A slow-motion one:

The IRS scandal is growing, not shrinking. Perhaps that’s one reason the Obama administration is changing its tune. The White House has come a long way since Obama’s May statement that he wanted “to make sure we find out exactly what happened on this.”

Since then, Obama’s loyal troops in Congress have gone out of their way not to uncover the truth but to attack the integrity and competence of IRS Inspector General George. Obama’s admonition last month that we ignore the “phony scandals” has been picked up by many of his elite media supporters. As any journalist who has followed the trajectory of most Washington scandals knows, such behavior is a clue that those looking into the IRS scandal might be getting warm.

Plus, why Lois Lerner pled the Fifth:

If the Treasury Department inspector general’s report published in mid May is to be believed, Lerner’s communications with the House Oversight Committee have been willfully dishonest. And providing the United States government with false or misleading information carries criminal liability.

Better to plead and be thought a liar than to talk and confirm it.

[Mid-afternoon update]

New links emerge:

The broader AIP case is, in fact, beyond improper. It’s fishy. The Obama campaign takes its vendetta against a political opponent to the FEC. The FEC staff, as part of an extraordinary campaign to bring down AIP and other 501(c)(4) groups, reaches out to Lois Lerner, the woman overseeing IRS targeting. Mr. McGahn has also noted that FEC staff has in recent years had an improperly tight relationship with the Justice Department—to which the Obama campaign also complained about AIP.

Democrats are increasingly desperate to suggest that the IRS scandal was the work of a few rogue agents. With the stink spreading to new parts of the federal government, that’s getting harder to do.

But they’ll keep trying.