The Scandal of Government Working Effectively

Via wonkette, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle on the IRS doing its job:

I’d like to remind everyone what we are talking about here. None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We are talking about whether or not the American taxpayers would subsidize your work. We are talking about a tax break…I get the feeling that many of you and my Republican colleagues don’t just believe you should be free from political targeting, but that you should be free from scrutiny of any kind.

SNIP

If there was an organization promoting taxpayer funding for abortions, wouldn’t you want to be sure they weren’t using their tax-free money to campaign for a candidate? What about a group that wanted to promote voting without I.D.’s? What if, in the midst of an increase of Communist candidates, new Communist clubs wanted tax-free status? Wouldn’t you want to be sure that the self-declared tax-free classifications of those groups were correct?

SNIP

Our job is to make sure this never happens again. Anything else, like the circus happening at the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is political theatre.

Or as Wonkette commenter shypixel nailed it:

This is the worst scandal we have faced since employers actually started calling references listed on job applications.

Not Another Whitewater

Yes, the wingnut freakazoid remnant of the republican party will try to turn the downfall of Illinois Governor Rod Blagejovich into the new Whitewater, but it won't work.

Down deep, they know that Obama is unlikely to hand them an easy way to defeat him, so their only hope of surviving as a political party is to harass him nonstop with a non-scandal like Whitewater.

They think Blagejovich is the new Whitewater, and I hope they spend every dime and ounce of energy they have into trying to make it so.

For those who have been living in the Rove bubble for the last year: Barack Obama is neither Bill Clinton, who couldn't help but look corrupt even when he was just stupid, nor Hillary Clinton, who couldn't help stonewalling even when she had nothing to hide.

Not only is there nothing about Blagejovich to hurt Obama, but unlike the Clintons, Obama knows how to make it clear and convincing that there's nothing there.

There'll be something to panic about soon, no doubt.

But Blagojevich ain't it.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.