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Comment by crunchcaptain | Hacker News Reader

Seems to me the IRS is just doing their job. They are responsible for ensuring people don't take advantage of non-profit exemptions by spending their tax-free donations on political campaigns. Which seems like something one might expect from "Tea Party" groups, whose goal is to elect politicians they support. Besides, if you follow the IRS rules like a good citizen, what do you have to worry about? Aren't you already paying for attorneys and tax advisors, specifically for situations like these?

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See my top level comment, we're talking about 501(c)(4) organizations, which, by the way, are allowed to engage in political activity but not with tax-free donations and are explicitly forbidden to donate directly to politicians, or, as I recall, "coordinate" expenditures.

And the actions of the IRS went way beyond even normal investigations, into explicitly forbidden fishing expeditions demanding membership lists.

And then "it's not the crime, it's the coverup"; the Administration swore up and down nothing targeted was happening in the run up to the 2012 election, and now, surprise, surprise, it turned out they lied.

>>Administration swore up and down nothing targeted was happening in the run up to the 2012 election, and now, surprise, surprise, it turned out they lied.

This is jumping to conclusions; as of today there is no evidence anyone outside of the IRS had knowledge about these alleged targetings. It is not as if all politically motivated acts require being orchestrated by top politicians, partisan politics can happen at all levels of government. Of course when they are, it does make for much juicer news.

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups... acknowledged that the behavior was “absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review. The IRS would like to apologize for that.” http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/15375-irs-admits-i...

Exactly. This is why warrantless wiretapping should be perfectly legal. Hell, I record all my calls and forward them with the rest of my email to the NSA to do my part.

The IRS has a sordid history of doing this for political purposes. The IRS targeted anti-war groups during the Johnson and Nixon administrations [1]. Was that justifiable by your reasoning, or does it only apply to groups that you put in scare quotes?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/03/magazine/misuse-of-the-irs...

Arbitrary and discretionary enforcement of the law(and granted power) is bad and abuse of power.

If republican organization get 60% of the politically motivated donations they should get 60% of IRS eyeballs' time. If they get less they are getting off easy, if more they are punished unfairly.

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