After censure threat, Issa apologizes for silencing dem colleague Cummings

San Diego Union-Tribune: A chastened Rep. Darrell Issa says he has apologized to a fellow senior lawmaker for abruptly cutting off his microphone during a hearing Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Issa, R-Vista, said he made a personal apology on Thursday to the man he silenced, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

“Mr. Cummings is a member of Congress who works very hard for his constituents,” he said.
Issa’s remarks came during a telephonic conversation with U-T San Diego after a House condemnation resolution pressed by Democrats earlier in the day failed to pass.

The resolution called for sanctioning Issa for “the offensive and disrespectful manner” in which he conducted the hearing on Capitol Hill. The resolution failed on a vote of 211-186 as House Republicans refused to back it.

Video of the incident is above.

Seems Issa was worried that his own shameful and disrespectful actions were getting more press than his kangaroo court of a committee and his heroic efforts to flog this dead IRS horse. But it’s hard to see how he’s going to get any traction with this anywhere but on Fox News, since his witchhunt is so lousy at turning up witches that even he’s getting irritated by it. You don’t literally shut down debate when your argument is a slam dunk, after all.

You do it when you know you’ve got nothing.

Yes, Issa lied about IRS controversy

Joan Walsh: Elijah Cummings wastes no time.

Just hours after the vice chair of the House Oversight Committee threatened Chairman Darrell Issa with releasing House Oversight Committee interview transcripts that clear the White House of wrongdoing in the IRS mess on CNN, AP already has the story: “a self-described ‘conservative Republican’ has told investigators that no one at the White House directed the Internal Revenue Service to target tea party groups.”

The Maryland Democrat released a transcript Sunday of the committee investigators’ interview with a manager of the IRS’ Cincinnati office. The unidentified man told investigators that workers in that office instigated the reviews on their own, that he was unaware of a political motivation behind the extra scrutiny to conservative groups’ applying for tax-exempt status, and that there was no evidence of any White House involvement.

You’ll recall that a week ago, Issa told CNN’s Candy Crowley that IRS agents “were directly being ordered from Washington,” but he offered no proof, though he hinted of dark secrets his investigators had learned in their interviews with IRS staff. This Sunday, Cummings told Crowley he “begged” Issa to release the full transcripts – and promised her “If he does not release them, I will. Period…I’ll release them by the end of the week.” He didn’t wait that long.

“He was a 21-year veteran,” Cummings said. “He described himself in the interviews in response to a Republican attorney’s question as a conservative Republican. Very significant. He is a conservative Republican working for the IRS. I think these interviews and these statements go a long way to showing the White House was not involved in this.”

“Based upon everything I’ve seen, the case is solved,” he went on. “And if it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on.”

But Issa’s not willing to let this go, even when it’s clear there’s nothing there. If he has to lie to smear the White House with this, then lie he will. Fortunately, he can’t get away with it.

[photo by davidboeke]

'OK, so what are you complaining about again?'

Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Poll: attention given to current ‘scandals’ historically low

Politico: A majority of Americans are following both the controversy over the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi and the brewing IRS scandal - but at levels below historic averages, according to a new poll.

Fifty-four percent said they are closely following the story of how the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups, according to the Gallup survey on Thursday, and 53 percent are closely following Benghazi. For both stories, 22 percent were following “not too closely” and 24 weren’t following at all.

“The level of attention being paid to each is below the average 60 percent of Americans who have closely followed more than 200 news stories Gallup has measured over the past several decades,” Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote in an analysis of the poll.

Yes, majorities are following these two stories, but if they were TV shows, they’d be flirting with cancellation. I’d like to see a survey done where respondents are asked to explain what they big scandal was with Benghazi. I’d be willing to bet that the average person’s answer would be, “I don’t know. They covered stuff up or something.” After all, Republicans have been failing to answer that question for months.

Ed Kilgore looks at the numbers and concludes that these are especially bad numbers for backers of a Benghazi scandal.

“Interestingly enough, the IRS story was drawing just as much interest as Benghazi!, even though it’s spanking new while Benghazi! has been huffing and puffing along for many months,” he writes. “This reinforces the impression that Benghazi! was pretty much a spent bullet until the other ‘scandals’ were linked to it to produce a ‘crisis,’ at least within the Beltway. With the latest deflating evidence that Republican ‘news sources’ deliberately mischaracterized the internal emails leading up to the famous ‘talking points’ on Benghazi!, you have to wonder that if the torches being carried for this particular witch-hunt will again start to flicker and even expire when summer arrives and public interest in noise from Washington inevitably flag.”

[photo by cervus]

IRS ‘scandal’ another example of ‘It’s only OK when Republicans do it’

Alex Seitz-Wald: While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting some 300 conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, from bona fide social welfare organizations. Employees are given almost zero official guidance on how to do that, so they went after Tea Party groups because those seemed like they might be political. Keep in mind, the commissioner of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee.

The second is that while this is the first time this kind of thing has become a national scandal, it’s not the first time such activity has occurred.

“I wish there was more GOP interest when I raised the same issue during the Bush administration, where they audited a progressive church in my district in what look liked a very selective way,” California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said on MSNBC Monday. “I found only one Republican, [North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones], that would join me in calling for an investigation during the Bush administration. I’m glad now that the GOP has found interest in this issue and it ought to be a bipartisan concern.”

The well-known church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, became a bit of a cause célèbre on the left after the IRS threatened to revoke the church’s tax-exempt status over an anti-Iraq War sermon the Sunday before the 2004 election. “Jesus [would say], ‘Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine,’” rector George Regas said from the dais.

The IRS under the Bush administration also targeted Greenpeace and the NAACP for extra IRS attention. And the Republican use of the IRS as a political tool didn’t end with the Bush administration; in 2011, Republicans pushed for an audit of the AARP, after the group that lobbies on behalf of seniors announced its support for Obamacare.

There’s no evidence that the IRS focused on Tea Party groups to punish them, rather it seems it was a case of bad management from an agency whose commissioner was on the way out. Under the Bush administration, however, the story seems to be very different. A lot of the Republicans clawing their eyes out over this IRS “scandal” were awfully quiet when it happened on Bush. And those who actually called for the AARP to be punished… Well, let’s say they can enjoy a nice cuppa STFU.

In the end, it’s more a story about the squeaky Republican wheel getting the media grease. But keep in mind they’re complaining about something their party has actively encouraged.