Blogger Paul Caron, dean of Pepperdine Law School, still counts the days since we learned that the IRS was blocking applications for nonprofit status from right-leaning groups at the behest of former IRS honcho Lois Lerner.
Now years later, the agency can still arbitrarily victimize any one of us. Nor have Lerner and other bad guys been brought to justice. Lerner collects a six-figure pension, instead.
And so, on Day 1699, Caron highlighted Kimberly Strassel’s proposal that President Trump make 2018 “the year of civil-service reform — a root-and-branch overhaul of the government itself. Call it Operation Drain the Swamp.” Exhibit A? The IRS and civil “servants” like “Lois Lerner, the IRS official who used her powers to silence conservative nonprofits.”
And on Day 1709, Caron called our attention to Lerner’s attempt to suppress a deposition she gave in June “for a civil suit that victims [of IRS targeting] brought in 2013.” Lerner thinks we have no right to know why she felt justified in discriminating against applicants for tax-exempt status based on their political viewpoint.
Unfortunately, not everyone cares about justice as much as Caron.
Consider an obtuse Washington Post editorial pretending that the IRS didn’t really target conservative groups. Instead, “conservative groups, their allies in Congress and the IRS itself all bear responsibility” for the appearance otherwise.
And the aftermath.
Uh huh. If only victims of the abuse of power would stop being so indelicate as to object!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Still at Large”
The targeted groups were political and were not exempt groups.
Yes, this is what’s always bothered me about the whole mess. The exempt status the groups were applying for meant that they could not engage in political activity. So: Did Lerner single out conservative groups because of her own prejudices or did she do it because conservative groups were more likely than liberal ones to make fraudulent applications? Either explanation makes sense.
If it was all so very innocent, according to the extensive rewrite of the affair by Messrs. JATR4 and Doug H, why did Lerner repeatedly take the Fifth?