With headlines like this you would think Obama was getting serious about all these unconstitutional acts being committed:
But it appears the commissioner was due to leave in two weeks anyways:
But in an email to IRS employees, Miller claimed he would only be leaving next month because his assignment would be over.
‘It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June,’ Miller wrote. ‘This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency.’
I’m betting we find out the truth here in the next day but either way, a firing…a resignation…put on leave, what have you, is NOT enough.
There must be jail time involved in this and a simple IG investigation is not enough to get to the bottom this abuse of power.
Obama has much to explain as do Senate Democrats:
Over the last three years, Democratic senators repeatedly and publicly pressured the IRS to engage in the very activities that they are only now condemning today. At the same time, Republicans repeatedly and publicly warned against this abuse of government power and pointed to a series of red flags that strongly suggested conservative political organizations were being targeted by the IRS. Those warnings were deliberately ignored by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress.
As the New York Times reported back in 2010 :
With growing scrutiny of the role of tax-exempt groups in political campaigns, Congressional Republicans are pushing back against Democrats by warning about the possible misuse of the Internal Revenue Service to audit conservative groups….And the Republicans are also upset about an I.R.S. review requested by Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who leads the Finance Committee, into the political activities of tax-exempt groups. Such a review threatens to “chill the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights,” wrote two Republican senators, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Jon Kyl of Arizona, in a letter sent to the I.R.S. on Wednesday. … Democrats dismissed the Republicans’ complaints as groundless.
You read that correctly.
The same Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who this week is calling for hearings into IRS activities, specifically called on the IRS to engage in that very conduct back in 2010.
Now they are all scurrying to their foxholes condemning these act.
It was Obama’s leadership that caused this environment to occur as Bookworm so eloquently describes:
According to Obama’s defenders, even if one concedes that what the IRS did was a bad thing, Obama shouldn’t be touched by the scandal. It was not Barack’s fault. Leave Barack alone!! The IRS’s version of events is that “low level” employees committed these tyrannical acts. The New York Times goes so far as toblame the whole thing on the GOP (and certainly wins the George Orwell “1984″ Reporting Award for doing so). Message: this is not Obama’s fault. Barack Obama himself has gone on record as being surprised and dismayed.
You know what? This may be true. I’m perfectly willing to believe that Obama didn’t personally order these audits. But I can’t help thinking of Henry II. Once upon a time, early in his reign, Thomas Becket was Henry II’s closest friend. The relationship lasted right up until Henry elevated Becket to be Archbishop of Canterbury. It was then that Becket, who had been a priest for years, finally had his “come to Jesus” moment. He began opposing Henry vigorously on government policies that affected the Church, so much so that he became a thorn in Henry’s side.
Eventually, goaded beyond bearing, Henry cried out rhetorically “Will no one rid me of this turbulent (or meddling) priest?” (or, perhaps, the wordier “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”). It’s important to note that Henry never ordered Becket’s death. He just whined about the fact that Becket’s existence interfered with his goals. Four of Henry’s knights heard these words and decided to help out. They rode to Canterbury and stabbed Thomas to death inside the Cathedral itself.
Although the facts made it impossible to hold Henry guilty for having ordered Becket’s death, everyone understood that his attitude caused it. Henry was castigated throughout Europe. Four years after Becket’s death, he donned a sack-cloth and walked barefoot through Canterbury’s streets as eighty monks flogged him with branches. Henry then spent the night in the martyr’s crypt. Henry also promised the Papacy that he’d go crusading in Becket’s memory, although never did so.
I’m sure our media will give Obama a flogging soon right?
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