Even the IRS's own IT guidelines states that all Federal Records (emails pertaining to IRS related activities) must be retained indefinitely for FOIA requests. There is no 6 mount opt out. It's also federal law that those documents be maintained.

The IT department did try to cover themselves by saying that they aren't responsible for storing those records and that EVERY work related email must be printed and then physically stored (like that was ever going to happen).

That group was denied because they expressly stated their goal was the training and election of Democrat women, not female candidates, but Democrat female candidates only. That's like going into a gun shop and on the form stating you are buying a gun to shoot your neighbor and then using that as an example of excessive gun control.

Even so, that same group had already been granted non-profit status at several other branches.

Sadly, their official plan is for all work emails to be printed and then those physical copies to be archived.

This story was never about denials. The story was that these organizations were placed in limbo for, in some cases, years and never granted their non-profit status and some were harassed with questions outside of the IRS purview to a point that they withdrew their applications.

Those that were later granted happened AFTER the initial scandal broke (which also happened to be after the election).

Emails concerning the functions of the IRA are considered, by the IRS, "Federal Records" which are legally required to be archived indefinitely. This isn't an option, it's in their own IT guidelines.

In fact their guidelines require that all such emails should be printed and physically archived because Exchange Servers do not meet their definition of a proper archival system. Since that is the case then they either broke federal law by not finding an electronic archival system or by not printing and storing the physical documents. Your choice.

It's true that no Tea Party group was denied non-profit status but that was never the issue. The issue was those groups were never denied OR granted non-profit status; their applications were intentionally sent to secondary review and never processed, or processed in such a way that effectively resulted in harassment from the IRS until they revoked their applications. The questions asked by the IRS to prospective Tea Party related groups were way outside of the scope the IRS is permitted when determining the legal status of a non-profit (such as requiring a complete list of donors which is not required for 501(c)(4)s). Progressive groups on the other hand were processed with minimal delay.

One liberal group was in fact denied their non-profit status (only after the same group had already received it for both the Federal and several state branches) but that wasn't even part of this process. That was done under a completely unrelated review process for completely different reasons. Their problem was that their own declaration stated they ONLY work with Democrat women to get them elected. That was determined to be outside of the definition of "common good" so their application was denied. If they had simply stated they were a group to help get female candidate elected, and then just so happened to focus on Dems, then that would have legally met the requirements for a 501(c)(4) (the other branches may have said that in their applications), but since they openly declared their support for a party and not an ideology, they were denied and then reapplied as a 527.

By the IRS ITs own definition these emails were "Federal Records" and as such were required by law to be archived indefinitely for just such purposes as this investigation.

According to the IRS's own website all emails that can be considered "Federal Records" (essentially anything having to do with actual work at the IRS) must be maintained and in fact printed and stored. These document are subject to FOIA request and they simply don't have the legal option to have them expire and get deleted.

Good enough?

Which I believe is part of the cause of the Judges opinion that minority and underprivileged children are being treated unfairly by the tenure system. In the richer districts where parents are more focused on getting little johnny into an ivy league school than a community college (or simply just out of high school), parents are more likely to complain vocally about what they see as an under performing teacher than in a poorer district. School boards don't like conflict so since the can't fire the mediocre teacher they simply move them to a school where he/she will not cause a fuss.

Over time this leads to richer public schools outperforming poorer schools, not just because of the students performance, but because the poorer area schools act as catch-alls for the most poorly performing teachers in the system.

The average salary for a teacher in California is $67,000 with a starting point of around $41,000.

Add to that a Census Bureau’s report that had people self evaluate their working hours and you had teachers actually self reporting fewer work hours that other people of similar education levels (43.7 vs 44.8), although the time difference is minimal. This was also backed up with a Bureau of Labor Statistics study which went more into where hours of work were spent (at work vs at home).

Then you have the vacation schedule which puts teachers working days at anywhere from 60 - 80 fewer days per year than the average worker and I doubt you will find many people with regular jobs that will find a $67,000/year salary for only a 2/3rds of the year job, underpaid, especially when that job has some of the most outrageous employment protections in the country..

1) I'm not American so their internal spying did not violate my non-existent constitutional rights.
2) I don't have much of an issue with his disclosures about their internal spying programs since I happen to believe they are violations of the constitution.
3) It's his disclosure of external spying I disagree with. All countries spy on each other; that's nothing new or unexpected but his disclosure of specifics placed him clearly outside of the concerned citizen category into the traitor camp.
4) This part of this thread is about his supposed attempts to do the right thing before going public so discussing those actions is hardly irrelevant.
5) Discussion Snowden's specific (in)actions is important in that it can highlight the difficulties with whistle blowing in the various levels of government.

According to the US Dept. of Labor, 4.7% of hourly employees in the US are paid at or below minimum wage with approximately half of those being under the age of 25. The largest category of those being paid at that rate worked in restaurants where it is common to be paid less than minimum with the understanding that tips will make up the remainder of your wage.

So in the entire US less than 3.7 million people are actually paid the minimum wage and even then a large number work in a field where additional forms of payment (mainly tips) are considered the norm and when calculated into their hourly pay would also remove them from the group making minimum wage.

Not quite or even partially true. Snowden CLAIMS he approached his superiors multiple times but the only released document was about a technical question about the legal power of executive orders.

He essentially asked if executive orders outweighed actual signed laws and the answer given him that while they have the weight of a law, if they conflict with a law then EO's are effectively void.

Of course you can claim that this was the only document released by the NSA because it proves Snowden is lying about his attempts to properly handle what he saw as a violation of the constitution, but if there were other documents don't you think Snowden would have presented them to prove his case. Or is a man who managed to copy millions of classified document not able to copy HIS OWN EMAILS from his account prior to leaving?

Two problems both of which, ironically enough, caused by the anti-death penalty groups and both of which are described above in several other posts.

1) Due to medical licensing regulations, most medical professionals in the US are not permitted to take part directly in executions. That in conjunction with the relative rarity of executions means the people administering the lethal cocktail are generally poorly trained.

2) The manufactures of many of the drugs that would be considered more humane for the purposes of lethal injection directly prohibit their use for that purpose. This leads to the people from problem #1 messing with less effective drugs to try and create a new lethal cocktail.