I have a lot to write about.

I’ll start with the fact that the president has asked for the resignation of Steven Miller, the acting director of the IRS. There was a lot of tough talk from the president about how the IRS’s actions were supposedly inexcusable and intolerable, but note that the IRS makes it very difficult to actually bring it to account for any abuses it engages in:

The IRS has usually done an excellent job of stifling investigations of its practices. A 1991 survey of 800 IRS executives and managers by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed that three out of four respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie when testifying before a congressional committee.

The agency also has a long history of seeking to intimidate congressional critics: In 1925, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes to Michigan’s Republican Sen. James Couzens—who had launched an investigation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue—as he stepped out of the Senate chamber. More recently, after Sen. Joe Montoya of New Mexico announced plans in 1972 to hold hearings on IRS abuses, the agency added his name to a list of tax protesters who were capable of violence against IRS agents.

Meanwhile, for anyone who is still under the ridiculous impression that the IRS didn’t engage in any abuses when it came to its treatment of tea party groups …

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

I don’t envy anyone who is tasked with trying to defend this behavior, although some port-side commentators are still desperately trying to do so because, in this case, the IRS targeted people they don’t like.

I’m going to link to an excerpt a bunch of material courtesy of Jim Geraghty’s excellent Morning Jolt below. Excerpt one:

At the time when tea party groups were targeted, Miller was a deputy commissioner who oversaw the division that dealt with tax-exempt organizations.

The report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration does not indicate that Miller knew conservative groups were being targeted until after the practice ended. But documents show that Miller repeatedly failed to tell Congress that tea party groups were being targeted, even after he had been briefed on the matter.

Excerpt two:

The director of the Internal Revenue Service division under fire for singling out conservative groups sent a 2012 letter under her name to one such group, POLITICO has learned.

The March 2012 letter was sent to the Ohio-based American Patriots Against Government Excess (American PAGE) under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division.

As Geraghty points out, this shows that “low-level employees” weren’t the ones primarily responsible for this scandal. Excerpt three:

In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like “Progress” or “Progressive,” the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups. They included:

• Bus for Progress, a New Jersey non-profit that uses a red, white and blue bus to “drive the progressive change.” According to its website, its mission includes “support (for) progressive politicians with the courage to serve the people’s interests and make tough choices.” It got an IRS approval as a social welfare group in April 2011.
• Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment says it fights against corporate welfare and for increasing the minimum wage. “It would be fair to say we’re on the progressive end of the spectrum,” said executive director Jeff Ordower. He said the group got tax-exempt status in September 2011 in just nine months after “a pretty simple, straightforward process.”
• Progress Florida, granted tax-exempt status in January 2011, is lobbying the Florida Legislature to expand Medicaid under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, one of President Obama’s signature accomplishments. The group did not return phone calls. “We’re busy fighting to build a more progressive Florida and cannot take your call right now,” the group’s voice mail said.

Like the Tea Party groups, the liberal groups sought recognition as social welfare groups under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, based on activities like “citizen participation” or “voter education and registration.”

And finally, excerpt four from Geraghty:

Eight months passed without word from the agency about the group’s application, Ryun said. In February 2012, Ryun’s attorney contacted the IRS to ask if it needed more information to secure its non-profit status as a 501(c)3 organization. According to Ryun, the IRS told him that the application was being processed by the agency’s office in Cincinnati, Ohio—the same one currently facing scrutiny for targeting conservative groups—and to check back in two months.

As directed, Ryun followed up with the IRS in April 2012, and was told that Media Trackers’ application was still under review.

When September 2012 arrived with still no word from the IRS, Ryun determined that Media Trackers would likely never obtain standalone non-profit status, and he tried a new approach: Starting over. He applied for permanent non-profit status for a separate group called Greenhouse Solutions, a pre-existing organization that was reaching the end of its determination period.

The IRS approved Greenhouse Solutions’ request for non-profit status in three weeks.

Tell me again how this is not a scandal.

As expected, the White House continues to blame everyone but itself for the scandal. The newest scapegoat is the Treasury department. Because God forbid that the White House itself start taking some responsibility for how unbelievably awful this scandal has gotten. Dana Milbank is one of the worst columnists around, but unlike the Obama administration, at least Milbank has eaten his Wheaties:

… Nixon was a control freak. Obama seems to be the opposite: He wants no control over the actions of his administration. As the president distances himself from the actions of “independent” figures within his administration, he’s creating a power vacuum in which lower officials behave as though anything goes. Certainly, a president can’t know what everybody in his administration is up to — but he can take responsibility, he can fire people and he can call a stop to foolish actions such as wholesale snooping into reporters’ phone calls.

Mitt Romney had his faults as a presidential candidate. But anything would be better than having a pretend president right about now.

Tech exec gives a speech to a bunch of educators. “The good news” he says, “is that my online education business will pay teachers a million dollars a year.” The crowd cheers. “The bad new is that I’ll only need six of you.”

Hah! Now here is the reality. From Inside Higher Ed:

The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors.

Georgia Tech will work with AT&T and Udacity, the 15-month-old Silicon Valley-based company, to offer a new online master’s degree in computer science to students across the world at a sixth of the price of its current degree. The deal, announced Tuesday, is portrayed as a revolutionary attempt by a respected university, an education technology startup and a major corporate employer to drive down costs and expand higher education capacity.

Georgia Tech expects to hire only eight or so new instructors even as it takes its master’s program from 300 students to as many as 10,000 within three years, said Zvi Galil, the dean of computing at Georgia Tech.

The university will rely instead on Udacity staffers, known as “mentors,” to field most questions from students who enroll in the new program. But company and university officials said the new degrees would be entirely comparable to the existing master’s degree in computer science from Georgia Tech, which costs about $40,000 a year for non-Georgia residents.

Recall Alex Tabarrok’s three advantages to online education: 1) leverage of the best teachers; 2) time savings; 3) individualized teaching via new technologies. All will likely be at play here.

Further proof that a huge swath of academic research being done today results from researchers daring each other to see how bizarre their projects have to get in order to scare off funding. From Science Daily:

Men's upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

...  The researchers collected data on bicep size, socioeconomic status, and support for economic redistribution from hundreds of people in the United States, Argentina, and Denmark.

