IRS, FEC Staff Conspire Against Conservatives

And Lois "I Take the 5th" Lerner was at the center

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

Lois Lerner looking down her nose at Darryl Issa

Funny how that seems to happen every where she goes, doesn't it.

“Several months ago . . . I spoke with you about the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that had submitted an exemption application the IRS [sic],” the FEC attorney wrote Lerner in February 2009. The FEC, which polices violations of campaign-finance laws, is not exempted under Rule 6103, which prohibits the IRS from sharing confidential taxpayer information, but the e-mail indicates Lerner may have provided that information nonetheless: “When we spoke last July, you had told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS,” the FEC attorney wrote.

Again, I make my "modest proposal".  Fire half the IRS employees and replace them with dyed in the wool conservatives.  Forget the Hatch Act stuff that allows the democratic operatives in the bureaucracy to pretend to be pursuing a nonpartisan agenda, and allow them to hammer liberal groups similarly for a few election cycles and see if they like it.

Curiously, the FEC may be the only example of such an agency.  By law, the commission has six members, no four of which can be from a single party (to allow oddball parties I suppose); typically it has three democrats and three republicans.  And in this case, the commission itself voted 6:0 not to pursue the conservative group it's liberal staff targeted.

Critics contend this makes the FEC "toothless." I regard this as a feature, and not a bug. Such critics are typically liberal and are hoping for liberals to stifle conservative efforts.