Carol Platt Liebau and Eliana Johnson aren’t exactly Woodward and Bernstein –yet.

But if both reporters keep up their relentless focus on the details of the IRS scandal –”Targetcon,” “Targetgate,” “Senseless in Cincinnati” –their names will be far and widely known as the first two serious reporters to take the burgeoning scandal seriously.

Lieabu labors at Townhall.com, and most her work appears first there in its “Tipsheet” column and eventually ends up easy to find and comprehensively categorized at CarolLiebau.com.

Johnson’s work appears most frequently in “The Corner” at National Review Online, though her work on the IRS is getting landing page, stand-alone attention from the editors, as it should.

Liebau brings to her work the skill honed as managing editor of the Harvard Law Review (the year after the president was the Review’s “president”) and years on the Hill as an aide to then Senator Kit Bond.

Johnson is a Yalie who won awards as a producer for Sean Hannity before throwing herself into print, and that particular corner of print –investigative journalism.

Together the work product of the two has run circles around the big names and the old guard, who apparently haven’t had time to figure out the IRS org chart or to read the IG’s report in detail, much less develop sources within the vast IRS bureaucracy willing and able to whisper some directions to the right office in the right building.

Now that the two are firmly established as out front and serious, expect additional emails to head their way, phone calls from friends of friends, and perhaps even the mother-of-all-journalistic finds –the documents mailed from an envelope with no return address.

Most of MSM remains in what can only be described as a stunned state, concussed by the rapid convergence of not one, or two but three huge scandals.  The IRS revelations came after the first of the Benghazi blockbusters and before DOJ’s hunting-and-gathering of journalists, but all three appeared suddenly out of the mist of endless talk-fests about gun control and immigration –real stories with new actors and obscure offices.  Reporters couldn’t pretend to do their jobs by calling up the second assistant to the third ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  They actually have to read dense copy and translate bureaucratese, make trips to cities as far removed from the modern Versailles as Cincinnati and actually talk to tax lawyers.

The IRS story is huge.  It is far greater than Tea Party activists, and embraces many, many religious groups and who knows who else.  The attempt to muffle the sound of a crash is under Liebau’s microscope as she traces who knew what when and who planted which questions, even as she painstakingly compares testimony of hearing one with hearing two.  Johnson is working through the org chart, looking for names and GS levels, dialing up lawyers in the agency whose address has never been near the Buckeye State but who are knee deep in the muck.

Follow those by-lines.  GIve yourself a Google alert for both and watch the serious reporting and analysis pour into your mailbox.  MSM is doing its best to mix Karl Rove into the mix, and blame Citizen United for what is an old fashioned “get your enemies” story, but new journalism doesn’t depend on the kindness of Beltway editors.

The second term is just beginning, and every thread worth pulling will get its yank.

Bloomberg’s Jonathan Alter was my guest yesterday, and he is waiting for an apology from a president which is not likely to ever come. Like many of his friends in the MSM elite, Jonathan is slowly waking up to the Chicago way, and a period of grieving and denial will be in order. The transcript is here.

The good news for Alter is that he has a new book just about to arrive on shelves: The Center Holds –Obama and His Enemies, which the publishing gods have blessed with the inclusion of the word “Enemies,” long before the country had begun to understand that Team Obama did indeed keep a list not just of suspect groups but also of disfavored journalists.

Jonathan assured me that Lois Lerner is not in the index.  I see an expanded paperback edition in six months.  In the meantime, I am eagerly awaiting my copy of this book to see if Jonathan, usually ahead of the pack on such matters, sensed that the second term would have a 1973ish look and feel to it.

The search goes on and relief is on its way.  Our friends at Feed The Children, many of whom were personally impacted by the storm given their distribution center in Oklahoma City, are organizing relief trucks today.  You can contribute here or via the button in the right column.

As Col. Kurt Schlichter noted on last night’s program, the Oklahoma National Guard was already on the way.

A great review of a new book by and about nurses.