So I guess it's sorta kinda bad that some low-level employees at the IRS "targetted" the Tea Party's requests for 501(c)(4) status when they were burdened with an overwhelming number of requests from the Tea Party. Republicans, of course, are trying to make it bigger than that. They're trying to allege that Obama knew about the IRS investigation and audit … Read More
Turns Out, There Were Benghazi Lies After All
CBS's Major Garrett told viewers last night something news consumers don't usually see or hear: House Republicans gave journalists bogus information, apparently on purpose, in the hopes of advancing the right's version of the Benghazi story. So here's what happened. Republicans in Congress saw copies of these emails two months ago and did nothing with them. It was obvious that they … Read More
An Interesting Wrinkle
Regarding the IRS "scandal", there's a handy visual in the IG report (pdf) that came out this week, responding to the controversy. (I added the red oval to highlight the relevant portion.): That's right. Noam Scheiber elaborates on this interesting point: It turns out that the applications the conservative groups submitted to the IRS — the ones the agency subsequently combed over, provoking … Read More
The Real IRS Scandal
L.A. Times: It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS … Read More
In Which Digby Is Right
On the IRS scandal: It's about taxes, the IRS and the Tea Party. We might as well put a white wig on Obama and call him King George. The excitement on the right over being "victimized" by Big Gummint this way is so palpable I'm afraid they're going to burst a vessel. Congress gave the IRS the nearly impossible task of deciding … Read More
Benghazi “Scandal” Collapses Further
At the heart of what's left of the GOP "scandal" is a White House email which purports to show that the White House was concerned about getting dinged with a terrorist attack in the weeks before an election, so they wanted to change the message to make the American people think it wasn't that. And they had an email which … Read More
Benghazi Joke Continues
Yesterday's jokester was Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Cal), who is heading up the Committee To Get To The Bottom of Benghazi Dammit Because We Know Something Is Being Covered Up But We Don't Know What But It's Impeachable That's Fer Darn Sure Dammit. In fact, Issa gave us two yucks yesterday. First he said, on Fox News, this (starting at 0:59): … Read More
So Is The DOJ-Associated Press Thing A Scandal?
I'm quite happy for conservatives – and journalists! – to make this into a big scandal…. WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. … if only because … Read More
Changing My Mind: The IRS “Scandal” Isn’t A Scandal Either.
Think about it and you'll realize I'm right. Okay. 501(c)(4) status — meaning you don't pay taxes and your donor list is secret — was intended for groups engaged primarily in social welfare and whose goals are not primarily political. That's the law. You with me so far? Now, it's the job of the IRS — specifically, the job of the agents in the Cincinnatti … Read More
Biggest Scandal Ever!!
PPP poll: … there's no doubt about how mad Republicans are about Benghazi. 41% say they consider this to be the biggest political scandal in American history to only 43% who disagree with that sentiment. Only 10% of Democrats and 20% of independents share that feeling. Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than … Read More
Not Nixonian
James Warren offered up some good perspective on "Benghazi!" yesterday. He concluded with this: Though Stevens was an admired former Lugar staffer, Lugar has neither condoned nor condemned U.S. actions in response to the Benghazi attack. And a former Republican staffer on that committee underscored his own bottom line: "This is not Iran-Contra," he said, alluding to the bonafide Reagan era scandal … Read More
Yes, This Is An Actual Scandal
WaPo: At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials singled out for scrutiny not only groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names but also nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general. The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from … Read More
Benghazi Debunked
A nice summary from Think Progress of scandals-that-aren't: 1. F-16s could have been sent to Benghazi Part of the prevailing theory surrounding the events the night of the Benghazi attacks is that the Obama administration did not do enough militarily to respond to the crisis. Gregory Hicks — a Foreign Service Officer and the former Deputy Chief of Mission at … Read More
Why Benghazi Isn’t, And Never Will Be, A Scandal
Balloon Juice nails it: Here’s the one thing I don’t get about the whole Benghazi Snark hunt: fucking up a government job, and trying to paper it over, is not now and has never been the basis of a scandal. The formula for a scandal is simple: crime + cover-up = scandal: Watergate was a scandal because Nixon authorized a … Read More
RIP Bob Novak
Some greatest hits: He was an old-school Washington reporter. He took a downward spiral when he became a member of the fledgling Tv network CNN in the early 1980's. The Evans-Novak Report was pretty thoughtful, but then came Capital Gang, and the Crossfire, setting the groundwork for TV political panel yell-a-thons. Then he became a tool for the Bush White … Read More