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

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.