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Kevin Drum outlines what I take to be the emerging case for the defense of the IRS agents who applied special scrutiny to tax-exemption applications from Tea Party groups: Roughly speaking, what seems to have happened is that three years ago the IRS was facing an explosion of newly formed 501(c)4 groups claiming tax exempt status, something that's legal only for groups that are primarily engaged in promoting education or social welfare, not electioneering. So some folks in the Cincinnati office tried to come up with a quick filter to flag groups that deserved extra scrutiny. But what should that...

To understand the moral context of the IRS' admission that it improperly targeted conservative Tea Party and Patriot nonprofits during the 2012 presidential campaign, it helps to know that Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have something in common besides twice being elected to the Oval Office: All three appear to have been quite willing to use the most intrusive powers of the federal government against their political opposition. Nixon was especially craven about it. He made clear to aides that they were to use the IRS against Democratic nominee George McGovern, senior members of McGovern's campaign staff and...

<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Monday that the IRS should be condemned for targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny in the run-up to last year’s elections, but she also blamed the Supreme Court for opening the door to broader political activity.</p>

Susan Collins appeared on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday to address the exploding scandal at the IRS, as many of the other Sunday talk shows focused more on the exploding scandal of Benghazi. Candy Crowley asked Collins, “Is this passing the smell test to you?” Collins scoffed at the explanation given — that this took place only among low-level staffers — and wondered aloud why Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew haven’t apologized for the agency’s targeting of political opponents for more than a year up to the 2012 election.

Just an IRS demand for documents can virtually cripple an organization that can find itself needing to bring all hands on deck to comply with the demand. The White House will claim, of course, that it had nothing to do with this and was completely unaware of it. Congress should certainly not accept that claim on its face. House Republicans should stop at nothing to bring the truth about this matter to light, because most Americans don’t realize the power the IRS has to harass ordinary citizens. Do we have evidence that the Obama political team drove this in any...

On Saturday, we discovered that the IRS targeting of conservative groups didn’t start in 2012 and wasn’t limited to a few rogue low-level agents. Senior officials became aware of the practice at least as early as June 2011, including the top lawyer for the IRS. Today, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters report that an upcoming IG report will show that the practice first began in the 2010 midterm cycle (via TPM):

Internal IRS Mandate: 'Be on the Lookout' for 'Organizations Involved In ... Educating on Constitution and Bill of Rights' May 12, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - A timeline of Internal Revenue Service activities that was developed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and provided to congressional staff indicates that early last year--as the nation was headed toward a presidential election--the IRS issued a "be on the lookout order" (BOLO) for officials in its "Determinations Unit" to ferret out for heightened scrutiny organizations applying for tax exempt status that were involved in educating Americans "on the Constitution...

the IRS may have been casting an even wider net, and agents could have unfairly targeted groups that touted better government economic policy and debt pay-down. Also among the targeted: Groups that tried to educate about the Constitution or government policy critics ... at least one congressional member has wondered: What about Obamacare? Do critics of Obamacare face extra layers of IRS scrutiny, also?

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has discovered that the IRS did not merely target groups containing the words “Tea Party” or “patriots” – the IRS gave heightened scrutiny for any conservative groups “raising political concerns over government spending, debt and taxes or even for advocating making America a better place to live.” Political leanings were the issue, not merely group names, a direct rebuttal to the IRS’ statement last week that screening was apolitical in nature. The inspector general’s report is scheduled for release later this week. It will reportedly...

(CNSNews.com) - The House Ways and Means Committee wants to know when the White House first knew that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting groups for heightened scrutiny for their political views, including groups that used the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax exempt status, or that sought to educate people about the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has provided a timeline to congressional staff that indicates that in the 2010 election year the Internal Revenue Service instructed officials in its "Determinations Unit" to "be on the lookout...

The Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to "make America a better place to live," according to new details of a government probe. The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn't targeting conservative groups.

Along with targeting tea-party groups, the IRS may also have given extra-special attention to the tax-exempt status of some Jewish groups for political reasons. From the Jewish Press: The passionately pro-Israel organization Z STREET filed a lawsuit against the IRS, claiming it had been told by an IRS agent that because the organization was “connected to Israel,” its application for tax-exempt status would receive additional scrutiny. This admission was made in response to a query about the lengthy reveiw of Z STREET’s tax exempt status application. In addition, the IRS agent told a Z STREET representative that the applications of...

Glenn Beck issued a response Saturday to the Internal Revenue Service’s shocking admission that it has unfairly targeted conservative groups, pointing out that he and his news organization have been reporting on the issue for over a year. “In February 2012, TheBlaze first reported what the IRS now admits to – that they unfairly targeted conservative groups including the 9/12 project. It is nice to see everyone else playing catch-up and finally asking the same questions that TheBlaze started raising over a year ago,” Beck’s statement read. As early as February 14, 2012, TheBlaze’s Mike Opelka published a story titled:...

When accusations first emerged in 2010 that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had targeted conservative and Tea Party groups for additional scrutiny, it was unclear how widespread the problem was, or how to respond. Some groups sued the IRS. Some contacted Congress, which sent inquiries to the IRS over a period of several months, beginning in October 2012. The House Ways and Means Committee, which is opening hearings on the subject on Wednesday, sent three separate letters to the IRS--but the IRS claimed no knowledge of the issue. It took the efforts of Mark Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation to find...

You don’t need an explanation. These aren’t the partisan political abuses you’re looking for. Move along. It was all a big mistake. An unfortunate, accidental error. And “what difference does it make?” anyway, since according to the New York Times headline, the “I.R.S. Apologizes to Tea Party Groups Over Audits of Applications for Tax Exemption.” Yes, indeed, the IRS says it is sorry. But not actually to the Tea Party and Patriot organizations, whose equal rights under the law the agency so flagrantly violated. Instead, last week, Lois Lerner, the Director of Exempt Organizations for the Internal Revenue Service, admitted...

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Sunday that the IRS´ admission of targeting various conservative groups for extra scrutiny was "absolutely chilling," and she called on President Barack Obama to apologize. "This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust that the American people have in government," Collins said on CNN´s "State of the Union." "It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review, and I think it´s very disappointing that the president hasn´t personally condemned this and spoken out." The Alabama Democratic Party:

“Whoa: Did the IRS also target Jewish groups for ‘extra-special attention’?,” Twitchy asks: The IRS admits to targeting conservative groups for additional review and laughably claims the witch hunt wasn’t “motivated by political bias.” What will its math-challenged spokeswoman Lois Lerner say about allegations that the IRS gave “extra-special attention to the tax-exempt status of some Jewish groups for political reason”? * * * * * The pro-Israel group Z STREET filed a lawsuit against the IRS in 2010, claiming an IRS agent said the organization would come under extra scrutiny because it’s “connected to Israel.” In addition, the IRS...

Lois Lerner’s Response to Tea Party Question In response to a question about the IRS’s handling of Tea Party exemption applications, asked at the May 10 meeting of the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, Lois Lerner, Director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations office, made the following response: “We get about 60,000 applications for tax exemption every year, most of them are 501(c)(3) organizations. But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these organizations applying more than doubled,...

<p>Sarah Palin said the Internal Revenue Service's recent scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status is a sign of "corruption at the heart of big government" in Washington.</p> <p>"So many Americans knew this was happening, but many felt defenseless and even helpless against a government that seems to roll along without accountability or sense of obligation to the people it's supposed to serve. These Americans were mocked for being concerned about this, but now we see light shining on the truth, finally," she wrote in an online posting shortly after the IRS acknowledged it made "mistakes" in handling the applications of tea party groups.</p>