National Public Radio briefly reported that when the president was asked a
question concerning “reports that the IRS targeted organizations that
identified themselves as ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot groups and gave their
applications for tax-exempt status extra reviews, Obama said:
"’This is
pretty straightforward. ... If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of
practices that have been reported ... and were intentionally targeting
conservative groups, then that's outrageous and there's no place for it.’ Those
responsible, he said, will ‘be held fully accountable.’”
Mr. Obama was asked about the audits during a press
conference that featured British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president’s
initial response, the promise of a severe dressing down of the IRS, passed
muster with the increasing band of journalists who thought Mr. Obama’s handing
of the Benghazi assault was seriously deficient. Even Fox News, unrelenting on
Benghazi, slathered the president with commendations. Brit Hume of Fox News
generously allowed the president’s initial response was the right one.
An explanation offered by IRS tax-exempt chief Lois Lerner quickly came under fire. Ms. Lerner
attributed the possible “outrageous” conduct to “line people” in Cincinnati,
Ohio who had “used names like Tea Party or Patriots” as criteria for selecting tax-exempt
applications for further scrutiny.
Chairman of Americans for Limited Government Howard Rich noted in a
piece written for Forbes Magazine that Ms. Lerner pointedly did not mention
that “the IRS’ Cincinnati office is the central location for all tax-exempt
application evaluations – meaning the discrimination that took place there
“wasn’t an isolated, dumb incident by some random field office,” as The
Washington Post concisely noted. In other words this was no error: It was
official policy – which directly contradicts testimony previously provided by
the agency’s leadership to Congressional investigators.”
A Reuters report noted, “When tax agents started singling
out non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in 2010, they looked at first only for
key words such as 'Tea Party,' but later they focused on criticisms by groups
of ‘how the country is being run’ … At
one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on
making ‘America a better place to live.”
Other IRS search terms included: “Government spending”, “Government debt, or taxes.” On Jan, 25, 2012, the
criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to "political action type
organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the
Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,’ according to an advance copy of a report done by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
(TIGTA), which notes that agency leadership was made aware of the
discrimination nearly two years ago, who said nothing – and clearly had no
plans to alert the public to what had happened.
On ABC This Week,
columnist George Will remarked that
the country had just celebrated – if that is the proper word – the 40th
anniversary of the Watergate summer and read from then President Richard Nixon
impeachment records: “He has, acting personally and through his
subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue
Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential
information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law,
and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax
audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a
discriminatory manner.”
Finally, shortly
after the possible “outrageous” conduct of the IRS towards the much maligned
Tea Party groups knocked the Obama administration on its noggin, a third shoe
fell. The Justice Department, led by Fast and Furious Eric Holder, had
wiretapped the phone lines of more than a hundred Associated Press reporters in
an attempt to uncover the source of a leak of top secret information. Mr.
Holder, who had recused himself from investigating the event, explained in a press
conference that the taps were justified because of the nature of the leak.
This is not theway to gain friends and influence reporters among the national media. To judge
from subsequent media availabilities in which presidential spokesman Jay Carney
was relentlessly grilled, some worm had turned in the breast of reporters, and
the Obama administration, which tends to treat words as incantations that
magically alter objective reality, was playing hardball defense.
Comments