<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" The Inspector General&amp;#039;s report on the IRS dumbassery regarding 501(c)(4) applications seems to the untrained eye to be a case study in bad management \u2014 specifically, a situation was extremely badly managed in which upper echelons tried \u2014 and conspicuously failed \u2014 to get a handle on low-level dumbasses out in the field. This, I suspect, happens very often within the federal government. although not is such a spectacular fashion as to get Dana Bash of CNN muttering in the darkling halls of the Senate office buildings about &amp;quot;how high this thing might go.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m telling you, seeing that at the Pattisonville Service Area on the New York State Thruway was like being in a Stephen King novel. I kept waiting for Dana to grow fangs and eat somebody. Anyway, it appears that there were some people in Washington trying to get a handle on the dumbassery, and that may be enough to give the Republicans \u2014 And don&amp;#039;t bring Max Baucus to me and call something &amp;quot;bipartisan,&amp;quot; OK? You sound like an idiot. \u2014 to swing from the trees by their heels, hooting and hollering. House and Senate aides said they were focusing on an Aug. 4, 2011, meeting in which the I.R.S.&amp;#039;s chief counsel appears to have conferred with agency officials to discuss the activities of a team in the Cincinnati field office that had been subjecting applications for tax-exempt status from Tea Party and other conservative groups to a greater degree of review than those from other organizations. Under I.R.S. rules, the agency&amp;#039;s chief counsel, William J. Wilkins, reports to the Treasury Department&amp;#039;s general counsel, and investigators want to determine if Mr. Wilkins took the issue out of the independent I.R.S. to other parts of the Obama administration. If the inquiry determines any new link to the administration, it could change the political equation for the White House, which has stressed the I.R.S.&amp;#039;s independence even as President Obama has castigated the agency over the allegations of political bias. A bipartisan investigation by the Senate Finance Committee built steam on Tuesday, and the House Ways and Means Committee prepared for the first hearing on the matter on Friday with an extensive request for documents from the I.R.S. The House Oversight Committee formally accused one I.R.S. official of misleading lawmakers on four occasions. Later on, however, at the very end of the Times story, which has more than a little Jeff Gerth to its structure, we discover \u2014 as upper echelons likely did to their horror \u2014 that, like campaign money, dumbassery finds the cracks in every system. The inspector general did seem to back up the Obama administration&amp;#039;s portrayal of a roguelike operation in Cincinnati flouting the wishes of senior I.R.S. officials in Washington. After being briefed on the screening criteria in June 2011, which included a search of case files for criticism of how the country was being run, Ms. Lerner immediately ordered them to be expanded to encompass applicants that would not necessarily be conservative. But in January 2012, the Cincinnati team had again changed the criteria &amp;quot;without executive approval because they believed the July 2011 criteria were too broad,&amp;quot; the report said. So Lerner told them to stop. And then, six months later, they started again without telling anyone, and on their own. And now the IRS is telling us all how it happened. Yeah, this is just like Watergate. I predict nobody will remember this last detail two days from now. There will be too many horror stories \u2014 boogedy, boogedy! \u2014 to tell from the darkling halls of Congress. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18514/dumbassery-uber/>