Is the IRS Scandal Worse Than Watergate?

Is the IRS scandal worse than Watergate? Of course, the question presupposes that there is indeed a scandal, and as Obama's new press secretary, Josh Earnest, informed us on Friday:

"The fact of the matter is after 13 months of multiple congressional investigations, including 14 congressional hearings, 30 interviews with I.R.S. employees, 50 written congressional requests and, as I mentioned, 750,000 pages of documents, there is zero evidence to support Republican claims."

"Zero evidence to support Republican claims"? Oh really? As observed by Michael Gerson today in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "An arrogant and lawless IRS" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-an-arrogant-and-lawless-irs/2014/06/23/8d6802d8-fb03-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html?hpid=z2):

"After President Obama blamed 'two Dilberts in Cincinnati,' an inspector general’s report found that high-level IRS officials in Washington were involved in directing additional scrutiny toward tea party groups seeking tax exemptions. [Lois] Lerner admitted as much, before taking the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before the House oversight committee."

Or in a nutshell, when a high ranking IRS official takes the Fifth before the House, only a raving partisan, intent upon obfuscation of the facts, would claim that there was no misconduct. How to respond to this misconduct? Gerson calls for the appointment of a special counsel:

"Because evidence of political influence is both plausible and circumstantial, a special counsel is needed to sort out the truth.

Why does this matter deserve heightened scrutiny from the rest of us? Because crimes against democracy are particularly insidious. Representative government involves a type of trade. As citizens, we cede power to public officials for important purposes that require centralized power: defending the country, imposing order, collecting taxes to promote the common good. In exchange, we expect public institutions to be evenhanded and disinterested. When the stewards of power — biased judges or corrupt policemen or politically motivated IRS officials — act unfairly, it undermines trust in the whole system."

A special counsel? In May 1973, Nixon's attorney general, Elliot Richardson, appointed Archibald Cox to the position of special counsel to investigate Watergate. Is the IRS scandal sufficiently momentous to demand the same treatment? Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal writes in an opinion piece entitled "The High Price of Obama Fatigue" (http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-high-price-of-obama-fatigue-1403139022):

"The IRS tea-party audit story isn't Watergate; it's worse than Watergate.

The Watergate break-in was the professionals of the party in power going after the party professionals of the party out of power. The IRS scandal is the party in power going after the most average Americans imaginable."

However, the IRS scandal goes far beyond the "mere" targeting of average Americans. As Warren L. Dean Jr. states in a Washington Times opinion piece entitled "A scandal worse than Watergate" (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/7/a-scandal-worse-than-watergate/):

"[T]he Watergate burglars were not government employees. No government agency was implicated in the initial break-in. This time around, the misconduct is taking place in what may be the most powerful — and feared — government agency in the country. To ordinary Americans, it looks like the IRS spent taxpayer money to conduct a potentially criminal enterprise directed at the Americans who pay their salary. It was not only wrong, it was a betrayal of the public's trust in government. At this stage, the IRS scandal is far more serious than the initial Watergate break-in."

I agree with Mr. Dean that the IRS scandal is potentially far more heinous than Watergate. Moreover, there can be no avoiding the comparison between the missing minutes from the Watergate tapes and the alleged crash of Lois Lerner's hard drive, preventing access to her emails (the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen, testified on Friday that the IRS destroyed Lerner's hard drive in 2011), but will Obama appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS scandal and put the matter to rest? Not a chance. In January 2009, Obama promised:

"Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."

Transparency in the Obama administration? Obama himself must rely on newspaper reports to learn of wrongdoing involving his presidency, and it remains to be seen what will remain of American government credibility at home and overseas by the time he finishes his second term.

The Washington Post, "IRS Chief Counsel’s Office Involved in Targeting Controversy": A Whiff of Watergate

It is being reported in a Washington Post article entitled "IRS chief counsel’s office involved in targeting controversy" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/07/17/irs-chief-counsel-involved-in-targeting-controversy/?hpid=z2) by Josh Hicks that the IRS scandal is widening. As reported by the article:

"The chief counsel’s office for the Internal Revenue Service, headed by a political appointee of President Obama, helped develop the agency’s problematic guidelines for reviewing 'tea party' cases, according to a top IRS attorney.

In interviews with congressional investigators, IRS lawyer Carter Hull said his superiors told him that the chief counsel’s office, led by William Wilkins, would need to review some of the first applications the agency screened for additional scrutiny because of potential political activity.

Previous accounts from IRS employees had shown that Washington IRS officials were involved in the controversy, but Hull’s comments represent the closest connection to the White House to date. No evidence so far has definitively linked the White House to the agency’s actions."

Yikes!

And where is the coverage by The New York Times of this story?  I entered "William Wilkins July 2013 I.R.S." into the search engine of the Times and came up with . . . nothing.

Meanwhile, I have just been informed by a West Wing staffer who asked to remain anonymous that Obama is planning another trip to Tanzania later this month.

Gail Collins, "Democrats at the Deep End": No Mention of Benghazi

Do you remember the 1972 presidential election when President Nixon was opposed by Democrat George McGovern? I do. I still have a McGovern campaign button tucked away somewhere in my closet. But more to the point, I never understood why the Nixon administration ordered the Watergate break-in. It was clear to all that Nixon was going to win by a landslide, and he had nothing to gain from breaking into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. Perhaps the operation appealed to Nixon's paranoia.

Today, I find myself wondering why the Obama administration sought, over the better part of a month, to falsify what occurred at the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11. As I observed in this blog on September 12 (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/gail-collins-mitts-major-meltdown.html), the deadly attack was obviously premeditated. So why did the Obama administration deem it necessary to blame the attack on a "spontaneous" demonstration in response to a ridiculous video? Was this attempt to mischaracterize the events in Benghazi part of an effort to buttress the argument that Obama had long since brought al-Qaeda to heel when he blew away Osama bin Laden? Was someone trying to salve Obama's enormous ego?

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, in stealth mode, "has made no public mention of the attack or investigation since Oct. 3" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/benghazi-attack-may-mar-clintons-legacy/2012/10/09/b7a8e382-1220-11e2-a16b-2c110031514a_story.html).

Yes, the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi is a major scandal.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Democrats at the Deep End" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/collins-democrats-at-the-deep-end.html), Gail Collins makes light of Obama's recent decline in nationwide polling:

"Things haven’t really gone off the deep end for the Obama campaign. They’ve gone back to normal. You knew that the Obama-is-going-to-win-by-10-points euphoria wasn’t going to last. When did anybody ever win a presidential race by 10 points? Don’t tell me about Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan was president, gas was 90 cents a gallon and I was writing on a Kaypro.

Maybe Democrats should try to be more like the Republicans, and reduce stress by blaming all bad news on incorrect information, cooked up by cabals of political partisans."

Sorry, Gail, but the only incorrect information concerning the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was cooked up by senior Obama administration officials.