By Scott Johnson
Von Spakovsky provides an excellent introduction to the proposed IRS regulation in “Silencing conservatives: The administration’s latest attempt to censor political speech.” Brad Smith and his colleagues at the Center for Competitive Politicshave compiled an invaluable, heavily footnoted document setting forth the efforts by the regulatory agencies to police political speech at the behest of the Democratic Party: “The IRS harassment scandal: A timeline of ‘reform.’”President Obama is now deep into the cover-up phase of the scandal. Obama asserted to Bill O’Reilly in the course of his pre-Superbowl interview on FOX, for example, that the IRS’s wrongdoing was confined to a few boneheaded decisions coming out of the IRS’s Cincinnati office. This is a demonstrable lie that all by itself demonstrates Obama’s centrality to the scandal.Von Spakovsky credited Eliana with breaking the story that the IRS targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status was directed from Washington, not Cincinnati, as in her NRO column “Oversight from Washington, all along.”Kim Strassel has explored the IRS scandal in columns including “The president has a list” and Obama’s enemies’ list–part II.”
