Smoking Gun.

Lerner e-mail acknowledges political agenda of IRS.

The Fox News moderator, Chris Wallace, quoted the report by the Republicans on Issa's committee, which said that Lerner "was keenly aware of acute political pressure to crack down on conservative-leaning organizations." Who put this pressure on Lerner?

ISSA: That's one of our questions. She says things like they put pressure. So e-mails indicate that there was pressure. We don't know whether it was the president shaking his fingers at the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court over Citizens United or whether it was...

WALLACE: During the State of the Union Address?

ISSA: During the State of the Union, where she felt the pressure. Only she can tell us where she thought that pressure was.

WALLACE: The report also cites a newly discovered e-mail from September 16th, 2010, in which Lerner discusses how to check whether groups seeking tax exempt status are engaged in improper political activity. This is an e-mail to other people in the IRS. And she says, quote, "We need to have a plan. We need to be caution so it isn't a per se political project." What do you think that e-mail shouts?

Shouts? Wallace leaned hard on that. And I put it in boldface. (That's me shouting.) I think it must mean that it was a political project and they were hard at work figuring out how to make it not look like what she knew it was. That's a smoking gun. Here's how Issa put it:

ISSA: It's a series of e-mails. And when you read them in context, what you realize is she's trying to walk back any kind of ability for someone to look at the record and say, aha, this was political targeting. And, yet, it clearly is political targeting.

Here's an idea!!!

Let's trust them with our medical information!!!

What could go wrong!

Lois Lerner illegally leaked tax information on conservative groups to the Fair Election Commission.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...such as critics of Obama suddenly being audited by the IRS.

On October 1 the Washington Times reported that Dr. Ben Carson revealed he had his first ever encounter with the IRS after he delivered a speech critical of public policy in front of Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast back in February. So far ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to report on this stunning revelation. In fact they’ve stopped reporting on the IRS scandal altogether.

It’s been 99 days since ABC last mentioned the IRS targeting scandal, way back on June 26. NBC hasn’t touched the story in 98 days and CBS last did an IRS story 70 days ago on July 24.

On Tuesday the Times’ Douglas Ernst relayed the following: “Dr. Ben S. Carson went years without ever having a run-in with the Internal Revenue Service. But his good fortune changed after his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in February, the former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon said Monday night at an event with business leaders and elected officials in Alabama.

“Alabama’s Yellow Hammer News tweeted Dr. Carson’s remarks from the annual Business Council of Alabama Chairman’s Dinner: ‘I had my first encounter with the IRS this year, unsurprisingly after the Prayer Breakfast.’”

On Thursday Dr. Carson elaborated on his run-in with the IRS as he told the Washington Times that: “I guess it could be a coincidence, but I never had been audited before and never really had any encounters with the IRS. But it certainly would make one suspicious because we know now the IRS has been used for political purposes and therefore actions like this come under suspicion.”

IRS followed Media Signals...

...according to James Taranto:

The Washington Post is credited with exposing the Watergate conspiracy and helping to bring down a corrupt presidency. Forty years later, the Post played a role in the corruption of the Internal Revenue Service, to the benefit of an incumbent president in a bitter and close re-election.

A staff memo released earlier this week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee provides an "interim update" on the investigation of the IRS scandal. A central finding: "Media attention caused the IRS to treat conservative-oriented tax-exempt applications differently" from liberal or progressive ones.

The memo presents no evidence that the White House directly ordered the IRS to crack down on political opponents. Instead, it is consistent with the theory, described here in May, that IRS personnel responded to "dog whistles" (in Peggy Noonan's metaphor) in public statements from the president and his supporters.

In a passage we've annotated with links, the memo describes the media "drumbeat" in early 2010, when the IRS first began turning its attention to the Tea Party:

Washington Post columnists accused Tea Party groups of "smolder[ing] with anger" [Colbert King] and practicing a brand of patriotism reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan [Courtland Milloy]. Another Post columnist opined in late March 2010 that Tea Party rhetoric "is calibrated not to inform but to incite" [Eugene Robinson]. In April 2010, Reuters tied the Tea Party movement to "America's season of rage and fear."

