The Consumer Advisory Board, an advisory council for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), met last Wednesday and Thursday in California. The meeting agenda listed a scheduled meeting of the entire board to discuss a white paper on “payday loans and deposit advance products.”

The Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA) tried to attend this session of CAB’s meeting, but it was closed to the public and a CFPB official denied them entrance, according to the letter.

The letter says the CFPB broke the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which “requires that federal advisory committees such as the CAB, with very limited exceptions, conduct their activities exclusively in public.”

“We have diligently searched for any provision of federal law that may exempt the CAB from the requirements of FACA, and we can find none,” the letter stated.

The CFPB and its advisory board were created in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial system overhaul, which has been the source of much controversy since its passage.

A CFSA spokeswoman expressed concern about bias in the white paper, which was published on April 24. She called the report “contentious,” “incomplete,” and “misleading,” and indicated that its results were inconsistent with other work published on payday lenders.

“We need to balance the discussion,” the spokeswoman said. She noted that several members of consumer advocacy groups hostile to payday lenders are on the advisory board and said there are no members of the industry to balance their perspectives.

CFSA and the bureau have had a strong collaborative relationship in the past, the spokeswoman said.

“We feel strongly that the bureau cannot make proper determinations about these products without complete data, and we want to continue working with them,” she said.

A consumer finance law expert expressed dismay at the advisory board’s decision to go into closed session to discuss the white paper.

“I think it’s highly unusual for a consumer advisory council to close portions of a meeting to the public. It’s very unusual,” said Alan Kaplinsky, founder and chairman of the consumer financial services group at the law firm Ballard Spahr.

“I don’t know why they would ever go into a closed session. It makes no sense,” he said.

The advisory board’s move runs counter to the CFPB’s intention of being a transparent agency, Kaplinsky said.

“They pride themselves on being very, very open,” he said.

Kaplinsky said the move to close the meeting is indicative of the bureau as a whole.

“I think they’re transparent when they want to be transparent, and when they don’t want to be, they’re not,” he said.

There have been other instances where the bureau has not been as open as it ought to be, Kaplinsky said. For example, the agency has not been very responsive to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and the actions of the “Advisory Research Council” have been rather opaque.

The CFPB did not return a request for comment. However, the Consumer Advisory Board’s charter says meetings “shall be open to public observation” unless the board needs to go into “confidential discussion.”

The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) sets rigorous requirements for advisory committee transparency, experts say, but the requirements are not foolproof.

Advisory committees have to have a publically available charter and publicly list the names of their members, said Sean Moulton, director of open government policy at the Center for Effective Government. They also have to conduct their meetings open to the public, although he said there are exceptions.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of ways around this,” he said. Agencies can have advisory committees set up by contractors, Moulton noted, and subcommittees to advisory committees do not have the same transparency requirements as the full committees.

“The opportunity to have something closed door—it’s a tempting one,” Moulton said, especially when the committee will be discussing a controversial issue.

However, convenience does not make it appropriate or legal, Moulton said.

FACA does carve out an exemption for intra-agency deliberation, said Sidney Shapiro, a FACA expert at Wake Forest Law School.

“The idea here is not to chill the kinds of conversations that staff members have among themselves,” he said.

However, the fact that the white paper under consideration had been released to the public well before the meeting removes the legitimacy of this exemption, Shapiro said.

“It seems to me that they have a pretty weak case for closing the meeting when the document is already public and is the source of public discussion.”

CFSA might sue the bureau to compel it to open future meetings of the Consumer Advisory Board, said Hilary Miller, who wrote the letter for CFSA.

“I have no doubt that CFSA is serious in this,” she said.

However, CFSA’s spokeswoman said she hoped they would not need to litigate.

“There’s no indication right now that that’s a step that we would need to take,” she said.

Lew said he did not know any details of the inspector general’s investigation into inappropriate targeting of conservative nonprofit groups before the final report was released, although he confessed that the inspector general alerted him to it on March 15.

“The inspector flagged a number of items without going into great detail,” Lew said about his meeting with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on March 15.

By contending that the IRS’ actions were contained within the agency, Lew continued the administration’s strategy of distancing the embattled departments from the scandals that engulfed the administration last week.

Attorney General Eric Holder likewise pleaded ignorance about the various scandals convulsing the administration last week during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. Holder used the phrase “I don’t know” or some variant at least 57 times in the hearing, according to reports.

