Lois Lerner: Toast. Even if I hadn't already heard that the juicebox mafia had gone to White House yesterday, and had come out tweeting about how she had to go, it's hard to imagine she can be an effective anything at the IRS after having taken the 5th. It appears she may have even blown taking the 5th by proclaiming her innocence and falling back on the "woe is me, poor hard working female government drone" routine, where she commanded a staff of thousand and a cool hundred million (with an "M") dollar budget. My guess is she's resigned in a week, and giving unbiased political commentary on MSNBC by the end of the year. She and Rachel Maddow will make such a cute power couple.
Douglas Shulman: Slime. I don't care who appointed him or when. He represents the worst of the entrenched bureaucracy, arrogant, smarmy, and really uncaring for anything outside his evil empire. Stacy McCain thinks he's the designated fall guy, and his political instincts are more finely honed than mine, but I don't have that much faith in justice. If cockroaches (and Cher) can survive a nuclear holocaust, Doug Shulman can survive this.
Elijah Cummings: A surprising new respect. It might not last very long, but he took Shulman to task and put him in his place repeatedly. Sure, he was more sympathetic to the IRS guys than most of the Republicans on the panel, but the Democrats are the party of the entrenched bureaucracy, and bureaucrats are one of their important constituencies. Given that, he did a half decent job at getting after the truth. If he was insincere, he sincerely did a good job at hiding it.
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