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Paul L. Caron
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Saturday, August 2, 2014

The IRS Scandal, Day 450

IRS Logo 2Fox News:  Lois Lerner Ripping ‘Crazies’ on Right: Why Some Media Folks Don’t Care, by Howard Kurtz:

The new batch of Lois Lerner emails may or may not be a smoking gun. But they’re something of a Rorschach test for the media.

For the former IRS official to be branding conservative commentators as “crazies” and “a--holes” is a telling moment in this scandal—but some in the media could care less.

To be sure, this investigation has dragged on a long time without proving a link between the White House and the Cincinnati office’s targeting of advocacy groups, especially on the right, for special scrutiny of their tax-exempt status. Critics say that conservative outlets such as Fox have tried to keep the story alive.

But the administration has done a decent job of bringing the story back to the headlines. The IRS acknowledged that it could not find two years’ worth of lost emails written or received by Lerner, who pleaded the Fifth when summoned by Congress. And the commissioner, William Koskinen, sounded downright arrogant when he showed up on the Hill.

Now the Republicans have found three emails in which Lerner disparaged conservatives.

What did the New York Times give the story? One measly paragraph, written by the AP, in a roundup column.

How much airtime did the story get that night on ABC’s “World News”? None.

The messages don’t prove that Lerner deliberately targeted Tea Party groups for special scrutiny, or that higher-ups knew about it. But they reveal a whole heckuva lot about her state of mind.

To give it short shrift suggests a certain eye-rolling attitude toward the IRS story, or perhaps a tacit view that some conservatives are kinda nuts.

Imagine a swirling controversy about a Bush administration official who was alleged to be out to get liberal groups. Emails surface in which the person rips, say, pundits on MSNBC or other liberal activists. Wouldn’t the press go crazy that such a biased individual was in charge of investigations? Wouldn’t there be analyses and op-ed columns and followup stories?

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/08/the-irs-.html

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Comments

Imagine a Justice Department that hired only conservative applicants and sh[t-canned applications with liberal indicators. Just imagine a recent law-grad political operative from a right-wing law school put in charge of vetting of federal judges and attorney applications. Just imagine that political operative taking the 5th before the Congress. Her name was Monica Goodling and she worked for Al Gonzalez. Just imagine.

Posted by: Publius Novus | Aug 4, 2014 11:03:14 AM

IRS Scandal Time lineLook over the facts as reported by CBS,CSPAN, USA TODAY
http://thedebateplace.weebly.com/irs-targeting-conservatives

Posted by: dave | Aug 2, 2014 1:20:31 PM