…draws it closer to rogue-agency status:
Let’s cut to the chase here: The IRS is obstructing justice because it doesn’t want the truth to come out . The agency has been caught red-handed targeting opponents of the Obama administration, including the tea party, pro-Israel groups and conservative news media.
It purposely delayed issuances of tax-exempt status to nonprofit groups and held investigations entirely outside its own mandate.
What the IRS is hiding is bound to be the work of malicious political operatives cloaking themselves as impartial civil servants, plotting among themselves against their political enemies through email.
The stiff-arms given by the IRS at every juncture — from Lerner’s invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a House hearing to this latest claim about preventing duplicates — is consistent with that scenario.
I’d say it’s already been full rogue for many months.
All of the emails need to be turned over, even the duplicates. Investigators need to be able to check them for discrepancies from emails turned over prior.
Notice how Hillary got nailed when Sidney turned over emails that Hillary didn’t. IRS can get caught the same way if they are not allowed to determine what evidence gets turned in.
What the IRS is hiding is bound to be the work of malicious political operatives cloaking themselves as impartial civil servants, plotting among themselves against their political enemies through email.
“Bound to be”? It’s foolhardy to predict the contents of documents sight unseen. Remember how many people were sure there was something fishy about Obama’s long form birth certificate (because obviously he was hiding something!). Our blog host even speculated that it might name someone other than BHO Sr. as Obama’s father. But of course there was nothing suspicious at all.
To date Congress has seen tens of thousands of IRS emails, and it has yet to find a single example of “malicious political operatives cloaking themselves as impartial civil servants, plotting among themselves against their political enemies.” There are perfectly innocent and boring reasons why it’s taken so long to get yet more IRS emails, just as there were innocent and boring reasons why it took Obama so long to release his long form birth certificate. But among the conspiracy-minded, hope springs eternal.
p.s. the link above seems to be broken. This worked for me.
To date Congress has seen tens of thousands of IRS emails
This “argument” remains vile and disgusting, regardless of how often it is repeated. The number of emails seen is irrelevant. What’s relevant is the emails not seen.
What’s relevant is the emails not seen.
What a pithy expression of the conspiracy mindset. You start with the assumption of a crime, so if proof of guilt hasn’t been found in all the evidence examined to date, by simple deduction it must be in the evidence that hasn’t been examined. And since there will always be unexamined evidence, the proposition is un-falsifiable.
There is no a priori reason to expect additional emails to be any more damning than all the ones that have been seen already. Predicting otherwise is to admit that you’ve prejudged the question.
The fact that they they are coming up with bullshit excuses to avoid turning them over is a reason to expect that what is in them is damning.
No, it isn’t. You’ve accused them of b.s. excuses for the delays in delivering every tranche of emails that’s been released so far, and yet your hopes for a smoking gun have been dashed each time. Will it ever it sink in that the releases are slow and incomplete because the IRS is a slow-moving bureaucracy with a terrible IT infrastructure, and not because they’re fiendishly concealing a massive conspiracy?
No, this release is “slow and incomplete” because they don’t want to provide “redundant emails.” So kind of them.
This is all you have? Pathetic. Have you read the IRS letters from tea party groups?
the assumption of a crime
Um, Lois Lerner plead the fifth, and thus gave everyone the impression of a crime. This would have been over long ago had she testified to Congress. Instead, she refused to testify and conveniently destroyed her email, while suggesting a crime was committed.
Lois Lerner pleading the fifth does not tell you that there was a crime, much less that evidence of a crime could be found in IRS emails, and even less that a conspiracy of IRS officials other than Lerner is today engaged in an on-going effort to conceal such emails from Congress. All of that is nothing but supposition.
Yes. Very well-founded supposition. The chance that these things are all just coincidences approaches epsilon.
The chance that these things are all just coincidences approaches epsilon.
You have your probabilities backwards. All these “coincidences” involve different people, in different parts of the federal government. The chances that any one of them is the result of a criminal cover-up falls with each new “coincidence”, since it requires the involvement of every other one to be successful. At this point, the chances of everyone from the IRS computer forensics staff to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration being willing to put their careers and personal freedom on the line on behalf of Lois Lerner et al has shrunk to less than epsilon.
” It’s foolhardy to predict the contents of documents sight unseen.”
That’s true. Its not like the documents in question were the ones destroyed by Obama’s IRS.
“Remember how many people were sure there was something fishy about Obama’s long form birth certificate”
Ya, the one released by Obama was pretty fishy. It was a product of computer generation rather than just printing or copying the record. Troll level pro on that one Obama.
“To date Congress has seen tens of thousands of IRS emails, and it has yet to find a single example of ”
Should we be shocked that the IRS didn’t turn over evidence that would incriminate themselves? The shocking thing is that people think the IRS would turn over incriminating evidence and should be allowed to sift through everything BEFORE it is handed over.
“There are perfectly innocent and boring reasons ”
Stonewalling and coverup are boring but hardly innocent. Its perfectly innocent to have said these emails didn’t exist, that they were destroyed, that no backups exist, that the back ups were too hard to go through, that no one even bothered to check the back ups, that the IRS turned over all the emails, that the new emails don’t contradict all previous claims of Obama’s IRS.
The chain of events totally screams innocence.
And yet Democrats cling to the myth that nothing wrong happened just like they do that 9/11 was an inside job, AQ is really the CIA, Iraq was a war for oil, and that foreign countries control their political opposition.
Funny that the last one was used by Obama to justify his crackdown on dissidents.
Ya, the one released by Obama was pretty fishy.
LOL. More evidence that the conspiratorial mindset does not give up easily. Can’t you admit at this point that there was nothing fishy about Obama’s certificate of live birth? As it happens, my wife (who was also born in Hawaii) requested her short form certificate around the same time, and it has the same format as Obama’s. But birthers were sure that Obama was hiding something, so they imagined all sorts of fishiness about computer manipulation. They were wrong.
They did delay the release to make hay out of a small amount of people who disbelieved the birth certificate. Your equating of birthers with the IRS scandal is scurrilous at best. It would be the same as if I, for example, equated Earth First with Obamacare proponents. How’s that Jim? Have you crazies stopped spiking trees?
“But of course there was nothing suspicious at all.”
Oh no, nothing suspicious about a PDF of his birth certificate with more than one layer. You lying hack.
Lois Lerner took the Fifth almost two years ago. We were told that all her emails were destroyed when her hard drive died. That was an obvious lie. You defended it. Turns out, those of us who knew anything about email at all (i.e. everyone) were correct.
The IRS has stonewalled Congress for two years. You would have us believe that this is due to “perfectly innocent and boring reasons”. The plants in your house must grow wonderfully, because that’s some grade A world-class bullshit.
Oh no, nothing suspicious about a PDF of his birth certificate with more than one layer.
The information on the form was accurate, and attested to by the Hawaii department of heath. Getting worked up about PDF layers puts you firmly in the tinfoil-hat brigade.
We were told that all her emails were destroyed when her hard drive died.
No, you weren’t.
Baghdad Jim, ever the loyal serf. Do you think he’ll ever wise up and realize Big Brother doesn’t give a damn for him?
Not as long as they continue to pay him to spread around this propaganda.