James Taranto puts a solid full-nelson on most of the Democrats’ rationalizations for the IRS scandal.  You should read the whole thing.

Money quote:

In his testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee–whose hearings opened 40 years ago today–John Dean famously called that scandal “a cancer on the presidency.” If Obama, his campaign or his White House aides are directly implicated in the IRS’s abuses, this will be another cancer on the presidency, remediable by resignation or impeachment.

But if the IRS acted without direction from above–if it “went rogue” against the Constitution and in support of the party in power–then we are dealing with a cancer on the federal government. That, it seems to us, is a far direr diagnosis, one whose treatment is likely to be radical and risky.

Corrupt President, or corrupt entire government?

Such choices.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The White House wants us to believe that dozens of IRS career bureaucrats spontaneously and simultaneously lost their minds and decided to start breaking the law to persecute Conservatives, with no direction from above, no warning to anyone in authority and no way to stop them.

That’s ridiculous. It wasn’t sudden at all, it’s been going on for ages.

Why wouldn’t this lie work? The same standard of BS has worked for years with the complicity of the liberal main stream media. Until the AP email story broke, it was working.

Joe Doakes

Until the media finds itself under attack, there’s really no crime the AP and the rest of the Praetorian Guard won’t sweep under the rug.

In a related matter:  is this circumstantial evidence of administration knowledge?  (Empasis is added)

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

From administrator of a bureaucratic unit that took care of tax-exempt applications to head of the biggest and most politically-linked part of the IRS, a part slated for massive expansion…

…a coincidence?

Hey, could be.

The MNDFL, as part of their languid dawdling in social issues this past session, introduced two deeply controversial sets of bills.

One was the raft of gun grab legislation that came out at the top of the session – everything from magazine restrictions and confiscations to background checks.  As we chronicled in this space, the bills spawned an epic turnout of opponents, and the re-mobilization of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance.  Notwithstanding this, and overwhelming disapproval in public feedback, the DFL kept on pressing to try to squeedge one form of stupid, crime-non-affecting gun grab or another through the legislature, until the effort finally petered out (with a bill that expanded the state’s data reporting, which the NRA and GOCRA favored all along, and which may actually have a useful effect on crime, and which the local leftymedia is treating as a non-event, since they wanted confiscations, dammit).

Another?  The daycare/Personal Care Assistant (PCA) union jamdown.  Even though opposition among the public and especially among the subjects of the forced unionization opposed the bill by cataclysmic margins, the DFL jammed the bills through, and the jamdown looks likely to become law – raising daycare costs and crimping availability in a market that’s already among the tightest and most expensive in the country.

Both of the bills were deeply stupid.  Both encountered massive public resistance.

One ended in a humiliating defeat for the Metro DFL.  The other was an embarassment, but looks likely, barring a miracle, to become law.

What’s the difference?

No major DFL donors are going to be getting millions and millions of dollars from gun grabs.

It’s becoming clear that the Obama Administration is using government agencies as political cudgels.

Although the Sorosphere has been strenuously chanting that the IRS scandal is no big thing, the “acting director” became the first scapegoat of the “non-scandal” yesterday.  And it looks like there just might be a gap in the “two rogue employees” dodge; according to a Cincinnati TV station, it may be four employees.  And (with emphasis added)…:

One of FOX19’s two sources went on say that these four IRS workers claim “they simply did what their bosses ordered.” FOX19 reported on Tuesday that the report by the Office of Inspector General states that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011.

In fact, according to that report, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, was told on June 29, 2011 that groups with ‘Tea Party’, ‘Patriot’ or ‘9/12 Project’ in their names were being flagged for additional, and often burdensome, scrutiny.

At least one local group, the Minnesota Majority, is reporting that it’s received the same treatment that other Tea Party related groups complained about .

More on that hopefully this weekend.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the the main legacy of the Obama Administration was the turning of the Federal Government into a racket to put some meat into the Democrats’ Alinskiite campaign to destroy the right?

OK, “Irony” isn’t the world I’m looking for.

How about “No Surprise At All?”

The GOP minority in the Senate managed to filibuster the daycare union jamdown last night – as in “up until 7AM”.

It wasn’t a “filibuster”, per se – the GOP added over 80 amendments to the jamdown, and debated them vigorously.  As of sixish AM, they’d gotten through a couple dozen, with dozens to go, and Tom Bakk tabled the  bill.  There are other things to get done.

Like maybe a budget.

The jamdown may come back.  But so will the amendments.

Cross your fingers, and stay tuned.  The good guys may pull this one off.

Anyone who believes that the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups was – as pointed out in the emphasized bit below…:

IRS officials said last week that the focused review of conservative groups was initiated by lower-level civil servants in the IRS Cincinnati office, not by political appointees in Washington, and that it wasn’t politically motivated. They say it stemmed from a misguided effort to centralize review of a growing number of applications for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status.

They want us to believe, to paraphrase Fred Thompson in “Hunt for Red October”, that “low-level civil servants take a dump without direction from above?”

Show of hands for anyone that’s buying it.

There is a lesser included question in this flap; the country is flooded with 501(c)4 non-profits.

Tax-exempt social-welfare groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code are allowed to engage in some political activity, but the primary focus of their efforts must remain promoting social welfare. That social-welfare activity can include lobbying and advocating for issues and legislation, but not outright political-campaign activity. But some of the rules leave room for IRS officials to make judgment calls and probe individual groups for further information.

Organizing as such a group is desirable, not just because such entities typically don’t have to pay taxes, but also because they generally don’t have to identify their donors.

So while conservatives (especially in Minnesota) have tried for years to work through their traditional party functions, done entirely under the scrutiny of Democrat-controlled “Campaign Finance” boards, subject to endless niggling politically-motivated investigations and enforcement actions…

…while the Democrats, especially the MNDFL, have funneled more and more of their money through 501(c)4s, which are regulated – but regulated in such a way as groups like the League of Women Voters get to operate as a de facto liberal PAC while, as we’ve seen, conservative groups come in for extra political scrutiny.

At the hands of “low-level employees”, naturally.