A Bombshell in the IRS Scandal

◼ A higher office is implicated. - Peggy Noonan/Wall St. Journal

The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.

That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn't say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan.

Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency....

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, finally woke the proceedings up with what he called "the evolution of the defense" since the scandal began. First, Ms. Lerner planted a question at a conference. Then she said the Cincinnati office did it—a narrative that was advanced by the president's spokesman, Jay Carney. Then came the suggestion the IRS was too badly managed to pull off a sophisticated conspiracy. Then the charge that liberal groups were targeted too—"we did it against both ends of the political spectrum." When the inspector general of the IRS said no, it was conservative groups that were targeted, he came under attack. Now the defense is that the White House wasn't involved, so case closed.

This is one Republican who is right about evolution.

Those trying to get to the bottom of the scandal have to dig in, pay attention. The administration's defenders, and their friends in the press, have made some progress in confusing the issue through misdirection and misstatement.

This is the moment things go forward or stall. Republicans need to find out how high the scandal went and why, exactly, it went there. To do that they'll have to up their game.

◼ WILL THE IRS SCANDAL FINALLY LEAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE? - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

So the little fish are dropping dimes on bigger fish, and the bigger fish are ratting out their bosses. It’s a classic organized-crime takedown. Compare all this to the Obama Administration’s initial lies about low-level employees farting around in the chilly basements of Cincinnati....

Of course, O’Donnell and Senator Grassley’s investigators “have run into a wall of silence, leaving more questions than answers about whether abuses of the IRS system extend to private individuals and not just the tax-exempt groups already identified as victims.” Walls of silence are the primary product of the Obama Administration, followed closely by bankrupt green-energy companies and unemployment. We’ll soon find out if Congressman Issa really does have the jackhammer of testimony he’ll need to crack through those walls.