Posted on 06/18/2014 10:20:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy."
That's the opening sentence of the Associated Press story on the IRS's claim that it lost an unknown number of emails over two years relating to the agency's alleged targeting of political groups hostile to the president.
But note how the AP casts the story: The investigators -- Republican lawmakers -- are outraged.
Is it really so hard to imagine that if this were a Republican administration, the story wouldn't be the frustration of partisan critics of the president? It would be all about that administration's behavior. With the exception of National Journal's Ron Fournier, who called for a special prosecutor to bypass the White House's "stonewalling," and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, it's hard to find a non-conservative journalist who thinks this is a big deal.
Let's back up for a moment. In 2013, IRS official Lois Lerner planted a question from an audience member at an American Bar Association meeting. She used her answer to apologize for -- and favorably spin -- the agency's actions, and then later claimed that the apology came as an unprompted response to a question.
Lerner laid the blame for the inappropriate targeting of tea party and other groups to a few low-level bureaucrats in Cincinnati. That was a lie. Senior officials in the IRS knew and helped to coordinate the effort. She said she only heard about the problem when tea party groups protested. The targeting, in fact, had already been under internal and external investigation.
In short, Lerner worked hard at denying her agency's tactics on applications for nonprofit status from groups deemed to be hostile to the president's agenda. According to IRS officials' congressional testimony, agents were told to "be on the lookout" for groups that "criticized how the government is being run." Lerner even joked to colleagues that she should get a job at Obama's activist group Organizing for Action.
President Obama insists he didn't know about any of this until he was briefed on it the way he's briefed on so many issues: from news reports. Nevertheless, we've since learned that White House officials were aware earlier.
Lerner, who was forced to resign, took the Fifth Amendment rather than clear the air.
In the June issue of Commentary, Noah Rothman notes that the mainstream media initially treated the IRS story as a very big deal. ABC's Terry Moran dubbed it a "truly Nixonian abuse of power by the Obama administration." But as Rothman notes, the media were just as quick to buy the story that this was a minor bureaucratic screw-up being whipped up into what the president called yet another "phony scandal."
More recently, Obama proclaimed there was not even a "smidgen" of corruption at the IRS, despite the fact his administration's own investigations are still underway. Obama's assurance seemed good enough for most of the media.
This is one of the great public relations turnaround stories of all time. Liberal groups successfully spun the incident as a well-intentioned mistake by a government agency trying to deal with a deluge of new applications from right-wing crazies let loose by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The "real" story was -- again -- Republican overreach.
Never mind that there was no evidence for such an "uptick" in applications -- Lerner's word. Indeed, evidence suggests that Lerner went looking for that evidence as an excuse for abuses she had already undertaken.
So now the IRS claims that a computer crash has irrevocably erased pertinent emails (an excuse I will remember when I am audited). National Review's John Fund reports that the IRS manual says backups must exist. If emails -- which exist on servers, clouds and elsewhere -- can be destroyed this way, someone should tell the NSA that there's a cheaper way to encrypt data.
The storied City News Bureau of Chicago famously lived by the motto "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." The bureau closed down several years ago. Perhaps that kind of skepticism died with it.
NOTHING HAS CHANGED WITH THESE CRIMINALS!
Wrong party is in charge, ergo, no outrage...............
‘Outrage’?
Hmmm...looks like it’s all used up! None left!
Where’s the outrage over anything happening in this country from anyone at all?
This is a nation of sleeping sheep.
Most capable of critical thought noticed their outrage alarms shorted out, melted down and wore out long ago.
Most understand government at all levels have betrayed the American people...
Only those drooling in cups and or those in on this big gov con-job failed to notice or would disagree.
Oh, there’s plenty of outrage out here and there’s plenty of trepidation in the news media over what has happened to their Golden Boy.
So much trepidation that the wagon circle has been updated with asbestos in place of the canvas covers of old. None of those Tea Party flaming arrows will be allowed to penetrate the veil of silence they so assiduously maintain.
They know that Holder wont appoint any special prosecutor for anything that will lower the protection of any of those wagons his friends in the leftist media maintain.
I can assure you, no one is more outraged than the President of the United States.
The MSM creates these things, and the MSM can ignore them too. It's just like putting a penny behind a fuse in a fusebox.
The outrage is coming from the Miami Heat losing to the San Antonio Spurs.
Ya know, priorities.
The ordinary slob has lost the ability to be outraged when they should be outraged. Their moral sense is distorted.
This is helped along by a media which deliberately and intentionally suppresses news of crimes by their favorite party, and hypes wrongdoing by normal people.
How long are we going to continue funding the corrupt media formerly known as MSM?
I want an honest debate.
I truly get tired of saying, “if this were a republican...”.
In this case, though, having lived through the Nixon years and the Iran Contra affair, it is absolutely applicable. It is an obvious double standard for anyone with the half brain it takes to know these things.
That off my chest, most of the American people don’t care when we say, “if this were a republican.” They don’t listen. It doesn’t get through the media blackout, and if they hear or read it elsewhere, they don’t know history, they’re low info voters, or they are doltish no-nothings.
Just waiting for the “go” signal, I guess...
The political system has failed to secure freedom.
“The outrage is coming from the Miami Heat losing to the San Antonio Spurs.
Ya know, priorities.”
With both political parties aligning against the people, and the media doing all it can to support expanded government, I’ve given up.
I have decided to make a sport of watching Americans lose their freedom. I am hoping that if it happens that Americans figure out what they lost, I’m around to see it.
(1. The IRS Scandal
(2. The lack of coverage of the IRS Scandal
(3. The lack of coverage of the lack of coverage of the IRS Scandal.
The fox is never outraged that the chicken coop was left open
And no one is asking the chickens for their opinion
There is only outrage when a Republican is in charge. To the left, their kind can do no wrong.
I’ve come to understand that leftists are totally unashamed of their hypocrisy. They have no character or principles. All they care about is power to impose their will on others.
Yeah, what you said.
Problem is, a slight majority of the voting population has only half a brain and gets along just fine, thanks to “the safety net.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said “slight.”
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