With apologies to the GayPatriot blog’s many Jewish friends and to its many “secular conservative” atheist/agnostic friends.

My only comment on the following material shall be this summary: It seems that Jesus took note of who was a tax collector and was willing to forgive them, on the premise that they were sinners who obviously needed to repent of their many crimes against their fellow man.

Matthew 9:9-13, English Standard Version (ESV), Jesus Calls Matthew

9 As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

10 And as Jesus[a] reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. 11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Luke 15:1-32, English Standard Version (ESV), The Parable of the Lost Sheep (more…)

. . . another scandal is a-brewing:

“According to documents obtained by the Committees, EPA readily granted FOIA fee waivers for environmental allies, effectively subsidizing them, while denying fee waivers and making the FOIA process more difficult for states and conservative groups,” wrote Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Darrell Issa and Sens. David Vitter, Chuck Grassley and Jim Inhofe in a letter to the EPA.

Maybe we misheard Obama back in ’08; he wasn’t saying post-partisan, but most partisan.

A video every American should see:

As the scandals engulfing the Obama Administration have proliferated and “gotten legs” this week, many of the conservatives I know or whom I hear on the radio have started drawing comparisons with what happened under Nixon, bringing up the word “impeachment,” and hoping that as  it becomes evident that these activities were not accidents but part of a coordinated strategy, Obama will eventually resign, or at least some of those who hold key posts of power in this administration–such as Eric Holder–will resign and that the Administration will be hopelessly tainted as the truth becomes known.

I hear that talk, and I think, it would be nice, but I can’t see it happening.  Maybe Holder will resign.  Maybe.

I can imagine the press starting to subject the Obama Administration to a little more scrutiny in the future, but “a little more” than none is still only a little bit of scrutiny, hardly enough to make a significant difference in public opinion.  While the outrage surrounding all of this may be enough for the Republicans to hold the House and to gain control in the Senate in 2014, there will still be formidable problems, and we’ll still have a very divided country.  The low-information voters in the electorate will still be willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt because most of them are either unwilling to see him for the cynical, partisan character he is, or they are unable to do so.

It is possible that after a year or two of scandals and after the outrage that is sure to follow the full implementation of Obamacare, Obama will end his second term with even lower approval ratings than George W. Bush ended his, but at this point, I think that’s about the most we can hope for, that, and maybe Holder’s resignation.  I’m not even sure any of this will derail the immigration bill, which is looking more and more like the next legislative disaster coming down the pike.

I’m not trying to be pessimistic, merely practical.  In the lead-up to the election in November, I knew that what happened  with the administration’s lies about Benghazi was an outrage, but after the election, it seemed evident to me that Obama, Hillary, and the entire administration were going to get away without any consequences.  The American voters had failed to demand answers and accountability and had just re-elected Obama.

Now that the scandals are starting to illustrate the kinds of things conservatives have been saying about Obama for years and years now, some liberals are upset with Obama, but others are busy trying to find more ways to blame conservatives for making an issue of the problems.   In one of the most ironic defenses of Obama I have encountered so far, David Axelrod offered the “incompetence” excuse, namely, that the government is just too big for Obama to really know what’s going on, an excuse we are sure to hear echoed in the days ahead.  Forgive me if I can’t forget that in November the American electorate rejected a man who was renowned for his management skills and his ability to lead large organizations successfully, all so they could re-elect the “community organizer.”

So what do our readers think?  Am I just being pessimistic about all this?  Is the investigation of these scandals likely to have real and significant consequences for our government, or are they a lot of talk that will amount to nothing, or at least nothing much?

. . . please explain why such snooping didn’t occur while George W. Bush was President of the United States.

And as a bonus, for those constantly blaming that man for wanting to destroy his enemies, please provide evidence of him — or his minions — rooting around in confidential government files for details about his political opponents.

The guy who would know, spoke on Morning Joe:

“You were talking earlier about kind of dismissing the Benghazi issue as one that’s just political and the president recently said it’s a sideshow,” said Woodward. “But if you read through all these e-mails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, ‘Oh, let’s not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al Qaeda. Let’s not tell the public that there were warnings.’ I hate to show, this is one of the documents with the editing that one of the people in the state department said, ‘Oh, let’s not let these things out.’

