Conservation

WASHINGTON - President Obama forced out the head of the IRS on Wednesday, seeking to restore the public's faith in the tax agency while asserting a measure of control over a rapidly growing political problem. Making a hastily scheduled statement at the White House, Obama denounced the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service as "inexcusable" and pledged to "do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. " "Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," he said.

WASHINGTON - Congressional investigators are broadening their inquiry into the Internal Revenue Service's mishandling of groups seeking tax-exempt status, indicating that they plan to examine how the agency dealt with a wide swath of nonprofit applications during the last three years. The Senate Finance Committee on Monday requested that the agency turn over a list of all charities, social welfare organizations, unions and trade groups targeted for extra scrutiny, as well as copies of all requests the IRS sent those groups for information about donors, volunteers and political activities since Feb. 1, 2010.

For only the second time in the last 28 years, scientists have discovered a new species of monkey, according to a new report in this week's edition of the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The monkey species, called lesula by locals, lives deep in the remote Lomami forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The monkey's habitat is one of few remaining unexplored biological frontiers in the area. Though researchers were previously unfamiliar with the species -- which has an extremely human-like face surrounded by golden hair -- the daughter of a local school director in the area had taken one as a pet. That led to a first chance encounter between the scientists and the monkey in 2007 when a field team saw it tied to a post in the village where she lived.

We have once again entered the college commencement season, which means we'll soon be reading about uplifting graduation speeches delivered by prominent Americans. Or at least by prominent liberal Americans. It's becoming increasingly apparent that conservative speakers aren't welcome on college and university campuses. Last month, in the span of a few days, student protests disrupted a presentation by Karl Rove at the University of Massachusetts and one by Rand Paul at Howard University.

Even with the recent batch of rainstorms, the ongoing drought has grown so severe that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday called for increased citywide water restrictions and the adoption of a tiered water rate that would punish Department of Water and Power customers who fail to conserve. Sprinkler use would be restricted to two days a week under the proposal and, by summer, could be cut to one day a week if the drought continues, Villaraigosa said.

Naturalist Anne LaBastille became something of a cult hero among modern women for embracing a distinctly frontier past. When her marriage fell apart in the mid-1960s, she took refuge in the wilderness, building a log cabin on a hidden lake in the Adirondack Mountains and then carving an influential writing career out of her remote existence. Both the women's and environmental movements were on the rise in 1976 when she published "Woodswoman," the first in a four-volume autobiographical series that celebrated her adventures — and inspired women across the nation to engage in the great outdoors.

Driving back to the San Fernando Valley from Orange County, I couldn't help notice the terrible waste of electricity used to light billboards. It is a virtual corridor of light from Irvine to Chatsworth. If politicians are serious about conservation, how about turning off electricity to all billboards? We really don't need them, and people are more important than billboard advertising. Another waste is nighttime sports. During this power crisis, I would think team owners would agree to play all games in the daytime to help the public conserve.

Voicing concerns that Americans are losing their connection with nature -- and that natural areas are falling victim to sprawl and pollution -- the White House will invite hundreds of sportsmen, environmentalists and other champions of the outdoors to Washington next month for a summit on conservation. The White House Conference on America's Great Outdoors, on April 16, will focus on how to conserve the land with local leadership, as opposed to a heavy federal government role, administration officials will announce Friday.

About 300 labor union members and other activists staged a demonstration to protest the potential sale of the Los Angeles Times to the politically conservative Koch brothers. Demonstrators marched outside the downtown L.A. headquarters of Oaktree Capital Management, an investment firm that holds a roughly 20% stake in Tribune Co., which owns The Times. Protesters alleged that Charles and David Koch, billionaire siblings who fund conservative causes, want to buy The Times in order to skew the paper's coverage to favor anti-union objectives.

WASHINGTON - President Obama forced out the head of the IRS on Wednesday, seeking to restore the public's faith in the tax agency while asserting a measure of control over a rapidly growing political problem. Making a hastily scheduled statement at the White House, Obama denounced the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service as "inexcusable" and pledged to "do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. " "Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," he said.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department began a criminal investigation Tuesday into overzealous scrutiny by the IRS of applications for tax exemptions by conservative groups, an improper targeting that an inspector general's report blamed on a confused staff and lax oversight. The improper activities "were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS," the auditors said they were told by Internal Revenue Service officials. Instead, the report painted a picture of an IRS unit based in Cincinnati that used "inappropriate criteria" for deciding which applications to examine, without any review by senior managers.

One of the great outrages of the Watergate scandal was President Nixon's use of the Internal Revenue Service to harass his political opponents. Yet some IRS officials appear to have forgotten what happens when tax law enforcers pick their targets based on their politics. A forthcoming report from the agency's inspector general is expected to describe how IRS employees inappropriately scrutinized grass-roots conservative groups that were seeking tax-exempt status. If that happened, it's unacceptable, and Congress should find out what involvement, if any, the Obama administration had in the abuses.

LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron moved Monday to beat back a brewing rebellion within his Conservative Party over Britain's membership in the European Union, rejecting demands for a speedy public vote on exiting the trading bloc but insisting that he would offer such a referendum by the end of 2017. As he met with President Obama in Washington - where Cameron lobbied for a U.S.-EU free-trade pact - the British leader found himself on the defensive at home against members of his party who want their country to withdraw from the 27-nation EU as soon as possible.

WASHINGTON - Top career officials in the Internal Revenue Service withheld information from Congress for months about the tax agency's targeting of conservative organizations for extra scrutiny, according to documents released Monday as a controversy involving alleged political bias in tax enforcement gathered strength. Members of Congress called for firing the agency's acting commissioner, one of the senior officials involved, and President Obama said he would "not tolerate" any such abuse of power by the IRS. "If you've got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous; it's contrary to our traditions.

WASHINGTON - A top Internal Revenue Service official knew as early as June 2011 that conservative groups seeking nonprofit status were being singled out for additional scrutiny, raising questions about when senior officials were informed and why the IRS allowed the agency's commissioner to deny the targeting effort in March 2012 testimony before Congress. The IRS has said the commissioner was not aware of the targeting at the time, but it has not explained why the testimony was never corrected.

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service improperly singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny of their applications for nonprofit status, a top agency official said Friday, setting off calls for investigations into an organization already under fire for its handling of secret political spending by nonprofits. Employees at the agency's Cincinnati nonprofits office, while screening a flood of applications from so-called social welfare groups last year, set aside about 75 containing the words "tea party" and "patriot" for more detailed review, said Lois Lerner, IRS director of exempt organizations.