1gucci
Susie King Taylor2 360x1000
3paradise
2defense
Susie King Taylor 360x1000
Samuel Johnson 360x1000
1defense
1jesusandjohnwayne
storyparadox2
Storyparadox1
2jesusandjohnwayne
7confidencegames
James Gould Cozzens 360x1000
Gilgamesh 360x1000
1theleasofus
1trap
Thomas Piketty1 360x1000
199
5confidencegames
George F Wil...360x1000
1falsewitness
7albion
399
1lafayette
Brendan Beehan 360x1000
5albion
Mary Ann Evans 360x1000
2gucci
10abion
1transcendentalist
2theleastofus
8albion'
1lookingforthegoodwar
2albion
Margaret Fuller5 360x1000
299
Ruth Bader Ginsburg 360x1000
2trap
Mark V Holmes 360x1000
1lauber
storyparadox3
Maria Popova 360x1000
11albion
Margaret Fuller4 360x1000
12albion
Richard Posner 360x1000
Office of Chief Counsel 360x1000
13albion
lifeinmiddlemarch2
Anthony McCann1 360x1000
Margaret Fuller3 360x1000
11632
Margaret Fuller1 360x1000
1paradide
Tad Friend 360x1000
3defense
1albion
Anthony McCann2 360x1000
Thomas Piketty2 360x1000
4confidencegames
3confidencegames
Spottswood William Robinson 360x1000
1confidencegames
3theleastofus
Margaret Fuller2 360x1000
6confidencegames
9albion
1madoff
LillianFaderman
George M Cohan and Lerarned Hand 360x1000
Margaret Fuller 2 360x1000
3albion
Lafayette and Jefferson 360x1000
2confidencegames
AlexRosenberg
Stormy Daniels 360x1000
4albion
2transadentilist
2paradise
Edmund Burke 360x1000
Betty Friedan 360x1000
Maurice B Foley 360x1000
2lafayette
Learned Hand 360x1000
499
lifeinmiddlemarch1
1empireofpain
Adam Gopnik 360x1000
Margaret Fuller 360x1000
2lookingforthegoodwar
2falsewitness
14albion
6albion
Thomas Piketty3 360x1000

The just before Christmas report of Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is probably a big disappointment to promoters of the IRS scandal narrative.  They won’t admit it and will maintain that the revelation of an IRS employee referring to a Tea Party group as “icky” is shocking, shocking.  Still I look at the whole thing as being like the story of the parents who tried to kill their kids excessive optimism by leaving no presents under the Christmas tree and loading his stocking with horseshit.  They woke up Christmas morning to a gleeful child running around the house looking for the pony that Santa Claus must have left.

The Issa Committee has over 1.3 million pages and 52 transcribed interviews – a veritable dung heap that could provide fertilizer to a modest farm for years.  Still no pony.  The pony would be proof of direct White House involvement in the targeting.  They have shifted to White House rhetoric inflaming the IRS – kind of like Henry II asking his knights why no one will rid him of the troublesome priest.

I feel bad for Issa and his friends, so as a belated Christmas present, I’m going to give them an imaginary pony in the form of a conversation in the West Wing that should have been taped.

President Obama:  Minion.  Come here and attend.  Tell me about these strange people with tricorner hats who call themselves the Tea Party.
Minion: Well excellency they seek to educate the people that the Founding Fathers wished the federal government to be carefully limited in its power.
Obama: Founding Fathers?  You mean the African enslaving slaughterers of indigenous people whom my liberal professors taught me to despise?
Minion: The same excellency.
Obama: I could see that this teaching would be highly dangerous to my master plan to turn America into a cradle to grave welfare state.  How can we best smite these Tea Party people in a subtle and devious manner?
Minion: Our prime minion in the IRS, Lois Lerner, who has taken the oath of silence, can harass them by delaying their exempt status applications
Obama: Make it so.
I recently read that during the Watergate hearings one of the most avid listeners was a young lad from Hawaii on his first trip to the mainland who would grow up to be President of the United States, which makes me think that there won’t be any tapes.