Much of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing Tuesday morning, initially intended to discuss the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s annual report, was devoted to the IRS scandal.

Committee ranking member Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) spent the entirety of his first segment of allotted time on the IRS scandal, turning to the hearing’s stated purpose in the second round of questions.

Crapo and other senators pressed Lew on who knew what about the scandal and when. Lew argued that the Treasury Department should not interfere with the IRS’ internal decisions.

“I will not cross that line into the administration of the tax system,” Lew said. He emphasized that his priority is setting up a management system that will prevent this kind of scandal from happening again.

Sen. Dean Heller (R., Nev.) expressed concern that Lew did not inquire further into the investigation when he first heard about it. Lew told the committee that he simply gave the inspector general his full support in investigating the matter.

“I’m just surprised that you had no additional questions,” Heller said, noting that in his experience it is not uncommon for corporate and government heads to inquire into the results of investigations, even before they are final.

Lew said it would be inappropriate for the department secretary to become involved in an inspector general’s investigation.

Lew repeatedly expressed his and President Barack Obama’s disapproval of the IRS’ actions, although he also said repeatedly that the inspector general’s report found no evidence of political motivation.

Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) called the sincerity of the president and secretary’s outrage “kind of laughable.”

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were “demonizing” and “villainizing” the same groups that the IRS was targeting, Corker said. He said their comments created a culture that encouraged the IRS’s discriminatory actions.

“People should not be surprised that bureaucrats at lower levels took it upon themselves to do what they did,” Corker said.

Eamonn Gearon, an Arabist and explorer familiar with the Saharan region, spoke about the present situation and the prospects of Mali and other states in northern Africa at an event at the New America Foundation (NAF). Peter Bergen, director of the NAF National Security Studies Program, moderated the discussion.

A rebellion by a northern tribe, a military coup d’état, and the intervention of French troops in January to fight al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists that had taken over part of the country have hit the country over the past year and a half.

Gearon said there are still parts of the country that the French troops have not visited. The primary cities have been secured and al Qaeda in the Maghreb has been denied a stronghold, but the country is so vast and arid that parts of it “are still beyond the pale.”

“Everybody wants to focus on the jihadis,” Gearon said. However, the Islamists are not the primary problem the country is facing.

“They are a security threat. They are not an existential threat,” he said.

“If it were only a problem of two or three terrorist troops, it would be much easier to solve the problem in the short term.”

Gearon described Mali as riddled with political, economic, and social problems.

Mali is actually a democratic “lightweight” despite the country’s reputation for being a stable democracy in the region, Gearon said. He highlighted that voter turnout is below 40 percent throughout its democratic history, which began in 1992.

The country also has a stark Arab-African divide socially, and its infrastructure is “dire,” Gearon said. Mali’s economy still relies on gold to a great extent, as it has for centuries.

Gearon expressed deep concern over the upcoming elections in Mali, which are scheduled for July.

“They will not be credible, and they will not be meaningful,” he said. Mali has no meaningful election register, there are one million internally displaced refugees because of the crisis, and the elections are scheduled to take place in the middle of the rainy season, Gearon said.

Mali’s military only has about 4,500 members, and it is divided regionally such that the northern Malians do not trust the southern troops, Gearon said, adding that the French enlisted the help of the Chadian army because the Malian army is both incompetent and distrusted.

Western countries should invest in and train the Malian military, Gearon argued. He also said counterterrorism tactics should be used but only on a strategic basis.

“If we’re going to have counterterrorism policy in northern Mali, it has to be smart counterterrorism policy,” he said, noting that the conflict there has become an insurgency.

Gearon repeatedly emphasized the complexity of Mali’s political and social landscape and argued that solutions must ultimately arise locally.

“Any solutions to the complex problems of Mali must be driven by Malians,” he said. “It’s the only thing that will work.”

The “D.C. Pain Capable Unborn Protection Act” comes in the wake of the trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia, where he was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for killing three newborn babies by severing their spines.

Franks first reintroduced the bill on April 26, 2013, after the House passed it last year. As originally written, the bill would outlaw abortion 20 weeks and later after conception only in the District of Columbia, but Franks pledged on Friday to amend the bill to extend the ban across the country.

“Knowingly subjecting our innocent unborn children to dismemberment in the womb, particularly when they have developed to the point that they can feel excruciating pain every terrible moment leading up to their undeserved deaths, belies everything America was called to be,” Franks said in a statement.

