Yes, Saul Alinsky would be proud. Rule number 13 in Rules for Radicals reads “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The AP reported:
The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” she added.
Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. She did not say when they found out.
About 75 groups were inappropriately targeted.
Was this a coordinated Democratic effort? Did the President have something to do with this?
As much as I’d like to say yes, as much as I know this is the M.O. of Chicago politics, right now we don’t have evidence that links them to this. Yet. I will keep an eye out and report it if it comes out.