IRS targeting charges are not dead

I, for one, haven’t given up on the charges of targeting conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve gotten hooked on the daily feature posted by Instapundit, The IRS Scandal, Day XXX, written by Paul Caron of Pepperdine University School of Law, who writes the TaxProf Blog.

irs-tea-party-cartoon-mckee (thedailyjournalist.com)

McKee cartoon courtesy of thedailyjournalist.com

On Day 771 (yes, it has been going on that long) Caron reported how the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a viewpoint discrimination lawsuit against the agency can proceed, handing the Obama administration another setback.

The IRS has been stonewalling the lawsuit in an attempt to get through the last days of the Obama administration, but they now have just seven days to appeal Z Street v Koskinen to the full court.  Z Street is a Pennsylvania-based pro-Israel group that applied for exempt status in 2009, and was told the agency had a policy that required Israel-related applications to get extra scrutiny by a special unit in Washington.  Hundreds of Tea Party groups were similarly targeted.

Remember how we were told that Lois Lerner’s hard-drive was no longer in existence?  Then, magically, e-mails were found. The IRS failed to meet a court-ordered deadline to turnover some 6,400 new e-mails miraculously found on her hard-drive.  They now say it will be September before they can turn over the documents because – wait for it – they want to ensure there are no duplicates.  On Day 768, Caron noted that the agency intends to block any inquiry into its doings and avoid any accountability for its actions.

The IRS has been illegally serving as a political arm of the Obama administration.  We must insist on justice for those organizations that have been targeted.