This Is What It’s Come To

Michele Bachman announced to Greta Van Susteran on ‘On the Record’ that Tea Party leaders and others will be gathering in Washington, D.C. on Thursday (tomorrow) 5.16.13, to talk about their groups’ experiences with the IRS scandal.

Mark Steyn: The IRS demands Marion Bower provide the Government with details of what materials her group is reading.

Mrs. Bower mails back a copy of the United States Constitution.

Mark Levin: Scolds GOP: IRS Scandal Should Have Erupted in 2012

Susan Jones at CNSNews.com noted that on Monday night, conservative lawyer and radio host Mark Levin told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that the emerging scandal over politics at the IRS exposes "the passivity and timidity of Congress."

"The fact is, a year ago Congress should have been calling witnesses before their committees, should have placed them under oath, should have been pursuing possible perjury claims and should have gotten to the bottom of this before the election cycle ran out." Levin has routinely found House Speaker John Boehner to be too passive with Team Obama.

"Why, for the life of me, these committee chairman now are beating their chests and they’re talking about their hearings they will conduct, why for the life of me they didn’t do this a year ago is very troubling."

Levin denounced the entire Obama administration: "Folks, it’s real world. The IRS is out of control, the Department of HHS with ObamaCare is out of control. The Agriculture Department with the scandal, with the payoffs to different groups, is completely out of control. The Interior Department and oil drilling — the government is big, it’s bloated, it’s getting more and more powerful — and if you believe in liberty, you better start paying attention."

On his radio show Monday night, Levin explained how his Landmark Legal Foundation has worked over the past year to expose the IRS and pushed for action with the Inspector General inside the Treasury Department for tax administration. The IG’s report on the IRS spurred the scandal to be leaked out, he’s guessing.

Mark Levin Show, May 15, 2013: "Yes, we’re going to cover the ins and outs of this — we’re going to come into the weeds, but folks, it’s time to kill the IRS. That’s the bottom line. This agency has been corrupt since its founding. And the bigger the government gets, the more corrupt it gets, the more ubiquitous it gets. And I don’t just mean political partisanship and cronyism, I mean its abuses. We must fight the expansion of the IRS under ObamaCare. We must fight to kill the IRS or critically wound it — politically — with either a flat tax or a fair tax. Now is the time to advance a liberty agenda. Now is the time to advance a Constitutional agenda."

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: That was a holding operation. That was the absolute minimum he could have done. He relieves one person, he obviously had to. He had to relieve at least one person. He chose, of course, the acting commissioner but I would have expected more. The other actions he announced are up to now meaningless.

Obama and this administration have said a hundred times they’re going to hold x, y, or z accountable for all kinds of behavior. In Benghazi, you know, regarding a lot of other scandals. He even speaks about Syrian generals are going to be held accountable. It means nothing. And then he says there will be an investigation from the Treasury. Well, that just means the left hand of the government investigating the right hand. He did say he’ll cooperate with Congress. But then he has the chutzpah to essentially warn Republicans not to make this into a political event when what we’re talking about is the IRS applying political criteria inexcusably unconstitutionally, probably criminally, in deciding who it’s going to investigate. So I found this the bare minimum. It will hold him for 12 hours, but no more. (Special Report, May 15, 2013)