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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Thursday declared that efforts to repeal President Barack Obama's health care reform law were "now revived" after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted that it had inappropriately targeted conservative groups to determine if they had abused their tax-exempt status.

At a tea party rally in Washington D.C., the Minnesota Republican pointed to the scandal as evidence that the IRS should not be allowed to distribute subsidies for health care coverage through state exchanges and issue penalties for individuals who elect not get insurance.

"As someone who formerly worked for the IRS, I can tell you this is the largest ramp-up and expansion, both of employees but also on an area of jurisdiction on one of the largest new entitlement programs that the American people have seen in decades," she told the crowd. "That's why it's crucial that we ask these questions now, when our most personal, sensitive, intimate information -- our health care information -- will all be centralized in a national federal database."

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On the same day that a poll found that many Republicans did not know where Benghazi was even though they considered last year's terrorist attack there to be the biggest scandal in American history, tea party leader Dick Armey confused the city with the country of Bangladesh.

Fox News on Monday invited Armey, who was ousted as chairman of FreedomWorks last year, to weigh in on the news that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had improperly scrutinized tea party groups to determine if they had abused their tax-exempt status.

"You have to understand that this is a politically-mandated suppression of the expression of resistance to big government," Armey explained. "I'm amazed that anybody would be surprised that this was happening."

"It's a debilitating stupidity on their part. When the real professional really undercovers [SIC] a serious transgression against the law by somebody they won't now be able to prosecute it in an orderly fashion because they biased the case against themselves."

Fox News host Gregg Jarrett pointed out to Armey that the White House had insisted that it was surprised by news that the IRS was targeting tea party groups.

"I imagine that they probably don't know any more about that than they do about Bangladesh or any number of other things," the former House majority leader quipped.

"You mean, Benghazi," Jarrett observed.

"The White House is a beautiful example of being capable of hiding your hands," Armey continued. "First they throw the ball through your window, then they hide their hands and pretend they know nothing about it. Of course, the White House knows about it. They are the most ruthless politicians I've ever seen in America."

A survey released by Public Policy Polling on Monday found that 41 percent of Republicans believed that the alleged Benghazi cover up was the biggest scandal in American history. The poll also found that 39 percent of those people did not know that Benghazi was located in Libya.

Bangladesh is located in South Asia, about 6,000 miles from Benghazi.

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Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Monday tied a scandal where the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party groups to President Barack Obama's health care reform law and last September's attacks in Benghazi.

In an interview on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough asked the former House Speaker what the president needed to do after The Associated Press revealed that the IRS has improperly scrutinized tea party organizations to determine if they had abused their tax-exempt status.

"This is a huge problem because Obamacare relies very heavily on the IRS," Gingrich opined. "I think the president has to say he's going to open up totally, he's going to demand everybody meet with Congress, go to the hearings, he's going to fire everybody he can legally fire who's been involved in this."

"And they've got to look at changes," he continued. "How can you put Obamacare under an Internal Revenue Service -- remember this is an administration which will not profile terrorists, but profile patriots, profile constitutional groups. I mean, this is almost madness."

But Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein said that Gingrich was making a mistake by tying the IRS scandal to Obamacare.

"There ought to be an investigation, there ought to be a criminal investigation if it's warranted," Bernstein explained. "And that's it. But to start making these global pronouncements about where it goes and it affects Obamacare seems to me is part of the problem."

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Former Congressman Allen West on Sunday (R-FL) said that an admission by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that it had improperly scrutinized tea party groups was part of a wider conspiracy that included President Barack Obama's administration forcing Republican-owned car dealerships to be shut down during the auto bailout in 2009.

Fox News host Alisyn Camerota asked West if he had any indications that the recently-revealed IRS practice of examining whether tea party groups were abusing their tax-exempt status was not limited to "rogue, low-level IRS agents in the Cincinnati office who thought that they were going to personally stick it to the tea party."

"Well, of course," the tea party-favorite Republican declared. "The most important thing we need to come to understand is your First Amendment rights is you have the right to petition the government for redress of your grievances. If we start to have a government that is targeting certain groups for their political ideology because they don't believe it is in concert with their beliefs, this is Orwellian, to put it in the least manner."

"We've got to come back and have hearings on this," he continued. "This is something that is criminal."

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Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama could be impeached after it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted tea party groups.

The Associated Press learned last week that the IRS had apologized for what it was an "inappropriate" investigation into whether tea party groups were abusing their tax-exempt status.

