FreedomWorks seems to be in a deep state of disarray following Dick Armey's attempted coup and effort to oust executive director Matt Kibbe. MotherJones reports that two more high-profile directors have resigned from FreedomWorks' board of directors.

In December, these two board members, James Burnley IV and C. Boyden Gray, sent a letter to FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe informing him that they had received "allegations of wrongdoing by the organization or its employees." They noted they had retained two attorneys, Alfred Regnery and David Martin, to conduct an independent investigation into the accusations. Burnley and Gray, both of them high-profile veterans of Republican administrations, ordered Kibbe to cooperate with the lawyers, to ensure that no records were "destroyed, deleted, modified or otherwise tampered with" and to send Regnery a check for $25,000 to cover his initial fees. The investigation followed several months of conflict inside the group that included the surprise resignation of FreedomWorks' longtime chairman, Dick Armey, a former Republican congressman and onetime House majority leader. Armey accused Kibbe of improperly using FreedomWorks resources to promote a book Kibbe had written.

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Even Lindsey Graham says there’s no evidence the IRS targeted conservative groups. Of course, the IRS didn’t really target conservative groups, it did its job and investigated questionable groups across the spectrum. Yes, even when he’s right, Graham is mostly wrong. Good luck against the Tea Party, tough guy.

Connecting the Dots: Where is Issa’s Edward R. Murrow?

Zandar Versus the Stupid: What’s with conservatives’ scorched-earth government?

Frankly Curious: Do conservative reformers exist?

RH Reality Check: Are we on the verge of contraception for all?

Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (Twitter: @mjwstickings). I'll be here all week.

Send tips to mbru@crooksandliars.com.

So Chris Christie, egomaniacal bullying blowhard Obama-BFF Springsteen-crazed governor of my former home state of New Jersey, sets up the special Senate election to replace Frank Lautenberg so that he can benefit politically, yet claims politics had nothing to do with it, and it’s going to cost a ton of money to hold it independently of the general election, and his fellow Republicans are pissed? Nope, couldn’t have seen any of that coming.

Bark Bark Woof Woof: The big DNA database authorized by SCOTUS.

Vox Verax: The war on terror was a neocon Trojan horse.

Occasional Planet: Maybe America needs the military draft again.

Legal Schnauzer: Denying voting rights in Macon County, Alabama.

The Political Garbage Chute: You might give a sh*t what Mitt Romney thinks if…

Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (Twitter: @mjwstickings). I'll be here all week.

Send tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com

I have no problem with conservatives joining other conservatives on a cruise. I have a big problem with groups of people who advertise that "There is no such thing on this cruise as a politically incorrect statement." Does this mean they can say that word about the President? Just asking the question. (h/t QuakerOrts)

Open thread below...

Joan Walsh calls the Democrats "a party of cowards" over their reluctance to change the Senate rules, and I really can't argue with her:

Now, just as Obama turns up the heat with his three judicial nominees, Reid is talking about using the so-called “nuclear option” to allow judicial nominees, at least, to be confirmed by a Senate majority – not the filibuster-proof 60 votes Senate rules have lately required.

Senate Democrats, not just Reid, caved in January for a variety of reasons. Some wanted to avoid an acrimonious rule change on the eve of votes on immigration reform, gun control and a possible deficit deal, hoping to win significant Republican support for such legislation. Those senators believe in unicorns.

Others were said to fear giving up the minority party’s power to obstruct the majority party’s legislative agenda, because they fear Democrats will soon be in that minority. “Many Democrats are wary of such a change,” the Boston Globe reported on Tuesday, “because they could one day find themselves in the minority wishing they had unfettered filibuster power.”

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As if the AP and the Administration weren’t already enjoying a contentious relationship, today it details the Administration’s use of second, secret emails.

Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the secretary for Health and Human Services, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

[...]Google can’t find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.

Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.

Now, the Administration claims people are doing this just to cut down on clutter in their email boxes. But thus far, it appears that the second emails aren’t being turned over under FOIAs or, if they are, aren’t being identified as belonging to the principal.

And so we move into another chapter of the Executive Branch hiding or deleting emails to avoid transparency, which of course goes back to Poppy Bush’s efforts to hide PROFS notesas part of the Iran-Contra coverup. The National Security Archive’s timeline, of course, misses the several efforts under the Bush Administration to either delete massive amounts of emails, particularly those from sensitive days of the CIA Leak Investigation, and the political staff’s use of RNC email addresses to take emails entirely out of Presidential Records Act retention.

This is getting tiresome: We’re going on five presidential administrations now that have played games with emails, a tedious series of efforts to avoid transparency.

Maybe it’s time for Congress to put some real teeth onto laws requiring the President to retain such records?

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As expected, Gov. Chris Christie has called for a special election in October to fill the seat of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D), who died on Monday.

In a move that will cost New Jersey an extra $24 million to hold the primary in August and then the special election on Oct. 16th, only a few weeks before Christie's own November re-election bid.