“And I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, ‘Oh, let’s not tell this, let’s not show this.’ I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue. As people keep saying, four people were killed. You look at the hydraulic pressure that was in the system to not tell the truth…”

Emphasis added.

And, as of this writing: No, the Benghazi e-mails still haven’t been released. Not all; not enough. They held back the most crucial ones, the e-mails from September 12 and 13, releasing only from September 14 on. Why?

UPDATE (from Dan): Jeff, are you anticipating a post I am planning? Or just reading my mind?
UPDATE (from Jeff): Dan, GMTA!

Some news reports just speak for themselves.

In the Weekly Standard today, Daniel Halper writes:

NBC’s Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election . . .

The IRS commissioner “has known for at least a year that this was going on,” said Myers, “and that this had happened. And did he share any of that information with the White House? But even more importantly, Congress is going to ask him, why did you mislead us for an entire year? Members of Congress were saying conservatives are being targeted. What’s going on here? The IRS denied it. Then when — after these officials are briefed by the IG that this is going on, they don’t disclose it. In fact, the commissioner sent a letter to Congress in September on this subject and did not reveal this. Imagine if we — if you can — what would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”

Via Ace. Barack Obama’s much vaunted commitment to transparency notwithstanding, that Democrat is more interested in winning elections than in opening the books on his administration.

RELATED: Worse and worse: IRS claimed in 2011 that there were no documents related to scrutiny of tea-party groups

Why did the IRS keep the scandal quiet until after the election?

Just caught Erin Burnett on CNN talking about something I had noticed earlier today as trending on Yahoo!

Yup, that’s right, number one above.* On his “700 Club” television show yesterday, his co-host Kristi Watts read a letter from a woman having trouble forgiving a cheating husband. Watts called infidelity “one of the ultimate betrayals“, but Robertson said the woman should “stop talking about the cheating.” After asking some good questions which get at the heart of what it means to be good husband, he otherwise seems to miss the point, dismissing the problem of infidelity — and failing to understand the full meaning of marriage, particularly the marital vows:

He cheated on you. Well, he’s a man, okay, so, what you do is begin to focus on why you married him in the first place, on what he does good.

. . . .

But recognize also, like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit. And what you want to do is make the home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander. But, think of the temptations that are out there. The Internet is filled with pornography. Magazines are filled with pictures, salacious pictures of women. Anywhere you turn around, there is some solicitation to the sense to entice a man. And so what you have to do is say, “My husband was captured and I want to get him free.”

Yes, Mr. Robertson is right; males do have a tendency to wander, but marriage vows exist to restrain that tendency, to remind a man that he has, to borrow a term many social conservatives like, made a covenant with a woman, forging a bond more important that the momentary gratification a dalliance with another women might offer.

What this man did was wrong and to earn forgiveness, he should first admit that.

Marriage has evolved for a great many reasons, one of them to control that tendency to wander.  Mr. Robertson should have said as much.  He should have said that what the cheating husband did was wrong — and criticized him for violating his vows.  And for causing pain to a woman to whom he had sworn fidelity. (more…)

I updated a previous post to cite reports that the IRS has requested the names of high school and college kids which conservatives organizations were training/mentoring.

At the National Review today, Andrew Stiles builds on that story:

The tax-collecting agency sought to identify and track student interns at the Leadership Institute, a conservative educational organization based in Virginia.

At around the same time the IRS began its “inappropriate targeting” of conservative organizations applying for nonprofit status — a practice detailed in a Treasury Department inspector general’s report published Tuesday — the agency conducted an audit of the Leadership Institute. The institute has offered workshops, seminars, internships, and other training programs for young conservatives and grassroots activists since its founding in 1979.

. . . .

It is not the only known instance of the IRS seeking information about conservative students. Kevin Kookogey, who founded a conservative mentoring program for high-school and college students in Tennessee, told National Review Online the IRS asked him to “identify the students I’m teaching and what I’m teaching them” as part of his application for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.

