Summary: The IRS, in its zeal to block the legal political activity of conservative groups, has still not come clean. The agency is out of control, and needs serious reform, and ought to be shuttered, its services provided in some other way. IRS officials are still trying to claim that the targeting of 292 Tea Party groups is nothing special because the IRS also turned its icy gaze on 6 progressive groups. It isn't clear that any of the progressive or liberal groups actually received any heightened scrutiny. Items of interest:IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when she pleaded her innocence before trying to invoking it. Another Senior IRS manager, Greg Roseman, did invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than testify to a House committee. The Linchpins of Liberty provide a detailed account of questions the IRS asked themPublic interest lawyer Cleta Mitchell noted that as of mid-May, the IRS was still harassing conservative groups. Now the second wave of IRS testimony has shown contradictions. Someone is lying. As GatewayPundit put it, Instead of condemning this practice, Tucker misrepresented the truth. She told the committee several different groups were targeted. This was not true. The Inspector General report in May confirmed that the agency was inappropriately targeting “conservative” groups. The IRS list allowed “progressive” groups to be approved on the spot while agents were told to send conservative applications to Washington DC. According to McClatchy News Service, Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration J. Russell George wrote to Congress that liberal groups were not subjected to the same kinds of inappropriate IRS treatment as conservatives: George added that while “we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, emails, and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘Progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention.” According to Gallup, most Americans think it was all political, or at least knowledge of the operation went well up the organizational chart: The coverup shows the crime. With the IRS playing such a key role in implementing nationalized medicine, the nation deserves answers. Ideally, the whole agency should be abolished.