Christie announced that a special primary election will be held on Aug. 13 with an Oct. 16 general election to fill the seat,ending a debate over conflicting state lawsand the possibility that the Senate election would be the same day as the November 2013 election. A nonpartisan analysis puts the cost for the special primary and general election at almost $24 million.

“This is about guaranteeing the people of New Jersey a choice and a voice in Washington," Christie said.

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I've been following Chris Christie for a long time, but not as long as the great bloggers over at Blue Jersey. Since I know how very lazy most reporters are, I'm going to make it as easy as possible for them to move away from the carefully-crafted media adulation of the governor. Hopefully they'll actually look at all this!

Oh, and just let me throw in this tidbit from The Awl's Abe Sauer before I forget:

Easy enough for just about anyone to remember: Lobbyist Chris Christie worked to remove securities fraud from a consumer fraud act on behalf of an organization run by Bernie Madoff.

Now, back to Blue Jersey:

When Chris Christie first ran for Freeholder and was sued for defamation, it wasn't his fault and he did nothing wrong.

When Chris Christie went from "not a candidate for US Attorney" to being appointed US Attorney after he was directly responsible for raising hundreds of thousands (and his brother donates hundreds of thousands) for Bush, the donations had nothing to do with it.

And when many top NJ lawyers pointed out that Christie didn't have any experience in criminal law and his appointment was directly connected to the above hundreds of thousands in donations for Bush, that was just a coincidence.

(but wait....there's more!)Adam L :: Chris Christie has lost the benefit of the doubtWhen Chris Christie suddenly got off the list of US Attorneys to be fired at the same time he issued bogus subpoenas to Senator Menendez weeks before the 2006 election, the timing was just a coincidence and Christie's word should be trusted.

When Chris Christie gave his top aide Michele Brown a $46,000 loan and didn't report it on his tax return or other disclosure documents, that was just an oversight and not a conflict of interest.

When it was discovered that criminal-turned-informant Solomon Dwek, the man who Christie turned from bank fraudster to briber-of-elected-Democrats,donated to Bush directly through Chris Christie, the two were in no way connected.

And when Michele Brown pushed to have the Dwek bribery arrests of elected Democrats announced at an opportune time during the campaign, there was nothing wrong with that. The same Michele Brown that had the $46,000 unreported loan from her boss Chris Christie.

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Just in case you're not up to date on the latest in GOP outrage over the manufactured IRS "scandal"!

Fabulist Bob Woodward asks questions about the IRS "scandal" that have already been answered. But whatever!

Dana Milbank makes actual sense:

A third House committee joined the stampede to examine the IRS on Monday, and its chairman did exactly what you would expect somebody to do before launching a fair and impartial investigation: He went on Fox News Channel and implicated the White House.

Asked by Fox’s Bill Hemmer what he hoped to learn at Monday afternoon’s hearing, Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) offered this bit of pre-hearing analysis:

“Of course, the enemies list out of the White House that IRS was engaged in shutting down or trying to shut down the conservative political viewpoint across the country — an enemies list that rivals that of another president some time ago.”

It was a sentence in need of a verb but packed with innuendo. And it is part of an approach by House Republicans that seems to follow the Lewis Carroll school of jurisprudence. Not only are they placing the sentence before the verdict, they’re putting the verdict before the trial.

The Associated Press writes about the whole thing as if it was something to be taken seriously. Which is why most people no longer take the AP seriously.

Even Lindsey Graham admits there's no evidence. Every once in a while, he actually tells the truth.

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Rick Perry actually said that in 2012, and in 2013, he and the Texas legislature proudly rejected the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act because...Obamacare.

Now Rick Perry and the other states rejecting that Medicaid expansion on pure ideological grounds without thinking about the consequences are about to find themselves explaining to constituents, and possibly each other, how their budgets just found themselves in serious deficit status.

States that refuse to expand Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health care reform law not only will deny health coverage to poor residents and lose access to a huge influx of federal dollars, they also will see increased spending on uninsured people's unpaid medical bills, according to a new report by the Rand Corp., a consulting firm.

The Rand Corp. analyzed 14 states with governors who oppose the Medicaid expansion. It found their actions will deprive 3.6 million people of health coverageunder Obamacare, forgo $8.4 billion in federal funding, and cost them $1 billion for programs that partially compensate medical providers who care for the indigent, according to the report published in the journal "Health Affairs." Since nearly half of states may not undertake the Medicaid expansion next year, those figures could be even higher. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia plan to broaden Medicaid in 2014, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Oops. Suddenly Jan Brewer's decision to force the Arizona legislature into approving the Medicaid expansion makes more sense than it did before. I guess true conservatives think maybe not running huge budget deficits to deny poor people healthcare is the prudent course of action.

What programs will Rick Perry cut so poor people can cost the state billions in emergency room costs? Maybe he and his pals will have to raise taxes instead! Perish the thought.