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From FoxNews.com:

Watchdog knocks down Democrat claim that liberal groups were targeted by IRS

Published June 27, 2013 FoxNews.com


The government watchdog that exposed IRS targeting of conservative groups gave a blunt response to Democrats' claims that the agency also targeted liberals: It never happened.

"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," IRS Inspector General J. Russell George wrote in a letter to Democrats.

Democrats have since turned on the IG's office, claiming it is only telling half the story.

But Republicans used the letter, and a House hearing on Thursday, to counter that narrative -- getting the current IRS chief to confirm that, in fact, there's no evidence to date that progressives were targeted.

"So far, the evidence only shows conservatives being systematically targeted by the IRS," Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., said.

Camp pressed the issue as he questioned newly appointed IRS boss Danny Werfel. Citing the IG letter, he asked whether Werfel's own internal report contradicted the claim.

"No," Werfel said, while adding "more investigation" is needed.

The developments drew the ire of Democrats. Earlier this week, they seized on acknowledgements that progressive groups were also included on so-called "be on the lookout" lists at the IRS.

Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., maintained at the hearing that the "failure" of the IG report to originally disclose this was a "fundamental flaw" in their investigation. He said it "contributed to the distortion of the entire investigation."

Earlier, he said the IG was "not forthright."

Democrats argued that by leaving out the detail on progressive groups, it gave Republicans license to cast the scandal as politically motivated.

"Half of the story has been told for I think for a very political reason and that is to make conservative groups feel as though they are the only ones receiving this heightened scrutiny and treatment and that somehow it must be orchestrated by the White House," Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., said. "And we believe that that's completely false."

But the IG explained that, while liberal groups were on those lists, agents did not then single them out for additional scrutiny. George said this repeatedly in his letter to Levin, noting Tea Party and other conservative groups were processed as "potential political cases" 100 percent of the time.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers pressed Werfel over his agency's 30-day report that found no intentional wrongdoing at the IRS over the targeting.

"This report is a sham," Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said, adding that it was too "unsubstantial" to even call a "whitewash."

The first stage of grief is denial. The right-wing tends to spend a long time there.

Now they're pretending the IRS "scandal" never had anything to do with allegations that the WHite House was directly responsible for any of this... which in reality was the only basis for claiming scandal!

The legend lives on...

Sean Hannity Ignores Facts In Attempt To Resuscitate IRS "Scandal"

Sean Hannity ignored new reports that Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (CA) directed the Treasury Department's inspector general (IG) to "narrowly focus" its audit of the IRS' assessment of tax-exempt status requests to focus on tea party organizations, falsely claiming that "new claims by progressive groups that they were targeted by the IRS are in fact, false."

On the June 26 edition of his Fox News show, host Sean Hannity attempted to resuscitate the dying right-wing media narrative that the improper IRS targeting of groups was directed by the White House in an effort to punish opponents, by citing an IG audit of the IRS which found that some conservative groups received improper scrutiny when seeking tax-exempt status. Hannity dismissed reports that progressive groups had received similar scrutiny and the IG's investigation had been directed by House Republicans, citing the IG report in an attempt -- as he put it -- to "correct the record" saying: "If you've been paying attention to this scandal you know that the inspector general report outlined very clearly the distinct ideological imbalance."

Hannity concluded by asking: "If progressives were unfairly targeted, why didn't anyone say so earlier?"

A June 25 Hill article answered Hannity's question. The Hill reported that a spokesman for the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, said they were asked by Issa "to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations":

The inspector general's audit found that groups seeking tax-exempt status with "Tea Party" and "patriots" in their name did receive extra attention from the IRS, with some facing years of delay and inappropriate questions from the agency.

But top congressional Democrats have wielded new information from the IRS this week that liberal groups were also flagged for extra attention on the sorts of "be on the lookout" lists (BOLOs) that also tripped up conservative groups.

The spokesman for the Treasury inspector general noted their audit acknowledged there were other watch lists. But the spokesman added: "We did not review the use, disposition, purpose or content of the other BOLOs. That was outside the scope of our audit."

Prior to this report, Issa had leaked incomplete transcripts that were used by right-wing media to suggest that the IRS' use of improper criteria for determining which groups requesting tax-exempt status required additional scrutiny was directed by officials in Washington D.C., and potentially by White House officials. Other transcripts released later debunked this claim.

Furthermore, as a June 26 Associated Press article reported, progressive groups have claimed that they received scrutiny from the IRS, resulting in long delays in their being granted tax-exempt status. James Salt, a spokesman for the progressive Catholics United went so far as to claim the IRS asked the organization nonsensical, "weird" questions. A June 25 Wall Street Journal article similarly reported delays in tax-exempt status assessment for progressive groups: "Maryann Martindale, executive director of Alliance for a Better Utah, said her "progressive" group has been waiting almost two years for IRS action on an application for tax exemption from one of its entities."

Prior to this revelation, a manager of the Cincinnati IRS office responsible for the assessment of tax-exempt status requests, and self-described "conservative Republican" John Shafer told congressional investigators that neither he nor his office "never discussed any political, personal aspirations whatsoever."

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, during the June 25 Hannity segment Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin went on to accuse the White House of orchestrating the IRS' targeting, saying: "All roads lead to Washington D.C. and all fingers, at some point, will lead straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

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First Benghazi fell through the cracks, then the IRS "scandal" and now the NSA "scandal." Manufactured scandals by the idiots running the Right Wing media.

