Actor Rob Lowe suddenly appeared in the White House press room today, escorted by White House Correspondents’ Association President Ed Henry of Fox News.

I was very excited, of course, to meet Ed Henry.

Yeah, that’s a joke. Though Ed is a good guy.

But Lowe seemed one too, graciously shaking hands with all and posing for photos with star-struck journalists. As he waded through, radio reporters tumbled out of their booths to see him, desk reporters rose to meet him, and CBS’s Mark Knoller rose to Tweet him.

That’s tireless Tweeter and chronicler of all things White House Knoller below in a shot I took just after he Tweeted to the world that Lowe was among us.

Sorry, ladies, that the focus is better on Mark instead of Rob.

Lowe said he was at the White House to meet with National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling. Don’t ask me, I don’t get it either.

Gene of course is famous in the White House press corps for staging soporific briefings for reporters and balling out Bob Woodward for half an hour. I assume he avoided giving Lowe the latter treatment. As to the former, we asked Lowe how his nap was.

Afterward, Henry escorted Lowe down to the White House swimming pool, the indoor one built by FDR. It’s still there, underneath the briefing room, which Nixon had built right above it. You can go down and walk around.

I mentioned to Lowe that JFK had done a lot of his relaxing there. He caught my drift.

Yes, reporting. It happens. Two examples of actual reporting – one from the conservative media, one from NBC.

Yes, you read that right. NBC’s Lisa Meyers is a good investigative reporter who seems to have forsaken NBC’s ideological bent in favor of traditional shoe leather – shoe heel? – reporting.

Myers found a 38-year IRS veteran who used to work in the IRS Cincinnati office. While the woman does not believe the investigation was politically motivated, she’s certain this was no rogue operation.

Meanwhile, over at the National Review, Eliana Johnson found herself some real live actual sources – pity them, I hope they met her in an underground garage and didn’t communicate by email or phone – who told her that the Washington Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office was holding wide sway over the targeting.

Officials in the Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office played an integral role in determining how the targeted applications were treated, provided general guidelines to Cincinnati case workers, briefed other agency employees on the status of the special cases, and reviewed all those intrusive requests demanding “more information” from tea-party groups. At times, the Technical Unit lawyers seemed to exercise tight control over these applications, creating both a backlog in application processing and frustration among Cincinnati agents waiting for direction.

An IRS employee who asked not to be identified tells National Review Onlinethat all members of the agency’s Technical Unit are based in Washington, D.C. A current list of Technical Unit managers provided by another IRS employee shows that all such managers are based at the agency’s headquarters on Constitution Avenue in the District of Columbia, and the IRS confirmed, in a testy exchange with National Review Online, that the Technical Unit is “based in Washington.”

According to the IRS source, who is based in Cincinnati, complex cases are routinely elevated to the Technical Unit for guidance. Many of the questions that agents sent to groups most likely came “from Tax Law Specialists — lawyers — in D.C.,” the Cincinnati employee explains. “With tea-party cases, questions from the Tax Law Specialists were way too aggressive,” he says.

The House Oversight Committee has a lot more people to call in to testify. And they won’t have to fly in from Cincy – they’re just a cab ride away.

They’re also a cab ride away from the White House and Treasury.

The Justice Department denies that it broke into CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s computer, according to Politico.

Attkisson, who has been unusually agressive among MSM reporters in investigating the administration, said that her computers were hacked beginning in February 2011, when she was reporting on the Fast and Furious gun running scandal and green energy spending. She didn’t say who she thinks did it, but she indicated it could be related to the investigation of Fox News reporter James Rosen, who has been caught up in a probe into who passed classified secrets to him.

The briefing has concluded.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who was in charge of the division that targeted conservative groups, refused to testify before the House Oversight Committee today, invoking her Fifth Amendment rights.

But Lerner asserted that she was guilty of no misconduct or crimes.

“I have not done anything wrong,” Lerner said. “I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.  And while I would very much like to answer your committee’s questions today, I have been advised by my counsel to assert my constitutional right not to testify or answer questions related to the subject matter of this hearing.”

