual" with a "less-than-reputable record." Other donors were described as having been "on the wrong side of the law."
This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.
Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot's divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.
The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn't account for what the president's vilification has done to his business and reputation.
The Obama call for scrutiny wasn't a mistake; it was the president's strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. . . .Peggy Noonan has a similar list here:
. . . Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government's attention. He told ABC News: "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare." Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they're afraid of saying they were audited. All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. . . . Fox News has this story about a Texas Tea Party group's filing with the IRS.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Today, the state House concurred on House Bill 533 and this critical self-defense reform bill now heads to Governor Jay Nixon (D) for his consideration.

Bill Maher's statement is the strongest argument against ever giving the government much power to begin with.  The fact that he believes it is so understandable that the government would take these actions must scare anyone and make them think twice before advocating new government programs.  Will Maher rethink his support of so much new government?

The state Senate approved several gun control measures on Monday, May 13, and the New Jersey Assembly has placed them on their calendar for consideration this Monday, May 20 at 1:00 pm.  The Assembly floor agenda is subject to change.  The remaining bills passed in the Senate on May 13 may require action in Assembly committees before they can be taken up on the Assembly floor.  As of today, the Assembly is currently scheduled to consider the following bills, among others:

Yesterday, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) signed into law sweeping gun control legislation, Senate Bill 281.  Reported by NRA-ILA throughout the session here, S.B. 281 faced strong opposition by the people of Maryland throughout the legislative process. This sweeping anti-gun legislation will take effect on October 1, 2013.

State lawmakers wrapped up their 2013 legislative session earlier this week in Montpelier with good results for Vermont NRA members.  Several anti-gun bills were introduced in Vermont this year, but none of them advanced beyond committee.  NRA members did a tremendous job of contacting their state legislators to express concerns about legislation that would attack the Second Amendment, and your telephone calls and e-mails made the difference. 

The Maine Joint Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee has been holding work sessions on numerous bills that, if passed and enacted into law, would severely restrict your Second Amendment rights.  Three anti-gun bills are expected to be considered on the Senate floor as early as next week.   We need you to contact your state Senator NOW in opposition to the following bills:

This Tuesday, May 28, the Independence Institute is hosting a forum at the Freedom Financial Expo Center to discuss the assault that took place during the 2013 legislative session on your Second Amendment rights.  

The new proposal could be voted on as early as Friday.  From the Peoria Star:An Illinois Senate panel approved a measure Thursday allowing the carrying of concealed weapons, but the committee's move followed sharp questioning from Republicans concerning whether packing a gun in Chicago should require special permission and how authorities would determine who is fit to carry. . . .
The most vociferous opposition to the measure has been over a provision that would require gun owners who want to carry in Chicago to get not only a statewide permit from the Illinois State Police, but from the Chicago police. Raoul has repeatedly said the density of Chicago creates greater "sensitivities" to guns and requires an extra layer of scrutiny.
But the NRA has rebutted Raoul's contention that the legislation creates a "shall issue" permit system, requiring police to OK public gun possession for anyone who obtains the proper training and passes a background check. That's because it contains language requiring police to find that an applicant is "of good moral character" and has a "proper reason" for carrying a gun. . . .All one has to do is look at NYC to see how discretion is used in granting permits to limit issuance to only wealth whites.  I suspect that few people will get permits with this discretion.