President Obama’s communications czar, Dan Pfeiffer, usually chooses his words carefully. So it’s no accident when he says, “The law is irrelevant” even as he concedes that the IRS targeting scandal is “inexcusable.” The law provides more than verbal knuckle wrapping for those who violate a sacred public trust, but Mr. Pfeiffer wants us to know the law is irrelevant here.
The law must be irrelevant if the official in charge of target selection – Sarah Hall Ingram – not only has not been disciplined, but has in fact been rewarded. She was rewarded first with $103,390 in bonuses for exemplary performance.
But more than that, she has been rewarded with a major promotion. She will no longer oversee who does and who does not get their requests for tax-exempt status granted. Instead, she will oversee the entire operation of the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare…
Applicants seeking to register with IRS were required to divulge what they read, whom they hired, what they talk about, even what they pray about. One pro-life group was instructed to abstain from protesting the abortions performed by Planned Parenthood. In short, they had to agree to give up their constitutional right to petition for redress of grievances as a condition for exemption from taxes. As the editors of the Associated Press are learning, under this administration, First Amendment freedoms of religion, press, assembly, and petition are all at risk…
A year ago, no one but “right-wing fearmongers” were worried about misuse of the IRS. TV comedian Jon Stewart dismissed such folks as the “tinfoil behatted” critics of enlightened government.
President Obama himself urged Ohio State graduates earlier this month to reject those who warn “that tyranny is always around the next corner.” Hardly had we turned the corner from the president’s speech than the IRS, Benghazi, and AP wiretap scandals burst into full bloom.
Tyranny is not around the corner. It is here. Not in an overt takeover, but in myriad small steps...
