Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of June 27, 2014. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.

Mark Wilson, Getty Images
Mark Wilson, Getty Images
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Cruz Demands Holder Appoint a Special Prosecutor

Senator Ted Cruz is demanding that Eric Holder appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the IRS targeting of Tea Party organizations. According to the National Review, if Holder fails to do so, Cruz believes Holder should be impeached.

Attorney General Eric Holder should be impeached if he refuses to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the targeting of tea-party groups by the IRS, according to Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas).

With the IRS claiming to have lost two years of former official Lois Lerner’s e-mails, Cruz is headed to the floor to introduce a resolution calling for the special prosecutor.

“He’s going to say, if Attorney General Holder does not appoint a special prosecutor, he should be impeached,” a Cruz aide told National Review Online. “Eric Holder has been at the center of every big scandal in this administration . . . If he doesn’t act on this issue, it’s perfectly appropriate for him to be impeached.”

Cruz believes that Holder’s failure to appoint a special prosecutor would rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard for impeachment.

Senate Democrats, of course, are very likely to block the resolution. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) articulated the party line last week when she was asked if she was suspicious of the hard-drive crash that the IRS says eradicated Lerner’s e-mails.

“What it convinces me [of] is that they need a new technology system at the IRS,” Pelosi told reporters. “They need to upgrade their technology, get it right, so that there’s no suspicion about what agenda anyone may have on that.”

Cruz suggested that Holder should be impeached in April, but the news that Lerner suggested that the IRS examine a speaking invitation for Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) gave rise to the latest proposal.

Lubbock City Council

The Lubbock City Council met Thursday night and as anticipated one of the issues most discussed after the meeting was the smoking ordinance. Mayor Glen Robertson told the Lubbock AJ that he wasn't sure where he stood yet on the issue.

Mayor Glen Robertson, who has a track record of speaking against ordinances that are in place to keep people from hurting themselves, said that isn’t the case with the coalition’s concerns.

“You can’t argue with the facts, secondhand smoke is a killer,” he said, also noting that residents can choose not to go into an establishment that allows smoking.” This is not a black-and-white issue.”

Members of the council did not engage in discussion with the group during Thursday’s meeting, though the mayor suspects his colleagues met with the coalition individually as he did.

Still, Robertson said he is unsure of where his vote will fall on this issue if the council takes it up.

“I’d like to gather all of the facts and find out what the property owners are thinking — they’re the ones that are going to be impacted,” he said. “I think we just need to gather information right now and try to figure out where the community stands.”

Gauging public opinion on a smoking ban could be done through a city vote, Robertson said.

“This may be an issue that we need to take to the voters like we did with the alcohol issue,” he said. “It is very hard for us, as elected officials, to find out how the public really feels about it.”

During the meeting the council also voted to set aside $1.2 million dollars to potentially buy the Omni Building with nothing being set in stone. The council was also told about a huge price increase for the new Goedeke Library. Instead of $200,000 in moving and renovation costs, city staff now projects the costs will be more that $866,000 dollars. The reason? Renovations costing more than $500,000 dollars.

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