In line with their hypotheses, the data revealed that wealthy men with high upper-body strength were less likely to support redistribution, while less wealthy men of the same strength were more likely to support it.

"Despite the fact that the United States, Denmark and Argentina have very different welfare systems, we still see that -- at the psychological level -- individuals reason about welfare redistribution in the same way," says [researcher Michael Bang] Petersen. "In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursue the self-interested position on redistribution."

Men with low upper-body strength, on the other hand, were less likely to support their own self-interest. Wealthy men of this group showed less resistance to redistribution, while poor men showed less support.

There are a couple of crumbs of crazy here. First is the fact that someone actually underwrote this study (although it becomes more intelligible when you learn that the research came out of California and Denmark). Second is the fact that -- reading this account, anyway -- it's not clear that the findings actually support the conclusion. Based on this account, there seems to be an awful lot of variability within the strength classes based on income. Maybe the spread is tiny by comparison to the difference between groups, but you can't tell from how this is written.

What rankles the most, however, is the characterization of opposing redistribution as the "self-interested position." We're talking about the confiscation of property here, albeit legally. If you think it's more important to retain a chunk of your income to support your wife and kids than to have that money deployed to make sure that the CEO of Solyndra has just the right Montblanc rollerball on his desk, is that really the apex of avarice?

What about those who think minimizing redistribution is the practical position? Those who acknowledge the need to pay taxes and are probably even amenable to a social safety net, but who believe that, beyond that threshold, it quickly devolves into a sucker's game for all involved? If a logically thought-out position results in you keeping more of your own money, does that still render it intrinsically greedy?

If we had no New York Times, where would we get our morning humor? From "An Onset of Woes Raises Questions on Obama Vision," today:

Yet Mr. Obama also expresses exasperation. In private, he has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.

First things first. If you are not familiar with the film (heck, even if you are), read John Podhoretz's brilliant review from 1998.

OK, so Obama wants to go Bulworth? What would that mean? The point of Bulworth is that a senator stops being a phony who says what he has to and starts promoting socialism. No, really. A major part of the film is when, um, Warren Beatty starts rapping about socialism.

My husband asks, "How would Obama even "go Bulworth"? Let us know just how liberal he is? Let us know he hates the GOP leadership? We got it, em kay?"

And who better to illustrate that than Dita von Teese, a Vargas girl made flesh.

Behold: Dita is wearing the first-ever 3D-printed dress, created by designer Michael Schmidt:

With the help of architect Francis Bitonti, Schmidt used digital rendering technology to design the dress and then collaborated with Shapeways, a 3D printing company, to create the dress with a fabric-like substance called powdered nylon. The final product was painted black and covered with 12,000 black Swarovski crystals.

The gown is made of thousands of plastic joints that are tiny enough to allow the material to drape like fabric. Bitonti started with Schmidt's iPad sketch of the gown and then created a computer model of the "network of curves" of Dita's body to match the gown to her shape. "Her body actually became an input for the software," he said. 

The technology is intriguingly disruptive, in that it hands a jealously guarded creative pursuit -- fashion design -- to the hoi polloi. "You can use an iPhone app to take 40 photos of an object, and the software will then stitch the photos together so you can recreate, modify and print the design," explained Duann Scott, a "designer evangelist" at Shapeways, the 3D printing startup that manufactured the gown. 

For now, anyway. From Politico:

Tonight's episode of Hardball saw Matthews delivering a rare, unforgiving grilling of the president as severe as anything that might appear on Fox News.

"What part of the presidency does Obama like? He doesn't like dealing with other politicians -- that means his own cabinet, that means members of the congress, either party. He doesn't particularly like the press.... "

"So what part does he like? He likes going on the road, campaigning, visiting businesses like he does every couple days somewhere in Ohio or somewhere," Matthews continued. "But what part does he like? He doesn't like lobbying for the bills he cares about. He doesn't like selling to the press. He doesn't like giving orders or giving somebody the power to give orders. He doesn't seem to like being an executive.”

Okay, obviously this isn't going to last. They'll all come purring back to Master, begging forgiveness. This is an adolescent temper-tantrum. It'll all be over in a trice, and the lickspittle press will be licking and spittling with enthusiastic abandon at every part of Obama's anatomy.

So, for now anyway, let's enjoy it.

Feel free to collect and post your own favorite examples below.  

Below, a meditation for times of scandal, in the words and voice of T.S. Eliot.

Does the "resignation" solution to scandal show that we live in an era in which there is no statesmanship?  Are we "resigned" to this state of affairs?

 T.S. Eliot.  "Difficulties of a Statesman" from Coriolan

The first thing to do is to form the committees:
The consultative councils, the standing committees, select committees and sub-committees

. . . I a tired head among these heads . . .

What shall I cry?

We demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation
RESIGN RESIGN RESIGN

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My colleagues from the campaign and political punditry universes often ask why I made the switch from domestic politics to full-time advocacy and foreign policy. Why am I concerned with development? Why global health? Isn't everyone anti-genocide? Why is ending sexual and gender-based violence that is happening thousands of miles away relevant? Why, why, why. The short version is that I am a survivor. The long version is that I am an American and with that comes responsibility. Also, hypocrites really tick me off.

When others affiliate themselves with a cause, take their selfies at $1,000 a plate dinners, and pretend that the occasional humanitarian impulse is enough, I am compelled to speak out. It would be better to not show up, to not be a hypocrite. These events are a staple in DC, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and beyond. The thing is, a couple of hours exposed to real human trauma is all most of us can stand.

Recognition of suffering is tough work, and sometimes it is best left to survivors, like myself, that found our way out of darkness and into purpose.

Victims are the dead. Survivors are the witnesses. Enter empathy: the poignant human connection we discover in news stories and fundraising emails from NGOs, think tanks, at award ceremonies in the White House, at the United Nations, hotel ballrooms and university auditoriums. The video rolls: gaunt faces, distended bellies, flies and mosquitoes landing on the faces of tiny children, mothers and sisters cradling babies in brightly colored wraps, families hiding in caves. Then come the images of scorched earth and devastation, which finally blur and give way to softer images. The music changes, signaling relief. Men and women arrive in matching logo emblazoned t-shirts or medical scrubs. Pallets of medicine and food aid are being unloaded and opened as the tents and temporary structures of refugee camps are assembled.