"How stupid do they think we are?" Will asked during an ABC News panel on Sunday. "Just imagine... if the George W. Bush administration had IRS underlings, out in Cincinnati of course, saying we're going to target groups with the word ' 'progressive' in their title. We would have all hell breaking loose."

"This is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate summer," he added, reading a passage from former President Richard Nixon's articles of impeachment.

He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

"I think it would be irresponsible to start talking about impeachment over this," Democratic strategist Donna Brazile replied. "Clearly, there was some incompetence at some level or bureaucrats looking into all these applications in a rush after Citizens United [Supreme Court ruling] to see whether or not they were legitimate organizations with the word 'tea party' or 'patriot' in it. Yeah, there are progressive patriots as well."

"Given what George has just said, you better get ready for your audit," ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl quipped to Will.

"The IRS commissioner was a Republican appointed by [former President George W.] Bush, who his term expired in November," Brazile pointed out.

There is no evidence that President Obama directed or even knew of the targeting of tea party groups.

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I have no idea what she's talking about here. via Rightwing Watch:

On Wednesday, Religious Right activists and members of Congress gathered together for a prayer event held in Statuary Hall at the US Capitol called "Washington: A Man of Prayer."

Among the speakers was Rep. Michele Bachmann, who used the opportunity to promote the 9/11 prayer event being organized by Birther-king Joseph Farah, saying that "it is no secret that our nation may very well be experiencing the hand of judgment" and declaring that both the original 9/11 attack and the attack in Benghazi on 9/11 of last year were God's judgment.

As such, the only recourse, Bachmann said, is to humble ourselves before God and cry out in repentance for this nation.

God doesn't like where things are going so sent these 9/11 attacks to send us a message. That's about the size of it, huh?

Michele Bachmann: It’s no secret that our nation may very well be experiencing the hand of judgment. It’s no secret that we all are concerned that our nation may be in a time of decline. If that is in fact so, what is the answer? The answer is what we are doing here today: humbling ourselves before an almighty God, crying out to an almighty God, saying not of ourselves but you, would you save us oh God? We repent of our sins, we turn away from them, we seek you, we seek your ways. That’s something that we’re doing today, that we did on the National Day of Prayer, it’s something that we have chosen to do as well on another landmark day later this year on September 11. Our nation has seen judgment not once but twice on September 11. That’s why we’re going to have ‘9/11 Pray’ on that day. Is there anything better that we can do on that day rather than to humble ourselves and to pray to an almighty God?

There are reasons Michele Bachmann needed $25mil to squeak out a 1% win in 2012 in a decidedly red district over a Democrat she outspent over 10-1, but the main one is obvious: she's insane.

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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck responded to a shooting at Houston's largest airport on Thursday by suggesting that it had been a plot to "set up" gun owners like the the burning of German's parliament -- or Reichstag -- in 1933, which Nazis exploited as a pretext to suspend constitutional rights.

According to CBS News, a man named Carnell Moore fired a pistol into the ceiling of Terminal B at Bush International Airport and was shot by a federal agent. At the same time, Carnell also shot himself. A fully-loaded, black Smith & Wesson AR-15 was found in a suitcase next to where he was sitting.

Messages on social media indicated that Carnell had planned a mass shooting, but a suicide note found on the body suggested that he changed his mind.

But because the shooting happened as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were arriving in Houston for its annual convention, Beck saw a conspiracy behind Carnell's actions.

"The idea that this is happening at the airport with the NRA is too much to believe," Beck told a studio audience in Houston. "If I were a journalist -- let me correct that -- if I were an honest journalist, I would be looking for these connections. Look for the connections of who this man is and any connection he might have to the uber-Left."

"I believe this man could fall into the category of somebody who has lost his job, is depressed, etc., etc. Somebody comes in off to the side, winds him up, says, 'Oh, you should make a statement, you should make a statement.' I believe that's probably -- I shouldn't say that -- I believe it is a very good chance that is what happened."

But Beck speculated that the man realized that "that's not who I am" and decided not to go through with the mass killing.

"If I were an honest journalist, I'd find out where these guns came from -- were they purchased or were they illegal?" he continued. "If there were illegal, oh, I can guarantee you, this is a set up. Someone knows history. I do."

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Conservative radio host Dana Loesch on Thursday argued that classifying certain guns as assault rifles was silly because "if you stab someone with a spoon it can be qualified as an assault weapon."

