One Straight Out Of The Nixon Playbook

[dales]

Oh lookeeeeeee..........andrew made a funeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[Andrew D]

Lamentably, there is nothing funny about it.

[dales]

My error.

[Econoline]

At least two IRS employees in a Cincinnati office may have already been disciplined and two more could be involved in the scandal involving the agency's targeting of conservative groups, according to reports.

Former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who President Barack Obama forced out on Wednesday, told members of Congress a pair of “rogue” employees had already been punished, according to CNN. The Fox affiliate in Cincinnati said on Wednesday night as many as four staffers could’ve been involved in unfairly singling out conservative groups’ nonprofit applications for extra scrutiny.

“They simply did what their bosses ordered,” the affiliate quoted an anonymous source as saying.

Facing a surge in the number of groups applying for nonprofit status, the IRS centralized the application process in Cincinnati. An inspector general’s report found it was employees there who first decided to single out applications with words like “tea party” and “patriot” in their name. However, top IRS officials knew about the targeting for at least a year before apologizing for it last Friday.

While Obama essentially fired Miller, he is limited in who else he can fire. The IRS has only two political appointees, with the rest of its employees protected by civil service regulations.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/r ... z2Tobwiiq8

[Lord Jim]

While Obama essentially fired Miller, he is limited in who else he can fire. The IRS has only two political appointees, with the rest of its employees protected by civil service regulations.

Yes, that is regretable...

It shows the kind of vice grip that the public sector unions have on our democracy that it can be extremely difficult to fire any of them, even when they engage in behavior this outrageous....

(That's another problem that should be addressed... If any of these civil service employees told a tasteless joke or lit up a cigarette in the office, they'd have been in more hot water than for engaging in this sort gross malfeasance of their responsibilities; that's unacceptable, and it needs to change.)

But difficult still doesn't mean impossible, (though I'm sure the union bosses would love to make the standard "impossible") and everyone who devised or participated in this sordid corruption of the IRS absolutely needs to be shit canned...(if not prosecuted)

[oldr_n_wsr]

Oldr, you are referring to Sarah Ingram, The Commissioner of Tax Exempt and Government Entities from 2009-2012, (which covers the period of the political targeting) and the person who Lois Lerner, (the Director of Exempt Organizations) directly reported to........

Why yes. Makes me all warm and fuzzy for the Obama Care administration team.

[Econoline]

It shows the kind of vice grip that the public sector unions have on our democracy that it can be extremely difficult to fire any of them, even when they engage in behavior this outrageous....

Civil Service regulations are not set by (and are much older than) public sector unions. I thought everybody knew that.

I get the impression that our real disagreement on this stems from the fact that you don't think that the IRS should be questioning any 501(c)(4) organizations at all whereas I think that the IRS should be scrutinizing all 501(c)(4) organizations equally.

Furthermore, I think that the evidence shows that there is far more potential and actual abuse of these organizations on the right-wing side of the political spectrum--e.g., "Four [sec.] 501(c)(4) organizations dominated outside spending in the 2012 election cycle: Crossroads GPS, founded by Karl Rove; Americans for prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers; Americans for Tax Reform, founded by Grover Norquist; and the American Future Fund, founded by Nick Ryan, a longtime political advisor to former Republican Congressman Jim Nussle." (from this thread of Andrew's.)

To return to the topic of the Nixon Playbook, this reminds me of another memorable and relevant quote from the Nixon/Watergate era: "Follow the money!"

[Lord Jim]

I get the impression that our real disagreement on this stems from the fact that you don't think that the IRS should be questioning any 501(c)(4) organizations at all whereas I think that the IRS should be scrutinizing all 501(c)(4) organizations equally.

Well I have absolutely no idea where you got that impression; it's certainly not from anything I've actually said.

I get the impression that our real disagreement on this stems from the fact that I believe that IRS agents singling out organizations for greater scrutiny based on blatantly ideological criteria is a very serious matter that corrodes and undermines public confidence regarding an agency that must absolutely act impartially, and that those involved must be punished, whereas you think it ain't no big thang.... (I believe the words were, "no harm no foul")

This may surprise you, but personally, I'd be open to an argument that would greatly limit (or even possibly abolish) the whole 501C-4 tax exemption concept entirely. (I'm also not a fan of the Citizens United decision) But as I pointed out earlier the whole question of the wisdom of the existing system is a completely separate issue. So long as this system exists, it must be administered in a fair and impartial manner.