The “dismemberment” refers to the “dilation and extraction” procedure used by many abortion clinics for second trimester abortions. The Washington Surgi-Clinic, an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., calls this procedure “the safest method for second trimester abortions.” This clinic will perform second trimester abortions up to 24 weeks after conception.

Both Franks and the National Right to Life Committee (NLRC), which is promoting the bill, invoked the conviction of Kermit Gosnell when announcing the bill.

“Because of publicity surrounding the trial of Kermit Gosnell and subsequent revelations about other abortionists, many Americans are becoming aware for the first time that abortions are frequently performed late in pregnancy on babies who are capable of being born alive, and on babies who will experience great pain while being killed,” the NRLC said in a statement on Friday.

“We think the time is right to push for the broader ban,” said Douglas Johnson, NRLC legislative director.

The bill is similar to one introduced last year during the previous congressional session. A majority of the House cosponsored the bill, but it needed a two-thirds majority to pass for procedural reasons. It did not meet that threshold, Johnson said.

The previous version of the bill was part of a campaign by the National Right to Life Committee to ban abortions at the state and local level, Johnson said. Nine states already have enacted similar legislation, and Franks introduced the bill last year to include the District of Columbia in that number, since Congress has exclusive legislative jurisdiction over the federal district.

Johnson expressed hope that the bill would pass the House, although he said that it would face much stiffer resistance from the Senate and White House. He said Obama has opposed all substantive restrictions on abortion, including a proposal while he was a state legislator that would require doctors to save infants born alive after a botched abortion.

Johnson noted that it took eight years to pass the federal ban on partial birth abortions, which President George W. Bush signed in 2003.

Abortion proponents fought Franks’ bill last year. NARAL Pro-Choice America released a statement on Friday opposing the bill’s expansion.

“Rep. Franks is using this bill in a shameless effort to exploit the terrible tragedy in Pennsylvania where Kermit Gosnell was just convicted of murder for performing illegal abortions that resulted in killing of infants and women. The women of America deserve better,” said NARAL president Ilyse Hogue in the statement.

She pledged to “fight this senseless attack and protect the rights of all women.”

Both NARAL and Planned Parenthood released statements condemning the actions of Dr. Gosnell and praising the verdict.

“This verdict will ensure that no woman is victimized by Kermit Gosnell ever again,” said Eric Ferrero, Planned Parenthood vice president for communications, in the statement.

Neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood returned a request for comment on the bill. Franks’ office also did not return a request for comment.

The U.S. Marines.

They had just returned from Iraq and were preparing to exit the military and move back into the civilian world.

“We just got home from deployment. We all want to go out and drink a lot and see all our family, and do all the other celebratory things after getting home,” Wagner said, recounting his final days in the service.

However, instead of enjoying their friends and family, the soldiers were sitting in a classroom, their minds absent, enduring PowerPoint presentations about the resources they had at their disposal for reintegrating into the outside world.

Wagner’s experience—“death by PowerPoint”—is all too common in the military, said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

This inconvenient information overload itself may be small, but when combined with many other aspects of soldiers’ reintegration into society, it forms part of a vast array of factors that hinder returning soldiers’ search for a job in the civilian world.

So argued the panelists at “Employing America’s Veterans,” an event Friday morning hosted by Real Clear Politics at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the challenges veterans face in finding a job in the civilian workforce.

Experts from multiple non-profits, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Marines all shared their insights and experiences from working with veterans transitioning into the workforce after leaving the military.

A large cultural chasm sits between the military and the civilian world, the panelists all testified. This gap can manifest itself in the language workers use to address their bosses to confusion about military jargon to misconceptions about the health and stability of veterans returning from combat zones.

This chasm has translated into higher unemployment for returning veterans. While the non-veteran population as a whole has an unemployment rate of 7.6 percent, veterans who served since September 2001 have an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The unemployment rate for all veterans since World War II is 7.1 percent.)

Soldiers have tremendous “soft skills” like discipline, leadership, and teamwork that can be an asset to any corporation, said Kevin Schmiegel, executive director for the Chamber of Commerce Hiring our Heroes program.

Schmiegel himself served 20 years in the Marines before taking a job with the chamber, where he learned of the trouble returning veterans were having finding jobs. He started Hiring our Heroes, which runs hundreds of job fairs across the country for veterans in order to help veterans connect on the local level with employers.

