Government watchdog: Joe the plumber unfairly targeted

Oh aside from the fact that Joe was a McCain/Rove plant....again no better vetted than the VP choice.
The guy couldn't/wouldn't tell the truth....Same as the VP pick.
Besides....his 15 minutes of fame were up 10 minutes ago.

Will you please look at the time line to the actual start of these investigations. It was over the weekend that Joe talked to Obama regarding his tax plan. These investigations into Joe did not occur until after McCain decided to use Joe's conversation in the Presidential Debate 21 times later in the week. It bothers me that it is implied that the actual conversation sparked the investigations- it was McCain's use of Joe 21 times in the debate that sparked the questions of who Joe actually was. There was very little interest in Joe between the weekend and just before the debate.

@HDtex: Actually, you're wrong. JTP's fame may have waned a little, but give him about 2 weeks and he'll be back in the spotlight. A Republican ghost-writer helped him slap together a book about the election so that he could capitalize on his fame and spend another 30 minutes in the spotlight. I don't doubt for a minute that he'll either jump into politics or become a regular on Fox News soon after his book is published too.

@Michael: Thank you. How anyone can accuse the media of being biased towards the left is beyond me. The only reason JTP got spotlight coverage at all is because John McCain put him there.

How could a guy playing catch with his son on in their front yard be a plant by Rove or the GOP? Do you think the GOP used their crystal ball to find out Obama would walk around this neighborhood on that particular day? Obama walked around a randomly selected neighborhood meeting people. Joe did not go to a rally, he was home in his yard with his kid when Obama came to him. Not the other way around.

I cannot believe that you ignorant automatons ignored what was written in this report and cannot honestly acknowledge the wrong doing of Helen Jones-Kelley. You are endorsing a communist dictatorship mindset in which opposing views can be quelled by ANY means necessary. Appalling!

I work for government and if I did that, I would be fired. So should she.

Here is the real deal. If you know you got something to hide keep your dumb butt out of the lime light. How could he not know that they were gonna check him out. Stupid gets what stupid earns. Joe the plummer.

I'm looking for a sarah palin joe the plumber ticket in 20012! heh heh..could be a real deal!!!

It is amazing how you guys miss the whole point of the Joe The Plumber situation. It is not about him it is about what President Elect Obama said. Everybody always wants to move switch the conversation off of what Obama said. It wouldn't matter if Joe was a homeless man, he asked a question and got and answer and none of the liberals liked the answer so they focused on the person that asked it. Joe is a great american and is being crusified and investigated for using his freedom of speach.

Most, if not all, of that information is public record. The "scandal" occurred when a State employee ordered State money to be spent doing the work. I know what I'm talking about - I'm a private investigator. This stuff is readily available to anyone savvy enough to know how to find it - even online.

Wow!
So you guys feel the end justifies the means huh?
That means you are FOR the tactics of the Patriot Act.
Spy on the public, access "private" records for political retribution etc.
Once again what you say you believe about freedoms is contradicted by what you actually defend.
Republicans? Democrats? what is the difference?

Where is the ACLU in all this? My goodness, this man's privacy rights were violated and not ONE peep out of them. If Joe was NOT a McCain supporter and/or NOT white....the ACLU would have been ALL over this. What do you expect from an organization that protects NAMBLA?

Come On Now Mr. Inspector General - Isn't it obvious that this woman wanted to destroy JTP's credibility because his questions embarrassed Barrack Obama and could have damaged Obama's candidacy? What other motivation could this woman who supported Obama with the largest allowable donation have had? This kind of action should be punished to the maximum extent under the law to send a strong message to others that freedom of speech by private citizens will be protected by the law.

Hdtex: A Rove plant? Are you a conspiracy theorist or what? Obama was walking in Joe's neighborhood to get a photo op and Joe asked a question. Do you think that Rove knew Obama's schedule and then went knocking on locals doors to get them to work as a plant? Give me a break. This is "1984, Big Brother" goverment intrustion. If it happened to someone on the Left, you would be outraged at the way government wields its power.

The problem with Joe the Plummer is not that he has issue with taxes, or even that he's not really a plummer- this issue is that he doesn't know the meaning of socialism. His legacy is that of being the soundboard for a silly stupid leap in logic. A 4% rise in taxes for 5% of the population is not socialism. When Obama starts imposing rent controls and taking over industry, we can have the socialism talk. Until then, he's just a fan of the same tax system of Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan and so on.

Sassmo, the left bias of the media is obvious, if you are willing to open your eyes to see it.

It is a fact that for the period between the conventions and last debate positive stories on Obama (36%) were more than double those of McCain (14%), while negative stories on McCain (57%) were roughly double those of Obama (29%). CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC are all on the left bias list. One of them is so pro-Obama it seemed as if the anchors were auditioning to see which one of them would be the new Press Secretary.

No matter which way you look at it, 18 background checks is a lot!

Sam "Joe" was full of crap from the beginning, but a government worker shouldn't have poked around in his records, and punishment is justified. We'll see now if anyone gets punished for poking around in Obama's cell phone records.

And if you're talking about destroying credibility by any means necessary, the Cheney-Bush outing of Valerie Plame is still much worse than either of these.

The real tragedy here is that this issue should be one that all Americans can agree about. Can we not agree that it's wrong for a government bureaucrat to use the resources of the state to investigate a private citizen for political reasons?

Have our partisan divisions gone so deep that we'll defend abuse of power as long as it's done for "our" candidate?

Are we so sheeplized? Are we really ready to submit to "total government" like this? Anybody read the Constitution anymore?

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I'm amazed at some of these responses. Joe the Plumber could have been you or me. He asked a question he had been wondering about. He was trying to find out the truth from the candidate, himself. When did this become a crime or a reason for indicting someone? For crying out loud. The last I looked, this was still the United States of America where we have freedom of speech. The person that investigated him using taxpayer time, money, equipment should be dumped from her job and sent to work for Obama since she likes him so much. Personally, if I lived in Ohio, I would be demanding more than a month's unpaid suspension for h

a yes,the rule of law soon to be nation wide under pres-elect obamma. dig up anything that will hurt anyone that dare ask anything that is not relative?