More on the so-called IRS scandal ... yawn
Accuse first and ask questions later
By Dana Milbank, WashPost, Monday, June 3, 6:30 PM
A third House committee joined the stampede to examine the IRS on Monday, and its chairman did exactly what you would expect somebody to do before launching a fair and impartial investigation: He went on Fox News Channel and implicated the White House.
Asked by Fox’s Bill Hemmer what he hoped to learn at Monday afternoon’s hearing, Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) offered this bit of pre-hearing analysis:
“Of course, the enemy’s list out of the White House that IRS was engaged in shutting down or trying to shut down the conservative political viewpoint across the country — an enemy’s list that rivals that of another president some time ago.”
It was a sentence in need of a verb but packed with innuendo. And it is part of an approach by House Republicans that seems to follow the Lewis Carroll school of jurisprudence. Not only are they placing the sentence before the verdict, they’re putting the verdict before the trial.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, announced his conclusions on CNN Sunday, declaring White House press secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar” for saying that the targeting of conservative groups was the work of a “rogue” element operating out of the IRS’s Cincinnati office. “The reason that Lois Lerner tried to take the fifth is not because there is a rogue in Cincinnati,” Issa told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “It’s because this is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we’re getting to proving it.”
(More here.)
A third House committee joined the stampede to examine the IRS on Monday, and its chairman did exactly what you would expect somebody to do before launching a fair and impartial investigation: He went on Fox News Channel and implicated the White House.
Asked by Fox’s Bill Hemmer what he hoped to learn at Monday afternoon’s hearing, Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) offered this bit of pre-hearing analysis:
“Of course, the enemy’s list out of the White House that IRS was engaged in shutting down or trying to shut down the conservative political viewpoint across the country — an enemy’s list that rivals that of another president some time ago.”
It was a sentence in need of a verb but packed with innuendo. And it is part of an approach by House Republicans that seems to follow the Lewis Carroll school of jurisprudence. Not only are they placing the sentence before the verdict, they’re putting the verdict before the trial.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, announced his conclusions on CNN Sunday, declaring White House press secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar” for saying that the targeting of conservative groups was the work of a “rogue” element operating out of the IRS’s Cincinnati office. “The reason that Lois Lerner tried to take the fifth is not because there is a rogue in Cincinnati,” Issa told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “It’s because this is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we’re getting to proving it.”
(More here.)
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