“Public private partnership in local communities—that’s how you get this done,” he argued.

Veterans often face the stigma from potential employers of being “damaged,” Rieckhoff said. This characterization is sometimes true, he conceded—veterans sometimes return with physical or mental disabilities.

“But they are also arguably the most incredible group of leaders this country has at its disposal,” Rieckhoff contended.

“They are an investment, not a charity,” he argued.

He pointed to soldiers’ entrepreneurial spirit as an example of their potential value.

“If you’re on a remote checkpoint in Afghanistan and you’ve got limited resources, limited guidance, tremendous pressure, you’ve got to be decisive—you get entrepreneurial pretty damn quick,” he said.

Systemic challenges still face veterans entering the civilian workforce despite their potential additions to companies, the panelists said.

Businesses typically hire individuals who have already been trained, while the military flips that process, hiring people and then training them for the job, said Curtis L. Coy, deputy under secretary for economic opportunity at the VA.

Coy said he is working to get businesses to use the resources from the VA, like grants to support apprenticeships for veterans.

Veterans often have trouble pitching their skills and experiences to potential employers, the panelists said. They can also be reluctant to talk about what they have done individually after being in such a team-oriented culture, said Brian Bilski, a major in the Marine Corps who works with transitioning wounded warriors.

Bilski also noted that the resources available to veterans are very fragmented. There are many groups and programs, but no centralized place where veterans or businesses looking to hire veterans can turn—a problem reflected in the “death by PowerPoint” information overload.

The years-long backlog for disability claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs contributes to the unemployment rate among veterans, the witnesses said. Trying to receive disability benefits can be exhausting and demoralizing, the panelists said.

Coy said that the VA is fully aware of the backlog and is taking measures to correct it, including working on the oldest claims first and mandating overtime.

These efforts, which are relatively well known, did not keep the other panelists from criticizing the VA. The strongest critique came from Rieckhoff, who called the backlog “inexcusable” and a “scandal.”

“When you file a disability claim, you shouldn’t have to wait 5 years,” he said.

Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Texas), and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel last week inquiring about the Pentagon’s potentially changing its regulations for how soldiers may discuss their faith.

The senators expressed concern over the effect that any changes would have on the military and asked the secretary if any pending changes comply with current legal protections for soldiers.

“We are very concerned that potential changes could endanger the rights of members of the armed services to practice and share their faith. Policies that prohibit discussion of religious matters by military members could create a chilling effect on members of the armed services of any faith and have an adverse effect on recruitment and retention efforts and the morale of our troops,” the senators wrote in the letter dated May 7.

Lee said he had not yet received a response from the Department of Defense. A department spokesman said he does not know what the status of the secretary’s response is because Hagel responds to inquiries personally.

“It came to my attention that Air Force officials met with the head of a group that espouses anti-religious freedom rhetoric,” Lee said when asked about the letter. “It is unclear if the meeting was an indication that the Air Force might be considering changing their policies, so we wanted to ensure the rights of members of the military would be protected.”

That April 23 meeting was between Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and top Air Force leaders, including several generals, according to a Washington Post editorial. Weinstein and others expressed concerns about Christians sharing their faith in the military.

Weinstein’s meeting with top Air Force commanders came after he wrote an editorial in the Huffington Post in which he called Christians who defend religious freedom “pitiable unconstitutional carpetbaggers” and “human monsters.”

The Air Force then published a new religious policy at the urging of Weinstein, the Washington Post suggested. The policy prohibited officers from using their position “to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion,” the Post wrote. Soldiers who violate the policy could be court-martialed.

News of the Air Force policy set off a firestorm.

Breitbart News ran an article declaring, “Pentagon Taps Anti-Christian Extremist For Religious Tolerance Policy,” as well as a follow-up piece titled, “Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith.”

Fox News picked up the story, and the Family Research Council launched a petition on April 29 urging the military to protect soldiers’ religious freedom. The petition has over 166,000 signatures.

The military sent mixed messages when trying to quell the controversy. A Pentagon spokesman first told Fox News, “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense.”

The department issued a statement a few days later on May 2 affirming its respect for the rights of all soldiers and denying Weinstein was a consultant to the military, contrary to Breitbart News’ reporting.

The Army Times also reported that the Air Force was not issuing any new regulations in response to Weinstein’s meeting with the branch’s brass. The timing of the launch of the “blue book” was purely coincidental, an Air Force spokesman told the Times.

