Even as the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports the discovery of thousands (!) of Lois Lerner lost-in-action emails, we\u2019re told the IRS \u201chas taken significant actions\u201d to avoid the sort of politicized shenanigans that got the former tax-administering bureaucrat in such hot water to begin with. Only time will tell whether the recovered missives reveal deliberate targeting of conservative tax-exempt organizations as part of an effort to hobble critics of the administration, but Inspector General Russell George and company have already concluded that right-leaning groups received inappropriate scrutiny\u2014and say that the tax agency is taking steps to make sure that this particular transgression isn\u2019t repeated. For what that\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration notes:<\/p>\n
The report is a follow-up to a May 2013 TIGTA report, which found that ineffective IRS management resulted in: 1) the use of inappropriate criteria to identify for review organizations applying for tax-exempt status based on names and policy positions instead of indications of political campaign intervention; 2) substantially delayed processing of certain applications, and, 3) the issuance of unnecessary information requests.<\/p>\n
And before we even get into it, the IG told inquiring members of Congress two years ago that conservative groups did indeed receive special attention not given to those leaning to the left. \u201cOur audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the \u2018progressives\u2019 identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012,\u201d he wrote to Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.). All of the groups with \u201cTea Party,\u201d \u201cpatriots\u201d and \u201c9\/12\u201d in their name got the treatment, compared to 30 percent of the groups with \u201cprogress\u201d or \u201cprogressive\u201d in their names.<\/p>\n