IRS "Scandal" Zombie lives on!

Once we stupidly went along with and accepted the ridiculous premise that political propaganda put out by tax exempt special interest groups was a form of social welfare, we were toast.   

The rush to influence elections by conservative and liberal “civic organizations” logically forced the IRS to investigate these hot new schemes before giving them tax exempt status.

As luck would have it, the lawsuit crazy right wing immediately saw another way to play victim and to vilify the government at the same time. Maybe even damage the IRS for good. 

Fox News’ Jay Sekulow is still taking it to the IRS, on behalf of the conservative anti-government & American special interests. Unlike the Democrats, Republican shills don't need a reason to bring up the IRS "scandal." 

“We have been in federal court since 2012 challenging the unconstitutional targeting by the IRS of conservative and Tea Party groups. This unlawful scheme was designed to punish organizations because of their conservative political beliefs.”

No, actually the IRS targeted an avalanche of both tea party and liberal groups seeking to avoid paying taxes while influencing elections. What, we’re just supposed to let anyone get the exemption?

It doesn’t hurt to have the now politicized conservative activist judicial system on your side either. Take for instance this completely unbiased shot at the IRS:

As Judge David B. Sentelle put it: “It’s hard to find the IRS to be an agency we can trust.”

Of course we can’t trust the government, which is by, for, and of the people. That would be crazy. Plus, Sentelle's judicial conservative activism is legendary:

Republican Federal Judge David Sentelle: How the GOP Has Packed the Courts With Partisan Hacks: Sentelle headed the three-judge panel that voided the NLRB and CFPB appointments … overturning of the convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra scandal … he appointed Ken Starr to oversee the so-called Whitewater investigation of the Clintons.

All good judicial activism. 

The most important and surreal part of their case against the IRS involves their blatantly partisan names, all the while pretending to be “civic organizations" operating exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. Anyone who considers themselves adults, should be insulted by that idea. 

It took a series of orders from federal judges … to get the IRS to finally release a list of the organizations it has targeted … 426 organizations … it’s clear that many groups were targeted simply because of their conservative-sounding names. Washington Times: “Sixty of the groups on the list released last month have the word ‘tea’ in their name, 33 have ‘patriot,’ eight refer to the Constitution, and 13 have ‘912 Project’ in their name — which is the monicker of a movement started by (Glenn Beck). Another 26 group names refer to ‘liberty,’ though that list does include some groups that are not discernibly conservative in orientation ... terms such as "progressive", "progress", "liberal", or "equality."

Wikipedia describes it this way:

The Republican majority on theHouse Oversight Committee issued a report, which concluded that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, the scrutiny that these groups received did not amount to targeting when compared to the greater scrutiny received by conservative groups. The FBI stated it found no evidence of "enemy hunting" of the kind that had been suspected…

Despite that FBI determination, right wing promoters of victimhood get a lot more mileage out of ignoring that, and instead creating their own reality:

It’s time for the stonewalling to stop and time for the courts and Congress to get to the bottom of this targeting scheme that was coordinated with the help of the Justice Department and other federal agencies. The bottom line: We intend to obtain justice for those patriotic Americans who were unconstitutionally targeted by their own government.