The same day that the Pentagon released its second statement, it released a third statement distinguishing between evangelization, which is permitted, and proselytization, which is prohibited.

“Service members can share their faith (evangelize) but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization),” the Pentagon’s statement said.

“We would see evangelizing and proselytizing as essentially the same thing,” said former Army Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, now executive vice president at the Family Research Council.

“The freedom of religion means you can live your faith, and for a Christian that includes sharing your faith,” Boykin said.

Boykin remains concerned.

“Their statements have been contradictory, so we don’t know which statement is the current or accurate statement,” Boykin said, calling the Pentagon’s position “nebulous.”

Boykin said he supports a prohibition on coercion, if that is what the military is after. He called for a clear, department-wide policy protecting soldiers’ right to practice their religion as they see fit.

Boykin sent a request to the Pentagon on May 3 to meet with Hagel. He has yet to receive a response.

Weinstein’s office did not return a request for comment.

“There are opportunities for greater efficiencies,” Tommy Beaudreau, the acting assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management for the Interior Department, told a subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The hearing focused on the Obama administration’s efforts to allow drilling for natural resources on federally owned land.

The federal government approved 7,124 permits for drilling on federal lands in 2007, with an average approval time of 196 days. However, the Obama administration approved only 4,256 in 2012, at an average time of 228 days, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) said.

States can take under a month, and sometimes under two weeks, to issue a permit, multiple congressmen said.

Beaudreau argued after the hearing that states have different regulatory requirements and the Interior Department has to take multiple factors, including multiple uses of federal land, into account when issuing permits.

“That takes time,” Beaudreau said. “That takes public engagement. That takes analysis.”

Frustration about the federal permitting time led Rep. Blake Farenthold (R., Texas) to ask if the department was intentionally sitting on permits in order to delay drilling. Beaudreau assured him the department was not doing that.

Rep. James Lankford (R., Okla.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care, and Entitlements, showed a map at the beginning of the hearing of drilling locations around federal land in North Dakota. He noted that companies are drilling all around federal land—often right up to the border—but are not actually venturing onto federal land to drill. Lankford argued that the regulatory burden is too high to make it worth it, even though royalty costs are lower on federal land than elsewhere.

Unleashing the resources on federal land would allow “American energy independence and broad economic renaissance,” Lankford argued.

Opening up all federal land to drilling would increase GDP by $127 billion each year over the next seven years and create 552,000 jobs over the next seven years, Lankford said, citing an Institute for Energy Research study.

Subcommittee ranking member Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) argued that issued and unused leases pose a greater problem for the United States than federal land that is closed to drilling.

The Obama administration has been criticized in the past for its reluctance to allow drilling on federal lands. Republican candidate Mitt Romney attacked President Barack Obama during the campaign for the drop in drilling on federal lands under his watch.

The Government Accountability Office issued a report last May asserting that America’s oil shale formations could be equal to the entirety of the world’s proven oil reserves.

The Interior Department is working on a new regulation for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on federal lands, Beaudreau said at the hearing.

Lankford wondered after the hearing if the department could handle yet another responsibility, given the inefficiencies that already plague it.

The National Center for Public Policy Research sent two representatives to Comcast’s shareholder meeting in Philadelphia on Wednesday morning. David Ridenour, president of the National Center, and Justin Danhof, general counsel, both posed questions to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts related to the media giant’s liberal bias.

Comcast is the majority owner of NBC Universal, which owns NBC and MSNBC.

Ridenour pressed Roberts on why Comcast refused to tell its shareholders how it protects itself against charges of libel. Ridenour’s inquiry came after one of MSNBC’s hosts, Rachel Maddow, accused Ridenour’s wife, Amy, and the National Center of committing a federal crime—an accusation the Ridenours say is libelous.

Maddow alleged last year that the National Center bribed politicians by giving them gifts. Specifically, she said former lobbyist Jack Abramoff funneled money from his corporate clients to members of Congress through the National Center. Amy Ridenour is chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“It’s not correct. That would be a felony,” Amy Ridenour said.

She submitted a shareholder resolution that would have required Comcast to issue a report revealing its media outlets’ fact-checking procedures. Fact-checking is the primary way Comcast would avoid libel lawsuits that could cost Comcast and its shareholders millions of dollars, Ridenour said.

“Rather than doing the report, which would have been easy, they hired a law firm to fight it,” Amy said.

