kaitainen wrote:
the level of understanding in this thread of what the IRS did is rather low. that's understandable, though, because the articles written by journalists and pundits have been nearly uniformly awful to date.
the IRS didn't "audit" any individual or group.
Frank VanderSloot was a subject of the Obama campaign's attacks on the wealthy. He was attacked on Obama campaign’s website for being a ”litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement.” That was part of a post entitled “Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney’s donors.”
Two months later, VanderSloot received notice of an audit. Two weeks after that, the Labor Department sent notice that they would audit his THREE h-2A workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But when such cases are combined with an IRS apology for wrongdoing for specifically improperly targeting groups for their political beliefs, you would be naive to believe this should not be investigated deeply.
The first charge of Article 2 of the articles of impeachment of Richard Nixon:
"He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."
If this current assault on American political freedom is confined to lower level employees of the IRS, they should be punished swiftly. Right now, no one has even lost their job.
No less than an independent thorough investigation is warranted.