UP-FRONT POLITICS NUGGET!!
Our Ceaseless Circus (Frank Bruni) from the New York Times
Bruni's Best. Column. Ever. A lengthy excerpt is in order here.
"Four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya: people with unrealized hopes, unfinished plans, relatives who loved them and friends who will miss them. But let’s focus on what really matters about the attack and its aftermath. Did Hillary Clinton’s presumed 2016 presidential campaign take a hit? [...] Now we have a scandal at the Internal Revenue Service to factor in. And a scandal it is, in urgent need of a thorough investigation, which President Obama pledged at his news conference on Monday and which we’re very much owed. But before we get a full account, let’s by all means pivot to the possible political fallout, politics being all that seems to matter these days. [...] It never gets better and may in fact be getting worse: the translation of all of the news and of all of Washington’s responses into a ledger of electoral pluses and minuses, a graph of rising and falling political fortunes, a narrative of competition between not just the parties but the would-be potentates within a party. On issue after issue, the sideshow swallows the substance, as politicians and the seemingly infinite ranks of political handlers join us journalists in gaming everything out, ad infinitum."
IRS Acted Alone In Developing Targeting Criteria For Conservative Groups: Report from the Huffington Post
"The IRS' Friday admission that it disproportionately scrutinized groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status has led some politicians to lay the blame on the Obama administration. However, a report in the Wall Street Journal Sunday said that a forthcoming Treasury Department inspector general report would show that no one outside IRS developed the criteria."
IRS Audits, Benghazi, Sebelius: Obama’s Second Term Is Scandal Heaven (Eleanor Clift) from the Daily Beast
"IRS Tea Party audits, Benghazi, oh my! The events unfolding in Washington may have journalists seeing blood in the water, but Obama’s second-term scandals are no Watergate, John Dean tells Eleanor Clift."
IRS Tactics Sully Legitimate Hunt for Fraudulent Nonprofits (Brian Dickson) from the Detroit Free Press
This columnist cuts to the chase as to what was probably going on at the IRS.
"It’s undisputed that a significant number of groups organized in the name of “tax fairness” or “defending the Second Amendment” have put their tax-exempt status in jeopardy by campaigning energetically for conservative candidates in Republican primary elections. Besides avoiding taxes, masquerading as a tax-exempt 501(c)4 organization such organizations to conceal the identity of donors seeking to promote candidates anonymously."
Here's the catch 22. Name me the Tea Party group that was not campaigning energetically for Republican candidates. Moreover, as Rachel Maddow and others have argued, many Tea Party groups were supported directly or indirectly by the GOP or conservative super-PACs. All of these aspects should make these groups ineligible for tax-exempt status and were thus appropriate targets for IRS scrutiny. The "political bias" of the IRS stems from the problem that there was no explosion of left-leaning organizations in 2010 and later that sent up as many red flags as these Tea Party groups. Botton line: in 2010 and 2011 there was a dramatic spike in the number of right-wing groups filing for tax exempt status whose claims to that status were highly problematic. There was no corresponding spike of left-wing groups. Oddly, as this NYTimes piece seems to indicate, the IRS seems to have rubber stamped the tax exempt status of the largest right-wing PACs and organizations that emerged in 2010 and 2011. Given all this, good luck to the IRS folks who will need to explain this to hostile Congressional interrogators. They will NEED IT.
IRS Scandal’s Central Figure, Lois Lerner, Described as ‘Apolitical’ (Caitlin Dickson) from the Daily Beast
"Lois Lerner is in the eye of the IRS-Tea Party firestorm. Caitlin Dickson reports on the ‘apolitical’ director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division—and whether she could have averted the scandal."
Breathless Over Benghazi: Republicans Can't Help Overplaying their Hand (David Horsey) from the Baltimore Sun
"The latest round of House hearings about the Benghazi incident provides a perfect example of how American politics has been warped and gummed up by bombastic, partisan extremism. A cool, methodical inquiry could well uncover serious mistakes and provide remedies so that future incidents can be thwarted before more American diplomats are killed in the line of duty. But the current generation of Republican lawmakers does not know how to do cool. Hot rhetoric more suited to a Glenn Beck tirade seems to be the only way they know how to communicate. [...] It is a fever dream for Republicans to think they can bring down President Obama with this pipsqueak of a scandal."
Benghazi Investigation Does Not Reignite Broad Public Interest: Reactions Split Along Partisan Lines from the Pew Research Center
"The public paid limited attention to last week’s congressional hearings on Benghazi. Fewer than half (44%) of Americans say they are following the hearings very or fairly closely, virtually unchanged from late January when Hillary Clinton testified."
White House: 'No Knowledge' of AP Phone Record Seizure (Justin Sink) from The Hill
"The White House on Monday distanced President Obama from the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press telephone records. “Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. Carney said the White House had no involvement in the Justice effort."
"No knowledge" is a pretty cut-and-dried statement -- and for Obama's sake, he and his people (re: AG Eric Holder at the DOJ) better be able to stand by that statement given the heat that is coming their way.
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