[BOSTONHERALD] Because there's a looser vibe on late-night talk shows perhaps President B.O. felt free to play looser than usual with the facts. But his characterization of the IRS...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies...
scandal during an appearance on Jon Stewart's show this week isn't as easily laughed away as it may have been by the audience.
Yes, the president tried to rewrite a bit of embarrassing history, chalking up the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status as the simple fallout from a "crummy" law enacted by Congress.
"When there was that problem with the IRS, everyone jumped ... saying, 'Look, you've got this back office, and they're going after the Tea Party' " Obama told Stewart. "Well, it turned out, no, Congress had passed a crummy law that didn't give people guidance in terms of what it was they were trying to do. They did it poorly and stupidly."
"Back office"? As was widely reported, the guidance to single out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny apparently came from the IRS in Washington.
Beyond that, the idea that Lois Lerner
...the former head of the IRS Exempt Unit. She is a past president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws and a member of the Massachussetts bar. She was held in contempt of Congress for her role in the IRS targeting of regime political enemies and refusing to testify. The dog ate her computer's hard drive with all her emails on it..., who was head of the tax-exempt office, and her colleagues simply didn't have the proper guidance required to vet applications -- and that it was not their fault, but the fault of Congress -- is, like an episode of Stewart's show, laugh-out-loud funny.