And frankly, I view attempts to somehow conflate the issue of the 501C-4 rules in general, with the outrageous political targeting that took place in this instance with some suspicion. It looks to me like an attempt minimize and skate past what happened here and change the subject.

ETA:

I agree with what this fella said; it reflects my position on this exactly:

It's inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives. And as I said earlier, it should not matter what political stripe you're from -- the fact of the matter is, is that the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity. The government generally has to conduct itself in a way that is true to the public trust. That's especially true for the IRS.

To be honest Econo, some of the things you have said about this subject, given the known facts, have struck me as well, bizarre....

No one in the political class regardless of party, from Obama on down, has attempted to spin this in the "no big deal" way that you have....

[Econoline]

http://www.stonekettle.com/2013/05/the- ... eapot.html

[Lord Jim]

Well Econo, now that I know that your primary information source is a website that has the slogan, "Don't just embrace the crazy, sidle up next to it and lick its ear", I now have a much better understanding of how you arrived at your conclusions about this....

[Econoline]

Look, this problem strikes me as exactly the sort of profiling or stereotyping that law enforcement gets caught at from time to time, from the INS swinging by the Home Depot parking lot at 6AM to ask for IDs, to the TSA pulling a bearded Arab with a wrapped gift the size of a pressure cooker out of the boarding line, to the highway trooper firing up the radar gun when a red Corvette or Mustang appears in the distance, to the beat cop checking a suspicious group of African American teenaged boys for drugs and guns.

Like the above examples, this IRS activity was a real problem, with the possibility of becoming a serious abuse of power. But if, in the examples I just cited, the activity was caught and publicized by an internal departmental probe, the perpetrators were disciplined and their colleagues warned, and none of the targets were arrested, ticketed, charged, or harmed in any way, I would not still be outraged and calling for weeks of congressional investigations, mass firings and impeachments.

In short, it was a problem that was newsworthy but already solved and as such not worth the incredible amount of political theater it has provoked.

P.S. I never said that that website was my "primary information source"--I posted it as an example because you said that no one agreed with me. (But I also DO highly recommend Stonekettle Station and its proprietor, Jim Wright (a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer who lives in Alaska) as a consistently wonderful, witty and entertaining blog with an eccentric and sometimes surprising take on the news--and a lot of other things. Even if you don't agree with him on some things, he's always entertaining and thought-provoking.)

[Andrew D]

Thanks for the link, Econoline.

Liberalism is a mental illness.

This phrase, of course, comes from the title of a book by ultra conservative font of verbal vomitus and host of radio talk show The Savage Nation, Michael Weiner, AKA Michael Savage (apparently conservative test audiences began hyperventilating uncontrollably and secretly visiting Castro Street bath houses when first exposed to The Weiner Nation, hence the nom de guerre). ... The book ended up on the NYTimes Best Seller list, in the top ten no less, which just goes to show you that conservatives will buy books other than the bible and Guns & Ammo, as long as they are bound in vellum made from the warty skin of Charlton Heston’s massive scrotum and printed in bitter black inky tears collected from members of the Michigan Militia.

Gotta love it!

[Econoline]

If you liked that one, Andrew, I'm sure you'll love this one on "The Deification of Ronald Reagan" (written in response to an op-ed piece in USA Today by Sarah Palin). I think even Jim would find it well worth the read.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I grew up during Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement and Nixon and the Hippies and the Age of Aquarius. And I remember very well indeed exactly what it was like after the war ended. I remember the Carter years, and the OPEC Embargo, and Iranian Hostage Crisis and the Recession and the car industry going belly up.

Oh yes, I remember what Edwin Feulner called the Great Malaise.

And Reagan did, in many ways, make America proud of itself again. He was charismatic, he made you like him. Conservatives, oh how they hate Obama for his charm and easy manner and especially his popularity, derisively calling him “The Messiah,” but that’s nothing compared to the worshipful adulation, and present day deification, of Ronald Reagan by Conservatives. Reagan radiated a 1950’s movie star charm and confidence, like Errol Flynn, you could feel it when you were in his presence. I saw him speak once, and shook his hand, and you couldn’t help but like the guy even if you couldn’t stand his politics. He was a sincerely nice human being. The military loved him – especially after he signed the defense authorization bill in 1986 that for the first time in our country’s history increased our pay to a living wage.

History will probably say that he was one of the great ones, i.e. the right guy in the right job at the right time. And I don’t think I’ll argue the point – you’d have to have lived through that time from where I was sitting.

