AP Scandal

On the AP scandal, this is a difficult issue. It is pretty well known among intelligence services around the world that you should never share any intelligence with the US that you would prefer to keep secret. Naturally, this hampers national security. Consequently, the DoJ did have a good reason for investigating that leak. At the time of the leak a year ago, the Republicans were OUTRAGED at the leak and demanded the perpetrator be caught. This led to the DoJ investigation. Earlier, the Congress had tried to pass a "shield law" for journalists so that their records couldn't be subject to a subpoena but this law was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate.

So, to summarize, the Republicans refused to grant journalists immunity, and then demanded an investigation and now the AP has been investigated, they are OUTRAGED. I think if the Republicans would stop all this mock outrage and stop being so hypocritical, I might be able to share some of their anger.

The IRS Scandal

This IRS "scandal" is,indeed, rather scandalous. The IRS was totally wrong to single out the Tea Party groups on the basis of their names. However, 501C(4) are given tax exempt status only if they are "social welfare" groups but primarily political groups are expressly forbidden. Let's first remember that NONE of these groups was denied tax exempt status. And THAT is where the scandal lies. All political groups, including liberal political groups, should have been scrutinized due to their political nature and all of the political groups should have been denied.

This is all a result of the corrupt Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. As these groups proliferated, it overloaded the IRS offices and so they looked for "short cuts" to identify potential abuse. But let me repeat, they were wrong to audit only Conservative groups, but they were equally wrong to grant any of then tax exempt status. As far as I can tell, Karl Rove'r group AND Obama's OFA should also have been denied tax exempt status.