Now comes the New York Times to try and help President Obama out of the scandal swamp into which his Administration has stumbled, the one marked “Benghazi, IRS, AP and EPA.”  (For some quick background on the latter, which has received the least attention, see the post below and my interview with Louisiana Senator David Vitter from Monday’s program.)

Before you read the article, be sure to focus on the key distinction between the abuse of power and the non-use of power, because the Times’ article conflates the two.

There is no defending the Obama Administrations abuse of the IRS’ power vis-a-vis conservative groups.  Not even the president is trying to defend it, merely deflect the scandal away from himself.

The Times’ report tries to muddy the waters by pointing to wholly unrelated complaints from left-wing groups that the IRS should have but didn’t investigate Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and a handful of other political action committees.  There is no predicate for launching such an investigation, no hint of wrongdoing, just some naked assertions by political operatives that investigations should have been launched. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehead of Rhode Island is trying the same gambit, suggesting to Politico that the real scandal will make the IRS more timid in hunting for GOP wrongdoing.

The game here is to draw MSM into a different subject, away from the damning nature of the real IRS conduct and the culture of the Executive Branch that allowed such behavior to take root and grow without rebuke.

The Times’ piece is almost a parody.  Reporter Nicholas Confessore talks to a collection of left-wing activists from The Sunlight Foundation, Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 and they all intone about how the IRS needs to do more about 501(c)(4)s, and of course Rove’s group is at the top of the list though President Obama’s “Priorities USA” is also mentioned.

These complaints from the left are wholly speculative though.  No wrongdoing has been found and none is alleged.  The left would simply like its anti-First Amendment agenda advanced via the use of IRS power.

That the IRS did not do so is a good mark on the agency’s behalf.  What is amazing that as the biggest scandal in the agency’s life since Nixon unfolds, the Times finds a way to try and release chaff in the journalistic air instead of asking which groups were wrongfully singled out, by whom, and who knew.  As with Benghazi, the Times is gearing up to help in the misdirection.

It isn’t going to work. The Mail Online has the sort of article the Times should be running –an article detailing the harassment one conservative group received.  There may be scores and scores of such stories about to break.

“This is just getting started,” GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell told Robert Costa yesterday. “Finally, people get it. This is a lot bigger than just one person. This a whole effort by the administration, across the board, to squelch their opponents, to shut them up, and, finally, they’ve done it in a way that will allow us to call attention to it nationwide.”

“[T]here is a pattern here,” the Wall Street Journal concludes in today’s editorial. “Oppose the Obama Administration or liberal priorities, and you too can become an IRS target.”

With Benghazi and the AP investigations just beginning, and the EPA’s conduct under the microscope, one can only wonder what November would have looked like if the MSM had done its job in 2012, as opposed to beginning it in 2013.

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I interviewed Senator Vitter about all of the D.C. scandals today, with a focus on the EPA.  (The news on the AP sweep by DOJ had just broken so he didn’t even know about that one yet.)  The complete transcript is here.  Bottom line takeaway about the nomination of Gina McCarthy:

HH: Would you fill in our audience why the Gina McCarthy hearings are so important, and whether or not you’ve got the information you need to vote on her nomination as a Senator?

DV: Well you know, after President Obama four years ago promised the most open and transparent administration in history, unfortunately, the landscape since then is a landscape of completely broken promises in that regard. And EPA is the single worst example in terms of an Obama agency. Email scandals using private email accounts, completely improper under federal law and practice, using fake names, clearly something used to avoid transparency and avoid information getting out, FOIA requests regularly being frustrated, complete lack of transparency and information with regard to the release of scientific data and studies that are supposedly behind their regulations, sue and settle agreements which are often negotiated in a very secretive, behind closed doors way with allied, left-leaning environmental groups. So it’s a clear pattern of lack of transparency. And that’s what we’ve been talking about and demanding answers and changes to in terms of this Gina McCarthy nomination.

HH: Have you determined yet whether or not Gina McCarthy sent or received emails from the fake accounts intended to deceive the public and avoid FOIA?

