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