At last.

Your donations are making a difference. Together, we are changing the world.

It takes more than aid to keep people alive. Understanding the financial cost and the impact is relevant. Saving a life is the right thing to do. Lives matter. For the suffering, the aid for their souls that comes with a shared sense of humanity is priceless. For us too. It contributes to the prevention of new conflicts. That means justice. Being pro-life is about more than unborn children; it is about loving our fellow beings. It is about standing against moral relativism. It is about understanding the difference between good and evil, and selflessness when the lives that need saving are not just down the street, but are thousands of miles away. Exporting goodness, compassion, and individual liberty costs so very little compared to ignorance and war.

Justice is what comforts those who have been devastated by crime. There is no logo on a t-shirt that can mend a soul and body torn apart by evil. Only love, only redemption, only justice can repair the wrong. Whether in San Francisco, Congo, Ohio, Sudan, Cambodia or Paris, the horror human beings inflict on each other can only be stopped by a greater force of good.

In Sudan, war crimes rage beyond Darfur. In the Nuba Mountains, across Southern Kordofan, and the Blue Nile, criminals indicted by the International Criminal Court act with impunity. It is a grave reminder that justice, not revenge, must triumph. Too often, it is the language of revenge that prevails. This tactic exacerbates and exploits the pain of survivors. Religious, ethnic, and gender violence is never justified. Any advocate whose language incites retribution and revenge delays and denies justice.

The language of moral equivalence also empowers evil. Dr. Mukesh Kapila, a professor and former UK diplomat that blew the whistle about the genocide occurring in Darfur while he served as the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, spoke earlier this year at the Sudan Emergency Action Summit, hosted by Act for Sudan at George Mason University's Arlington Campus. "So it is that Darfur burned while people fiddled with the different protocols." He knows, because he was there.

"When the premiere institution of the world, the United Nations system, created after all that happened in the Second World War, in the image of this country [the U.S.] subcontracts out its principle business then don't be surprised that what happens is not a legitimate outcome as far as the world is concerned or at least as far as some countries are concerned."

The freedom from fear is a blessing for so many in the West, particularly in the United States. We feel inherently safe. We are isolated from real suffering. We are also isolated from a violent, brooding, and calculating evil that flourishes when there is no system for accountability or justice. We view rape and murder almost casually because we trust the perpetrators will be caught, the victims or their families will see a conviction in a court, and we'll be able to go back to our daily lives. We view justice as entertainment. Courtroom dramas are a staple in our entertainment diet. We don't object to the desensitization of our children.

The truth is this: real heroes, real champions for virtue, love, forgiveness, redemption, and justice exist.

Americans and our international allies have moral responsibilities. After the Holocaust, we vowed to never enable evil to commit genocide again. The time for moral equivalence is over. The time for complaining about the financial cost is over. It is more economical to convince people to live, to embrace justice. Allowing a genocide to occur, then complaining about the cost of cleaning it up is heartlessly selfish. Ending systematic rapes and genocide is the right thing to do.  Americans must call on President Barack Obama to contribute to fighting the scourge of rape and genocide, just as we called President George W. Bush to end the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Who can forget the stain of the Rwandan genocide on President Clinton's watch?

As human beings, we must remember those images on the screen. The babies, the kids, the young women and men, the fathers and brothers, the colleagues who love and stand by the women scarred by rape deserve our empathy -- but also our action. The salve to the soul is kindness. The soft touch of a champion, the acknowledgement that rape and violence do not define a survivor compels healing, compels action. It inspires faith. We become whole again. Americans have long lit the path towards freedom and self-determination because we understand all the costs, all the sacrifices are worth giving of ourselves.

Wearing couture, taking selfies, and congratulating ourselves on our isolation from such sadness seems beneath the dignity we afford the Constitution and the fields of our dead from Arlington National Cemetery to Normandy. Let us begin to right the ship of state so that we may inspire others to do more, do better, and find their own way towards justice and a culture of life.

The Department of Justice has started an FBI investigation into the IRS and its targeting of Tea Party groups, and today President Obama made a token move by forcing the IRS commissioner to resign, but more must be done. In particular, a special counsel needs to be named to ensure that the job is carried out fairly, objectively, and, more importantly, exhaustively—that means finding out who was involved no matter how high it goes.

Of course, the U.S. Attorney General himself is the one who assigns a special counsel, but will Eric Holder step forward and make that assignment? Will President Obama force him? Will the Republicans raise hell until every person responsible for violating the constitutional rights of Americans is brought to justice?

It’s clear from the scope of the scandal and the insidious nature of targeting conservative groups (as well as transferring their private information to news outlets) that these actions are not only illegal, but also damaging to free speech. Groups and individuals who wanted to express their views through legitimate processes were intimidated and in many cases silenced by the IRS.

The power of the tax department is legendary and strikes terror in the hearts of even the most upstanding of citizens. One woman who wanted to start a Tea Party group said she stopped the process after she read through the intrusive questions on the IRS tax-exempt forms and found out that she could be charged with perjury if she didn’t answer correctly. She threw up her hands and said, “I’m a pregnant stay-at-home mother on one income. Oh my goodness, I’m not doing anything.”

The IRS’s actions against conservatives can only be interpreted as an effort to suppress political opposition to the current administration and to shackle free expression. In many cases, the plan worked. Groups were silenced. Individuals were intimidated. Obama won. Freedom of speech was lost.

What must be emphasized now is that if the IRS is not thoroughly investigated, if the rat nest isn’t emptied, and if the roaches aren’t flushed from every crack and crevice, then the chilling effect on free speech will be even worse than before the scandal broke. It will extend beyond the Tea Party and other groups targeted in this scandal to all Americans because what was once only an imaginary fear for many has been shown to be true—the IRS will target you if you step out of line. And as long as nothing is done about it, who is to say it won’t happen again—to you, to me, to any one of us?

