Either CNN's Tom Cohen, his headline and subheadline writers, or both thought it was a bit over the top to describe the IRS's targeting of Tea Party, conservative, and religious groups as a "forgotten scandal" in a Friday story. Evidence that the subheadline originally read "Republicans try to keep the public focused on the forgotten scandal of IRS targeting of conservative groups" is here and here.
As will be seen after the jump, Cohen tries to make the case that there's nothing to see, that everyone who matters agrees with him, and that forgetting about the scandal would be defensible (bolds are mine):
GOP tries to keep focus on IRS targeting scandal
Remember the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups?
It was the scandal du jour in Washington last month, now relegated to back-burner status after recent revelations of a vast government electronic surveillance apparatus created in the name of national security following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The announcement Thursday by the Obama administration that it would boost aid to Syria rebels because government forces there used chemical weapons further shifted attention away from the IRS controversy involving extra scrutiny given conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Republicans continue trying to raise the issue, grilling FBI Director Robert Mueller about it at a congressional hearing on Thursday. They argue that the Obama administration used the tax agency to intimidate and harass political opponents.
Democrats respond that the independent inspector general who revealed the targeting blamed poor management, rather than political bias. Congressional sources on both sides say that interviews with IRS workers so far have found no political conspiracy.
So the review of tax-exempt applications, all of which are processed and ordinarily managed out of its Cincinnati office, was directed out of Washington in the case of Tea Party, conservative and religious groups. But there was no conspiracy. (/sarcasm)
Cohen thus attempts to justify the virtual abandonment of the IRS scandal in the establishment press, particularly at the Big Three broadcast networks.
The TaxProf blog is a one-stop rebuttal to the claims that the IRS scandal should be forgotten and that there is no news to report. The blog has a daily roundup of posts (currently at Day 38, as of today), and a typical weekday daily roundup has at least 20 items (Friday's is here), several of which from each day have been considered newsworthy or worthy of note at Fox News and talk-radio outlets.
The only reason the lapdog establishment press is trying to convince us that the IRS scandal is and should be "forgotten" has nothing to do with its paramount importance, and everything to do with a group of people who wish it never happened, and don't want to see things get any worse than they already are for Dear Leader.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
