IRS Conservative Witch Hunt

IRS: We're sorry. :(

GIVE ME A BREAK!

From the Washington Post:

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday said that it inappropriately selected tea party political groups for special scrutiny in the 2012 campaign, an admission likely to fuel long-simmering suspicions among conservatives that the IRS has been singling them out for unfair treatment.

The IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, Lois Lerner, acknowledged at a conference on Friday the actions were wrong and apologized, according to the Associated Press. Lerner said groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status faced additional screening.

In a statement, the IRS said the screening occurred by career employees in Cincinnati who, between 2010 and 2012, were seeking to centralize work related to tax exempt organizations. The agency said that while it made errors, they were not politically motivated.

“The IRS recognizes we should have done a better job of handling the influx of advocacy applications,” the statement said. “Mistakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale.”

What?

"[T]hey were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale"???

That's impossible to believe. Ridiculous.

Of course, it was politically motivated.

It was an abuse of power by the government. That is undeniable. American citizens were targeted by the government for harassment because of their politics.

There is no doubt about that.

...Since early last year, tea party groups and other conservative organizations have said they have been the subject of inappropriate screening by the IRS, prompting formal complaints by Republican lawmakers. Some Democrats and campaign finance groups, meanwhile, have argued that tax-exempt groups are stretching the boundaries of the law and should be required to disclose more about their operations.

One of the nation’s largest tea party groups, the Tea Party Patriots, on Friday said it rejected the IRS’s explanation and demanded the resignations of all officials involved. The group also called on President Obama to apologize for ignoring the groups’ concerns.

“The IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power,” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for the group. “This deliberate targeting and harassment of tea party groups reaches a new low in illegal government activity and overreach.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), the top Republican of the Senate Finance Committee who has raised concerns previously about IRS oversight of conservative groups, said he was not satisfied by the acknowledgment.

“This frankly isn’t enough,” he said. “We need to have ironclad guarantees from the IRS that it will adopt significant protocols to ensure this kind of harassment of groups that have a constitutional right to express their own views never happens again.”

He called on the IRS to release more information about what transpired. “The American people deserve to know who at the IRS learned about this unlawful activity, when they learned about it, and what they did, or did not, do when they did learned about it,” Hatch said.

I don't accept the IRS's explanation at all.

Imagine the outrage if the George W. Bush administration had pulled something like this. The Leftists would go ballistic.

This revelation comes because conservatives are not rolling over and taking this sort of abuse.

Deal with it, Leftists.

Thank you, Mark Levin and the Landmark Legal Foundation.
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As IRS admits it targeted Tea Party groups, remember IRS is Obamacare enforcer
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Back to Benghazi...

Nothing is going to derail attention here from the Obama administration's lies about the 9/11/12 terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of four Americans.