Following Thursday's revelations that Newtown shooter Adam Lanza had fired over 150 rounds with an AR-15 in less than five minutes, Loesch appeared on CNN to argue that it was a "false premise" that Lanza had used an assault weapon.

"We are talking about semi-automatic weapons," the former Breitbart editor explained. "I do not own a military-style assault weapon. Just because, what, a firearm looks scary then you call it military assault? Do you realize that one of my children has a BB gun that looks like an AR-15? Is that going to be considered a military-style assault weapon? It sounds silly and uneducated."

CNN host Piers Morgan noted that Lanza had "in the space of 300 seconds using an AR-15, killed 26 people. He had magazines with 30 bullets."

"Anyone can reload!" Loesch shouted.

"Are you telling me that doesn't qualify as an assault weapon?" Morgan asked.

"By the technical definition, no, Piers," Loesch shot back. "Oh, anything can be qualified as an assault weapon. If you stab someone with a spoon, it can be qualified as an assault weapon."

"So you're equating stabbing someone with a spoon with shooting dead 26 people?" Morgan wondered.

Liberal CNN contributor Van Jones said that Loesch's argument was part of the "conscious strategy on the part of the pro-gun folks to constantly bring things back around to things that don't make any sense."

"You're talking about people stabbing people with spoons," Jones observed. "If that were the problem that we had in America -- stabbing people with spoons -- we wouldn't be talking about this right now. What we're talking about is funeral after funeral after funeral. What we're talking about is children being gunned down. And what we're talking about is common-sense measures, not confiscating guns."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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At an event for bloggers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday night, tea party-backed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-SC) toasted the late conservative activist Andrew Breitbart as a "great and fearless leader."

Following a confrontation with Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) over guns at a Senate Judiciary Committee, Cruz met up with conservative bloggers at the 4th annual Blog Bash, which bills itself as "the largest gathering of right-of-center bloggers."

"Let me tell you, the men and women in this room, you represent power and you represent democracy," Cruz told the crowd. "Let me tell you, each of you, you scare the hell out of Washington... Y'all are on front lines of taking this country back."

The Texas Republican ended his pep talk by holding up a beer in Breitbart's memory.

"I want to collectively remember our friend. And a toast to Andrew Breitbart," he said, turning up the bottle. "A great and fearless leader, and we all carry on with his unshakable, fearless spirit to speak the truth to power. And the more they quiver, the better job we're doing. God bless."

Cruz' speech sent the conservative blog Weasel Zippers into a state of giddiness.

"Must stop swooning… must stop swooning… I’m trying as hard as I can," blogger Zip wrote.

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(h/t: Scarce)

Carl Paladino was the 2010 Republican candidate for governor of New York, but now the tea party activist is not even welcome at a Buffalo School Board meeting.

On Wednesday, the former candidate found himself being escorted from a school board meeting by security guards after he began ranting about how badly board members had handled a sewage problem at Math Science Technology Prep in Seneca.

"In a couple months the ground rules are going to change here, that kind of nonsense isn’t going to happen," Paladino promised the board, according to The Buffalo News. “Six weeks. I would’ve fired [Joseph P. Giusiana, head of plant services] after the first week. He can’t fix a sewer line leak because he’s in bed with Ciminelli?”

LP Ciminelli is a contractor working on a $1 billion project to make schools in the district more energy efficient.

"This is a not a forum to attack anyone," Board President Mary Ruth Kapsiak told Paladino, adding that he would be asked to leave if the verbal attacks continued. "We have the security people here."

"I want to know why this School Board condones a cover-up of the criminality of what’s going on in the schools," Paladino shot back.

At that point, Kapsiak summoned security.

"You have to go," she said. "Right now, you're out of line."

"You're out of line," Paladino quipped as he was escorted from the room.

The next day, the former gubernatorial candidate announced that he would run for a seat on the Buffalo School Board.

Paladino told WBBZ-TV that he was running "because of the inability of the current members of the school board to comprehend the challenges they have as a board."

Buffalo Teachers Federation President Phil Rumore on Friday said that Paladino was "demented" and didn't deserve to be on the school board because he had been caught forwarding emails that included bestiality, pornography and racism.

"Women having sex with each other, women completely unclad, African-Americans being apparently run over by an airplane," Rumore told WFBO. "It is really sick that anybody would give any kind of credibility to somebody like this being on a board of education."