Jailtime For IRS' Political Hacks

From Investors Business Daily via H/T at Instapundit:

Using legal technicalities to silence and repress political dissent under the color of the nation’s most feared enforcement agency isn’t mismanagement. It’s a crime.

It’s incompatible with democracy and it shatters public confidence in the rule of law. It’s the very crime the State Department is now condemning in Venezuela: the use of legal technicalities to halt popular opposition candidates from running for office. Until now, this kind of activity has had no precedent in our country, and it must be stopped before it becomes the standard. . . .

Lerner herself called Tea Party members “crazies” and spewed other anti-GOP insults in her emails.

To say that the IRS didn’t have an interest in repressing dissent and was just unwittingly incompetent is ridiculous. IRS bureaucrats saw an illicit advantage for their Democrat friends — and wrongly took it.

That’s illegal, and it demands a strong response from the law if the agency ever expects to recover public confidence. If it doesn’t care enough about that, well, then what difference is there between the U.S. and a lawless banana republic?

As always, if the legal system fails to remedy abuse, people may pursue extralegal remedies. That’s not a good thing for a country, but once the law looks like a tool of oppression rather than justice, it loses its hold.

Perp Walk ! Perp Walk ! Perp Walk ! Perp Walk ! Perp Walk ! Perp Walk !