So this got me wondering if the IRS had ever previously asked organizations applying for 501(c)(3) or (c)(4) status (or organizations with such status under audit) to name their interns.

Do any of our readers know if that happened before?  I will link any credible report of such requests.

Was the same person (or persons) who crafted the questionnaire the individual (or team) deciding to ask for the names of high school and college kids?

* (more…)

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – Invaders Guarding the Watchtower
• The Colossus of Rhodey – “Morality and Conscience”
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The Difference It Made
• The Political Commentator – Cartoon, Video: Hey recent college graduate, congratulations?
• Joshuapundit-Who Really Is Really Savagely Destroying Palestinian Children?
• The Right Planet – Exasperation: A Nation on the Brink
• Gay Patriot – Only the president can end the Benghazi “sideshow”
• Rhymes With Right – A Lawless Agency In Need Of A Special Prosecutor
• VA Right! - A Word on Supervisor Elton Wade Appointing Norm Sulser to the Hanover School Board
• The Glittering Eye -What Did They Know and When Did They Know It
• The Razor – The Ignored Will Not Be Silenced
• Bookworm Room – Obama and Henry II; Obama and Martin Niemöller; and Obama and Al Capone
• The Mellow Jihadi – Michelle Bachmann, Jihadi Foods, and the US Navy
• Simply Jews – When in Rome or the best and the worst of that trip (more…)

As damning as the scandal at the IRS (as well as the ones at the HHS, the DoJ, Benghazi, the other ones at the DoJ, etc.) is for the presidency of Barack Obama, I am 100% in agreement with Utah Senator Mike Lee‘s take that the scorn should be much broader:

Unfortunately for the president, his best defense is the same reason Americans should reject his liberal agenda to make the federal government more powerful, more intrusive, and more involved in the decisions we make. The bigger government gets, the less control the president has and the more opportunities there are for abuse.

BINGO

I’ll have more to say about this soon, and I could cut-and-paste every word in this article, but you might as well just read the whole thing.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HHQ)

Remember that moment in Star Wars when Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie land in the trash compactor and the princess trying to make the best of things, sighing, “It could be worse.”  A moment later, they hear the growl of the “garbage creature,” leading Han Solo to quip, “It’s worse.”

The garbage creature just let out another growl.

Ann Althouse reports that the IRS targeted a stay-at-home mother who had set up a Tea Party group:

“Send us your Facebook pages, your Twitter pages,” and I said, “Does that include personal pages?” and they said, “Everything.”  They wanted to know your personal relationships with politicians and political parties. And I asked, “What would happen if I don’t send this to you?” and they said, they made an insinuation like, “Look, it can be considered perjury if you omit things from the IRS.”  I’m a pregnant stay-at-home mother on one income, I thought, “Oh, my goodness, I’m not doing anything.” I stopped.

Via Instapundit. Seems the snooping strategy had the desire effect. It hindered one engaged young woman from actively debating issues of public concern.

She wasn’t the only woman impacted by the IRS intimidation.

Only days ago, Obama gave a speech in which, rather than warn us against tyranny, he warned us against the people who go around warning us against tyranny.

The IRS revelations only get worse: From the Washington Examiner yesterday (via Ed Morrissey this morning), we learn that the IRS demanded of a pro-life group – under “perjury of the law”, the IRS staffer’s words – that it not engage in legal Planned Parenthood picketing. And required another pro-life group to furnish detailed plans on its constitutionally-protected speech activities.[1]

This is the same IRS that Obama has been beefing up to enforce Obamacare by demanding ever-greater private information of citizens.

The AP snooping scandal speaks for itself. Now from the GP comments, V the K reminds us of something Obama said in 2008:

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Video here.[2]

In these disparate data points, I see a pattern: Obama wants to be a tyrant – while pretending not to. My question is, do liberals really not see the pattern?

I know that some liberals have begun seeing it – and will, for example, condemn the IRS actions – but others don’t. The other day, I noted Julian Bond saying that he thinks conservative groups deserve the IRS harassment. The execrable Bill Maher has joined the fun there.

Obama maintains his democratic pretense by periodically declaring the goodness of his intentions. For example: yes, the other day he called the IRS actions “inexcusable”.

