Why is anyone surprised that the IRS was used (it appears) as a political tool? It has been in the past. It likely will be used again in the future. (There is always the dream of ending the income tax and the IRS of course, but that’s still a bit down the road.) The agency is a very powerful weapon of coercion.
The Obama administration overstepped it’s partnership with the establishment media and now the other half of the partnership is flexing is muscles. Doug Wead rightly points out that the AP hasn’t been particularly interested in covering the surveillance of ordinary everyday citizens. That’s not a story. But if the AP is put in the cross hairs, then they care. It’s natural I suppose.
What can I say? The guy is right. He’s right almost all of the time, and on this point he is especially right.
The first job I had out of college was working as a staffer on The Hill and pretty quickly I learned that the halls of Congress were no place for me.
I had interned at an upstart news network just off the Hill for a couple of years prior and had loved it, but getting the full dose of staffer life was a bit much. Somehow, naively I thought that ideas mattered on Capitol Hill. I know, I look back on this time and want to slap myself, but I still believed that the Republicans were “the party of small government” and that everybody’s goal on the GOP side was make Washington less important in the lives of average Americans. Like I said I was naïve.
Part 1
Probably the most important recent development in domestic American politics is the emergence of the “New Wave” within the Republican Party. Led by Rand Paul in the Senate but with numbers growing in both Houses of Congress, and most importantly in the Party outside of Washington DC, this new group of small government acolytes are engaging in a protracted battle for the Grand Old Party. They are very likely to win.
About sums it up.
The big shots within the GOP are scared. They fear the Tea Party far more than the Democrats do, at least right now.
The sequester isn’t even a cut. If anything goes wrong economically over the next 12 months the President will blame sequester.
In 2010 I wrote about the Ron Paul Reformation.
Like Martin Luther (not MLK but the German priest of the Middle Ages) who held the sacred script of the Bible up to Church leadership and indicted Rome for running directly contrary to what Jesus and the Bible advocated, Ron Paul has done something similar with the US Constitution.
Sequestration represents roughly .6% of total US debt. But we are being told from all sides that sequestration is the end of the world. Hardly.
