I have watched so many committee meetings and most are more boring than soccer. But when Paul Ryan spoke to the IRS Commissioner, fireworks ensued.
The purpose of the Internal Revenue Service is to collect tax revenues for the federal government. It is not to be used as a political tool by the President and his administration. And yet, that is exactly what has happened.
Full disclosure: The Internal Revenue Service targeted CatholicVote.org. So, yeah, this is a bit personal.
Watch this four-minute clip:
But how has does the media portray this IRS scandal? Jonah Goldberg notes the hypocrisy:
‘Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea-party controversy.’
That’s the opening sentence of the Associated Press story on the IRS’s claim that it lost an unknown number of e-mails over two years relating to the agency’s alleged targeting of political groups hostile to the president.
But note how the AP casts the story: The investigators — Republican lawmakers — are outraged.
Is it really so hard to imagine that if this were a Republican administration, the story wouldn’t be the frustration of partisan critics of the president? It would be all about that administration’s behavior. With the exception of National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who called for a special prosecutor to bypass the White House’s “stonewalling,” and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, it’s hard to find a non-conservative journalist who thinks this is a big deal.
Conservatives and pro-lifers occasionally get upset that we have few political victories. But we should recognize the everyday miracle that these movements even exist (and make an impact!) when you consider that politicians from Obama to Cuomo use the long arm of the law to engage in political attacks, coupled with completely slanted coverage provided by the media.