The IRS Scandal has its roots in DC. It’s not local to Cincinnati, it’s not non-partisan, and President Obama is not isolated from it:

Ms. Hofacre of the Cincinnati office testified that when she was given tea-party applications, she had to kick them upstairs. When she was given non-tea-party applications, they were sent on for normal treatment. Was she told to send liberal or progressive groups for special scrutiny? No, she did not scrutinize the applications of liberal or progressive groups. “I would send those to general inventory.” Who got extra scrutiny? “They were all tea-party and patriot cases.” She became “very frustrated” by the “micromanagement” from Washington. “It was like working in lost luggage.” She applied to be transferred.

For his part, [IRS lifer and tax exemption expert Carter] Hull backed up what he’d told House investigators. He described what was, essentially, a big, lengthy runaround in the Washington office in which no one was clear as to their reasons but everything was delayed. The multitiered scrutiny of the targeted groups was, he said, “unusual.”

This goes all the way to Obama-appointed officials; it’s absurd to think that the President’s inner circle wasn’t intimately involved in the persecution of dissent.

The Administration is running the Clinton-era play, the one they always run when they’re up against it; Delay, Deny, Destroy. 

Maryland Rep. Cummings is doing the Deny part, and doing it absurdly badly:

It was Maryland’s Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel’s ranking Democrat, who, absurdly, asked Ms. Hofacre if the White House called the Cincinnati office to tell them what to do and whether she has knowledge of the president of the United States digging through the tax returns of citizens. Ms. Hofacre looked surprised. No, she replied.

It wasn’t hard to imagine her thought bubble: Do congressmen think presidents call people like me and say, “Don’t forget to harass my enemies”? Are congressmen that stupid?

Mr. Cummings is not, and his seeming desperation is telling. Recent congressional information leads to Washington—and now to very high up at the IRS. Meaning this is the point at which a scandal goes nowhere or, maybe, everywhere.

By Cummings’ logic, Nixon was innocent because he didn’t jimmy the door at the Democrat office at Watergate.