When my friend the Biking Brewer recommends something to read, I take notice — and not just because he is accomplished at creating fine malt beverages and has a discriminating sense of Belgian ales.
The BB sent along a link to this article from Salon, entitled When the IRS targeted liberals, that seeks to add a little context to the current story about the IRS actions with respect to conservative groups. President Obama has called the IRS actions “outrageous” and he’s right about that — but the Salon article usefully points out that the IRS has been embroiled in political issues before.
The key point here is not which groups are being targeted by the IRS, or who is the President at the time the targeting occurs, but rather the fact that IRS employees think they have the right to target specific groups at all. Our federal government has become so colossal in size, and so removed from interaction with average citizens, that many government employees think they can do just about whatever they damn well please because they are from the government and, well, they just know better than we do.
This isn’t a political issue — or , at least, it shouldn’t be. When agencies like the IRS can become politicized, no one at any point on the political spectrum is safe. The question is how to change the culture of these bureaucratic leviathans, where employees have jobs for life and have little accountability to anyone who isn’t their direct line supervisor. Shrinking the size of the bureaucracies, and establishing performance standards that don’t give every employee a lifetime job, would be a good place to start.
Some people in the IRS decided that groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their names should be given additional scrutiny, to see whether they were acting in ways inconsistent with their tax-exempt status. About 300 groups received the scrutiny. The IRS says that low-level employees were responsible and that, when more senior officials learned about it months later, the practice was stopped. However, it now appears that 
It’s like old times — or, at least, it’s like the run-up to the 2012 election, when the President and Mitt Romney and Joe Biden and Paul Ryan and their minions seemingly were somewhere in Ohio every day. Since then, Ohio has dropped off the political map a bit, and that is fine by me. It’s been nice to return to our daily lives and get to the point where a visit by the President is once again a big deal, rather than a tiresome cause of another pre-election traffic snarl.
The proposal is being sold as a way to generate revenue — $9 billion over a decade — but also to achieve greater “fairness” in the tax code. One of those faceless, nameless “senior administration officials” who are always quoted in these articles says that those pesky wealthy Americans can “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.” Under the proposal, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement, or about $3 million this year.
This week 
From a budgeting standpoint, the judiciary is unique. Unlike other agencies and entities, it doesn’t operate grant programs or distribute benefit checks or buy advertising to discourage drunk driving or promulgate regulations. Instead, it exists solely to resolve disputes and try those accused of federal crimes. Its budget is spent largely on people — on judges and their law clerks, bailiffs and court reporters, docket clerks and security personnel — who make the system function smoothly.
The target of Senator Paul’s filibuster was the nomination of John Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency — but the broader target was the Obama Administration’s drone program. Attorney General 
President Obama called the cuts “dumb” and “arbitrary.” He’s right — and in fact, you could use even stronger terms, like imbecilic and ludicrous. So why did the President and the White House play a central role in devising the idiotic “sequestration” concept to begin with, and why wasn’t he able to do what was necessary to avoid the cuts from taking effect? The President, of course, immediately blamed congressional Republicans for their intransigence and refusal to consider additional tax increases, and maybe the public will decide that the Republicans should be the whipping boys this time, as they have been in the past. At some point, however, I think most people will come to accept that some of the blame must fall upon the President. Rather than working steadily toward a solution, he seems to enjoy playing chicken, waiting until the deadline looms immediately ahead, and then trying to work out a last-minute deal when he thinks the pressure is all on the other side. This time, obviously, his tactic didn’t work, and the chickens have come home to roost.
In case you missed 
I’m heartily sick and tired of this kind of sanctimonious stuff. I don’t see anything wrong with a First Lady participating in the Academy Awards broadcast if she wants to do so (although I’m not sure that, if I were the First Gentleman, I’d want to be part of the phony, kissy-face Hollywood scene). It’s not as if Michelle Obama — or any other First Lady — is expected to be pondering weighty affairs of state at all hours of the day and night. Even her husband, who unlike Michelle Obama was elected to his current leadership position, is not begrudged an occasional vacation, golf outing, or basketball game. Why should anyone care if the First Lady wants to spend an hour of her time appearing on an awards show?
In fact, the President believes that our goal should be to “stabilize” the debt, rather than actually reducing it. In short, he’s just aiming to slow the incredibly rapid rise in our debt to a slower rate of increase. Under the President’s approach, our debt would continue to grow — just at the same rate as the economy generally.
The problem, of course, is that more debt is more debt, and interest on the debt must be paid. In 2012, 
With so much of international diplomacy conducted behind closed doors, it’s very difficult to gauge the performance of any Secretary of State until the years pass and secrets become public. In Clinton’s case, we know that the United States has managed to avoid become embroiled in any new wars during her tenure and that our roles in Iraq and Afghanistan are finally winding down. We also know that efforts to “reset” relations with the Russians haven’t made much progress, North Korea, Iran, and Syria remain rogue states, and Pakistan seems to be teetering on the brink of chaos. And the Holy Grail of American diplomacy — brokering a conclusive Middle East peace deal — eluded Secretary Clinton just as it eluded every one of her predecessors. Her legacy as Secretary of State may be dependent, in significant part, upon what historians conclude about how, if at all, her stewardship affected the takeover of the American compound in Benghazi and the killing of the Ambassador and three other Americans.
Historically, second terms have not been kind to American presidents. President George W. Bush limped home, dogged by poor poll numbers, Hurricane Katrina, the ongoing effect of two wars, and an economy that was plunging into recession. His experience was an extreme example of the problems that typically beset Presidents during their second term — falling popularity, scandals, recessions and other economic problems, and an almost immediate lame duck status. The lame duck problem has become even worse recently, with the focus on the next presidential election beginning earlier and earlier each cycle and the haggard President who seems to have been in office forever being compared, unfavorably, to the fresh new faces vying to replace him. By the end of their second terms, most Presidents seem almost irrelevant.
This time, the deadlines are in March and April, and one of the key issues is the debt limit. The debt limit now stands at $16.4 trillion — that $16,400,000,000,000 — but that staggering sum is not enough for our debt-ridden, spending-obsessed, deficit spending-addicted country. At a press conference yesterday, 