David Ridenour asked Roberts directly about Comcast’s fact-checking procedures at the shareholder meeting.

“Mr. Roberts, shareholders have a right to know that your management team has good systems in place to minimize the risk of expensive libel suits, so I am asking you here now to publicly answer this question: What exactly are the systems in place to prevent libel       exposure?” Ridenour asked.

The exchange between him and Roberts was “heated and terse,” Ridenour said.

Roberts first said Comcast is legally obligated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) not to interfere with its media outlets’ standards, a statement Ridenour questioned.

Comcast voluntarily agreed not to interfere with its affiliates’ reporting on Comcast itself, but there is no rule preventing Comcast from requiring stronger fact-checking standards, Ridenour said after the meeting.

Any agreement the CEO makes that cedes so much authority over his own company would be “absolutely insane,” Ridenour said.

After further questioning, Roberts then asserted that his news outlets have very good editorial standards.

“If you have the procedures, why aren’t shareholders allowed to see them?” Ridenour asked.

Comcast then turned his microphone off. Roberts did not answer the question, Ridenour said.

Ridenour and Danhof met with David Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, after the meeting. Cohen said he would look into the case.

Ridenour expressed concern over the ethical standards of Comcast’s media outlets.

“They don’t seem to be concerned at all about whether they are behaving ethically,” he said. He noted that MSNBC did not bother to call the National Center for Public Policy Research before accusing them of breaking the law. Calling for fair comment is part of good journalistic ethics, Ridenour said.

Comcast, NBC News, and Rachel Maddow’s publicist did not return a request for comment on this story.

Amy Ridenour said she has not ruled out a lawsuit against Comcast, MSNBC, and Maddow, although she said that she thought asking about the issue at the shareholder meeting would be more effective.

Danhof also asked about Comcast’s decision not to allow any advertisements for guns or ammunition on any of their networks while simultaneously allowing violent programming to continue to air.

“Why does Comcast’s management believe it is appropriate for Comcast to profit from the excessive glorification of gun violence but not appropriate for gun shops to advertise legal firearms and ammunition to people who overwhelmingly use firearms in a lawful and safe manner, including in self-defense?” Danhof asked.

Roberts laughed dismissively as Danhof was asking the question, according to the National Center’s summary of the meeting and then asserted that Comcast will not change its position.

“Well, Justin, that’s just your opinion,” Roberts said, according to Danhof.

Gun crime has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, Danhof said, pointing to a Los Angeles Times article. Nevertheless, people think that gun crime has risen, in large part to the media’s excessive and biased coverage of it, Danhof contended.

“When conservatives talk about media bias, they have to talk about what it really does,” Danhof said. “They are changing the perceptions of reality.”

Many hosts from Comcast’s liberal news outlet MSNBC have met with President Barack Obama in the past about the policy issues facing the country.

Comcast as a whole has strongly supported Obama, and its leadership has strong ties to the administration.

Comcast employees gave much more strongly to Barack Obama than Mitt Romney in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. They also donated significantly more to Democrats than Republicans over the past three election cycles.

Cohen, who promised Ridenour he would look into National Center’s accusations against MSNBC, has also been a major supporter of Barack Obama’s campaigns.

He pledged to bundle over $500,000—the highest recorded category—in the 2012 campaign, and he donated to both Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns and subsequent inaugural funds, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Cohen also hosted a fundraiser for President Obama in 2011 at his home in Philadelphia. Attendees pledged to give at least $10,000 to the president’s reelection campaign. The Washington Post called Cohen “a longtime Democratic operative” when reporting on the fundraiser.

Cohen is not the only big-money supporter of President Obama at Comcast. Jeff Shell, chairman of NBC Universal International, pledged to bundle between $200,000 and $500,000 for the president’s reelection campaign.

Comcast’s support for Obama has won NBC Universal’s shows coveted appearances from the first family.

Obama introduced the movie To Kill a Mockingbird on USA Network, part of NBC’s family of networks. First Lady Michelle Obama has made several cameo appearances on NBC shows, including The Biggest Loser.

Comcast is not the first company the National Center has questioned at shareholder meetings. The National Center plans to attend 30 shareholder meetings this year. It has been involved in shareholder activism since 2009.

Officials at the IRS put heightened scrutiny on groups with conservative-sounding names applying for tax-exempt status. A Tuesday story in USA Today revealed that “In the 27 months that the Internal Revenue Service put a hold on all Tea Party applications for non-profit status, it approved applications from similar liberal groups.”

