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Monday, June 03, 2013

Peggy Noonan: Why This Scandal Is Different

Peggy Noonan was gaga over Obama in 2008 so her judgement and opinion is questionable. However, she thinks that this IRS scandal is different because the IRS is being manipulated to go against the small fry rather than fat cats. She may have a point in term of the optics, but the IRS should not "go after" anyone based on their politics. They should be above that. Unfortunately, they're being exposed as a bunch of partisan hacks with unlimited powers to destroy you.

But my friend got to the essence. He wrote, “The left likes to say, ‘Watergate was worse!’ Watergate was bad—don’t get me wrong. But it was elites using the machinery of government to spy on elites. . . . It’s something quite different when elites use the machinery of government against ordinary people. It’s a whole different ball game.”

It is.

That’s exactly what I meant.

In previous IRS scandals it was the powerful abusing the powerful—a White House moving against prominent financial or journalistic figures who, because of their own particular status or the machineries at their disposal, could pretty much take care of themselves. A scandal erupts, there are headlines, and then people go on their way. The dreadful thing about this scandal, what makes it ominous, is that this is the elites versus regular citizens. It’s the mighty versus normal people. It’s the all-powerful directors of the administrative state training their eyes and moving on uppity and relatively undefended Americans.

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