If that fear is not removed through an investigation by a special counsel, if the case is closed and tossed under the table along with Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and every other nefarious government venture no one has had the courage to pursue, then that fear will spread. Americans will think twice before speaking truth to power because of fear that they will be abused by the IRS or that their personal information will be exposed for others to use against them. Or worse, once Obamacare is implemented with the IRS as its enforcement mechanism, they won't get the care they need because they're on the wrong side of the political spectrum.

Enforcement of law is not just about bringing the guilty to justice; it’s about securing liberty and peace of mind for the innocent. If President Obama does not appoint a special counsel, then he is just as responsible as those in the IRS for suppressing free speech, because he will be perpetuating a toxic environment of fear and repression that has infected our nation as a result of this scandal.

If Congress does not do everything in its power to uncover the truth—even if that means every committee carrying out its own investigation to bring the facts to light—it too will be complicit in chilling free speech because it will fail to assure the American people that their liberties will indeed be protected and secured by the full force of the law.

From Attorney General Holder's testimony earlier today in front of the House Judiciary Committee:

As the Los Angeles Times reports:

In ground-breaking action, the Los Angeles Unified school board voted Tuesday to ban suspensions of defiant students, directing officials to use alternative disciplinary practices instead.

The packed board room erupted in cheers after the 5-2 vote to approve the proposal, which made L.A. Unified the first school district in the state to ban defiance as grounds for suspension. The action comes amid mounting national concern that removing students from school is imperiling their academic achievement and disproportionately harming minority students, particularly African Americans.

As a parent living in Los Angeles, I find this policy outrageous. It is one more reason why my wife and I will not allow our children to attend L.A. public schools.

A few years ago, while I served on the faculty oversight committee for UCLA admissions, I discussed a new potential policy with a colleague.  The idea was to make admissions at UCLA more like that at the University of Texas, where a student is guaranteed admission if his or her grades are among the top 10% at his or her high school. The colleague, a liberal whose children had attended L.A. public schools, cautioned, "You gotta be careful. At some of the L.A. Unified schools, you basically get a B+ just for not throwing spit balls at the teacher." 

Los Angeles public schools are truly awful. The new policy, I am certain, will only make them worse.

I wish California policy makers would think seriously about the consequences of their proposals. The new policy will not make kids smarter, nor better citizens. It will not help to make California businesses more productive once the kids graduate.

I'm only partially joking when I suggest this: I wish Rick Perry would make a commercial where he would note the new policy and ask, "Hey, California business owners:  In 10 years the pool from which you hire employees will be even worse. Maybe it's time you come check out Texas."  Such a commercial, I believe, would cause California lawmakers to wake up and realize how silly some of their policies are.

Over at Foreign Policy (where you may have to register -- for free -- to get the whole piece), Ricochet's own Richard Epstein is headlining today, lighting into the Obama Administration for its recent round of scandals. To wit:

The very president who has pledged himself to the most open and transparent administration ever is now perceived on all sides of the political spectrum as a secretive soul who skulks about in the shadows, so sure of his own moral rectitude that he thinks that it is all right to ignore the procedural safeguards that the U.S. Constitution wisely puts in the path of less wise and omniscient presidents. Long ago, James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 that the Constitution had to be rigged for bad times because it is in the nature of politics that "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." Madison's time has come.

And later:

For the president and his aides, the first item on the agenda is damage control. The administration is likely in full-blown (but secret) polling mode, seeing how high the tides of dissent and resentment will rise, and who they will envelop. My guess is that Holder is history. Right now, it looks as if Obama will survive, though probably as a lame duck, just four months into his new term in office. It is a sad fall for an administration that has always prided itself as having escaped the muck of ordinary politics. But not this time. We are past the point where presidential protestations that the administration is innocent on all charges will be treated as evidence that it is covering up its own misdeeds. Cheap talk is dangerous in all professions, even in politics. The real tragedy is that the president and his attorney general believed overmuch in their own exalted rhetoric; the nation, and the world, is all the poorer because of their excesses. "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16.18 should now be required reading in Washington.

Ever heard of something called the "Lavender Graduation" at Louisiana State University? Neither had I until this morning.

Apparently homosexual graduates at LSU had their own special graduation ceremony this year, hosted inside a campus ballroom. There'd be nothing wrong with that, I guess, if they were the ones paying for it. On the other hand, since taxpayers are footing the bill... then maybe it's one publicly-funded ceremony too many.

In addition to their own special ceremony on Tuesday, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students were given lavender-colored sashes to wear as they march in the main "heterosexual-inclusive" graduation ceremony on Thursday. All thanks to the generosity of Louisiana taxpayers.

In unrelated news, LSU's Interim Chancellor Dr. William Jenkins sent out an email in March, warning faculty and staff about the looming budget crisis the university faces, and calling on state lawmakers to increase tuition rates. "We need the resources," he wrote.

Of all the scandals, mini-scandals, and scandals-in-waiting circling the White House these days, the one that should set off the most alarms in the Oval Office is the AP phone records affair. It’s not so much its relative placement on the egregious overreach scale; it’s the fact that it involves the mainstream press. This is an assemblage  of men and women that has been vital to the political success of the President. This is the group that collectively decides whether an event, or series of events, constitutes a scandal or, for that matter, even a story.

When scandal engulfs an administration, it’s generally not about one isolated occurrence, but rather a confluence of events that forms a narrative and paints an unsavory picture. Until now, that dynamic has been lacking in the coverage—or lack thereof—of  stories such as Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and the IRS. Now, however, this administration has provided a linchpin to the scandal process with its peek into AP’s virtual Rolodex. The press is now angry, and that’s not a good thing for Obama, Inc.

