A User’s Guide To The White House Scandals

Forget the “birthers,” his Muslim background and training as a secret socialist spy. A set of more serious inquiries have hit the White House in force.

Via: Larry Downing / Reuters

WASHINGTON — The IRS, Benghazi, Marines holding umbrellas … it's gotten to the point that even seasoned political reporters are having trouble keeping track of the various scandals, allegations, and investigations dogging President Barack Obama's administration these days.

This isn't Obama's first term, when the biggest "scandals" emerged from the fringiest reaches of the political world and related to absurd questions about his birth certificate or whether he and the first lady were engaging in some sort of secret terrorist handshake.

Now, the administration is facing fundamental questions about it's treatment of political opponents and the press, whether it has engaged in inappropriate or even illegal killings of American citizens abroad.

IRS

IRS

Via: Susan Walsh, File / AP

Conservative activists on the talk radio circuit had complained for years of unfair scrutiny from the tax enforcement agency, but the IRS scandal exploded last month when a draft Inspector Generals report came out, revealing a concerted effort by officials to scrutinize organizations with words like "Tea Party" and "patriot" in their names.

The rules governing political activities by tax exempt organizations are, at best fuzzy, and the IRS has never had much of a hard and fast definition of when a group may cross the line.

The IRS has also never had a particularly great track record of enforcing the rules, which made the fact that the service targeted groups opposed to Obama and his progressive ideals in general all the more noteworthy.

The administration has thus far struggled to put the scandal to bed: they initially argued it was the work of a handful of over worked employees in the IRS' Cincinnati office; then, when it became clear more senior officials knew of the targeting, the White House sacked the IRS' acting director.

Over the last several days White House supporters have pointed out that a number of the groups targeted were, indeed, engaging in significant amounts of political activity — something that would reasonably trigger scrutiny.

Although that argument doesn't necessarily exonerate the IRS for targeting groups based on ideology, it at least gave backers of the administration a leg to stand on. Unfortunately on Wednesday NBC News reported that high level officials at the IRS had also requested information on Tea Party groups in particular.

On Wednesday, Tea Party activists filed suit against the IRS, while Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday called for a special prosecutor to be designated to launch an independent investigation.

Congress has already held several hearings into the scandal, and Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrel Issa will likely try to force Lois Lerner, director of Exempt Organizations, to testify before his committee next month. Lerner exercised her right to remain silent during a hearing earlier this month, but not before asserting her innocence, a decision that Issa and Republicans insist means she actually ceded her right to not incriminate herself.

There are few things people hate more than the IRS, and for Republicans the scandal has provided proof that Big Government is, in fact, out to get them. That's a potent cocktail in any situation, and plays perfectly into the over arching complaint that Obama has created an atmosphere in Washington in which opponents are harshly punished.

With Democrats aggressively piling on the IRS, the central questions remain exactly who directed the scrutiny of conservative groups, and why.


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