This will make your jaw drop!

Here is a story written over six years ago by Terence P. Jeffrey in CNS News. JJ Sefton linked to it this morning. I have never heard of this. Have you?

The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.

The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

Other locations on the IG’s Top Ten list for singular addresses that were theoretically used simultaneously by thousands of unauthorized alien workers, included an address in Oxnard, Calif, where the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874; an address in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the IRS sent 2,408 refunds worth $7,284,212; an address in Phoenix, Ariz., where the IRS sent 2,047 refunds worth $5,558,608; an address in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the IRS sent 1,972 refunds worth $2,256,302; an address in San Jose, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,942 refunds worth $5,091,027; and an address in Arvin, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,846 refunds worth $3,298,877.

Since 1996, the IRS has issued what it calls Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to two classes of persons: 1) non-resident aliens who have a tax liability in the United States, and 2) aliens living in the United States who are “not authorized to work in the United States.”

The IRS has long known it was giving these numbers to illegal aliens, and thus facilitating their ability to work illegally in the United States. For example, the Treasury Inspector General’s Semiannual Report to Congress published on Oct. 29, 1999—nearly fourteen years ago—specifically drew attention to this problem.

“The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to undocumented aliens to improve nonresident alien compliance with tax laws. This IRS practice seems counter-productive to the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s (INS) mission to identify undocumented aliens and prevent unlawful alien entry,” TIGTA warned in that long-ago report.

The inspector general’s 2012 audit report on the IRS’s handling of ITINs was spurred by two IRS employees who went to members of Congress "alleging that IRS management was requiring employees to assign Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) even when the applications were fraudulent.”

In an August 2012 press release accompanying the audit report, TIGTA said the report “validated” the complaints of the IRS employees.

“TIGTA’s audit found that IRS management has not established adequate internal controls to detect and prevent the assignment of an ITIN to individuals submitting questionable applications,” said Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George. “Even more troubling, TIGTA found an environment which discourages employees from detecting fraudulent applications.”

In addition to the 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 that the IRS sent to a single address in Atlanta, the IG also discovered that the IRS had assigned 15,796 ITINs to unauthorized aliens who presumably used a single Atlanta address.

The IRS, according to TIGTA, also assigned ITINs to 15,028 unauthorized aliens presumably using a single address in Dallas, Texas, and 10,356 to unauthorized aliens presumably living at a single address in Atlantic City, N.J.

Perhaps the most remarkable act of the IRS was this: It assigned 6,411 ITINs to unauthorized aliens presumably using a single address in Morganton, North Carolina. According to the 2010 Census, there were only 16,681 people in Morganton. So, for the IRS to have been correct in issuing 6,411 ITINS to unauthorized aliens at a single address in Morganton it would have meant that 38 percent of the town’s total population were unauthorized alien workers using a single address.

TIGTA said there were 154 addresses around the country that appeared on 1,000 or more ITIN applications made to the IRS.

Not impeached; he should be imprisoned.

On day 1232 of the IRS scandal, Paul Caron reminds us

When the feds couldn’t make ordinary criminal charges stick to the organized-crime syndicate that turned 1920s Chicago into a free-fire zone, they went after the boss, Al Capone, on tax charges. Under Barack Obama, the weaponized IRS has been transformed into a crime syndicate far worse than anything dreamt of by pinstriped Model-T gangsters — because Al Capone and Meyer Lansky did not have the full force of the federal government behind them.

Caron does not believe IRS Commissioner Koskinen should be impeached. He believes he should be imprisoned.
Read more here.

IRS defends giving refunds to illegal immigrants

Greta Van Sustern has the story in this videotaped interview with Congressman Jim Jordan.

When there is no law

Victor Davis Hanson writes about America's descent into lawlessness.

Do you remember Lewis “Scooter” Libby?

In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Yet Plame may not have been a covert undercover agent, based on the formal government definition of that role. And even if she were, it was widely known at the time that Secretary of State Colin Powell’s subordinate, Richard Armitage, had most likely disclosed her status earlier.

In other words, Libby was in an Orwellian position of being accused of a crime that may not have existed. But if it had, it was more likely committed by someone else.

