Politico's love piece for the "complicated" "fierce" and "unapologetic" Lois Lerner today is absurd.
Fox's Bret Beier expressed his surprise at her claim that she's innocent of any wrongdoing, not sorry and would do everything she did again.
Politico's writers begin with the travail Lerner has suffered since she started this snowball rolling downhill by apologizing for targeting conservative groups. They detail epithets that have supposedly been hurled at poor Lois, including a claim she's been called a "dirty Jew," (who knew?).
The mean Republicans are at the bottom of all this angst, we learn, but there seems to be a real disconnect between reality and Politico's version of Lerner's work performance.
For example, while Lerner now says she "didn't do anything wrong," and Politico makes a point to include the information that Lerner loves puppies (no, really!) , is loyal to her Leftist friends who, not oddly, consider her "apolitical."
While Lerner admits planting a question to get the info out about her illegal shenanigans regarding conservative groups, Politico carefully words the information that Lerner lied, planted information regarding wrongdoing, tried to deflect blame by redirecting investigators and withholding information and purposely delayed the function of the government based on the groups' names.
Initially in her apology, Lerner admitted what she did was wrong, then she pled the Fifth Amendment, refusing to incriminate herself, even though she now says she did nothing wrong. Politico:
Within days, lawmakers in both parties were calling for her
resignation, furious that IRS leaders, including Lerner, had withheld
information when asked by lawmakers for months about the matter. Top
officials also blamed Cincinnati, when, in fact, Washington was also
handling the cases.
Called to testify before the House Oversight Committee, Lerner
decided to take the Fifth and read a defiant speech declaring her
innocence — one that Republicans argued waived her rights. She says
she’d do it again.
Lerner complains that she's being scapegoated because of refusing to incriminate herself by telling the truth, which has given her detractors the opening to "say anything they wanted" about her.
Well, duh. I guess you can't have it all.
Yet the "apolitical" Lerner swearing in emails against conservative groups, calling them obscene names.
Lerner also tells Politico she believes it is unrealistic to expect government employees, even in the IRS, to have no political opinions, as if what she engineered was simply the result of a competent ruthlessly efficient federal employee.
Although she wouldn’t discuss these issues at the behest of her lawyers,
Lerner said it is unrealistic to expect public servants not to have
opinions: “What matters is that my personal opinions have never affected
my work.”
Lerner's friends are eager to declare that she is "non-partisan," claiming she rarely discussed politics but may have been somewhat insensitive.
Of course, when you're all hammers, there can be little sin in providing the function of pounding what y'all see as nails.
Politico's writers complain that **still** Republicans are "suspicious" about all those disappearing emails, to which Lerner responds, indignantly:
Lerner scoffed at the notion that she would crash her own computer to
hide emails: “How would I know two years ahead of time that it would be
important for me to destroy emails, and if I did know that, why wouldn’t
I have destroyed the other ones they keep releasing?”
Politico doesn't seem interested that Lerner and all her friends' hard drives mysteriously disappeared after they were subpoenaed, many of the emails missing or excessively redacted.
Why does the IRS need to significantly redact documents in an attempt to be transparent?
Well, she may have been a bit "stern" her peers claim but she has a "big personality" which lets loose with a "short temper" now and then. No mention of the selectively of the objects of that short temper.
Politico's writers repeatedly pump Lerner's so-called good points, her love for animals and her friends and her commitment to causes important to her, apparently unable to decipher how that behavior might translate against those she considers her political opponents.
Though Politico does admit Lerner has some culpability, she should not be the only one to blame just because her name is the only one out there and the "GOP is taking advantage of" the "kerfuffle" including Lerner's unlikeability factor.
Still, Lerner lives in a $2.5 million house in an affluent neighborhood with a husband who works and somehow she gets by on a $100,000 pension from the taxpayers.
She and her husband look "tired," have become friends with their lawyers, have suffered greatly from the persecution she's received.
Politico appears to have boundless compassion and sympathy for Lerner's situation, using specific adjectives and verbs to draw a more positive than negative picture of Lerner, regardless of the lies, the misdirection, the mysterious destruction of government documents.
When a taxpayer from Ohio reads this kind of hogwash propaganda from a major "news" website such as Politico, he or she certainly has to wonder where the articles are about the taxpayers who were maligned for simply holding a view contrary to Leftist political think running the IRS.
Where are the stories about the IRS, FBI, ATF harassment of True the Vote's founder.
Where are the stories about the "invasive" questions the IRS asked to engender fear, such as the names and addresses of people who attend your meetings, the "derivation of your group's name" or your "connection with Justin Binik-Thomas" (?), "your youth outreach to local schools," or the names of "donors, contributors and grantors ."
Where are the Politico (and its ilks') long sympathetic articles about why the IRS felt it necessary for groups to "detail the content of your members' prayers"?
If Lerner is so innocent, why did she apologize in a planted question in May 2013 for her behavior in targeting conservative groups?
Why did she then ADMIT that what she did was wrong?
And admit that she had purposely stalled the function of government based on the names of conservative groups seeking IRS approval?
Why did she plead the Fifth?
Let's revisit that admission, in part here, from Lerner's apology itself:
They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases
simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was
wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate —
that’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review. [SNIP]
The other thing that happened was they also, in some cases, cases sat
around for a while. They also sent some letters out that were far too
broad, asking questions of these organizations that weren’t really
necessary for the type of application. In some cases you probably read
that they asked for contributor names. That’s not appropriate, not
usual, there are some very limited times when we might need that but in
most of these cases where they were asked they didn’t do it correctly
and they didn’t do it with a higher level of review. As I said, some of
them sat around for too long.
So which is it, Lois?
Was it wrong or wasn't it?
Was it inappropriate or wasn't it?
Were the questions unnecessary? The onerous demand for document after document?
The intentional delay of government function based on political affiliation?
It appears Lerner--and Politico for her--want both exoneration and rehabilitation for things Lerner now claims not to have done.
Wow.
Just wow.
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