But a troubled President Nixon, as well as actual tyrants like Chavez and worse, also frequently declared their own goodness. So many of Obama’s other words, policies, and actions of his underlings point in a direction opposite to his self-declared goodness. Do liberals really not see? Or are they part of the pretense; de facto pro-tyranny?

—————-
[1] (I don’t know the ins and outs of these tax-exemption laws, but I thought that as long as a group would refrain from electioneering for parties/candidates, it would get a pass.)
[2] Students of history will note that the Fascists also believed in having powerful civilian, national security forces, and will be troubled by the weird applause that Obama’s liberal audience gave him for proposing it.

Looking at the “IRS letters to Tea Party groups“, J. Christian Adams found that they “read like an opposition researcher’s fantasy:  demands for the names of volunteers, money, content of speeches, donors, offices, on and on and on.”

An opposition researcher’s fantasy. . . . Wonder if any allies/associates of the president have an expertise in that kind of work.

According to Politico,

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.

. . . it stands to reason that that man’s minions might be interested in using the IRS to obtain information about his ideological adversaries.

This afternoon during the statement in which he announced the sacking of the interim head of the IRS whose tenure apparently may already have been approaching its expected end anyway, the president said, among other things:

I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again

Now, there is a possibility, I suppose, that he’s lying.

However, imagining the possibility that he really will do everything in his power “to make sure nothing like this happens again”, I have a suggestion of something that he can do immediately that is absolutely within his power and wouldn’t even take that much work: Prepare and then deliver the following statement from the Oval Office:

Greetings, my fellow Americans. I come before you to start a new chapter in American politics. I realize that I told you that I’d start a new chapter in American politics almost five years ago when I won the presidency. I said then, as I had throughout that campaign, that my administration would usher in a new type of politics in America. Many of you first heard about that dream four years earlier when I delivered a speech to the Democratic National Convention extolling the virtue of Red States and Blue States coming together as one Nation working together to solve our problems and live in harmony.

Indeed, many of you were enthralled with the concept of a young and charismatic politician who did not pit Americans against each other, and throngs of you from both sides of the political aisle came together to make history by electing me as president in 2008. You believed in that new chapter of American politics I sold you at that time. Perhaps I did too.

I am going to be frank with you in my assessment of my own record since then. Simply put, I have let you down.

I let you down during my first term, for example, by suggesting those who opposed my $800,000,000,000 increase in government spending were “rooting for failure“, and in an effort to convince you that the government was a better judge of your health-care decisions than even your doctor, insinuating that some of them perform unnecessary surgeries simply for their own monetary gain, among many other instances.

I often highlighted not simply the differences of opinions—fair game in the rough-and-tumble sport of politics and vital in the arena of competing ideas—but impugned the motivations of my opponents. It wasn’t simply that Fox News, for example, showed an opposing view, my thin-skinned response was that they were “entirely devoted to attacking my administration“. I had no qualms with singling out individual citizens who were expressing their First Amendment rights to disagree with my policies publicly if it would provide a face to demonize rather than forthrightly and honestly defend my positions.

On topic after topic, in forum after forum, it was belittling those who disagree with me as bitter clingers, and that my supporters should “punish our enemies“. Heck, just last year, my campaign produced a commercial that—no kidding—said my opponent was “not one of us“. Okay, sincerely, as an aside, I’m surprised at the lack of irony Americans displayed when I, of all people, was allowed to get away with that one…but that’s a story for my memoirs and I digress.

Point being, I have fostered, as much as or possibly likely more than anybody an atmosphere of demonizing your political opponents to the degree that we cannot even get along and agree to disagree anymore. Let’s set aside my cynicism in having suggested that I am the non-cynical one in all of this and simply recognize my role in the degradation of our political culture.

Now, let me be clear that I state unequivocally I never explicitly directed nor even winked-and-nodded to anybody who works for me nor any part of the government to single out my political opponents for IRS scrutiny. But as I reflect on the employees of the Federal Government, I cannot help but recognize the role that my leadership must have had on them.

