The IRS "Scandal" and other Darrell Issa BS

So it turns out that the IRS showed no particular preference in going after right-wing groups claiming tax-exempt status. Progressive groups engaging in political activity were also investigated with equal fervor.  The most notable fallout from this manufactured scandal is the skyrocketing of contributions to Darrell Issa's next campaign because he is so mind-numbingly anti-Obama.  

 

A June 25 post on The Hill website provided an update on the machinations behind the "scandal":

The Treasury inspector general (IG) whose report helped drive the IRS targeting controversy says it limited its examination to conservative groups because of a request from House Republicans. A spokesman for Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, said they were asked by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) “to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations.” ...top congressional Democrats have wielded new information from the IRS this week that liberal groups were also flagged for extra attention on the sorts of “be on the lookout” lists (BOLOs) that also tripped up conservative groups.

Can you believe this sack of crap? I think the House Oversight Committee should investigate it own chairman. But somehow I feel that's not going to happen.  Oh yeah, the trail in this IRS "scandal" was supposed to lead to the White House, right?  Unfortunately for the Obama conspiracy theorists, it apparently starts and ends in Cincinnati.   As detailed in Rep. Elijah Cummings' masterful June 13 letter to Issa , in which the ranking Democrat on the Committee asks Issa to release the full interview transcripts from the Committee hearings:

I asked for the Screening Group Manager's interview transcript to be made public because I believe it will establish several key facts...[among them that] there was absolutely no White House involvement whatsoever in the origination or development of the process to screen Tea Party cases. Neither the Screening Group Manager nor any other witness who has appeared before the Committee has provided any evidence to back up this wholly unsubstantiated claim. The Inspector General also identified no evidence of White House involvement.

This isn't the first time Issa's Oversight Committee tried to prove dastardly doings in the Obama White House that just weren't so. From Timothy Egan's July 11 blog in the NYTimes, " The Charade of Darrell Issa":

..after millions of dollars in investigative forays, the wheels come off the ride. Fast and Furious — that gunrunning scheme into Mexico by federal agents, known to conservatives as a vast conspiracy by Obama to bring on gun control — is traced to the White House, just as Issa predicted. Except, it was George W. Bush’s White House, where the practice of letting guns cross borders originated in a similar program called Operation Wide Receiver. Move along. Solyndra, the subsidizing of a money-losing solar energy company, and the tragedy of Benghazi — Watergate-level cover-ups, yes? They both sank with truth that was much more banal and sad.

We can laugh off the likes of Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, and Michelle Bachmann, but the scary thing is that Darrell Issa controls one of the more powerful House committees and he apparently is not done yet. On July 18, USA Today even gave him an op-ed column. WTF were they thinking?