In a stunning admission, the IRS has now officially apologized for subjecting 75 conservative groups to over-aggressive tax scrutiny during last year’s presidential campaign — even though it also insists that the treatment was “in no way due to any political or partisan rationale.”
Huh? The IRS admits that any group that used the words “tea party” or “patriot” in its application for tax-exempt status was targeted for harassment.
For decades now, the left has pointed to tapes in which Nixon called for the IRS to audit the taxes of his political enemies. But there was only silence this past year as conservative groups complained they were being subjected to unreasonable demands for information that cost them thousands of dollars and countless hours. These IRS demands included clearly improper requests for lists of donors, volunteers and their family members.
The one notable exception to the silence was The New York Times — whose editorial page actually congratulated the IRS for finally “doing its job.”
Now, the IRS is blaming the outrage on a bureaucratic snafu by “local career employees” in its Cincinnati office that no senior officials was aware of.
Which sounds suspiciously like the same kind of excuse the Justice Department used for its Fast and Furious debacle and the State Department offered for the deadly fiasco at Benghazi.
And with the same degree of credibility.