In no way do I excuse this despicable and illegal conduct and I stand behind my comments and my commitment to follow the trails to those who did this and punish them accordingly.

That said, I certainly deserve part of the blame here.

Therefore, starting now, I will institute a new form of public dialog. From this day forward, I vow to never again attack my political adversaries’ motives but rather honestly and straightforwardly challenge them on their positions and policies. We will disagree, and the arguments will be pointed and heated at times, but they will not—at least from me—ever be personal again.

Let me start by acknowledging unequivocally that my opponents do not want poor people to starve and die naked and emaciated in the streets. They do not want poisoned air and water, and that they want a clean environment for their children just as much as anybody does. My opponents don’t hate gays, Muslims, nor foreigners. They don’t want you to go without teachers, policemen, firemen, libraries, or White House tours.

Just like me, they want to help people stay healthy and have access to health-care…they just want to approach it a different way.

Just like me, they want our children and families and friends to be safe from random acts of violence…they just have a different idea of how to achieve that.

Just like me, they want a revitalized economy and more people working fulfilling careers…they just don’t agree with how we get there.

Just like me, they want a strong and respected America that leads the world…we just differ on what that means and what it looks like.

Now, to my supporters, don’t worry…I’m not disarming unilaterally. I am not in any way abandoning the foundational ideas of a strong and effective centralized government playing an active role in our citizens’ lives in an attempt to make our Nation great and strong. But going forward, I will respect my opponents’ motives and respect that they also hope for the best for America and want our Nation to be strong and prosperous.

I cannot promise that my taking this new approach will ensure no underlings in the IRS or other parts of the government will never again act as recklessly and criminally. But I can guarantee you that as of this moment, this evening, right now…they will never be able to imagine for a moment that I, President Barack Obama would even for a second condone such actions. I regret that it is incredibly likely that up until now, they may very well have.

Thank you, and good night.

My partner says it’s also “in his power” to just resign.

I suppose I’d give both possibilities about equal chance.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HHQ)

UPDATE: My apologies (mine, ColoradoPatriot, not the hypothetical president)…no end of troubles with WordPress last night. I didn’t realize till this morning that comments had been turned off, now since rectified.

“To believe“, Bruce tweeted last night, “that no one in @BarackObama White House knew about IRS scandal is to, in words of @HRClinton ‘willingly suspend disbelief’.”  Perhaps, I was in too generous of a mood last night when I read that, aware that there was as yet no evidence linking top Obama officials to the scandal.

Though given the information asked of Tea Party groups — and the fact that the IRS was approving liberal groups while leaving Tea Party ones “in limbo”, it is pretty clear that some political appointee had a say in that. Once again, who decided to ask for all this information from the Tea Party folk?

Seems the IRs was interesting not just in gleaning information about the organizations, but also about learning the names of citizens participating in the organizations. Why would they need know the names of all the group’s members and its donors?

Was their goal to get those names? And for what end?

Seems there was more to this than just string out the process.

And now Breitbart is reporting that an Obama campaign co-chair was attacking Romney with leaked IRS documents. (And that co-chiar just happens to be a Mr. J. Solmonese.)

Maybe we should be asking these questions, “What did David Axelrod know? And when did he know it?”

UPDATE: Even the names of high school and college kids?

UP-UPDATE: Sounds like David Axelrod is acknowledging Obama’s incompetence, the president’s unfitness to preside over the executive branch?

UP-UP-UPDATE: The answer could be nothing and never, but one’s gotta wonder how Obama’s political allies manage to get copies of confidential forms his ideological allies filed with the IRS.

Via Drudge, we learn that the Attorney General is pointing the finger as this deputy who secretly obtained journalist’s phone records:

Holder said that he recused himself from the making the controversial decision to subpoena the phone records of Associated Press journalists, saying that it was made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

kHolder said that he recused himself from the making the controversial decision to subpoena the phone records of Associated Press journalists, saying that it was made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

Well, did he think the way Mr. Cole engaged in a bit of overreach in the manner in which he attempted to contain the leak?  And does he think a man should keep his job in the federal Justice Department after casting so wide a net?

