“…Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln…”

The IRS Scandal has been dragging on for a solid year now.

Democrats chant in near-unison “It’s just low-level employees!  You have no evidence that it’s tied to the White House!”

Which brings up two additional questions.

Gone Rogue: Let’s say that the Democrats are right – that suppressing conservative activist groups (who, without tax exempt status, have their First Amendment rights hobbled by campaign finance laws) is entirely a product of low-ranking IRS officials exercising their own, peculiar, organic biases. 

That’s the good news? That the IRS is intrinsically politicized and doesn’t need orders from above to play political favorites?  That it feels perfectly empowered to give de facto support to Democrats by harassing conservative organizations? 

Somehow that doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better.

Smokeless Powder:  When a cop or prosecutor says about some bit of government intrusion “If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be worried”, we all know we’re talking about a “public servant” who doesn’t really get what America is supposed to be about, and who needs to retire for everyone’s own good.

But I don’t extend that same courtesy to official institutions.  Bureaucracies – the DMV, the IRS, Congress, the Pentagon, even the President himself – answer (in theory) to us. 

The Administration has been stonewalling releasing details about their involvment, or lack of it, for a solid year now. 

If they have nothing to hide, they’re showing it in a pretty convoluted way.  Either they think they can blow this up into a Clinton-Impeachment-style backfire, or…they’re hiding something.

I suggest “both”.