No group of professionals is more thin-skinned and protective of its turf than the press. Just ask Tom Brokaw, whose recent ruminations about the appropriateness of his brethren’s participation in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner unleashed a series of “lighten up, Tom” attacks from media folks. Additionally, there’s a lot of water that has been held back by the protective dam built by much of the mainstream press, and there’s no telling how much damage might be done if the dam bursts. There’s a cracking sound coming from upriver, and it might be time to start placing sandbags around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As the IRS scandal deepens, we should remember that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, et al. set the tone for the stigmatizing and targeting of conservatives, even if it turns out they did not authorize the IRS witchhunt. George Bush, conservatives, tea partiers, "republicans in Congress," and "the wealthy" were vociferously blamed for just about everything. In a December 2012 post entitled Obama Labels Others With His Own Traits, I said:

Obama often accused George W. Bush of trying to “scare up votes.” But Obama’s own presidential campaigns rested upon precisely that. This from Agence France-Presse, just after the 2012 Iowa Caucuses:  

In keeping with its previous line of attack, the Obama campaign's manager Jim Messina said in a statement that the ‘extremist Tea Party agenda won a clear victory’ … ‘No matter who the Republicans nominate, we'll be running against someone who has embraced that agenda in order to win - vowing to let Wall Street write its own rules, end Medicare as we know it, roll back gay rights, leave the troops in Iraq indefinitely, restrict a woman's right to choose, and gut Social Security to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.

Throughout his first term, Obama decried GOP “budget games,” “obstructionism” and unwillingness to “compromise,” at the same time insisting that it was Republicans, not he, who engaged in “blaming and finger-pointing.” He stigmatized “Republicans in Congress” as obstinate do-nothings at the very time he was: campaigning around the country instead of governing; giving hyper-partisan fundraising speeches; and refusing to submit a real budget or to meet with Republicans in the attempt to forge a budget.

Moreover, he continuously caricatured Republicans as ideologically extreme. At a 2011 Town hall Meeting at Facebook headquarters, he said, “I think it’s fair to say their vision is radical.”  A year later, Obama was hammering the same theme, saying, for example, that the Republican budget plan represented “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”

Obama' s first campaign promised unity and national reconciliation and an end to the bitter partisan divide. But it was soon evident that the kind of unity Obama favored required lock-step agreement to his ideological agenda; the diversity his party supposedly stands for was strikingly absent.

There is a lot of nonsense being written on the IRS scandal—see here for nonsense from a reliably ridiculous source—but Professor Rick Hasen (who actually knows something about election and campaign finance law) has no problem whatsoever calling the IRS’s actions “terrible”:

Let’s not make excuses for the IRS. The agency shouldn’t have subjected conservative groups to special scrutiny. Campaign finance reform groups should have immediately called for hearings when this scandal broke: Imagine the hue and cry if the IRS during the Bush administration had singled out “progressive” groups for special tax scrutiny and sent them unprecedented questions about their contributors and activities. Given the danger going back to President Richard Nixon of using the IRS against political enemies, the agency has to be scrupulously nonpartisan and fair. Congressional investigations and the Department of Justice criminal investigation announced Tuesday are inevitable and warranted.

Professor Hasen thinks that the thing to do in response is to strengthen disclosure laws. I have no problem with that, but two things bear remembering:

(1) Disclosure laws should not put any limits whatsoever on the amount of money that can be spent in supporting a 501(c)(4). I happen to think that money is speech, and if we can call flag-burning speech in Texas v. Johnson (a ruling I agree with, given my high regard for the First Amendment), then we can call spending money to advance political causes speech as well.

(2) The identity of those who bankroll certain 501(c)(4)s may be somewhat interesting to know—I certainly would be less inclined to support a 501(c)(4) that I know is bankrolled by neo-Nazis or communists—but in the vast majority of cases, one really shouldn’t need to know the identity of donors in order to be able to determine whether or not one supports the aims of various 501(c)(4)s. The nature and scope of the argument made by 501(c)(4)s matters a whole lot more than does the identity of those making the argument.

When President Obama was asked what he thought of Kermit Gosnell, he declined to answer, taking a new (for him) approach by declining to comment on ongoing trials. I wrote in USA Today:

So now that the trial is over, reporters should ask if President Obama still opposes laws that protect infants that survive abortions. After the school massacre in Newtown, President Obama suggested reforms to the country's gun laws, saying, "If there is even one step we can take to save another child . . . then surely we have an obligation to try." So let's find out the specifics of his proposed abortion reforms post-Gosnell.

The Gosnell trial's gruesome details about the cold-blooded killing of infants, the mistreatment of their corpses, racist practices and the disgusting conditions of the clinic have shocked the nation's conscience regarding the culture of abortion. This trial and this verdict will generate serious discussion about abortion policy in the United States and elsewhere.

What are your thoughts, President Obama?

You know who else I think reporters should talk to, now that he's agreed not to appeal his conviction? Kermit Gosnell. He has to be one of the biggest gets out there. I would love a reporter to ask him what he thinks about our abortion laws, late-term abortion in general, his particular abortion practices, etc. I bet that other people in his industry might be less curious about his answers.

One of these is a real wine review:

1. Overall character is that of a sex-loaded scarlet; endowed, jaunty and erotically scented with every part smelling and tasting provocative, flamboyant and blooming. Its gorgeous, vaunting style is burning, mantling and amorous with an extravagant softness that is grandiose, exotic and pursed lipped. There is an edginess, sophistication and dominating air that questions whether your palate has the true aptitude to handle the complete clutch of this much worldliness.

2. This supple, chocolatey, full-bodied blend of cabernet franc and merlot teases the palate with a spicy, jammy, in-your-face hit of blackberries laced with Swiss cacao by way of cherry blossoms in the dewy morning. The hibiscus nose, heady with fruit-forward notes of nectarine and plum, lulls you into submission and then hits you full-bore with neon purple magic-marker tannins on the finish. As much at home beside a slab of bloody prime rib as it is gracing an earthy pot-au-feu, this isn't the flirty tween in the cutoffs by the pool. This is her mother in the diamonds on the chaise-longue, checking you out and finding you wanting. Serve the rabble your Mondavi cab; keep this one for yourself. 91.

Okay, which is the real one? (Answer at the bottom of the post.)

I'm a big wine lover (and cocktail fan), but have always suspected that much of the language thrown around in the assessment of wine is the purest nonsense. I operate on a fatally pedestrian "yummy," "whoa, even yummier!" "sweet Lord above, this is the yummiest" metric, so I'm at a bit of a loss when somebody starts declaiming about straw-peachy noses and the hint of the barnyard and, heaven help us, flaccidity. 