Contrary to initial claims that the Tea Party targeting was a product of rogue employees in the IRS's Cincinnati office, the Oversight Committee memo shows that as early as February 2010, Cincinnati employees were flagging Tea Party applications for Washington's attention, and their stated motive was media interest:

The potential for media attention continued to be a concern for IRS officials once Washington received additional sample cases in late March 2010. Upon receiving the cases in Washington, an IRS employee reviewing the application reiterated that "[t]he concern is potential for media attention." Around the same time that the Washington Post was running columns critical of the Tea Party, she added that "[t]he Tea Party movement is covered in the Post almost daily. I expect to see more applications."

"Other IRS employees also monitored news about conservative-leaning groups applying for tax exemption," according to the memo:

In March 2012, a line attorney in the IRS Chief Counsel's office circulated a New York Times editorial entitled "The I.R.S. Does Its Job" to three colleagues. The first sentence of the editorial read: "Taxpayers should be encouraged by complaints from Tea Party chapters applying for nonprofit tax status at being asked by the Internal Revenue Service to prove they are 'social welfare' organizations and not the political activities they so obviously are."

In May we faulted the Times for "cheering on the IRS" as it abused its power. Now we have confirmation that the IRS got the message.

The memo presents evidence that the IRS used an ideologically biased definition of what constitutes a "social welfare" organization, citing this testimony from a Cincinnati IRS employee (which we quote verbatim from the memo):

Normal (c)(4) cases we must develop the concept of social welfare, such as the community newspapers, or the poor, that types. These [Tea Party] organizations mostly concentrate their activities on the limiting government, limiting government role, or reducing government size, or paying less tax. I think it[']s different from the other social welfare organizations which are (c)(4).

The reference is to Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, which defines a type of nonprofit organization whose operations are tax-exempt but whose contributions are not.

The memo also notes striking similarities between President Obama's and Lois Lerner's rhetoric in the wake of Justice Anthony Kennedy's landmark January 2010 First Amendment ruling, Citizens United v. FEC. Here's Obama in an August 2010 speech:

Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. You don't know if it's a big oil company, or a big bank. You don't know if it's a insurance [sic] company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it's good for their bottom line, even if it's not good for the American people.

Note that Obama did not even attempt to conceal the partisan and ideological nature of his concern. His worry was about substance, not process--about "ads against Democratic candidates" and in support of industries he chose to demonize.

Now, here's Lerner in an October 2010 speech at Duke University:

What happened last year [sic; actually earlier the same year] was the Supreme Court--the law keeps getting chipped away in the federal election arena. The Supreme Court dealt a huge blow, overturning a 100-year-old precedent that said basically corporations couldn't give directly to political campaigns. And everyone is up in arms because they don't like it. The Federal Election Commission can't do anything about it. They want the IRS to fix the problem. The IRS laws are not set up to fix the problem. (c)(4)s can do straight political activity. They can go out and pay for an ad that says, "Vote for Joe Blow." That's something they can do as long as their primary activity is their (c)(4) activity, which is social welfare.

So everybody is screaming at us right now: "Fix it now before the election. Can't you see how much these people are spending?" I won't know until I look at their 990s next year whether they have done more than their primary activity as political or not. So I can't do anything right now.

Lerner's description of the Citizens United decision is grossly inaccurate. It did not overturn any century-old precedent, but a pair of more recent ones, the older of which, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, was decided in 1990. And it left standing the ban on corporate donations to federal campaigns. What it protects is independent speech about campaigns. These errors are telling, because they track closely with Obama's false description of Citizens United in his 2010 State of the Union address:

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests--including foreign corporations--to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.

