Robert Stacy McCain posted an article in the March issue of the American Spectator that summarizes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal and sums up where we are today. The article reminds us that Tom Perez, now Secretary of Labor,  was head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division where his key aide Barbara K. Bosserman was chosen to head up the investigation of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups. The first question regarding the investigation of the IRS is, “Why was Barbara K. Bosserman chosen?” Ms. Bosserman’s background is as a civil rights attorney–she does not have a background in tax law. It is also an incredible coincidence that Ms. Bosserman has historically been a major donor to Democrat party coffers.

The article reports:

During a January hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan raised that question with the Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz. In his 12 years of DOJ experience under three different administrations, did Horowitz “ever recall the civil rights division investigating tax law matters?” Jordan asked.

“I don’t recall that during my time,” Horowitz answered.

The article reminds us that conservative political groups who applied for tax exempt status had their applications held up for a year or more. In some cases, organizations were asked for lists of donors and those donors were harassed.

The article points out the media’s role in downplaying the IRS scandal:

The media has been complacent,” said Becky Gerritson of the Wetumpka (Alabama) Tea Party, whose group was one of those the IRS targeted. In a telephone interview, Gerritson mentioned that the traffic-related “scandal” involving New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie had gotten 17 times as much major network news coverage in a single 24-hour period as the IRS scandal had received in the previous six months. From July 2013 through early January 2014, ABC, CBS, and NBC had barely two minutes of coverage to IRS scandal, according to the Media Research Center’s Scott Whitlock.

Even a basic investigation shows that some very fundamental laws were broken by the IRS:

Perhaps the most egregious example of that “climate of hostility” was the illegal release of donor information from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). Congressional investigators say the source of that leak was an IRS staffer in Lerner’s Exempt Organizations Division. NOM opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage and the IRS leaker, who cannot be named because of confidentiality laws, provided NOM’s donor information to a gay activist, who then gave it to NOM’s arch-enemy, the pro-gay Human Rights Campaign. The illegal IRS leak led to news stories in 2012 identifying GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a donor to the conservative group. NOM filed its own lawsuit against the IRS in October, and pointed out that former HRC president Joe Solmonese served as co-chairman of Obama’s re-election campaign. “This is a federal crime,” NOM president Brian Brown said. “Worse, the confidential information contained in the illegally leaked documents included the identity of dozens of our major donors and the HRC used this confidential donor information to harass our donors. This is a chilling set of circumstances that should ring alarm bells across the nation.”

The straw that broke the camel’s back for the conservative organizations targeted by the IRS is the fact that the investigators have only actually interviewed one of two of the organizations that have registered complaints.

The only way the IRS’s abuses of power will be dealt with is if those people impacted by the crimes of the IRS continue to speak out. If the sort of abuse of power is allowed to continue, all of our freedom of speech is in danger.