All the talk about the IRS targeting conservative for audits and the Department of Justice hacking into the email files of the Associated Press is disturbing enough. \u00a0But it may be only the start.<\/p>\n
Reports have been circulating in the past week that other agencies have engaged in similarly aggressive behavior towards administration critics. \u00a0The Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission \u2013 all have been mentioned in the local scuttlebutt as having targeted conservatives, sometimes, some suggest, appears in coordination.<\/p>\n
If even a few of these reports prove true, it will become hard for the White House to maintain that there was no concerted campaign. \u00a0Already the reports of multiple IRS offices simultaneously launching parallel investigations, as well as of the number and timing of the commissioner\u2019s meetings in the White House, have made laughable the idea that at fault were only a few marauding minor minions in a remote (whatever that means in this wired age) IRS office.<\/p>\n
As details accumulate, Congressional investigators will want to move up the line. \u00a0Who initiated and coordinated the campaign within each agency? \u00a0How was coordination with other agencies achieved? \u00a0Coordination surely came from a central source, likely but not necessarily within the White House.<\/p>\n
Could the coordinating officer have been Attorney-General Holder, perhaps chairing a committee of cabinet officers? \u00a0Could it have been David Axelrod at the reelect campaign, chairing a group of political operatives distributed through the federal establishment? \u00a0Or someone else?<\/p>\n
Whoever it was, it would need to be someone with sufficient seniority to give all parties confidence that such an edgy operation enjoyed the backing at the highest levels of the administration. \u00a0Bear in mind that the term \u201chighest levels\u201d does not necessarily or even likely mean the president. \u00a0It simply suggests a council of senior staffers who would have been presumed to carry the full weight of the administration.<\/p>\n
I say council because, while such an operation would require an action officer, unless the president was directly involved (which strikes me as improbable), a group within the senior staff would have been needed to bless the enterprise, even as they remained at a distance from its actual execution.<\/p>\n
As reports have accumulated, we have heard calls for firings or resignations. \u00a0Don\u2019t hold your breath. \u00a0The president has a reputation for throwing inconvenient people under the bus. \u00a0Is he really going to jettison Mr. Holder or Valerie Jarrett?<\/p>\n
Yet, that such speculation is circulating shows were the administration stands at this moment. Half a year past a reelection, this town is aswirl with \u201cwhat did he know and when did he know it.\u201d \u00a0But like fighting the last war, shouting Watergate is pursuing the last scandal (or at least the modern archetype for scandal).<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen if laws were broken. \u00a0It is entirely possible none was. \u00a0But our nation has an unwritten as well as a written constitution \u2013 understood norms to limits in action and intent. \u00a0\u00a0These unwritten limits have become more essential as our government has growth larger and more powerful. \u00a0They are how separation of powers and the protection of liberties have been maintained even as, in the name of helping all, our government has developed the capacity to crush any one of us.<\/p>\n
The one thing we know for certain at this point is that, after five years in office, the administration has displayed no appreciation for that unwritten constitution or for the price all of us will pay if it is swept aside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All the talk about the IRS targeting conservative for audits and the Department of Justice hacking into the email files of the Associated Press is disturbing enough. \u00a0But it may be only the start. Reports have been circulating in the past week that other agencies have engaged in similarly aggressive behavior towards administration critics. \u00a0The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[158,118,164,12,156,60,155],"class_list":["post-1583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitution-and-law","tag-ap","tag-constitution","tag-holder","tag-hugh-hewitt","tag-irs","tag-obama","tag-scandal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1585,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions\/1585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}