Perhaps even more telling is Lerner's lament that "everybody is screaming at us right now." Not only did she hear the dog whistle, but she apparently was unable to identify it as emanating from a partisan source. Obama, congressional Democrats and the liberal media were the only voices Lerner was capable of hearing.

And:

 As we have argued before, Barack Obama's re-election deserves to be listed with an asterisk in the record books. He is the political equivalent of an athlete found to have used illicit performance-enhancing drugs. Whether he would have won in 2012 absent the IRS's political corruption is unknowable. We know only that he did win with the help of a corrupt IRS. And if indeed the election was stolen, many in the media were complicit in its theft.

IRS Scandal - Mens Rea

"Mens rea" means basically "guilty mind," and here is the evidence of Lois Lerner's mens rea:

Perhaps a quote from Lois Lerner might explain the necessity. Blogger Patrick Frey found this potent advice from the woman at the center of the targeting scandal from a November 2011 interview with Bloomberg Business Week http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-irs-takes-a-closer-look-at-colleges-11172011.html  that could explain quite a bit about the IRS’ motivations.

Lerner, interviewed at the time in regard to an investigation into not-for-profit colleges and universities, underscored the importance of aggressive interrogatories to discourage organizations from pursuing tax-exempt status. Business Week reported Lerner’s response: “Receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS, she says, is a ‘behavior changer.’”

Hey! Here's a great idea! 

Why don't we turn over our medical information to the same people who targeted people for their religious and political beliefs and gave away confidential information to their political opponents.

What could go wrong?

"House committee looks into IRS seizure of 60 million medical records."

Even the Washinton Post is appalled by the Obama IRS's breaches.

Here is the opinion piece:

A BEDROCK principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends. 

So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation.

Back in 2009, Obama joked about using tax audits to punish his enemies.

At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."

Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it's hard to see the humor. Surely he's aware that other presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, have abused the power of the Internal Revenue Service to harass their political opponents. But that abuse generated a powerful backlash and with good reason. Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.

Our income-tax system is based on voluntary compliance and honest reporting by citizens. It couldn't possibly function if most people decided to cheat. Sure, the system is backed up by the dreaded IRS audit. But the threat is, while not exactly hollow, limited: The IRS can't audit more than a tiny fraction of taxpayers. If Americans started acting like Italians, who famously see tax evasion as a national pastime, the system would collapse.

One reason why Americans don't act like Italians is that they see the income-tax system as basically fair in execution. A tax audit or a tax-fraud prosecution is still seen, usually, as evidence that someone has done something wrong. If it comes instead to be seen as "just politics" then the moral component of the system will be gone. For the system to work, people have to believe that it is fundamentally fair.

This is why the IRS is so strict with its own employees. Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who writes the TaxProf blog, noted in response to Mr. Obama's remarks that the law calls for the termination of IRS employees who make audit threats for illegitimate reasons. He suggested that Mr. Obama's "joke" might be grounds for firing if he were an IRS employee.

He's not, of course, but as the president his words carry much more weight and he should be much more careful. That's particularly true given that people still haven't forgotten about the Obama administration's other tax issues -- the appointment of Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary despite an inexcusable failure to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund, and the scandals involving Tom Daschle and others whose appointments failed. (When the Geithner issue came up, news reports indicated that IRS employees were very upset. They can be fired over a simple late filing or a failure to report a mere $500 in income, making Mr. Geithner's "pass" on much more serious questions quite demoralizing.)

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...such as using the IRS to target Americans for their political views.

IRS anti-Tea Party scandal gets real — senior IRS officials aware of targeting (Update – Chief Counsel knew and targets expanded to groups “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights"

Yesterday it was just some “low level” employees involved. Now AP is reporting that senior IRS officials were aware of the targeting, via AP, IRS watchdog: Senior IRS officials knew in 2011 tea parties’ tax-exempt status being targeted (h/t @GabrielMalor):

The Obama administration apparently also targeted Jewish organizations.