A website called i09: We Come From the Future shares my skepticism. A Robert T. Gonzalez makes the following points:

1. Wine experts contradict themselves. Constantly: 

Statistician and wine-lover Robert Hodgson recently analyzed a series of wine competitions in California, after "wondering how wines, such as his own, [could] win a gold medal at one competition, and 'end up in the pooper' at others." In one study, Hodgson presented blindfolded wine experts with the same wine three times in succession. Incredibly, the judges' ratings typically varied by ±4 points on a standard ratings scale running from 80 to 100. Via the Wall Street Journal:

A wine rated 91 on one tasting would often be rated an 87 or 95 on the next. Some of the judges did much worse, and only about one in 10 regularly rated the same wine within a range of ±2 points.

Mr. Hodgson also found that the judges whose ratings were most consistent in any given year landed in the middle of the pack in other years, suggesting that their consistent performance that year had simply been due to chance.

It bears repeating that the judges Hodgson surveyed were no ordinary taste-testers. These were judges at the California State Fair wine competition – the oldest and most prestigious in North America.

2. Expert wine critics can't distinguish between red and white wines. You've probably heard about this one:

In 2001, researcher Frédéric Brochet invited 54 wine experts to give their opinions on what were ostensibly two glasses of different wine: one red, and one white. In actuality, the two wines were identical, with one exception: the "red" wine had been dyed with food coloring.

The experts described the "red" wine in language typically reserved for characterizing reds. They called it "jammy," for example, and noted the flavors imparted by its "crushed red fruit." Not one of the 54 experts surveyed noticed that it was, in fact a white wine.

3. We taste with our eyes, not our mouths:

Actually, scratch that. We taste with our eyes, ears, noses, and even our sense of touch. We taste with our emotions, and our state of mind. This has been demonstrated time after time after time.

Research out of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab has shown that people will rate food as more enjoyable if it's consumed in the relaxed atmosphere of a fine dining environment, as opposed to a noisy fast food restaurant.

A 2006 study, published by the American Association of Wine Economists, found that most people can't distinguish between paté and dog food.

A recent New Yorker piece describes a followup to Brochet's 2001 study, wherein he served wine experts a run-of-the-mill Bordeaux in two different bottles:

One bottle bore the label of a fancy grand cru, the other of an ordinary vin de table. Although they were being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the bottles nearly opposite descriptions. The grand cru was summarized as being “agreeable,” “woody,” “complex,” “balanced,” and “rounded,” while the most popular adjectives for the vin de table included “weak,” “short,” “light,” “flat,” and “faulty.”

4. Wine critics know wine reviews are b*****t. Rodriguez quotes Joe Power, editor of Another Wine Blog:

There is no hard science involved in reviewing wine, no real way to quantify results, no test cases, and certainly no verifiable set of standards that everyone adheres to. Everyone makes up their own processes for reviewing from Wine Spectator to us and all of the way down to the most recent person who just discovered how easy it is to set up a blog of their own.

When asked point blank what he thought of the aforementioned results from Robert Hodgson's study (see Exhibit A) wine-maker Bob Cabral said he was "not surprised":

In Mr. Cabral's view, wine ratings are influenced by uncontrolled factors such as the time of day, the number of hours since the taster last ate and the other wines in the lineup. He also says critics taste too many wines in too short a time. As a result, he says, "I would expect a taster's rating of the same wine to vary by at least three, four, five points from tasting to tasting."

Rodriguez ends by citing MIT behavioral economist Coco Krume, who recently performed a meta-analysis of the language used in wine reviews. She found that reviewers 

tend to use "cheap" and "expensive" words differently. Cheap descriptors are used much more frequently, expensive ones more sparingly. Krume even demonstrated that it's possible to guess the price range of a wine based on the words used in its review. "From a quantitative standpoint," Krume writes, "there are three types of words more likely to be used for expensive wines":

• Darker words, such as intense, supple, velvety, and smoky
• Single flavors such as tobacco or chocolate versus fruity, good, clean, tasty, juicy for cheap wines
• Exclusive-sounding words in place of simple descriptors. For example, old, elegant, and cuvee rather than pleasing, refreshing, value, and enjoy
• Additionally, cheap wine is preferentially paired with chicken and pizza, while pricey wine goes with shellfish and pork

Using her scientific metric, Krume goes on to create the most expensive-sounding wine review ever penned: "A velvety chocolate texture and enticingly layered, yet creamy, nose, this wine abounds with focused cassis and a silky ruby finish. Lush, elegant, and nuanced. Pair with pork and shellfish." If that sentence made you yearn for a glass of classy red, congratulations, there's a very real chance you're a pompous *****.

(The real wine review is #1. I made up #2.)

Given all of the new developments that seem to be occurring regarding Obama Administration scandals, it’s a safe bet that five minutes after this post gets published it will be out of date. But at least we can record the state of the Administration’s scandals for the moment … until we discover, of course, that things are a lot worse than we thought they might be.

First off, it’s worth noting anew that when it rains, it pours:

When two storms collide, the weather gets hairy. For President Obama, the IRS and Benghazi stories converged this weekend for a self-inflicted tempest that threatens his credibility.

His people can’t get their stories straight.

Internal Revenue Service officials denied for months the targeting of conservative political groups for reviews of their tax exempt status. With investigators poised to expose the chilling operation, a high-ranking IRS official acknowledged it late last week and apologized for it.

The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.  That appears to be untrue. The Associated Press reported Saturday that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report.

Politicizing the IRS threatens the integrity of an agency entrusted with Americans’ secrets and the taxes that fund government. It also fuels the paranoia of conspiracy theorists.

“This is outrageous,” said Democratic consultant Chris Kofinis. “The administration and the president need to condemn this and act immediately. This is not a right-left issue.”

Several other Democratic allies of the White House expressed similar sentiments while refusing to be named out of fear of retribution. Kofinis, who specializes in political communications, said the White House needs to explain itself. “Your first response can’t be to say the IRS is an independent agency,” a claim the White House has made, he said.

