Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official: “Everything comes from the top.”

◼ A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents. - Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner

The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters...

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office....

◼ Ideological Revenue Service - Mark Hemingway/Weekly Standard

US Rep.Paul Ryan questioning Outgoing IRS Commissioneer Steve Miller