With each developing scandal, the picture of an arrogant administration abusing its power grows clearer.
The White House revealed that it had even deeper knowledge of the IRS scandal than it first let on when press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that a top aide to President Obama talked with a Treasury Department official about how to break the news of the agency's improper targeting of conservative groups.
There is an old proverb that goes something like this: From the mouths of babes and drunks comes the truth. It is pretty dated. If you were to create that proverb today, you might have to include politicians and their advisers.
Every few years, at least from the time of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, there is a scandal involving abuse of power at the Internal Revenue Service.
Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee said Tuesday the IRS, while engaging in "unacceptable" targeting of conservative groups, may have been set up for failure by campaign finance law ambiguities that allowed tax-exempt groups to engage in partisan politics without disclosing their donors.
The Senate immigration bill's authors acknowledged Tuesday that their legislation does not require illegal immigrants to pay all back taxes, saying it would be too difficult to make them ante up everything they might owe.
The Republicans who can't wait to talk impeachment should sit down, shut up, and be patient. President Obama may yet deserve impeachment, but we're not there yet. Patience, as anyone old enough to remember Watergate knows, is how this game is played.
Yes, President Obama's birth certificate was made public two years ago and even emblazoned upon a Democratic fundraiser coffee mug during the 2012 presidential campaign. But the "birther" issue which so intrigued Donald Trump has yet to disappear.
An attorney for the high-ranking IRS official who ignited the agency's political targeting scandal with a public apology this month plans to invoke her right to remain silent instead of answering questions from top House investigators on Wednesday.
