Actually, "we" are pissed about the things they did that are not allowed by statute. The IRS is allowed, even obligated, to release information for FOIA requests for organizations that have already have their tax-exempt status approved, but they're not supposed to release the information of groups that have not yet been approved, as they did with the application for the Crossroads group and others that were released to ProPublica. It has been suggested that some of the questionable inquiries on the questionnaires were asked for the purpose of providing that information to individuals outside the IRS for political purposes because of a
different scandal in which the National Organization for Marriage claims that information leaked to the Human Rights Campaign could only have come from confidential information they provided to the IRS.
"We" are also pissed about the impropriety of treating groups differently based on their political leaning/affiliation. Some of the follow-up
questionnaires sent to "tea party" groups asked about the party affiliation of the group and/or its members, affiliation with other groups, and/or the
relationship with particular activists or candidates. While some of the questions were or could be seen as legitimately necessary for the approval process, some of the questions, the ones about party affiliation in particular, were questionable at the very least and should not have had any bearing on the group's request.
"We" are pissed that these groups were singled out and put through a lengthy approval process
while groups of an opposing political view had their applications approved with less time and effort. Is it against the statute for the IRS to choose to put a group through a more thorough screening? No, but the impropriety of determining a group should receive extra scrutiny based on it's political leanings should be obvious to a law student.
"We" are also pissed that it possible that someone at the IRS was leaking confidential information for political purposes. It's very likely in light of all that's been revealed this week that the source of Harry Reid's comments regarding Mitt Romney's taxes during the election was someone in the IRS who shouldn't have been sharing that confidential information.
What "we" aren't pissed off about the alleged scandal involving the Justice Department subpoena of AP phone records. For once, one of Attorney General Holder's non-answers is pretty legit. Tasked with finding out who leaked sensitive information to the AP in violation of the law, AG Holder removed himself from the investigation because he could have possibly been the leaker. The deputy he charged with the investigation got a court order to pull the AP records without telling the AP because he didn't want to alert anyone who may have been involved. According to what I've read, it's customary to inform a news organization of this sort of record search, but if a court approved the request based on the stated reasoning, the deputy did his due diligence, and responsibility for the decision rests with the judge that signed the order, not anyone in the Justice Department. This is a non-scandal, but it's going to be treated like Watergate--probably even more so than the IRS debacle--because the press is going to be huffy. The journalism community has the attitude that so long as you can say "journalism" it excuses you and puts you above scrutiny, and they expect special treatment because of that attitude, which is usually indulged.
"We" also didn't like Speaker Boehner's comments today about "who's going to jail over this." It's inappropriate for someone in his position to make a comment that doesn't respect the principle of "innocent until proven guilty," even if he's directing it at a nebulous "someone" and not at a specific person. It's also the place of the judiciary, not the legislature, to decide matters of criminal guilt/innocence and the appropriate sentences for the guilty.
In short, Tuhl, even if everything done by IRS employees in this situation was legal (and it wasn't), there are still serious ethical questions that need to be addressed. Someone, or several someones, exercised very poor judgment where these applications were concerned. The person or persons responsible for this should be determined and dealt with appropriately. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Your Pal,
Jubber
