It just writes itself.

IRS official:  "I'm not good at math."

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/05/10/IRS-Official-Im-Not-Good-at-Math

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MCCONNELL DEMANDS FULL INVESTIGATION OF IRS' 'POLITICAL THUGGERY'

On Friday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) demanded a government-wide review of the IRS’ new admission that they targeted conservative groups in 2012 for special scrutiny. Calling the Obama administration’s acknowledgement that such activity occurred “insufficient,” McConnell said that the White House had to “conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not underway at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views …. An apology won’t put this issue to rest.”

McConnell went on to call the IRS’ activities a threat to the First Amendment, and suggested that the American people had to “send a clear message to the Obama Administration that the First Amendment is non-negotiable …. This kind of political thuggery has absolutely no place in our politics.”

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

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TRUE THE VOTE PREZ ON IRS: 'ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH'

The voter integrity group True the Vote told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday that new revelations that the IRS was discriminating in 2012 against conservative non-profits came as no shock to them. “We applied for nonprofit C-3 status early in 2010,” said Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, which has come under heavy assault from the left for its focus on voter identification. “Since that time the IRS has run us through a gauntlet of analysts and hundreds of questions over and over again. They’ve requested to see each and every tweet I’ve ever tweeted or Facebook post I’ve ever posted. They also asked to know every place I’ve ever spoken since our inception and to whom, and everywhere I intend to speak in the future.

“We’ve met all requirements, responded to everything, and provided case law in such areas where appropriate,” Engelbrecht continued. “The IRS treatment of us lends to the appearance of a politically-motivated abuse of power and an assault on free speech.”

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

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FLASHBACK 2009: OBAMA JOKES ABOUT IRS AUDITING POLITICAL ENEMIES

Back in May 2009, Professor Glenn Reynolds, better known to his followers as Instapundit, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he discussed some odd rhetoric from President Obama. Obama had been refused an honorary doctorate by Arizona State University, and Obama remarked, “President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.” Reynolds pointed out:

Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it's hard to see the humor. Surely he's aware that other presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, have abused the power of the Internal Revenue Service to harass their political opponents. But that abuse generated a powerful backlash and with good reason. Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.

As it turns out, the IRS under President Obama routinely gave special scrutiny for groups with the terms “tea party” or “patriots” in their titles. His little joke doesn’t read much like a joke anymore.

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

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IRS APOLOGIZES FOR TARGETING TEA PARTY GROUPS IN 2012

On Friday, the IRS apologized for singling out conservative groups, especially organizations that had "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names, for additional reviews during the 2012 election.

According to the Associated Press, Lois Lerner, who "heads the IRS unit that overseas tax-exempt groups," said such groups were targeted and scrutinized excessively to see if they were in violation of their tax-exempt status.

At a conference in Washington, Lerner "said organizations that included the words 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their applications for tax-exempt status" were targeted by IRS workers in Cincinnati and conceded it was wrong. 

“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” said Lois Lerner, the chief IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations

"That was wrong,” said Lerner. “That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review."

The IRS harassment of conservative groups was not politically motivated, claims the IRS. Furthermore, Lerner says the practice of targeting conservatives was done without the knowledge of top IRS officials and was the work of lower-level staff in Cincinatti.

The revelation stands in stark contrast to past proclamations from IRS officials. "There's absolutely no targeting,” said IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman last year.

As the Associated Press notes, many conservative groups "complained during the election that they were being harassed by the IRS" and said "the agency asked them an inordinate number of questions to justify their tax-exempt status."

The IRS apology comes more than a year after radio host Mark Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation wrote to the Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury in March 2012 to request an investigation of the IRS for targeting Tea Party groups. 

"The information demanded in many cases goes far beyond the appropriate level of inquiry" for tax-exempt status, Levin wrote in his capacity as President of Landmark Legal. An investigation into the IRS "also must determine whether the relevant IRS employees are acting at the direction of politically motivated superiors."

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