Conservative watchdog and public policy experts see the IRS scandal as continuing a trend in the Obama administration.

“The Obama tendency has been to attack its enemies, and the bureaucracy has been set on its enemies, and the IRS is just one more example of it,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.

“This administration got its ethics out of Chicago,” said Gover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

The Department of Homeland Security in 2009 was panned for a report on right-wing extremism. The report, titled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” acknowledged that there were no known threats from right-wing extremists but nevertheless warned about a growing specter of right-wing extremism.

The report defined suspicious right-wing groups as “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

The report argued that conservatives were using the election of the first black president and the economic recession to recruit members, including veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. It drew parallels between the conditions at the time of the report and the 1990s, when radical right-wing groups multiplied and grew, according to the report.

Conservatives and libertarians slammed the report, arguing it was unfairly broad and unsubstantiated.

Napolitano ultimately had to issue multiple apologies, including one to the American Legion, the largest veterans group in the country.

The Department of Defense was criticized earlier this year for a report on religious extremists that included what critics saw as an overly broad list of worrisome groups. The list included “Evangelical Christianity” and “Catholicism” in a list that also included al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan.

Christian groups pushed back against the label.

“It is dishonorable for any U.S. military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization,” the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) said in a statement.

“The Archdiocese is astounded that Catholics were listed alongside groups that are, by their very mission and nature, violent and extremist,” the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services said in a similar statement.

ADF also criticized the Department of Defense for relying on the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, which itself has inspired left-wing terrorism, to create its report.

Religious groups felt they were being unfairly targeted.

Evangelical Christians voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, according to the New York Times. The Catholic Church strongly opposes several of the president’s social policy positions, including same-sex marriage and abortion.

Most recently, an investigation prompted by House Republicans uncovered that the IRS was targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny before the 2012 campaign, including asking for information from the groups that it did not need.

While the IRS initially claimed that only employees based in Cincinnati were involved in targeting conservative groups, it later emerged that IRS officials in Washington were also involved.

Both Republicans and Democrats have denounced the IRS’ actions. Moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) called the revelations “chilling,” while Obama himself called them “intolerable and inexcusable.”

Both Fitton and Norquist noted that similar things happened during the Clinton administration.

Fitton said his group Judicial Watch was audited during the Clinton administration after the White House forwarded a letter it received to the IRS. When Fitton inquired into why he was being audited, an IRS official responded, “What did you expect?” Fitton said.

The same pattern has continued in Obama’s White House, Fitton said.

“The president and his men have specifically attacked American citizens for their participation in the democratic process,” Fitton said.

Norquist placed the blame for the IRS scandal on the White House.

“Certainly they sent a hundred signals that they don’t mind this,” Norquist said about the White House.

Norquist noted that the IRS has in the past resisted attempts to use it for political attacks. When Chuck Colson came to the IRS with Richard Nixon’s enemies list, the IRS refused to target the individuals on the list with audits.

“They just view this as an extension of playing politics,” Norquist said about the White House.

“It is exactly what you expect in Chicago,” he said.

The Romeike family fled Germany in 2008 after receiving heavy fines and the threat of jail time for homeschooling their children, which is illegal in Germany. The family immigrated to Tennessee, where they were able to homeschool their children.

The family filed for defensive asylum in Tennessee, which a Memphis immigration judge granted them. The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division then appealed the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The board overturned the initial judge’s decision last year, stripping the Romeike family of their asylum protection and ordering them to be deported back to Germany.

The Romeikes then appealed the board’s decision to the 6th Circuit of Appeals, which ruled against the family, according to an announcement by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

The 6th Circuit ruled that Germany’s homeschool ban is a general law that applies to all people equally, and therefore does not discriminate against those who homeschool for religious reasons.

“The United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment, even treatment that our laws do not allow,” the judges, who decided against the Romeikes unanimously, said in their opinion.

“The court ignored mountains of evidence that homeschoolers are harshly fined and that custody of their children is gravely threatened—something most people would call persecution,” said Mike Donnelly, HSLDA director of international affairs, in a statement. “This is what the Romeikes will suffer if they are sent back to Germany.”

HSLDA chairman Michael Farris pledged to appeal the 6th Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court, according to the statement.

ICE did not return a request for comment.