DV: I believe she personally did not. At least she’s testified with regard to that, that she did not under oath.

HH: And so if there’s any email, did she testify as well that she hadn’t received any from the former administrator, that originated from…

DV: Oh, she may have received some of those so-called Richard Windsor emails, yes. I don’t think she participated directly by having an alias herself, or using a private account. But she undoubtedly received some of those Richard Windsor emails. That’s part of our ongoing dispute to actually get those un-redacted emails, which we still have not gotten.

HH: Well then, Senator Vitter, one of two things is true. If you get an email from Richard Windsor, and it turns out to be Lisa Jackson, who’s your boss…

DV: Right.

HH: Then you know, either you are too dumb to realize she’s engaged in a subterfuge of federal law, or you’re willing to be complicit in that subterfuge. It’s sort of like receiving stolen property. Is that an issue for you?

DV: Yeah, because Gina McCarthy has been at the EPA for four years, and it’s been four years of a horrendous record of lack of transparency. And she’s not exactly been at a low level job. She’s been at the most important air job at that EPA except for the director. So her whole tenure there, as all of these problems have persisted, is a big problem, yes.

HH: You see, I’m driving in on if you are receiving emails from an account obviously established to avoid federal law…

DV: Right.

HH: …do you think that’s enough, Senator Vitter, not to vote for her to be, as the nominee, because I do. I think if you’re part of a cover up scheme, and avoidance scheme, you’re part of an avoidance scheme. How would we trust you with an agency that is so powerful?

DV: Well, that’s going to get into whether these aliases were only about trying to hide things from the public. And you know, their argument is this was just another email account used because the general account gets so much traffic and gets so much stuff dumped into it, wasn’t patently illegal, although it was clearly contrary to their policy. So it’s a little in the gray area. What I think is even more worrisome is that Gina has been there for four years at a very high-ranking position as all of these problems have persisted, whether it’s emails or lack of straightforwardness in terms of FOIA requests, or sue and settle, secret negotiations behind closed doors, not getting the data and scientific studies out that are supposedly behind their regulations, not having true cost benefit analysis of economic impacts of these regulations. To me, that big picture is even more worrisome.

HH: It is, and with 45 seconds, do you expect that she will be filibustered?

DV: As of now, there are plenty of holds on her, so yes. As of now, people are going to demand significant debate on the floor, and a 60 vote threshold.

HH: And do you expect that the rules will change because the President wants a rather aggressive left-leaning, or very left-leaning administrator? Will they go to the nuclear option to get her into position?

DV: No, I don’t think they’ll go over this. They may push her through notwithstanding the 60 vote requirement, but I don’t think they’ll change the rules over this.

Most reaers and listeners understand what a reference to “Benghazi” means, and if they don’t know what a reference to the “IRS scandal” means, they will by the end of the week as the outrageousness of the agency’s conduct grows into a Beltway catastrophe for all the the president’s men (and the president himself.)  Welcome to a second term.

There is another story, one of equal importance but far less public recognition, which has been the outrageous conduct of the EPA over the first term of Team Obama’s tenure.  The agency has, to put it simply, been out of control, promulgating gargantuan proposed rules and pursuing an agenda that Congress explicitly refused, and doing so via highly irregular and probably unlawful tactics.  The “EPA phony email scandal” is among the search terms that will take you to the first layer of the agency’s lawlessness.

Now the president has a new nominee to take over the agency –Gina McCarthy, and her nomination is hung up in the Senate.  Many of the questions have to do with the secret agenda and the secret emails used to run EPA from 2009 to the present, and the agency’s relationships with outside groups.  With the example of the IRS abuse in mind, watch that space for the eruption into public view of the third major scandal of the first Obama term.

The weekly column from Clark Judge:

Watergate, Monicagate and Benghazi
By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute

During Watergate, President Richard Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, became infamous for such remarks as, “This is the operative statement; the others are inoperative” in the face of the developing scandal.  Say what you want about Mr. Ziegler, who passed away a decade ago, that phrase was at least an admission that something the presidential aide had said from the White House pressroom podium had been wrong.  Continue Reading