UPDATE: Lerner has taken the fifth, and the IRS hearing by the House Oversight Committee is now focusing on the other witnesses – two senior Treasury officials and former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.

You can see video of Lerner’stestimony here.

With scandal swirling about the White House, First Lady Michelle Obama may be considering an extended exit from Washington this summer, fleeing for weeks to the Obamas’ traditional summer haven, Martha’s Vineyard.

According to the Boston Globe, “Michelle Obama and the children may be on the island for an extended period.” But the president would hardly be suffering by comparison. He may come up on weekends and then stay for two weeks at the end of the summer, the Globe reports.

The White House has not commented on the Obamas’ vacation plans.

The Obamas are said to be eying a house in Farm Neck on the Vineyard. If they land there, the president will have easy access to the lovely Farm Neck Golf Club and Cafe. Here’s the view from the tee on the third hole.

It appears Michelle may be skipping her usual spring excursion overseas, which in the past has included stops at a luxury resort in Spain and in South Africa. Instead, she’ll accompany her husband next month on an official trip to Africa.

But not to worry. She already spent two weeks in Hawaii this past winter and jetted out for some Apsen skiing in February.

The Obamas opted out of their annual trip to Martha’s Vineyard in 2012, likely because they were campaigning and because a luxury sojourn there would have conflicted with the campaign image Obama was trying to project as a fighter for the middle class.

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WH answers on IRS only raise questions . . . Washington Post
Government not pursuing Benghazi attackers . . . Fox News
Petraeus had key role in talking points . . . Washington Post
Fox reporter’s parents targeted too . . . Daily Caller
Jay Carney’s press briefing blues . . . Politico
Ex-IRS chief: Scrutiny not my job . . . Washington Times
The meatball testifies to Congress . . . Charles Hurt
Obama not a protector of press freedom . . . National Journal
Immigration bill heads to Senate floor . . . The Hill
IRS has eight offices for Obamacare . . . Examiner

“So she’s taking the Fifth. Well, me, I’m taking the First.”

- Barack Obama

A note from our attorneys: This is not a real quote

H/T to one of our clever readers, Guillermo Grande

9:45 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
4:15 pm || Meets with Treasury Secretary Lew
7:25 pm || Hosts a concert honoring Gershwin Prize winner Carole King; East Room

All times Eastern
Live stream of Carney briefing at 1:00 pm

Now things are getting extra interesting.

The IRS official in charge of the division that scrutinized tax exempt organizations when the agency targeted Republicans will invoke her Fifth amendment right not to incriminate herself if forced to appear as scheduled Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee.

In a letter to the panel, her attorney asked that she be excused since she doesn’t plan to say anything. You can bet she won’t be excused even for a pee pee break.

Well.

This ratchets up the scandal for President Obama, make no mistake. Government officials are now taking the Fifth, like mobsters appearing at the Kefauver hearings. Average Americans are going to be smelling a lot of smoke and wondering intently about the fire.

A federal official, nominally in the employ of Barack Obama, will be all over the news Wednesday night taking the Fifth. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney keeps changing his story. Obama claims he don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.

Now the investigations will intensify. Reporters might even decide they want to try their hand at probing the guy they all voted for.

Once you begin looking hard, even at the innocent, it’s not too difficult to find something wrong. And this group is looking less and less innocent.

Lerner is being summoned to testify to explain why she repeatedly failed to tell Congress about the targeting, even after, according to the inspector general’s report, she knew all about it.

She’s not guilty of any crimes, her lawyer insists. So what exactly does she not want to talk about? Did anyone instruct her to begin her little Jihad against Tea Party groups?

Lerner is looking less like the apolitical naif she was initially portrayed to be. The Weekly Standard reports today that in a previous role as head of the FEC enforcement division in the 1990s, she went right after the Christian Coalition, trying to ascertain such things as who was praying for whom.

Now she’ll want to know if anyone’s praying for her.

The briefing has concluded.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is sweating it out under the harsh lights of the White House briefing room these days, revising stories and spinning away suspicious facts in what is becoming an almost comical daily exercise in scandal avoidance.

