It would be easier, Truthseekers, to find the outrage in the twin IRS and AP "scandals" if the very same Neocons had never justified the Bush Crime Family's illegal snooping over and over again.
How many times did the Rapture Righties dismiss the concern of civil libertarians over the Patriot Act abuses by saying "if you've got nothing to hide, why worry?" Or poo-poo the violations of privacy by illegal wire taps with the oxymoronic mantra -- "freedom isn't free?"
It makes them seem a little silly now to pull their hair and flail about in front of the Fox "News" cameras, ranting about how the Obama administration has violated the privacy of reporters (they love reporters now??) or that the IRS has unfairly examined Tea Party activities.
And then they have another problem -- there was, in fact, no true misconduct by the IRS in the first place. Our good friend Brad Friedman has once again conducted exhaustive research into the IRS issue and actually read the entire Treasury Department Inspector General's report...
"As is so often the case, the Henny Penny's are screeching "the sky is falling" over nothing at all:
"After having slogged through the full IG's report, I'm not sure what 'misconduct' the President is actually referring to. That word would seem to imply that someone at the IRS was purposely or criminally misbehaving. They may have been, and further investigation may uncover such behavior, but if there was purposeful or criminal misconduct by anyone in the office, the IG's report doesn't seem to offer any actual evidence of it.
"The IG's report offers evidence of much confusion, poor training, unclear directives and what seems to be pretty lousy, or, at least, extremely ineffective management at the department of the IRS tasked with approving or rejecting tax-exempt status for 501(c)(3) 'charitable groups' and 501(c)(4) 'social welfare organizations.' Members of Congress, as well as government watchdog groups have long argued that many of those tax-payer subsidized organizations have abused the privilege and violated the legal restrictions on political activity by such groups. The abuse has been particularly widespread, they argue, in the wake of the Citizens United decision and the flood of largely unrestricted, often completely anonymous money funneled to those types of groups for often purely-political purposes."
Facts are pesky little things, aren't they? Visit http://www.bradblog.com and read the entire report, then listen LIVE at 9PM ET for more on the little scandal that couldn't.