Later, at a White House news conference, Obama forcefully denounced the IRS actions as “outrageous” and said people will be held accountable.

On Benghazi, the president’s U.N. ambassador said five days after the Libya attack that the incident grew out of a street protest rather than a terrorist attack. Caught fudging the facts in the middle of a presidential campaign, a race in which Obama’s anti-terrorism record was a major selling point, the White House blamed Ambassador Susan Rice’s statement on “talking points” concocted by the CIA in virtual isolation.

Obama’s team stuck with that story until the truth was exposed amid a GOP congressional investigation. Emails leaked to news organizations last week show that both the White House and State Department were directly involved in scrubbing the CIA talking points of any mention of past threats and al-Qaida involvement. That is the exact opposite of what the Obama White House had claimed.  

Inexplicably, White House spokesman Jay Carney refused late Friday to acknowledge the contradiction.

Even worse, Obama himself ignored his administration’s obfuscations today, and instead called the debate over shifting explanations “a sideshow.” At the news conference, he turned the tables on GOP critics and accused them of playing “political games.”

Concerning Benghazi, Glenn Kessler is forced to give the president four whole Pinocchios for his claim that he called the attacks “an act of terrorism."

Now let’s turn to the IRS scandal. As has been noted many a time, Joe Klein has been an Obamaphile since Barack Obama first emerged on the national scene. But lately, Klein has had trouble defending the president:

Yet again, we have an example of Democrats simply not managing the government properly and with discipline. This is just poisonous at a time of skepticism about the efficacy of government. And the President should know this: the absence of scandal is not the presence of competence. His unwillingness to concentrate — and I mean concentrate obsessively — on making sure that government is managed efficiently will be part of his legacy.

Previous Presidents, including great ones like Roosevelt, have used the IRS against their enemies. But I don’t think Obama ever wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon. In this specific case, he now is.

Oh, lest you think that we are finished with the IRS scandal, behold:

The IRS acting chief acknowledged Tuesday that the agency demonstrated “a lack of sensitivity” in its screenings of political groups seeking tax-exempt status, but he said those mistakes won’t be repeated.

In his first public comment on the case, Steven Miller said there was “a shortcut taken in our processes” for determining which groups needed special screening.

Miller has emerged as a key figure in the controversy over the IRS’ singling out of conservative groups for extra scrutiny. President Barack Obama said Monday that if the agency intentionally targeted such groups, “that’s outrageous and there’s no place for it.”

In an opinion piece in Tuesday’s editions of USA Today, Miller conceded that the agency demonstrated “a lack of sensitivity to the implications of some of the decisions that were made.” He said screening of advocacy groups is “factually complex, and it’s challenging to separate out political issues from those involving education or social welfare.”

“The mistakes we made were due to the absence of a sufficient process for working the increase in cases and a lack of sensitivity to the implications of some of the decisions that were made,” Miller wrote.

Miller said the agency has implemented new procedures that will “ensure the mistakes won’t be repeated.”

On Monday, the IRS said Miller was first informed on May, 3, 2012, that applications for tax-exempt status by tea party groups were inappropriately singled out for extra scrutiny. Congress, though, was not told tea party groups were being inappropriately targeted, even after Miller had been briefed on the matter.

At least twice after the briefing, Miller wrote letters to members of Congress to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status without disclosing that tea party groups had been targeted. On July 25, 2012, Miller testified before the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, but again did not mention the additional scrutiny — despite being asked about it.

Miller’s op-ed, however, did not address why he did not inform Congress after he was briefed.

And more:

The same Internal Revenue Service office that singled out Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny also challenged Israel-related organizations, at least one of which filed suit over the agency’s handling of its application for tax-exempt status.

The trouble for the Israel-focused groups seems to have had different origins than that experienced by conservative groups, but at times the effort seems to have been equally ham-handed.

A leader of one of the organizations involved, Lori Lowenthal Marcus of Z Street, said Monday that she was convinced the added attention her group got was no accident.“I can’t believe it was just about Z Street, because it’s a tiny organization,” Lowenthal Marcus said of the group, which has been critical of President Barack Obama for being too cozy with left-leaning Jewish groups like J Street and with pro-Palestinian entities.

Maybe this story regarding Larry Conners’ claims is filled with falsehoods. But how many of you are willing to cavalierly dismiss it?

Larry Conners, a veteran local news anchor at KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis, says that the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting him since an April 2012 interview he conducted with President Obama — a fact that he dismissed as coincidence until the recent reports about the IRS targeting conservative groups.

“Shortly after I did my April 2012 interview with President Obama, my wife, friends and some viewers suggested that I might need to watch out for the IRS. I don’t accept ‘conspiracy theories’, but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me,” Conners wrote on his Facebook page late Monday night.

And this story serves as a hilarious momentary coda to the IRS scandal.

Things have now gotten bad enough with the IRS scandal that the Department of Justice has been forced to investigate. But the Department of Justice has its own problems:

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.

There is a background to this latest scandal that is worth mentioning:

President Barack Obama came into office pledging an unprecedented commitment to government transparency. During his first days in the Oval Office, Obama issued an executive order and two memoranda that were supposed to create a new climate of openness in Washington. One of the memos instructed government officials to “adopt a presumption in favor” of releasing information.

Nine months later, Obama needs to reread his own instructions. A federal shield law for journalists that had been moving forward with broad support is now bogged down in the Senate Judiciary Committee due to limitations on information sought by the administration.

The Free Flow of Information Act strikes a reasonable balance between the public’s right to know and the government’s responsibility to protect the citizenry. It recognizes a reporter’s right to protect confidential sources in limited circumstances, as 36 states - including Texas - do.

The measure, however, would also compel journalists to disclose their sources in cases of imminent threats to national security or critical infrastructure and when the safety or welfare of individuals is at stake. In such cases, the government would take its arguments in favor of disclosing a reporter’s confidential sources before an impartial judge.

The administration initially supported this equitable process. Recently, however, it has decided it wants to be the arbiter of national security and its judge and jury. With White House opposition, the federal shield law legislation is now in danger of foundering in the Senate or being weakened to the point of ineffectuality.

