The Vanish Inquisition
"Sometimes stuff just happens."
Try using that excuse the next time you forget to pay your taxes. Lois
Lerner seems to think it's a perfectly reasonable explanation for
thousands of missing emails from her IRS server -- emails, Congress
points out, that are crucial to the House's investigation. If it's good
enough to get the IRS off the hook, then surely the "stuff happens"
defense ought to work for taxpayers too.
As many as 24,000 messages have
vanished in a series of quote-unquote "computer crashes" that --
wouldn't you know it? -- only affected people involved in the
conservative targeting scandal. First, it was just Lois Lerner's account
that disappeared in this new Bermuda Triangle. Now, administration
officials are changing their story, claiming the "hard-drive failure"
that wiped Lerner's emails also affected key stuff. "Plot lines in
Hollywood are more believable than what we are getting from this White
House and the IRS," said a furious Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), who heads up one of three committees demanding answers on the administration's crackdown.
Apparently, we're supposed to
believe that the IRS, which keeps meticulous records of hundreds of
millions of tax forms, somehow stopped backing up its files? Attorney
Cleta Mitchell doesn't buy it. "I've had many, many emails from people
around the country saying this is just not possible. This is not 1978.
Those emails are not lost. They can be recovered... They are required
under many court decisions and many federal statutes to retain
information that would be discoverable and relevant on issues related to
litigation."
Among the AWOL emails are a string of messages from IRS Chief of
Staff Nikole Flax crucial to the investigation. Based on reports, Flax
could be the missing link
that implicates the Justice Department to the multi-agency conspiracy
to silence conservatives. "Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa
said Monday evening he believes she was the senior-most official
involved... [Already, we know] Flax [was] giving the green light to
Lerner's request to meet with Department of Justice officials to explore
the possibility of criminally prosecuted nonprofit groups."
Of course, the question on most
people's minds (apart from the abject incompetence) is why the IRS
didn't report the files missing in the first place? If the agency knew
about this problem for a year, what's the point in covering it up? Why
lie under oath -- again? In an administration that's maxed out its
crisis management office space, "stuff happens" is the stuff of
arrogance. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us 24,000 times? Even
liberals will bristle. "Gross mismanagement," said Democratic
Congressman Sander Levin (Mich.). "Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?" mocked CNN's John King.
Meanwhile, the White House, the same one that insisted there wasn't
"a smidgeon of corruption" at the IRS, is setting records in approval
ratings -- bad ones. According to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC
poll, only 41%
support the President, tying the lowest mark ever. Interestingly
enough, Americans arrived at this conclusion with only two major news
channels covering the IRS email loss story. "If Joe Namath had the
offensive line protection the media give Obama, he could have played 30
years in the NFL," joked Ron Hart.
For now, House leaders will try
to extract what cooperation it can from the President. If the IRS won't
provide communications, Rep. Camp says the White House must. But in
this quest for justice, don't expect any help from Attorney General Eric
Holder. The only thing he's interested in enforcing is the President's
agenda.
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