Free Republic

It seems that not only is Justice blind in Washington, D.C., but she's been kicked out of town altogether. On Saturday, it was reported that Cindy Thomas just got a big promotion. If you don't know who Cindy Thomas is, she was the IRS official in charge of the exempt organizations office in Cincinnati. This was one of the IRS groups who targeted conservative tea party groups for harassment and intimidation. They also illegally leaked confidential tax information to other agencies and liberal groups. Cindy Thomas is a 35 year veteran of the IRS (bet her pension plan is rocking!)...

The IRS official in charge of the exempt organizations office in the Cincinnati branch at the time conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status were unfairly targeted just got a promotion. Cindy Thomas has been appointed to the senior technical adviser team for the Director of Exempt Organizations. Thomas, a 35-year IRS veteran, will fill the spot vacated by Sharon Light. Light, a one-time close adviser to Lois Lerner, is the sixth senior IRS official to leave the agency. Lerner is the employee at the center of the political storm that hit the nation earlier this year. She was the first...

Obama-appointed IRS Chief Counsel is sued. IRS targeted Christine O’Donnell. So. Buckle in. True the Vote, the Tea Party-style group targeted by Internal Revenue Service officials who are now at the very heart of the IRS scandal, is suing William Wilkins. That would be the William Wilkins who is the IRS Chief Counsel. True the Vote, “the nation’s leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization,” is announcing today that it is adding Wilkins — one of only two Obama political appointees to the IRS — to its federal lawsuit against the IRS. The group is also adding five other ranking...

APThe contention that the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups was limited to several low-level workers may not be holding up.Former IRS acting head Steven Miller testified last week that two “rogue” agents responsible have already been disciplined. But Fox Cincinnati affiliate WXIX-TV has identified six local employees that sent probing letters to Tea Party groups: Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr, Stephen Seok, Liz Hofacre and a woman known only as Ms. Richards.According to WXIX, all of those workers have separate managers, and separate territory managers above them; the only supervisor they do have in common is Cindy...

The short answer? The highest-ranking official in the Cincinnati office where, the IRS would have us believe, a few rogue employees initiated a scheme to target conservatives. SNIP When an application for tax exempt status comes into the IRS, agents have 270 days to work through that application. If the application is not processed within those 270 days it automatically triggers flags in the system. When that happens, individual agents are required to input a status update on that individual case once a month, every month until the case is resolved. Keep in mind, at least 300 groups were targeted...

In one sense, this can’t surprise anyone who’s ever dealt with entrenched bureaucracies, which are hardly known for their innovation. No one really believes for a moment that a few rogue agents just decided to band together to start targeting opponents of the current administration for extra scrutiny, delays, and harassment on their own. That argument flies in the face of common sense and common experience in bureaucratic stagnation.Fox 19 in Cincinnati shows that the internal processes and organizational chart of the IRS makes it provably ridiculous as well: #divWNVideoCanvas938119 {top:25px; left:0px; position:absolute}#divWNHeadline938119 {top:0px; left:0px; position:absolute}#divWNWidgetsContainer938119 {position:relative;overflow:hidden;height:380px;width:630px;} FOX19.com-Cincinnati News,...

The six Cincinnati workers we have identified, who sent scrutinizing letters to conservative groups with words including "patriot, liberty, tea party or 9-12" in their names are Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr, Stephen Seok, Liz Hofacre and a woman identified only as Ms. Richards. But was all of this done at the hands of a small group of Cincinnati employees working together? During Friday's congressional hearing, that appeared to be the theme. Now, that explanation just became less likely. Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr and Liz Hofacre are IRS agents. Stephen Seok is a supervisor IRS agent But...