This story is from three years ago. I guess it should have served as a warning of sorts. More:

Reporters across The Associated Press are outraged over the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of staff phone records — and they say such an intrusion could chill their relationships with confidential sources.

In conversations with POLITICO on Tuesday, several AP staffers in Washington, D.C., described feelings of anger and frustration with the DOJ and with the Obama administration in general.

“People are pretty mad — mad that government has not taken what we do seriously,” one reporter said on Tuesday. “When the news broke yesterday … people were outraged and disgusted. No one was yelling and screaming, but it was like, ‘Are you kidding me!?’”

So, that’s a lot of scandals, and a lot of news about scandals. Which makes this entirely unsurprising:

At Rep. Steny Hoyer’s weekly meeting with reporters on Tuesday, the Maryland Democrat was asked if he was concerned about the DOJ seizing phone records from Associated Press journalists working in the House press gallery in the Capitol building.

Hoyer’s answer was well-delivered: Articulate, clear, firm and precise.

One problem: He responded to the wrong scandal.

“The IRS activity was inappropriate, inconsistent with our policies and practices as a country, very concerning, needs to be reviewed carefully,” Hoyer, one of the top-ranking House Democrats, said in response to a question from Fox News’ Chad Pergram about the DOJ. “We need to ensure that this does not happen again, and we need to find out how long it continued, when it was stopped. It is my understanding—there was a front-page story on this at the [Washington] Post—it’s my understanding that [IRS official] Lois Lerner, who was apparently overseeing this, at some point in time found out about this and said …”

When Hoyer named Lerner, Pergram interrupted.

“We’re talking about two things,” Pergram, who apparently had not heard the first mention of the IRS, said from across the table, “You said Lois Lerner and the IRS.”

Another reporter sitting closer to Hoyer, Public Radio International’s Todd Zwillich, learned over and said softly, “He’s talking about the AP story.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, excuse me,” Hoyer said, pausing briefly. “Whatever happened, we need to find out why it happened. But clearly it should not have happened. I don’t know enough about whether there was a warrant sought.”

Boom. He nailed it!

But Hoyer wasn’t finished.

“I don’t know fully the rationalization or justification that was being used, but the president’s statement that it was outrageous, that there was no place for it and that they have to be held fully accountable is a statement in which I agree,” Hoyer went on to say.

The only problem is that President Barack Obama didn’t comment about the DOJ story. And he certainly didn’t call it “outrageous.” In fact, the White House has declined to say much of anything about the DOJ investigation. Was he talking about the IRS story again? Yup.

Franklin Graham of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) has written a letter to President Barack Obama, informing him that the IRS has not only targeted organizations with “Tea Party” and “Patriot” in their names, but has extended its profiling to religious organizations as well. Here is a portion of the letter:

Last April, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, headquartered in North Carolina, ran full-page ads statewide supporting the Marriage Amendment in North Carolina. We believe marriage between a man and a woman to be a moral, biblical value to be upheld. And last fall, our ministry ran newspaper ads nationally encouraging voters to “cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel.” The ad concluded with these words: “Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me (Billy Graham) that America will remain one nation under God.” (These ads were purchased with designated funds given by friends of our ministry for this purpose.)

To my surprise, on September 6, 2012, both Samaritan’s Purse (headquartered in Boone, NC) and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (headquartered in Charlotte, NC) received notification from the IRS that a review would be conducted for tax year ending 2010….

In light of what the IRS admitted to on Friday, May 10, 2013, and subsequent revelations from other sources, I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence—or justifiable. Yesterday, you said, “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then that’s outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions…” Mr. President, the IRS has already publicly acknowledged it operated in a less than neutral and non-partisan way. We also know that the target of their improper actions was much wider than political or Tea Party organizations. Will you take some immediate action to reassure Americans we are not in a new chapter of America’s history—repressive government rule?

I applaud Franklin Graham for stepping up and publicly holding the president to account for the actions of the IRS under his watch. I’m not betting on Obama taking any “immediate action” to reassure Americans of anything—much less repressive government rule. However, if more conservative leaders are willing to stand up and confront this administration, maybe the message of just how oppressive this government is will become more apparent to the American voter.

What do you think of Graham writing a letter directly to Obama and making it public? Do you think we will be hearing from more groups like this?

So many of you in the Ricochet community bring your impressive knowledge of history into our interesting discussions that I've been itching to ask you: What is history? I'm not sure how I would define it. Oxford philosopher and historian Robin George Collingwood has interesting thoughts on the subject in The Idea of History:

For history, the object to be discovered is not the mere event, but the thought expressed in it. To discover that thought is to already understand it. . . . All history is the history of thought . . and therefore all history is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian's own mind.

The concept that our ideas predate our actions certainly resonates when we think about how dramatically Marx's theory of history affected, and still affects, "history."  For Marx, all of history was determined by material conditions. As I like to say to those who accuse  liberal/capitalist society of being the most materialistic societal form,  it is in communism that matter is what matters. Marx predicted that each stage of history would raise the standard of living of the masses while inevitably being overcome by the next. With socialism, the final oppressive class would be overthrown and society would finally achieve equality - material equality, that is --- so different from the kind of equality our founding fathers defended.

Speaking of the founding ideals, in my forthcoming book, I provide some thoughts on modern interpretations of history which diminish the ideas that undergird our republic. Here's a bit of that analysis:

Yes, fascism fell, and so did communism. Unfortunately, the concepts of historic inevitability and moral relativism they both contained did not fall with them. More often than not, these ideas exist side by side with the contradictory ideas that socialist societies are better than capitalist ones and that everything in political and cultural life can be “constructed.” (Too few in the academic world are willing to point out these contradictions.) Whether we “construct” history or go along for the ride of its inevitability—either way—the belief in God-given and innate rights becomes impossible. So too, whether we embrace moral relativism or statist-socialism, the idea that individual and human rights are fundamental and prior to government can’t hold.

Still, I don't know how I would define history. Your thoughts? Alternately, what are some of the more compelling definitions you've come across? (A tale told by idiots, signifying nothing?)