But Reagan most surely didn’t “win” the Cold War by himself – he was simply the last in a long line of cold warriors.

And he sure as hell didn’t win it “without firing a single shot.”

Because see I was there, and there were many shots fired.

[Econoline]

Back on topic:

What we’re learning about the IRS’s Cincinnati office

“I was not a happy camper leaving that organization,” Bonnie Esrig, a senior manager who retired from the IRS’s Cincinnati office in June, told the New York Times, “and I can still say that I don’t think there was malice behind it at all.”

We’re getting more reporting out of the IRS’s Cincinnati office. The reports all paint a similar picture: An overworked, overwhelmed, understaffed agency outpost that wasn’t prepared for the rise in political 501(c)(4)s, was confused about how to manage them, was unable to get proper direction from higher-ups, and responded in ways that were both inappropriate (targeting tea party-related groups for extra scrutiny) and incompetent (taking forever to conduct that extra scrutiny).

There continues to be no evidence that the targeting was directed by agency higher-ups, much less anyone related to the Obama campaign. In fact, there’s still not much evidence that the targeting was politically biased in intent, even as it was clearly politically biased in effect.

One clear implication of these stories, though, is that the employees of the Cincinnati Determinations Unit are not the employees you want to trust with a task of this delicacy. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing as rogue agents — there are some that aren’t as competent as others, just like in any workplace,” Esrig said.

Jack Reilly, a former lawyer in the Washington office that oversaw exempt organizations, was even more blunt to the New York Times. “Nobody wants to be a determination agent. It’s a job that just about everybody would be anxious to get out of it.” This was not an office that was appropriately staffed and prepared for the rise of political 501(c)(4)s, much less the improvisational, politically explosive, highly diplomatic work of vetting them.

This gets to a larger truth, though. We don’t want IRS agents deciding who is and who is not a primarily political group. That is not their core competency. Worse, it necessarily involves the IRS in politics, and the IRS is an agency we want kept far from politics. We either need extremely bright lines that govern the IRS’s judgments on these groups and removes the need for significant discretion or, as tax professor John Colombo argues, we should consider getting rid of the 401(c)(4) designation altogether.

---

Wonkbook’s Number of the Day: 70,000. That’s roughly the number of applications for tax-exempt status the Cincinnati IRS office processes in a year. Most are easy calls, with no political questions whatsoever.[/size][/font]

source

[Andrew D]

That (the Reagan one) is a good article, Econoline, but as turns of phrase go, "bound in vellum made from the warty skin of Charlton Heston’s massive scrotum" takes the cake for me.

[dales]

I imagine it would.

[Econoline]

But as I pointed out earlier the whole question of the wisdom of the existing system is a completely separate issue. So long as this system exists, it must be administered in a fair and impartial manner.

And frankly, I view attempts to somehow conflate the issue of the 501C-4 rules in general, with the outrageous political targeting that took place in this instance with some suspicion. It looks to me like an attempt minimize and skate past what happened here and change the subject.

Au contraire, milord. The 501(c)(4) rules as they now exist make such problems inevitable. As long as you have IRS agents who are required to make political decisions regarding what constitutes evidence of political activity, which activity is okay and which isn't, and how much of that activity is too much (the "exclusively" versus "primarily" problem that Andrew pointed out) you're going to have the perception from one side or the other that somebody's ox is being Gored and somebody's ox is being Bushed. (Unless all the IRS agents in the Determinations Unit are way more competent than their pay grade--no, actually, way more competent than mere human beings.)

The way the IRS seems to have solved the problem in the short term (except for this one half-assed and inappropriate effort on the part of a few individual agents) is to simply approve all 501(c)(4) applications to avoid asking these inherently and inevitably hard political questions. And that amounts to allowing these organizations to exist as government-approved money-laundering operations for virtually unlimited anonymous political donations.

This was not an office that was appropriately staffed and prepared for the rise of political 501(c)(4)s, much less the improvisational, politically explosive, highly diplomatic work of vetting them.

This gets to a larger truth, though. We don’t want IRS agents deciding who is and who is not a primarily political group. That is not their core competency. Worse, it necessarily involves the IRS in politics, and the IRS is an agency we want kept far from politics. We either need extremely bright lines that govern the IRS’s judgments on these groups and removes the need for significant discretion or, as tax professor John Colombo argues, we should consider getting rid of the 401(c)(4) designation altogether.

