Delaware Dem

The IRS IG Must Resign. But so should every single Republican on the House Oversight Committee

Earlier this week, lost in the hub bub surrounding the Supreme Court’s decisions on DOMA, Prop 8 and the Voting Rights Act, was this revelation that the IRS Inspector General’s report on the IRS was deliberately limited to only discussing Tea Party groups, and the IG says it was Congressional Republicans who ordered this limitation. We now know that the IRS targets both tea party groups and progressive groups, singling out the terms progressive and occupy in 2011 just as they singled out tea party and patriot. Thus, it would appear that the Inspector General perjured himself before the House Oversight Committee when he said the IRS targeting was limited to the conservative groups and terms.

Andrew Sullivan says the IG must resign due to such perjury. He is half right. But he conveniently ignores the true scandal here.

The Treasury inspector general (IG), whose report helped drive the IRS targeting controversy, says it limited its examination to conservative groups because of a request from House Republicans. A spokesman for Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, said they were asked by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) “to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations.”

Darrell Issa must be arrested for obstruction of justice at once. If he had any honor he would resign, as should every single Republican on that committee. They purposefully and with malice aforethought attempted to create a scandal where none existed. And in so doing, they interfered with the investigation into what actually happened at the IRS.

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Let’s check in on the GOP Rebranding Effort, shall we?

This week has been a banner one for the GOP, and its only Wednesday. First, with respect to reaching out to minorities, which the GOP HAS TO DO IF IT EVER WANTS TO WIN ANOTHER ELECTION AGAIN, we have their celebration of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and their zeal in passing as many Voting Restriction Laws as possible so as to prevent minorities from voting. As Bill Clinton rightly says, you can never vote for someone who doesn’t want you to vote in the first place. So Strike One for the GOP.

Second, on the same minority outreach issue, we have Speaker Boehner telling his Republican colleagues in the House that he will not bring the Senate Immigration Bill to the floor, which essentially means that the GOP will kill immigration reform. And that means what was a horrible Romney loss of 70-30 among Latinos in 2012 will grow to 90-10 in 2016 if not higher, which of course means the GOP will never again win the Presidency. Well, that is a little hyperbole on my part. I suppose if the GOP wins all of the white vote, and I mean all of it, 100%, it could win a close Bush-Gore repeat here and there between now and 2050, when whites will be a minority in America. So good job on that one, Boehner.

Third, we have all the GOP efforts to again discuss rape in the context of their shared zeal to end reproductive freedom in this country. The latest example is that idiot Texas State Representative saying on Monday that Rape Kits clean out the victim so as to prevent pregnancy when defending SB5’s lack of a exception for rape and incest victims. Yeah, ok. Send her back to biology class please, or at least have a detective explain to her what a Rape Kit is. Well, that was all in prelude to last night’s wonderful events where Texas State Senator Wendy Davis stood up for women’s rights and reproductive freedom and filibustered the bill until it was dead.

Well, on Twitter, very dumb conservative males have started using this hashtag: #SitDownWendy. That was in response to the hashtag in use last night in support of Senator Davis, #standwithwendy. Yes, the first thing you always do when trying to bridge the Gender Chasm and attract more women voters to your ideology and party is to tell another woman to sit down and shut up. It does wonders for the party image among women. Another conservative hashtag in use is #wendymakemeasandwhich. Nice.

So with the GOP going to great great pains to alienate minorities and women, the GOP better embrace homosexuality soon since they are going to need white men to start breeding with each other, not to mention advances in medical science, which they are also against.

But on that score… not so much. As those conservative Republicans who did speak out today in horror at the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality decisions made sure to attack homosexuality as a sin and classified gays as second class inferior citizens destined for Hellfire.

So good work, GOP. Really, we Democrats could not do a better job defining you all as out of touch discriminatory bigots than the job you are doing yourselves.

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