Publicity-seeking special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald persuaded a Washington, D.C., jury to find Libby guilty of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators — not the supposed crimes for which he was originally targeted by the media.

Apparently, the very suspicion of improper behavior by high public servants once warranted vigorous legal inquiry — by supposedly independent and autonomous prosecutors.

In the eight-plus years since the Libby trial, the Obama administration has blown up the law as we have known it for centuries.

...After his re-election in 2012 and the midterm elections in 2014, Obama made a mockery of immigration law.

Hundreds of liberal sanctuary cities have announced that federal immigration law does not apply to them. That scary, neo-Confederate idea of legal nullification was sanctioned by the Obama administration — in a way it never would have been if a city had suspended the Endangered Species Act, emissions standards, or gun-control legislation.

As a result, once-detained and later-released immigrants with criminal records have murdered innocent American citizens.

Consider the proposed nuclear deal with Iran. By past custom and practice, the nonproliferation agreement would be treated as what it is — a treaty.

But ratifying treaties constitutionally requires 67 yes votes from the Senate. Obama could never obtain that margin. So he managed to downgrade the treaty into a mere legal agreement. Then he claimed that the Senate required 67 no votes to override his veto.

Obama also was worried about the political impact of his new Obamacare legislation on the 2014 midterm elections. So he simply suspended by executive fiat the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Had another president done that to the laws of Obamacare, the Left would have demanded impeachment.

In Ferguson, Mo., law enforcement eased off and allowed a city to burn. But the cause of the rioting — the supposed improper police killing of criminal suspect Michael Brown — was based on the lie that Brown was shot in the back while fleeing. No matter. The ensuing public outrage seemingly exempted arsonists and looters from arrest.

Just as scary is the application of the law on the basis of the perceived politics of a suspect.

IRS bureaucrat Lois Lerner was exposed as a rank partisan whose office gave particular scrutiny to would-be tax-exempt groups deemed opponents of Obama’s re-election efforts. She invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify before a congressional committee about her actions at the IRS. Lerner has never been indicted.

Almost everything former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated about her improper use of a private e-mail account and server has been proven false. A State Department staffer who worked on Clinton’s private server plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before a congressional committee about his role in privatizing Clinton’s email.

But like Lerner, Clinton has escaped an indictment or jailing.

Not so Kim Davis. She is a conservative Christian court clerk in Kentucky who apparently thought, given the lawless times, that she could ignore without consequence a Supreme Court decision making gay marriage legal.

Davis was jailed for not enforcing the law. That is a justifiable punishment — if it were applied equally to the progressive mayors of sanctuary cities and all officials who likewise ignore federal law.

In the same manner, rank amateur video maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was jailed for violating his probation. Why?

Nakoula made a video insensitive to Muslims and thus was falsely blamed for the riotous 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The most likely culprit of the preplanned Benghazi attack was not scapegoat Nakoula, but the inconvenient pre-election truth that al-Qaeda was quite alive in Libya and U.S. security quite lax.

America is becoming analogous to the mess in lawless contemporary Venezuela. When the law is suspended or unevenly applied for politically protected individuals and groups, then there is no law.

So we are now seeing the logical descent into the abyss of chaos.

Read more here.

“This shall be a nation of laws, not men”

Weird Dave writes at Ace of Spades,

This week on social media, THE big topic has been Kim Davis and her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. The Left has been outraged, OUTRAGED I tell you, that someone would so flout the decision of the SCOTUS. Typical of the Left there have been calls for violence, death threats and much social justice wanker posturing. This is all the more strange because what Kim Davis is doing is completely and totally a product of the Left, and I don't mean that Davis is a Democrat(which she is). Davis' refusal to issue same sex marriage licenses is the inevitable result of several generations of left wing political activism aimed at ignoring the rule of law when they find it advantageous to do so.

Think about the basic social contract that is the United States of America. What idea was the cornerstone of the ideological wall that the Founding Fathers used to construct this nation? What single, simple concept embodied everything that they hoped to create, and would serve as a yardstick for future generations to measure their path?

“This shall be a nation of laws, not men”

The idea of rule of law is that the law is immutable. It says what it says, and all men are required to respect it. It can be changed, of course, but until it is, it binds the righteous and unrighteous alike.