[dgs49]

For the record, there is no evidence whatsoever that President Nixon EVER asked the IRS to audit ANYONE, much less that the IRS during his Administration harrassed or audited anyone on the fictitious "enemies list." He was recorded suggesting in a long and rambling monologue that it might be a good idea to get the IRS to audit certain people, but the request was never made, and it was the sort of comment like, "someone oughtta shoot the bastards," that entailed nothing more than him blowing off some steam.

In fact, Nixon himself was audited while he was President.

But of course that goes against the Liberal/MSM's narrative, so feel free to ignore the facts.

[rubato]

Am I correct in assuming that if a republican RONALD REAGAN were POTUS, the screeching from the left would be deafening and non-stop.

If Reagan were President, the targeting operation would have been run out of the basement of the White House.

And he would have been given a pass because of senility.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

For the record, there is no evidence whatsoever that President Nixon EVER asked the IRS to audit ANYONE, much less that the IRS during his Administration harrassed or audited anyone on the fictitious "enemies list." He was recorded suggesting in a long and rambling monologue that it might be a good idea to get the IRS to audit certain people, but the request was never made, and it was the sort of comment like, "someone oughtta shoot the bastards," that entailed nothing more than him blowing off some steam.

In fact, Nixon himself was audited while he was President.

But of course that goes against the Liberal/MSM's narrative, so feel free to ignore the facts.

For the record, you are consistently wrong about everything:

President Richard Nixon was aware that the IRS had audited him in 1961 and 1962 and presumed those audits were politically motivated by the Kennedy White House. When, early in his Administration, Nixon learned that his friends and political allies John Wayne and Rev. Billy Graham had endured recent audits by his own IRS, Nixon boiled over. He ordered White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, "Get the word out, down to the IRS that I want them to conduct field audits on those who are our opponents." Perhaps recalling the Kennedy era audits, Nixon ordered that its investigator begin with my Uncle's, John F. Kennedy's, former campaign manager and White House aide, then Democratic Committee Chairman, Lawrence O'Brien.

Nixon's minions had the IRS set up a special internal arm "the Activist Organization Committee" in July of 1969 to audit an "enemies list" provided by Nixon. My uncle Senator Ted Kennedy was at the top of that list along with a small army of well-known journalists. The IRS later renamed its political audit squad "Special Services" or "SS" to keep its mission secret. The SS targeted over 1,000 liberal groups for audits and 4,000 individuals. The SS staff managed their files in a soundproof cell in the IRS basement.

On September 27, 1970, Nixon ordered Haldeman to get the IRS to investigate my Uncle Ted who was then the presumed frontrunner in the 1972 presidential contest, sharing the field with Edmond Muskie and Hubert Humphrey who Nixon also ordered audited.

Nixon personally put White House dirty trickster Tom Charles Huston, former president of the Young Americans for Freedom, in charge of setting up the new IRS "anti-radical squad" to make sure that the laggards in IRS's bureaucracy didn't drop the ball. Huston prepared a 43-page blueprint for Nixon outlining a government agency campaign targeting Nixon's enemies. Uncle Teddy was still at the top. The scheme included tapping phones without warrants, infiltrating organizations that had been critical of the President and, purging IRS agents who refused to tow the Republican line. Huston told the President, "we won't be in control of the government and in a position of effective leverage until such time or we have complete and total control of the top three slots" at the IRS. Nixon also enthusiastically authorized a series of "black bag jobs" including breaking into offices, homes and liberal think tanks like the Ford Foundation and the Brookings Institute which Nixon believed was home to many former Kennedy Administration officials.

As a disclaimer, Huston cautioned that the "use of this technique is clearly illegal; it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed. However, it is also the most fruitful tool and can produce the kind of intelligence which cannot be obtained in any other fashion."

According to historian and Nixon biographer, Rick Perlstein, Nixon "found the document splendid." Haldeman ordered Huston to draft a formal decision memo outlining the illegal plan as a mandate to the heads of the intelligence and tax collecting agencies. Nixon ordered Haldeman and Huston to order the IRS, the FBI and the CIA to proceed with the plan.

In May 1971, Nixon used an IRS investigation of Alabama Governor George Wallace's brother, Gerald Wallace, to pressure Gov. Wallace to run for President on the Democratic ticket as a spoiler rather than on a third party ticket as he planned. The blackmail scheme succeeded and most of Wallace's white male supporters fled to the Republicans after the Democrats nominated civil rights activist George McGovern. Nixon's tactic of having Wallace run as a Democrat was an indispensable element of the White House's "southern strategy".