As the IRS Scandal Goes Down in Flames, An Important Lesson for the NSA Story

So it appears as if the so-called IRS scandal has finally evaporated into nothingness. The central claim in this non-scandal was specifically that the IRS had been unfairly and exclusively targeting conservative tea party groups and, it was assumed, rejecting the 501(c)4 applications filed by those groups. The immediate analysis was that President Obama had grossly abused the mighty federal government as a means of political retribution. Calls for impeachment ensued, and a congressional investigation was launched by Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Yesterday, however, we received further confirmation via a document published by the AP that the IRS was also scrutinizing left-wing 501(c)4 groups using “be on the lookout” (BOLO) terms like “progressive,” “Occupy,” “Medical Marijuana,” “occupied territory advocacy,” “Green Energy Organizations” and “Healthcare legislation.” We also learned that the IRS used BOLOs to target newspapers that applied for non-profit status as educational publications.

Come to think of it, we’ve kind of known since the beginning that liberal groups were also examined and rejected for non-profit status. Back when the scandal originally broke, Bloomberg reported that at least three liberal groups were scrutinized, and two of the groups were denied tax exempt status. Later, we discovered that out of 176 organizations that were granted tax exempt status in 2010, 122 were conservative and 48 were liberal/non-conservative. In other words, more than twice as many conservative groups were approved over liberal groups.

We’ve been aware of these massive gaps in the integrity of the story because many of us asked very serious questions from the beginning. We endeavored to discover how the IRS handles non-profit applications, what events and decisions created the influx of 501(c)4 groups and whether the scrutiny was a matter of routine or if politics skewed the process.

While some of us were asking questions, the Republican Party, led by the conservative entertainment complex, blindly lost its collective shpadoinkle and engaged in histrionics that almost entirely superseded its histrionics over the Benghazi non-scandal.

There’s a valuable lesson here, one that ought to be considered in the context of the NSA story.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Conservatives insisted that there was systemic wrongdoing inside the Obama White House extending deep within the IRS: a colossal and intrusive bureaucratic kaiju monster that holds a vice-grip on the throats of freedom-loving citizens. The president himself was the man-in-the-rubber-Godzilla-suit crushing free speech under the heft of his unchecked executive power. Conservative fire-eaters like Glenn Beck, whose 9/12 group was one of the BOLO terms, became instant martyrs whose basic constitutional rights were being trampled (Beck’s free speech has only been silenced by his paralyzed vocal cords). And all preconceived notions about big, bad government were officially vindicated.

We were told that this scandal might be the one that’ll stick to the wall. It could be Obama’s mandatory second term scandal involving a special prosecutor, building into an eventual impeachment trial. Game over, man.

None of that happened.

One of my main concerns about the NSA story is entirely driven by the lessons of the IRS story. Not every screamer headline that pops up in your Twitter feed is worthy of a permanent, unwavering red-alert — not until we ask serious questions and commit ourselves to learning about everything that orbits around it. My concern is that there continues to be an unhinged stampede to judgment without knowing exactly what’s going on, and, in the melee, we risk falling into a similar trap that ensnared and embarrassed the Republicans on the IRS story.

And so I have a lot of questions. We all should. I’m also hesitant (clearly) to jump aboard the outrage zeppelin out of a legitimate concern that it could be the Hindenburg. By the same token, too many otherwise smart people have accepted every detail, even the peculiar and questionable ones, at face value, while refusing to acknowledge both new and old information alike. They’re taking it as a matter of faith, too, that the outcome will be a positive one for the cause of transparency and civil liberties.

But an unintended consequence of how this story was handled could be that the NSA will become even more opaque and restrictive. Post-Snowden, does anyone honestly believe the NSA will make it easier for analysts to attain and leak classified documents to the press?

In this sense, the way the story was handled could actually contravene the effort to check the NSA — and especially to weed out any potential wrongdoing in the future. Sure, we might learn something more about the nuts-and-bolts of the NSA’s operations, but isn’t that like winning a battle but losing the war?

At some point, the repetitive outrage could become the boy who cried wolf. It already has with the Republicans who are convinced that every presidential fart is an impeachment-worthy trespass. After the monstrous IRS-gate turned out to be a great big Nothing-gate, I doubt anyone will take the Republicans seriously the next time they cry scandal.

If it’s not too late already, the left could fall prey to a similar fate.

If I were to define the central motivation for why I’m covering this story so extensively it’d be this one: I don’t want the left to descend into a liberal version of the tea party, possessed by zeal above all else, and an exuberant willingness to nihilistically burn down the village in order to save it. However, if the left can approach these issues with thoughtfulness, smart accountability, pragmatism and laser-accuracy, it’ll avoid that fate and progressive legislation will slowly but surely win the day. But if it becomes increasingly guided by kneejerk screeching and flailing carelessness, it’ll simply de-evolve into an incoherent, self-defeating mess. These issues, including and especially the effort to roll back the national security excesses of the post-9/11 era, are too important to be sacrificed upon the altar of derangement.

Uh huh...it "goes down in flames, just as:

http://spectator.org/blog/2013/06/28/ho ... ittee-lois

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2 ... candal.php

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/3 ... na-johnson

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/3 ... na-johnson

And, of course, what happens when the Left has real power and "runs things" to the degree that they find ripping their masks off now and then to be well worth the possible political risk:

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/05/15/ida ... last-year/

And, of course, the entire narrative about liberal groups also being targeted was, as one might have guessed, nothing but agitprop:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... ted-By-IRS

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/ ... s-n1627588

Leave it to the least educated, least knowledgeable, least intellectually serious, and least intellectually honest interlocutor in any room to squirt ink for the cause.