IRS Targeting and 2014
President Obama and Democrats have been at great pains to insist they knew nothing about IRS targeting of conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofits before the 2012 election. They've been at even greater pains this week to ensure that the same conservative groups are silenced in the 2014 midterms.

That's the big, dirty secret of the omnibus negotiations. As one of the only bills destined to pass this year, the omnibus was—behind the scenes—a flurry of horse trading. One of the biggest fights was over GOP efforts to include language to stop the IRS from instituting a new round of 501(c)(4) targeting. The White House is so counting on the tax agency to muzzle its political opponents that it willingly sacrificed any manner of its own priorities to keep the muzzle in place. ...

...The fight was sparked by a new rule that the Treasury Department and the IRS introduced during the hush of Thanksgiving recess, ostensibly to "improve" the law governing nonprofits. What the rule in fact does is recategorize as "political" all manner of educational activities that 501(c)(4) social-welfare organizations currently engage in.

It's IRS targeting all over again, only this time by administration design and with the raw political goal—as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.) notes—of putting "tea party groups out of business."...

...Yet my sources say that throughout the negotiations Democrats went all in on keeping the IRS rule, even though it meant losing their own priorities. In the final hours before the omnibus was introduced Monday night, the administration made a last push for IMF money. Asked to negotiate that demand in the context of new IRS language, it refused.

That's a lot to sacrifice for a rule that the administration has barely noted in public, and that then-acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel claimed last fall when it was introduced is simply about providing "clarity" to nonprofits. It only makes sense in a purely political context. The president's approval ratings are in the toilet, the economy is in idle, the ObamaCare debate rages on, and the White House has a Senate majority to preserve. With one little IRS rule it can shut up hundreds of groups that pose a direct threat by restricting their ability to speak freely in an election season about spending or ObamaCare or jobs. And it gets away with it by positioning this new targeting as a fix for the first round.

This week's Democratic rally-round further highlights the intensely political nature of their IRS rule. It was quietly dropped in the runup to the holiday season, to minimize the likelihood of an organized protest during its comment period. That 90-day comment period meantime ends on Feb. 27, positioning the administration to shut down conservative groups early in this election cycle.

Mr. Camp's committee has meanwhile noted that Treasury appears to have reverse-engineered the carefully tailored rule—combing through the list of previously targeted tea party groups, compiling a list of their main activities and then restricting those functions....

...Treasury is also going to great lengths to keep secret the process behind its rule. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who represents targeted tea party groups, in early December filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Treasury and the IRS, demanding documents or correspondence with the White House or outside groups in the formulation of this rule. By law, the government has 30 days to respond. Treasury sent a letter to Ms. Mitchell this week saying it wouldn't have her documents until April—after the rule's comment period closes. It added that if she didn't like it, she can "file suit." The IRS has yet to respond...

Obama’s phony IRS investigation
President Obama dismissed the IRS’ harassment of conservative groups as a “phony scandal,” so it’s little wonder his administration has conducted a phony investigation into it.

Why else would they appoint Barbara Bosserman — a partisan lawyer who gave thousands of dollars to Obama and the Democratic National Committee — to lead the DOJ investigation? Bosserman’s appointment is highly unusual. She hails from the civil rights division, not the criminal division. At the House Oversight Committee’s hearing yesterday, the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz admitted that in his 12 years at DOJ under 3 different presidents, he did not ever recall the civil rights division investigating tax law matters.

So why did the Obama administration choose this lawyer from the civil rights division over all the criminal division attorneys to lead the IRS investigation? Maybe it’s because the civil rights division in the Obama Justice Department is a hotbed of liberal partisans — as evidenced by the president’s recent appointment of a lawyer for convicted cop killer and left wing cause célèbre Mumia Abu Jamal as the head of said division.

Appointing Bosserman is a violation of Justice Department guidelines, which state that no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation if it would “create the appearance of a conflict of interest likely to affect the public perception of the integrity of the investigation.” Having a political donor to the president investigate the IRS’s harassment of the president’s political opponents does creates at the very least “the appearance of a conflict of interest.”...