Media

Read the full story: Washington Examiner

According to the government watchdog group Cause of Action, which launched a website in early September dedicated to exposing executive earmarks, federal grant spending has jumped 40 percent since 2001.

 

Cause of Action began investigating executive branch earmarks in December 2011, when the group sent Freedom of Information Act requests to 21 different agencies to track down discretionary grants.

 

Hundreds of letters resulting from the organization’s probe and compiled on its new website reveal a pattern of funding requests that echo the language once found in legislative earmarks.

 

The Cause of Action website features a digital timeline of milestones in earmarking’s evolution, including Executive Order 13457, “Protecting American Taxpayers from Government Spending on Wasteful Earmarks,” which President George W. Bush signed in 2008.

Read the full story: Washington Free Beacon

Experts argued these activities appeared to cross the line from education to lobbying.

 

“It bills itself as a tax-exempt educational organization, but obviously the American Constitution Society is engaging in policy-making activities,” said Daniel Epstein, the executive director of Cause of Action and an expert at the conservative Federalist Society. “They created the intellectual arsenal behind filibuster reform.”

 

“[The Democracy Alliance is] investing a lot of money to get the American Constitution Society to do things that are going to benefit the Democratic Party politically,” he said.

Read the full story: The Blaze

Cause of Action Director Dan Epstein also blasted the IRS on Monday for failing to run basic searches on Lerner’s Blackberry for the lost emails.

 

“The IRS knew Lerner’s hard drive was not recoverable while the blackberry was operating,” he said. “This should have triggered a search and preservation of the blackberry contents – but the IRS failed to do that.”