REBLOG: When the IRS targeted liberals

Other recent reporting on the Obama Administration has documented that the IRS uncovered and then corrected actions by some career federal staff to develop tools to assess whether Tea Party groups filing as social welfare organizations under Ch. 504 of the tax code were, in fact, political actors barred from using that tax provision.   While it was initially reported as the IRS targeting Tea Partiers, the MSM as usual rushed to judgement without most of the facts, and talking heads on both sides ran up the flag of capture as they attempted to board the pirate ship of the IRS.

leaving aside the subsequent reporting on the fact that this practice is actually routine in the IRS, and leaving aside the fact that in the run up to the 2012 election there was a significant boost in 504 application by Tea Party groups that was not matched by a significant boost in applications by liberal groups, Alex Seitz-Wald reminds us that the IRS was accused of doing this to liberal groups under the Bush Administration.  When the IRS targeted liberals