“Phony scandal” or real cover-up?

Despite enormous efforts to keep them out of view, emails that have recently come to light reveal that former IRS official Lois Lerner was anything but neutral in her political beliefs as they pertained to the doing of her job.

You recall Lois Lerner. She was the person at the IRS in charge of the department that reviews applications for tax exempt status – a status that is routinely requested by charities, churches and grass roots political organizations on the left and the right. Ms. Lerner is the person at the center of what we now know to be IRS targeting of conservative and tea party groups during the run-up to the 2012 presidential election. She is the person who, when asked about that targeting, invoked her right to avoid self-incrimination under the fifth amendment. Lois Lerner is the person who suffered the fantastically timely failure of a computer hard drive that just happened to contain the very emails and communications pertinent to the investigations.

We know from these most recently divulged emails that Ms. Lerner despises conservatives. In those emails from 2012, Lerner describes conservatives as “crazies” and “a**holes.”

That Lois Lerner brought a very high level of political bias to her job is now beyond dispute. That she used her authority improperly and in violation of the law now seems certain.

When news of the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups first came to light in May of last year, President Obama expressed outrage. In a press conference at the time, the president said, “I have got no patience with it, I will not tolerate it, and we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.”

Yet since then, the entire episode has taken on the look, feel and smell of a cover-up. In direct opposition to the remarks he made at that press conference in May 2013, Obama said in an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday in February 2014 that there isn’t a “smidgen of corruption” at the IRS. He now characterizes all attempts by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to get to the bottom of the story as partisan and part of a “phony scandal.”

If the president believes that it’s a “phony scandal,” why then does he continue to resist appointing a special prosecutor who could prove him right?

Of all the agencies of our Leviathan government none is more frightening than the IRS. The IRS can empty your bank account, take away your home or put you in jail. Even if you ultimately prevail, an IRS investigation can be financially ruinous. Thus anything other than a politically neutral IRS is completely intolerable. If the IRS under a Democrat can target conservatives, the IRS under a Republican could target liberals.

The IRS must be put in its place and kept there by administrations of every stripe.

This “phony scandal” looks more real with each passing day. It’s time for the administration to appoint a special prosecutor and allow him or her to go wherever the evidence leads.