UPDATE:  Hmmmmm. . . . : Holder: I can’t remember when I recused myself from the AP investigation, and I know I didn’t do it in writing

Last night, I had a pleasant dinner, spontaneously arranged, with one of my closest friends in LA.  He and I had met about six years via an online dating service.  We didn’t feel much romantic chemistry, but did enjoy each other’s company and became friends.

as we occasionally do, we shared our stories about online dating, he kvetching about a man who didn’t call when he promised, but who subsequently kept pestering him with texts, I sharing stories about a number of decent dates I had with guys whose profiles presented a pretty accurate portrait of their personality, profession and passions.

And then we fell to talking about guys who misrepresented themselves on line, with both of us recalling dates with men who just didn’t look like their pictures.  I related a tale about a guy I met depicted as thin in his online pictures, but who in person, suffered from a severe shall we say, a severe absence of thin.  (After our coffee date, I went back home and checked his profile and ascertained that that was clearly the guy depicted online, but the pictures were at least ten years old.)

And we wondered last night, my friend and I, we wondered what these men thought when they posted these pictures, that their scintillating personalities would make up for the difference in appearance?  Didn’t it occur to them that men who responded to the ad would be attracted to that picture and expect to meet someone who looked like the guy in the picture? Or did they believe that the picture merely served to draw the potential date to the profile and that the qualities delineated therein constituted the real nature of said date’s interest?

Or did they believe their own propaganda, that they actually looked today like they did ten years ago, despite the fact that ten years ago, they exercised regularly whereas today they’re making plans to exercise next week? (more…)

Back in October 2010, blogger Tigerhawk recalled what one of his Princeton classmates, who was originally from Romania, said about the nature of life under socialism:

One recurring tool of socialist tyranny is the capricious enforcement of unworkable laws.

He quoted the passage in making a point about the “capricious enforcement” which was an inevitable feature of the unworkable mess better known as Obamacare.

But two and a half years later, it’s evident that observation could just as easily have been applied to our byzantine tax code, our environmental regulations, and even laws pertaining to press freedoms under the Obama administration.  As Dan wrote earlier today, the only folks who are surprised by any of these scandals are the ones who haven’t been paying attention to what has been going with our government since January 20, 2009.

In the case of the Obama administration, though, it’s not strictly capricious enforcement, but selective enforcement, always with a partisan goal in mind.  The IRS targeting of the Tea Party and conservative organizations is appalling, but one would have to be naive not to believe, as ABC’s Trey Hardin noted today, that it wasn’t authorized by someone in the West Wing.  Hardin observed (audio at the link):

I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it. It simply just does not happen at an agency level like that without political advisers likely in the West Wing certainly connected to the president’s ongoing campaign organization.

And it’s not just the IRS.  Earlier today it came out that the EPA waived fees for leftist organizations and leftist journalists who requested information, but not for conservative ones:   “Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.”  Yes, this would be the same EPA that has classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant, making the mere act of exhaling potentially troublesome.

A coincidence?  I think not.  This is the same administration committed to picking winners and losers on most matters.  Hence, it should surprise no one that while oil companies are prosecuted for the deaths of eagles and other protected species, the bird-killing wind farms are naturally given a pass.   Clearly, some energy companies are more equal than others.

It’s the same with journalists.  Just a day after the AP snooping scandal broke, the administration is playing favorites again.  Jake Tapper has gained a reputation as one who can be counted on to ask tough questions of the White House with greater frequency than the reporters at most of the other lamestream news organizations.  Well, today Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection is reporting that the White House played Jake Tapper by selectively leaking one e-mail with the apparent aim of creating a diversion in the reporting about the Benghazi cover-up.  Jacobson writes: “Like I said, this entire diversion of leaking a single email out of a chain of emails to Tapper was simply meant to put critics of the administration back on their heels and to provide an excuse for White House defenders to throw around words like ‘doctored.’”

And so what else do we see today?  Well, all of a sudden the administration’s lackeys in the press such as Hilary Rosen are now out expressing their sympathy for poor Jay Carney.  I guess they’re afraid of ending up as the subject of a DOJ snooping scandal or an IRS investigation or a selective leak.