500 Days

It has been 500 days since the IRS scandal broke. During that time, Barack Obama, his administration, the IRS itself, and the Democratic Party have done everything possible to: (1) stonewall every attempt by congressional investigators to learn who was behind the IRS attacks on groups of American citizens, (2) vilify those who are looking for the truth, (3) destroy evidence that is crucial to finding the perpetrators, (4) lie about those responsible (remember Cincinnati), and (5) mislead the American public about the danger associated with their effort to weaponize a government agency against their political opponents.

A corrupt and highly politicized Justice Department and its Attorney General have refused to do their job, half-heartedly investigating this major scandal. The IRS has the chutza to claim that serial disk crashes have destroyed email evidence—evidence that undoubtedly would have lead to the perpetrators in the Obama administration who coordinated the IRS's scandalous and illegal behavior. Obama's trained hamsters in the media have embarrassed themselves and their supposed profession by ignoring the story, not to mention conducted virtually no investigations of their own.

In a recent editorial, the Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch sums up nicely:

The IRS, which can seem to keep track of mortgage interest payments, mileage reimbursement allowances and tractor depreciation schedules for millions of American families and businesses, can’t seem to find its own archives with a flashlight.

First the agency lost whole troves of emails from disgraced former apparatchik Lois Lerner — emails that would have shed light on her role in the ongoing scandal over the targeting of conservative groups by the agency. Then, on a recent Friday afternoon (of course), the agency admitted it also could not find emails from several others connected to the scandal.

The disappearances are extremely convenient — especially because the IRS is being treated under a different standard than the one it uses to treats taxpayers. Lerner and others will face no serious legal consequences without hard evidence of guilt — evidence that has now vanished into the ether. But taxpayers who find themselves in a dispute with the IRS are presumed to be in the wrong until they can produce hard evidence to prove otherwise.

The IRS saga fits a disturbing pattern in which Democratic- and liberal-leaning authorities have abused ostensibly neutral laws and procedures to harass, intimidate and silence conservatives and Republicans. Other recent examples include the trumped-up charges against Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the gross misuse of campaign-finance laws to keep an independent conservative group in Wisconsin from exercising its First Amendment right to speak about politics.

It’s not unusual to see Third World autocrats perverting the machinery of the administrative state to criminalize differences of political viewpoint, then trying lamely to cover their tracks. Over the past six or so years the American public has seen a lot of that nefarious behavior as well. It’s a dismaying trend — and one that has to stop.

This "dismaying trend" would never stand if conservatives had targeted progressives in the same manner. The media would have provided 24-7 outrage, conducted in-depth investigations, and would have hounded the administration mercilessly. Hollywood would have 3 - 5 movies in the works; major publishers would be printing books on the scandal at a prodigious rate. Talk shows would be interviewing the aggrieved on a daily basis.

But none of that has happened.

Our government under Barack Obama continually acts like "Third World autocrats [who] pervert the machinery of the administrative state to criminalize differences of political viewpoint." In fact under the Obama administration, every decision, every action, every position is hyper-partisan and unremittingly political. The tragedy is that few have called his government on it.

500 days. And counting.

Called me naive, but I'm still hopeful that the truth will come out, and those responsible will pay a very heavy price.