Internal Revenge Service

IRS Poster Girl Lois Lerner

The news emerging about the Internal Revenue Service is of a government agency converted into an Internal Revenge Service under the Obama Administration. (That it is also slated to be a major player in every American's access to health insurance is beyond terrifying at this point.)

There is no greater evidence of the need for Congress to completely overhaul the U.S. tax code system and purge the IRS of its opportunity to abuse power than this week's revelations and headlines:

• Ethics Watchdog: IRS Customer Representative Urged Vote for Obama (Politico)
• Displays of Obama, Democratic Support Common At Some IRS Offices (Washington Times)
• IRS Under Fire: Vote for Obama Stickers, Campaign Cheerleading Commonplace (Washington Times)
• Lerner Mentioned Working for Pro-Obama Group Amid Scandal (Washington Post)
• Lerner Mentioned Organizing for Action Job (The Hill)
• IRS Agents: No Liberal Groups Were Targeted (PJMedia.com)
• IRS Agents' Testimony: NO Progressive Groups Were Targeted by IRS (Daily Caller)
• Breaking: Emails Show Lois Lerner Fed True the Vote Tax Information to Democrat Elijah Cummings (Townhall.com)
• Bombshell: Emails Show Democrat on Oversight Committee Was Working with Lois Lerner to Target True the Vote (PJMedia.com)
• Darrell Issa Says Emails Suggest Elijah Cummings Prompted IRS Targeting of True the Vote (Washington Examiner)
• House Committee Votes to Request Criminal Prosecution of ex-IRS Official Lois Lerner (Washington Post)

Attorney Jay Sekulow argues that "the Ways and Means report raises the possibility that Lerner (and perhaps others) violated a number of federal statutes. It's clear — regardess of criminality — that they also violated the Constitution."

The House Ways and Means Committee released a letter Wednesday detailing what it believes to be criminal misconduct by Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the ongoing IRS Tea Party targeting scandal. For those who want to understand how partisan bureaucrats can manipulate a powerful federal agency, the letter is a must-read.

The list of newly-disclosed acts of political bias and manipulation are astounding:

—After meeting with an outside group (Democracy 21) that claimed both conservative and liberal groups were violating IRS rules, Lerner chose to focus like a laser only on the conservative groups, with particular emphasis on one of the largest, Crossroads GPS.

—In fact, her focus on Crossroads GPS included demanding to know why Crossroads had not yet been audited combined with plans to deny Crossroads’ application for tax exempt status. She showed no such similar interest in liberal groups.

—She showed astounding sensitivity to reporting from ProPublica, a George Soros-funded media nonprofit, at one point forwarding a ProPublica article mentioning conservative groups and demanding a meeting on the status of those groups’ tax exemption applications.

Read the rest at The Lois Lerner Files: A Partisan Bureaucrat at Work (Fox News).