Smoky Mountains Sunrise

Friday, May 24, 2013

Noonan: A Battering Ram Becomes a Stonewall

The IRS's leaders refuse to account for the agency's corruption and abuse.

"I don't know." "I don't remember." "I'm not familiar with that detail." "It's not my precise area." "I'm not familiar with that letter." 

Lois Lerner and her lawyer
These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service officials who testified this week before the House and Senate. That is the authentic sound of stonewalling, and from the kind of people who run Washington in the modern age—smooth, highly credentialed and unaccountable. They're surrounded by legal and employment protections, they know how to parse a careful response, they know how to blur the essential point of a question in a blizzard of unconnected factoids. They came across as people arrogant enough to target Americans for abuse and harassment and think they'd get away with it.

So what did we learn the past week, and what are the essentials to keep in mind?




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