A lot of times people take these stories and say "this is end of a democratic republican" and so on, and I think it's non-sense. We should be careful with this IRS stuff. The IRS has a lot of power, and it's a disaster if whoever is in the White House can use the IRS for political reasons. They should investigate the devil out of this. I get the notion the people writing this are the same people fired up over education initiatives and who think PPACA is a backdoor method to police how you talk to your children or whatever, but everyone should be on their side about this. Using the IRS politically is more dangerous than it might sound at first, i.e. it's a threat to democratic gov't and rule of law.

People think gov't spending on a network of foreign military bases, grandma's nursing home, incarcerating a staggering number of non-violent drug offenders, school lunches for poor kids are holding a finger in the dike against complete destruction. As long as people believe this, the simple solution isn't an option. People are for heavy cuts in gov't, as long as they don't affect military, medicare, medicaid, being "tough" on crime, social security, or research to fight public health threats. We can cut all the other stuff, though.

The simple solution to stopping the political use of the IRS is to abolish the IRS.

Thanks, rockymountainpirate.

Great analogy. Point for you.

From Casablanca by the poor, corrupt official played by Claude Rains:

I'm shocked, shocked, that there is gambling in this establishment!

Your winnings, sir.

Oh, thank you very much.

I tried to vote Carl Levin out way back when I lived in Michigan from 1989 to 1994. He was a skunk then and is still a skunk. Fortunately he is retiring ... finally! But he has done great damage as described in this article about the IRS scandal.

Fucking fuckers.

Surprise, surprise, surprise. OMG