Four months later, on September 8, 1971, Nixon raged at his counsel and Chief Domestic Policy Advisor, John Ehrlichman, about the IRS's lack of progress on finding dirt on his enemies. "We have the power but are we using it to investigate contributors to Hubert Humphrey, to Muskie, and the Jews? You know they are stealing everybody.... you know they really tried to crucify Ho Lewis [Reader's Digest editor, Hobart Lewis, a Nixon supporter who had been audited]! Are we looking into Muskie's return? Hubert's? Hubert's been in a lot of funny deals. Teddy? Who knows about the Kennedys? Shouldn't they be investigated?"

The following week he pleaded with Haldeman to light a fire under the IRS. "Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know the Big Jewish contributors of the Democrats.... Could we please investigate those cocksuckers?"

The following day he replayed that tune for Ehrlichman. "You see the IRS is full of Jews that's the reason they went after Graham." Haldeman recounted in his diary, "There was a considerable discussion of the terrible problem arising from the total Jewish domination of the media. Graham has the strong feeling that the Bible says there are Satanic Jews and that's where our problem arises."

The "Jewish-controlled media" and the "liberal media" were never far from Nixon's limbic system. Nixon also bugged reporters and used bribery, blackmail attempts, forgery, spying, burglary, and extensive bugging by national police agencies and by his own "plumbers squad" to monitor and manipulate the press for political purposes. Many of the top twenty names on Nixon's political enemies list (which eventually included 47,000 Americans) were reporters. They included Daniel Schorr, Mary McGrory, Edwin Guthman and Walter Cronkite. Nixon's staff and agencies bugged their phones, investigated their sex lives, rifled their trash, and had them watched and followed. Nixon directly ordered the investigation of imagined homosexuality by columnist Jack Anderson, a devout, teetotaling Mormon with a happy marriage and nine children.

On March 24, 1972, a group of Nixon's trusted operatives including former CIA spy E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, a murderous former Dutchess county, New York prosecutor and Adolf Hitler admirer, huddled in the basement of Washington's plush Hay-Adams Hotel, across from the White House with Dr. Edward Gund, a CIA physician, poison and assassinations expert. Nixon had complained darkly to top staffers including Special Counsel Chuck Colson that Anderson was "a thorn in his side" and that "we have to do something about this son of a bitch." According to Hunt and Liddy, Colson deployed them that day saying that Nixon had ordered Colson to "Stop Anderson at all costs."

The three spooks plotted out the best way to murder Anderson including running him off the road, spiking his drink with venom, breaking into his home and lacing Anderson's aspirin bottle ("aspirin roulette") with a special toxicant undetectable by autopsy or simply shooting him with Liddy's untraceable 9mm pistol. The plot is detailed by Mark Felstein in his 2005 book, Poisoning the Press, and elsewhere. Liddy suggested painting Anderson's steering wheel with a massive dose of LSD which would cause Anderson to crash in a hallucinogenic craze. Dr. Gund warned them that the LSD would be traceable in an autopsy. They finally elected to stab Anderson outside his house. Liddy volunteered to do the bloody work and make the crime look like a bungled robbery. Luckily for Anderson, the plot fizzled and was forgotten when both conspirators were arrested shortly thereafter in the Watergate scandal while endeavoring to reset a bug in Larry O'Brien's office.

On October 6, 1971, Nixon ordered Haldeman to have the IRS audit Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler who had transformed the Times from a right wing rag into a universally respected paper by recruiting top journalists from across the nation. Chandler and his very large family were close friends of my family and had spent the summer prior to my father's death running the Colorado River with us. "I want Otis Chandler's income tax," Nixon told Haldeman. Nixon then called his Attorney General and former law partner, John Mitchel, and ordered Mitchel to fire the Los Angeles Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "The fellow out there in the Immigration Services is a kike by the name of Rosenberg." The President explained to Mitchel, "He is to be out." Fulminating on, Nixon told Mitchel, "I want you to direct the most trusted person you have in the Immigration Service to look at all the activities of the Los Angeles Times... let me explain as a Californian, I know everybody in California hires them... Otis Chandler... I want him checked with regard to his gardener. I understand he is a wetback. Is that clear?" When the Attorney General replied, "Yes, sir." Nixon crowed triumphantly, "We're going after the Chandlers! Every one, individually and collectively, their income taxes... every one of those sons of bitches."

