Until today I thought he might get through it, even with the media more and more offside. But now I think the flow is in the other direction, and it is this article that has convinced me. Titled, “The IRS Scandal Started at the Top” and from The Wall Street Journal, it describes the Obama modus operandi in getting the IRS to attack opposition groups. Here is the killer passage:

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a “wealthy individual” with a “less-than-reputable record.” Other donors were described as having been “on the wrong side of the law.”

This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. Vandersloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn’t account for what the president’s vilification has done to his business and reputation.

This will have been magnified thousands of times over for any group that might in any way have been a threat to the President. Start a Tea Party group, here comes the IRS. Donate to Romney, here comes the IRS. Oppose the President, here comes the IRS. This is the worst scandal in American history, one that goes to the heart of democratic governance. If the Americans do not root this corruption out, American democracy is a sham, and everyone will know it.

Obama must go.

Peggy Noonan update: From her latest column with the title, “This is no ordinary scandal: Political abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government“:

What happened at the IRS is the government’s essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position’s powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don’t, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn’t stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.

You can already see the punches being pulled. The issue is not the integrity of the IRS, it is the integrity of the President of the United States. When Henry II cried, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome monk?”, it was he who had to beg forgiveness, not those minions who took him at his word.

More, and a lot more at Pajama Media, A Degree of Malevolence

by Richard Fernandez

Everything that could never happen, all that was said to be impossible is suddenly upon us.

Heh, the IRS softball team, is called The Cheaters …