IRS Scandal is 1000 days old

Cartoon credit: teachufr.org

A few days ago, Glenn Reynolds (Mr. Instapundit) published a column in USA Today about the IRS scandal and Tea Party groups:

Last week saw the passage of a grim milestone in government corruption: Pepperdine University Law Professor Paul Caron’s TaxProf blog marked the 1000th day of the scandal involving the IRS’s deliberate political targeting of conservative “Tea Party” groups. 

. . .

But what happened in the IRS scandal wasn’t a case of bureaucrats slow-walking ideas they think are dumb. It was, instead, a case of bureaucrats targeting people because of their political views.

Ohio Tea Party activist Justin Binik-Thomas noticed in 2012 that the IRS was asking Tea Party organizations if they knew him. The IRS denied that it was targeting people based on their political views, then admitted that it was doing so but blamed low-level employees in the Cincinnati office.

Then it turned out that, as the Treasury Inspector General found, there was much more going on. The next day, the acting IRS commissioner resigned.

There was much talk about accountability, even from President Obama, but, in the end, we got something that looked more like a whitewash. 

As Caron wrote:

"On May 22, 2013, the IRS director (of exempt organizations) asserted her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to testify before a House committee. She was placed on administrative leave. The following month, it was revealed that she received a $42,000 bonus. She retired in September.

"On Jan. 9, 2014, it was revealed that the Department of Justice attorney leading the investigation was a donor to the president's campaigns. A week later, the Justice Department revealed it would not bring any criminal charges. Attorneys for many of the targeted political groups complained that they had never been contacted in the investigation.

"On Feb. 2, 2014, the president stated in a televised interview before the Super Bowl that although there 'were some bone-headed decisions out of a local (IRS) office ... (there was) not even a smidgen of corruption.'

"On May 7, 2014, the House voted 231-187 to hold the former IRS director in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate in its investigation (six members of the president's party voted with the majority). The House also voted 250-168 to request the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate (26 members of the president's party voted with the majority)."

Of course, nothing happened. Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the U.S. Attorney was using "prosecutorial discretion.” That discretion protected [former IRS director Lois] Lerner from the grand jury.

Read the rest here. 

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Eric Holder: buh-bye

Tea Party Patriots’Jenny Beth Martin offered these comments on the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder:

He will go down in history as the nation’s most corrupt attorney general. Americans must never forget that the blood of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is on his hands. Eric Holder’s illegal scheme to put guns in the hands of the Mexican cartels led to that brave patriot’s death. He became the first attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress, which is fitting, given his utter and open contempt for the American people and the Constitution.

He began his tenure by dismissing the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, and he slithers out of office having played defense for Lois Lerner by his refusal to appoint a special prosecutor. He is a disgrace to that honorable office.

As one chapter ends in the Obama Administration’s war on the Constitution, Americans must remain engaged and vigilant. There’s no doubt the President will try to ram through a lame-duck Senate another partisan hack for Attorney General. We cannot allow that to happen.

Over at PJ Media,Roger L. Simon had this to say:

he was a political bagman, a low rent consigliere whose  unquestioning obedience to power was evidently appreciated by Barack Obama and rewarded with the full position of attorney general. Obama knew what he was getting for our number one law enforcement official.  With that background, no wonder Holder investigates nothing, leaving “Fast & Furious,” the IRS, Benghazi, all the scandals, untouched, stonewalled or deliberately obfuscated.  He was chosen to be a “Good German” and he was one.  He spent most of his time inveighing against what he perceived to be racial injustice.

Now I have a theory about the etiology of Holder’s fixation on race. When you know deep down you’re a dishonest person, when you have had to eat the bitter pill of your own corruption who knows how many times (even Clinton finally admitted that he had gone too far pardoning Rich and damaged his own reputation), you have to invent a narrative for yourself to justify your activities.  So over may years Holder developed what I have called elsewhere a “nostalgia for racism.”  No matter that racism was diminishing in our culture, he had to keep racism alive, believe it was alive.  If racism were going away, he would no longer have a raison d’être, an excuse for his biased behavior, an excuse, as it turned out, to go beyond the law, act unilaterally and punish political enemies.

Toward this end, in a sense, Holder encouraged racism, as did Obama.  They are both slightly more polished versions of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Like Jackson and Sharpton, they act as if they care about the black man or woman in the street, but in actuality they just care about themselves.  The racial posturing is a form of moral narcissism that works to preserve racism, not to defeat it.

It’s not by accident black America is suffering under Obama/Holder.  At least subconsciously, it’s by design. . . .

 

Who will be the next AG? The WaPo reports that

Possible contenders include U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.; former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler; Tony West, the former associate attorney general who just stepped down; Loretta E. Lynch, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York; and Jenny Durkan, who is about to step down as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington state.

Perhaps I am not paying close enough attention, but I never heard of any of them. I doubt that the Obama administration would consider, oh, Kris Kobach.  

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