…taxes credulity:

Lerner is, so far, the face of this use of government to punish political adversaries. She knows what her IRS unit did and how it intersects with the law, and for a second time she has exercised her constitutional right to remain silent rather than risk self-incrimination. The public has a right to make reasonable inferences from her behavior.

And from Obama’s. After calling the IRS behavior “outrageous,” he now says there is not a “smidgen” of evidence of anything to be outraged about. He knows this even though the supposed investigation of the IRS behavior has not been completed, or perhaps even begun. The person he chose to investigate his administration is an administration employee and a generous donor to his campaigns. . . .

Speaking of questions: Can anyone identify a Democratic Senate candidate whose tax records were leaked, as Christine O’Donnell’s were when she was the Republican candidate in Delaware in 2010? Is it a coincidence that in January 2011, after Catherine Engelbrecht requested tax-exempt status for two conservative groups she founded in Texas — King Street Patriots and True the Vote — the Engelbrecht family business was notified of its first IRS audit? Does James Comey wonder why (this was before he became FBI director), five months after Engelbrecht’s tax-exemption request, FBI agents appeared seeking information about attendees at the King Street Patriots meetings? Were five subsequent FBI contacts “checking in” for “updates” on the group’s activities really necessary? Why did the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show a sudden intrusive interest in the Engelbrechts’ business, which has nothing to do with alcohol or tobacco or firearms or explosives?

Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Who is she protecting?

These simple questions – each based on indisputable facts – establish that somebody outside of the IRS told her they wanted the tax agency to “fix” something involving groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax status, that she directed subordinates to begin a (c)(4) project she feared could be seen as “political,” that she viewed Tea Party groups as “dangerous,” and that she ordered that such groups be subjected to “multi-level review.” Those are the four essential points of the IRS scandal: Who ordered the tax agency to get involved, who in the tax agency responded, who they targeted and what actions they took. She cannot answer these questions because, as she herself has claimed, that would be incriminating. Lerner and others must hope Issa doesn’t already have the answers.

Gee, I kind of hope he does. I’m guessing White House counsel’s office, myself.

Some thoughts on the real “war on science”:

This, of course, is a charge that Democrats usually love to levy against Republicans. When Barack Obama took office in 2008, Democrats swooned that we finally had a “pragmatist” back in the White House after eight years of a Republican president who supposedly favored ideology to facts on everything from science to foreign policy. Translation: Democrats act based on knowing things because they are smarter and think about them rationally and scientifically, while Republicans act based on believing things because they are religious, ill-informed, or misled by powerful interest groups.

The last few years have supplied ample evidence of the opposite — namely, that Democrats are the ideologues wearing blinders to shield themselves from inconvenient realities. Indeed, it is worth reviewing a list of items on which Democrats seem incapable of overcoming preconceptions and interest groups.

The long standing deceit and conceit of the left, as Jonah Goldberg has documented in his books, going all the way back to John Dewey, is that they are “pragmatic” and that everyone else is “ideological,” when of course it’s exactly the opposite. The great irony of last year’s election was that the nation actually had a choice between an leftist ideologue and a pragmatist: Romney truly doesn’t seem to have any political principles, and just wants to do what “works.” They chose the ideologue.