A Summary of the IRS Email Scandal To-Date

Government fighting the government is always awesome. The less time they have to harass us.

The destruction of Lois Lerner's hard drive is blood in the water for Republicans. Buy more popcorn.

 Walter Olson reports:

 Some highlights since the email story broke last Friday: 

* According to Strassel’s column today, the contents of Lois Lerner’s hard drive were wiped out by forces unknown “about 10 days after the Camp letter arrived,” that is to say, a letter from House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp inquiring into targeting of conservative groups. (Lerner then replied to Camp denying targeting and subsequently pleaded the Fifth before Congress.) 

* A WSJ editorial this morning points out the remarkable timing of the IRS’s begrudging disclosure last Friday that evidence central to the case has been destroyed: more than a year after the investigation began and only when a deadline was impending in which the IRS commissioner would have to certify personally that the agency had produced to Congress all relevant communications. Were responsible agency officials determined to treat this as a high-priority investigation, to be carried on in good faith and with all deliberate speed? (There was no doubt about the seriousness of the scandal, as President Obama himself admitted—or seemed to be admitting—at the time.) Or did they instead stall and deflect until the very last moment? So un-forthcoming was the agency that, according to today’s Journal editorial, IRS staffers met with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) Monday and did not tell him that the external emails of six other IRS employees had gone missing too—he found that out only later in the week when he read a press release from the House side.  

Of course, ALL government agencies act to protect their territories, it is not only the IRS. It is the nature of the evil government beast. There are plenty of hidden and distorted actions conducted by government employees across government. The current IRS hard drive scandal should be seen as exposure of one of the problems with government in general and not an isolated incident of a few bad actors. Government is about bad actors, The higher someone is in government, the worse they are. Hayek wasn't kidding when he titled a chapter in The Road to Serfdom, "Why The Wost Get On Top."

-RW