“Are you going to ask me about Myanmar?” Carney joked Monday as yet another White House reporter teed up a question about one of the various scandals swirling about the administration. The leader of Myanmar was to meet with President Obama later in the day.

Photo by Keith Koffler

Carney Monday was escorted by reporters down several nightmarish paths. The most ghastly of them all was the one on which he was forced to acknowledge that more White House officials than previously disclosed knew about the Treasury inspector general’s IRS report, and that the information was far more substantive than the simple “heads up” Carney had said it was.

To be fair, it appears that Carney himself was on the wrong end of a deception, and that his bosses may have withheld information from him indicating that senior aides beyond the White House Counsel were aware of the IG probe before it became public.

If that is so, Carney ought to be threatening to resign, because his credibility is now on the line. His insistence, for example, that the president himself knew nothing of the probe would only appear to be operative until we hear the next version of events.

And he’s still stonewalling – or not being informed – about who else knew, other than Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. “I don’t have a list for you,” he blandly remarked.

Carney has also made the mistake of allowing the questions to become personal. A press secretary should never respond when asked for his own opinion – he speaks for the president, no one else – but Carney, a former leading Washington reporter, clearly has something on his conscience.

“I think that I share the President’s — personally, as a former reporter, but also in this capacity — I share the President’s belief that we need to find a balance,” Carney said when asked about whether the Obama believes that reporters should ever be considered criminals for trying to gather information.

The response was to a question in relation to Monday’s revelation that Fox News reporter James Rosen was judged by the Justice Department as a potential co-conspirator in the case against a State Department official who allegedly leaked him classified materials.

Then things got even more personal. Carney, it turns out, was in the Time Washington bureau when a colleague at the magazine, Matt Cooper, was nearly sent to jail after being caught up in a leak investigation.

“What would you have said if the government told you that he had been involved in a crime for reporting on the Valerie Plame case?” Carney was asked,

Carney fled to the most coveted refuge of White House press secretaries: “That’s a hypothetical,” he said.

“It’s not a hypothetical,” the reporter insisted.

Carney clung tight: “That’s a hypothetical.

Finally, some relief:

Reporter: Myanmar, Myanmar.

Carney:  Myanmar, in the back, yes.  All the way back.  Myanmar?

Reporter: Yes.

Carney:  Thanks

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The briefing has concluded

WH offers fifth version of IRS events . . . Politico
Claim: Top WH aides knew, but not Obama . . . National Journal
Poll: IRS targeting intentional . . . Politico
Tea Party group targeted by four agencies. . . National Review
Obama and the IRS. Smoking gun? . . . American Spectator
IRS wanted info on conservative interns . . . Daily Caller
Labor breaks with Obama over Obamacare . . . The Hill
Obama stepped up probes of journalists . . . Washington Times
Congress to question former IRS chief . . . Associated Press
Immigration bill nears finish line . . . Politico
Tensions rise between press, Obama . . . The Hill

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I’m nothing like Nixon.”

- Barack Obama

A note from our attorneys: This is not a real quote

10:15 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
11:00 am || Meets with illegal immigrants who have received deferred action under the DREAM Act and with U.S. citizen family members of illegal immigrants
4:30 pm || Meets with Defense Secretary Hagel

All times Eastern
Live stream of Carney briefing at 12:30 pm

From the White House:

This evening the President spoke with Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin to express his concern for those who have been affected by the severe weather beginning last night and continuing today. While information is still coming in, the President made clear that his Administration, through FEMA, stands ready to provide all available assistance as the Governor’s team responds to the storm and that he has directed his team to ensure that they are providing available resources as the response unfolds.

FEMA has deployed an Incident Management Assistance Team to the state emergency operations center in Oklahoma City to support state and local officials on the ground and additional personnel and resources stand ready to be dispatched as necessary. The President told Governor Fallin that the people of Oklahoma are in his and the First Lady’s thoughts and prayers and, while his team will continue to keep him updated, he urged her to be in touch directly if there were additional resources the Administration could provide.

May God comfort the victims of this nightmare.