Just don't lie about your personal use of legal drugs ...
by digby
Why am I featuring yet another picture of a baseball player I have always loathed on this blog, you ask? Well because, once again, it seems that the only thing you aren't allowed to lie to congress about is your personal use of steroids. That will get you prosecuted. Other than that, it's anything goes.
The Atlantic reports:
When the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration appeared before a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on June 3, he did not shy away from introducing a highly politicized framework for understanding the Internal Revenue Service's actions in targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
"This is unprecedented, Congressman .... During the Nixon Administration, there were attempts to use the Internal Revenue Service in manners that might be comparable in terms of misusing it," J. Russell George, the George W. Bush appointee who leads the IG's office, told the committee in the closely watched hearing.
"I'm not saying that ... the actions that were taken are comparable, but I'm just saying, you know, that the misuse of the -- causing a distrust of the system occurred sometime ago. But this is unprecedented," he continued.
It seemed a needlessly inflammatory statement. The impartial investigator within the Treasury Department had just, unprompted, introduced the historic specter of presidential involvement in directing abusive tax treatment of White House enemies, despite a total lack of evidence that such a thing had occurred under President Obama, according to his own findings thus far. It was the first mention of Nixon at the hearing, albeit delivered with a deliberative caveat. He wasn't saying, he was just saying, you know?
Now comes news that the inspector general might not be the impartial arbiter he successfully presented himself to be in releasing the May audit report, "Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax Exempt Applications for Review."
We know now that the IRS did not target just the Tea Party but also used other screens such as "progressive" and "occupy" to alert them to groups that might be overtly political. And that logically means that it's not rational to even imply that this was some sort of Nixonian plot to punish the president's opponents.
Read the rest of the article to see that this isn't a non-partisan scandal, however. It would appear that the allegedly independent Inspector General went before congress and performed as Darryl Issa's personal house boy and blatantly misrepresented facts which he surely knew he was misrepresenting.
But don't worry, he's in good company. The NSA chief can lie without repercussions, why shouldn't he be able to as well? It's not like they're hiding their own personal use of legal drugs or anything important...
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