In August of 1972, Edmund Muskie withdrew as George McGovern's Vice Presidential running mate. After my Uncle Ted demurred at McGovern's request that he join the ticket, McGovern recruited another of my uncles, Sargent Shriver. On August 9, Nixon had a meeting with his staff to discuss how to destroy the Democrats. Turning to Haldeman, he asked, "What in the name in of God are we doing on this one? What are we doing about the financial contributors? Now those lists there... are we looking over the financial contributions to the Democratic Committee? Are we running their income tax returns? Is the Justice Department checking to see if there are any anti-trust suits? We have all this power and were not using it. Now what the Christ is the matter? In other words I'm just thinking for example if there is information on Larry O'Brien. What is being done? Who is doing this full-time? What in the name of God are we doing?" Nixon abruptly narrowed his sights on McGovern's top contributor, Henry Kimmelman, and said emphatically, "Scare the shit out of him," He repeated the order to Ehrlichman, "Scare the shit out of him. Now there are some Jews with the mafia and they are involved with this too!"

George Schultz was now Treasury Secretary. Nixon directed Haldeman to order Schultz to audit Kimmelman. "Everybody thinks George is an honest, decent man," Nixon observed contemptuously. "George has got a fantasy... what's he trying to do say? That you can't play politics with the IRS? Just tell George he should do it." Three days later Nixon had Kimmelman's tax returns as well Larry O'Brien's who had by then agreed to manage McGovern's faltering campaign and whose office would be the target of the Watergate break-in.

On March 12, 1973, even with the erupting Watergate scandal and its related Congressional investigations incinerating his presidency, Nixon was still intent on using the IRS to disable his enemies. That day he asked Haldeman, "What happened to the suggestion that the IRS run audits on all the members of Congress?"

Those who bother to read these historical snippets will find many important departures and only tenuous parallels between the Obama Administration's IRS affair and Richard Nixon's Watergate-era IRS scandal. A principal distinction is the ingredient of direct presidential involvement. President Nixon was the fulcrum, the visionary and the principal conspirator in his various capers to use the IRS as a political weapon. Nixon personally directed and persistently harangued his staff to audit, investigate and gather dirt on his enemies for personal purposes. Nixon went to reckless extremes even punishing IRS agents who refused to participate in his vendetta. A mean-spirited viciousness and his contagious enthusiasm for law breaking were also distinctive Nixon bailiwicks. In contrast, there is no evidence that Obama even knew of the IRS investigations which were presided over by Donald Shulman, a Bush appointee. The most recent evidence indicate that the Tea Party audits resulted not from intentional political targeting of conservatives from the sheer preponderous of Tea Party applications among the hundreds of 501(c)(4) tax exemption requests that deluged a tiny understaffed IRS field office. The 200 demoralized officials, already drowning in tax exemption petitions, also audited several liberal groups including Progress Texas and Sea Shepard. Detailed reporting in Sunday's New York Times indicates that the problem arose because the Cincinnati branch is already debilitated and overwhelmed by years of personnel and budget cuts, now aggravated by the sequestration -- and confused by new rules applying to the cascade of political "charities" unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The GOP's comparisons of today's IRS blunders to the Watergate era scandals broadcast a willful blindness toward history.

As to the A.P. eavesdropping scandal, any spying directed at journalists should set off fire alarms in a democracy. The Associated Press is justified in its outrage at the Justice Department caper. Fear that a reporter's phone may be bugged will inhibit disclosures and discussions with the many secret sources and whistleblowers upon whom journalists rely to keep our democracy transparent and our public informed.

Obama's Justice Department's eavesdropping on the Associated Press, however, is in no way analogous to Nixon era bugging. The Obama eavesdropping was an, unfortunately, legal investigation of national security leaks involving a Nigerian terrorist bomber planning to blow up an American airliner en route from Amsterdam to New York. Nixon's bugging in contrast was illegal and his purposes were political and personal having little or nothing to do with national security.

Many states have "journalist shield" laws that make eavesdropping on reporters illegal and give a limited, but critical privilege to the relationship between journalists and their sources. Obama has long promised to support federal shield legislation. This week, apparently motivated by damage control, he finally asked Senate leaders to produce a federal shield law, a reform that could transform this scandal into a national plus for American democracy. That legislation will require GOP support. Republicans could also work with the White House to find adequate funding and training for the IRS and remedy the morale and governance problems in Cincinnati. The big question now, is whether Republicans will sideline genuine reform in their efforts to exploit the "scandal." Republican legislators have apparently been ordered by their leadership to hold scandal-mongering hearings but to stall any legislation for genuine reform. The real scandal is the Republican party's devotion to grandstanding over governance and its preference for slime over substance.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f- ... 05611.html