Oops: IRS’s rationale for scrutinizing tea partiers debunked by nonprofit application data
...By the way, in case you’re updating your scandal meme scorecard, we’ve now moved on from “Obama’s passive and disinterested, but certainly not culpable” to out-and-out assertions that the IRS was completely in the right here, despite their (and O’s) acknowledgment of their wrongdoing. MKH was on that last night, but here’s Scary Larry from Wednesday evening’s MSNBC broadcast proving he’s the most progressive progressive of them all. I’ll leave you with this from HuffPo’s business editor, who felt moved to opine in favor of these fine, hard-working public servants:

The Tea Party stands for many things, but a big part of its message is that sending money to Washington amounts to the perpetuation of a dangerous welfare state that’s intent on turning America into a helpless land where our lone skill is filling out the forms to go on the dole.

Isn’t it reasonable to assume that people who hold such beliefs might feel additional motivation to pursue grey areas and loopholes at tax time? Wouldn’t the people who oversee federal coffers have been derelict had they not at least had a good look? ...

IRS official in charge during Tea Party targeting now runs agency’s Obamacare office
...The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today....

The IRS Was Dead Right To Scrutinize Tea Party
...In castigating government as the root of all evil while portraying taxation as a form of tyranny, the Tea Party is no less than a mass celebration of the evasion of the basic responsibilities of American citizenship. Common sense alone tells you that people drawn to its ranks may feel extra temptation to find ways to limit what they surrender to the rogue federal bureaucrats who have supposedly seized the nation....

...Which gets us back to the Tea Party. Here is a group that has made no effort to hide its contempt for the very institution of taxation. This is what it says on the website of the Cincinnati Tea Party: "Individuals need to have a direct connection between their efforts and the fruits of their labor. This is the magical spark that has led the United States from a loosely conglomerated political experiment into the most exceptional, strongest and most powerful nation on earth. Too many taxes and regulations ultimately serve to snuff out that spark."...

...This scandal does not stem from the IRS actually levying action that contravenes the law. It's simply about whom the IRS decided to scrutinize. And the IRS had abundant reason to look carefully at the applications for tax exempt status sent in by people who are prone to portray taxes as something as base as slavery....

"I was just a stay-at-home mother. I was pregnant with another baby, and I wanted to do what was right. My Tea Party group was becoming really large..."
...So I started calling other groups and I thought I would file and create an organization, and here they were all getting targeted by the IRS, and I got scared....

"Send us your Facebook pages, your Twitter pages," and I said, "Does that include personal pages?" and they said, "Everything." They wanted to know your personal relationships with politicians and political parties. And I asked, "What would happen if I don't send this to you?" and they said, they made an insinuation like, "Look, it can be considered perjury if you omit things from the IRS." I'm a pregnant stay-at-home mother on one income, I thought, "Oh, my goodness, I'm not doing anything." I stopped....