As Johnson has reported: “At the time, the deputy commissioner for services and enforcement — her boss — was none other than Steven Miller, who held the post of IRS commissioner from November 2012 until his resignation in May after the IRS scandal broke.” Grooms herself left the IRS in 2011 to rejoin House Oversight as its chief Democratic counsel. There she advises ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings on how to handle the IRS scandal, which involves the people she used to work with at the IRS. That’s called a conflict of interest, with bells on it.
There have to be major reforms in the civil service.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Mens Rea: Lerner sent confidential information in private emails. She knew it was wrong, and being a lawyer, she almost certainly knew it was illegal. If we didn’t have such a corrupt Attorney General, she’d be doing a plea deal right now, in exchange for telling everything she knows, and where the orders came from.
OK, call me crazy, and I haven’t looked into this at all. But would anyone be at all surprised if they were selected on how much they filled Democrat campaign coffers rather than track record or competence?
..by keeping calm. Bjorn Lomborg says, once again, cool it:
When you look at these issues properly, the results are surprising. Climate change, for example, has had a net benefit for the world. From 1900 to 2025, it has increased global welfare by up to 1.5 per cent of GDP per year. Why? Because it has mixed effects – and when warming is moderate, the benefits prevail (even if they are unevenly distributed between nations).
Increased levels of atmospheric CO2 have improved agriculture, because the gas works as a fertiliser; we have avoided more deaths from cold than have been caused by extra heat; and we have saved more from lower heating bills than we have lost to an increased need for air conditioning.
But that doesn’t give the socialists the control over our lives that they continue to crave.
This should lead to the end of the National Park Service.
[Update a while later]
Let’s turn the parks over to the states. And why stop there?
All that this is doing is fomenting disgust with the federal government. That’s not a good attitude for people who love big government to be nurturing.
…is trying to block a book on the “phony” “Fast’n’Furious” gun running scandal by a whistleblower:
The ACLU charged that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is worried that the book proposed by an ATF agent would hurt relationships with other U.S. law enforcement agencies.
At this point, that seems more like a feature than a bug.
Jeff Foust discusses the issue over at The Space Review (spoiler warning for those who haven’t seen it). Also spoiler warning for people who read the rest of the post.
