When The U.S. Government Targets Half The Country

An Antidote To Cynicism Poisoning -- Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

Restoring public faith will require a full investigation of the IRS's politicization.

The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press, Attorney General Eric Holder is on the run, and rightly so. They called it the First Amendment for a reason. But nothing can damage us more as a nation than what is happening at the Internal Revenue Service. Elite opinion in the press and in Washington doesn't fully understand this. Part of the reason is that it's not their ox being gored, it's those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.

Those who aren't deeply distressed about the IRS suffer from a reluctance or inability to make distinctions, and a lack of civic imagination.

An inability to make distinctions: "It's always been like this." "Presidents are always siccing the IRS on their enemies." There's truth in that. We've all heard the stories of the president who picked up the phone and said, "Look into this guy," Richard Nixon most showily. He got clobbered for it. It was one of the articles of impeachment.

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My Comment: Peggy Noonan gets to the heart of the problem. A special prosecutor will have to be appointed .... and people will have to be put in jail to change this culture of intimidation and abuse. Failure to do so will undermine what is probably the most important department (after the military) in the U.S. government.