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IRS scandal is Republicans’ zombie

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 22:00:00 +0000

Like a "zeke" in "World War Z" that just won't die, the IRS scandal lives another day. We declared it dead on Monday -- based on the information we had at the time -- after we learned that the IRS had targeted progressive and Occupy groups in addition to Tea Party ones.

But today, Treasury Department Inspector General Russell George explained in a letter to lawmakers that while some liberal groups got extra scrutiny, they weren't systematically targeted like conservative ones were. "We found no indication in any of these other materials that 'Progressives' was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention," the IG wrote. While 100 percent of applications for groups with "Tea Party," "Patriot" or "9/12" in their name were processed as "potential political cases," just 30 percent of progressive ones were.

This pretty much kills the IRS scandal

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 22:50:00 +0000

Remember the IRS scandal? How the tax agency improperly singled out Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny in a nefarious political vendetta against conservatives because the agency is either inherently liberal or was acting on orders from the Democratic President? Remember how it cost even Mitt Romney the election?

Well, as it turns out, that whole scandal is entirely bogus. False. A fiction. The entire notion that the agency singled out groups with "Tea Party" in their name in simply wrong, we learn today, thanks to new documents revealed by the Associated Press. The documents, and confirmation from officials, show the IRS targeted groups with other keywords in their names, including "Progressive” and “Occupy.”

Darrell Issa is terrible at his job

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:40:00 +0000

In case you lost track of the IRS scandal, here's where it's at right now: House Oversight Committee members are releasing dueling transcripts of witness testimony to the press. There is a big fight about it. It is maybe kind of boring.

Darrell Issa, Republican chairmain of the committee, has been selectively releasing snippets of testimony to the press, all of it designed to support his contention that the IRS targeting of conservative groups for additional scrutiny of their nonprofit status was a political maneuver ordered or somehow directed by the White House. There is literally no evidence for that claim and it's not true but Issa is sort of bad at his job in many important respects. Democratic ranking member Elijah Cummings asked Issa to please release full transcripts of witness testimony, but Issa refused, so Cummings just did so, with a full transcript of the committee's interview with an IRS employee who seems to have been the first one to flag a "Tea Party" group's application for tax-exempt status for further review.

Elijah Cummings outplays Darrell Issa

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:17:00 +0000

Elijah Cummings wastes no time.

Just hours after the vice chair of the House Oversight Committee threatened Chairman Darrell Issa with releasing House Oversight Committee interview transcripts that clear the White House of wrongdoing in the IRS mess on CNN, AP already has the story: “a self-described ‘conservative Republican’ has told investigators that no one at the White House directed the Internal Revenue Service to target tea party groups.”

The Maryland Democrat released a transcript Sunday of the committee investigators' interview with a manager of the IRS' Cincinnati office. The unidentified man told investigators that workers in that office instigated the reviews on their own, that he was unaware of a political motivation behind the extra scrutiny to conservative groups' applying for tax-exempt status, and that there was no evidence of any White House involvement.