...To the Left, however, the law is simply a convenient cudgel to beat their foes with until it isn't, at which point it can be ignored. Case in point, contrast to the Kim Davis situation. In 2004 Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco, ordered that the city clerks issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in spite of the fact that same sex marriage was against the law in California. The Left just got so excited and jumped around like lovesick puppies celebrating Newsom for “doing what was right” and “following his moral convictions in spite of the law”. In 2015 when Davis does the exact same thing, she is roundly condemned. In Newsom's case, the rule of law was inconvenient to the desired outcome so it was ignored. In Davis' it supported the desired outcome, so it was invoked.

And how did the Right react? In both cases, the overwhelming reaction has been the same. In 2004 the Right maintained that the licenses should not have been issued, because rule of law. In 2015, the Right has maintained that the licenses should be issued, because rule of law. Most acknowledge that the law in question is nothing more than an arbitrary edict issued by Justice Kennedy's fiat, but, still, law of the land and all of that. This perfectly demonstrates one of the fundamental differences between Right and Left. The Left believes that the ends justify the means, while the Right maintains that the ends are meaningless, even dangerous, if the means are not just.

However, this time around there is an interesting twist. A growing number of people on the Right have started to point out that the rule of law is pretty darn arbitrary as far as the Left is concerned.

Kim Davis MUST follow the rule of law and issue the marriage licenses. Absolutely must.


But Washington DC isn't issuing gun permits despite being directly ordered by the SCOTUS to do so.


But immigration laws are not just being ignored, they are being flouted with impunity by the Obama Administration and Democrat sanctuary cities.

But the IRS refused to issue permits to conservative non-profits, holding them in limbo for years and possibly influencing the outcome of the 2012 election.

Are conservatives doomed to abandon principle for expediency and push whatever policies we want, regardless of what the law says, when we are in power? Could a SoCon President require the Department of Education to require prayer in schools or a FiCon President stop funding for welfare unilaterally? Would we even be conservatives then, or simply nothing more than another gang in power for a brief period of time? That right there is a reallllly interesting question, in which lies the death of the Republic.

Read more here.

Lois Lerner used two personal email accounts in addition to her official IRS email

Morgan Chalfant reports at freebeacon.com,

Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner used a second personal email account under the name of “Toby Miles” to conduct official business during the time of the conservative group targeting scandal.

The Washington Times reported that the IRS admitted Monday in a court filing that Lerner used not one but two personal email accounts in addition to her official IRS email during her time heading the government agency’s Exempt Organizations Unit.

According to IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas, the agency discovered the email account when it was assembling documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, the public interest law group that filed an open-records lawsuit to gain access to emails sent by Lerner during the time she targeted conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.

“In addition to emails to or from an email account denominated ‘Lois G. Lerner’ or ‘Lois Home,’ some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated ‘Toby Miles,’” Klimas explained to District Judge Emmet Sullivan Monday.

While it remains unclear who is “Toby Miles”–Lerner is married to a Michael Miles–the IRS said that it has concluded that the address represents “a personal email account used by Lerner.”

“It is simply astonishing that years after this scandal erupted we are learning about an account Lois Lerner used that evidently hadn’t been searched,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, accusing the IRS of concealing information from Lerner that could inform the targeting controversy.

...A bipartisan Senate Finance Committee report released earlier this month concluded that Lerner “failed to adequately manage” members of her staff processing the applications from conservative groups seeking tax exempt status for two years beginning in 2010.

As a result of the “delinquent” handling of such applications, only one conservative advocacy group was granted tax-exempt status in a three-year period.

Read more here.

Define "held responsible"

A retired Colonel, who is a friend of mine, writes a letter to his Congressman:

Congressman Buck, You say the EPA will be "held accountable." I will ask you, sir," to define "held accountable." As with Lois Lerner (IRS)? Hillary Clinton (Benghazi)? That phrase has become an euphemism for kicking the can down the road (another horribly overworked phrase). Exactly what does that accountability entail? Getting somebody fired? Somebody going to prison? If you mean you'll try to fine the EPA, that may be a real problem for you in Congress, as they are authorized to do their own investigation, determination and adjudication on themselves as an Agency. That's the power Congress gave them. Correct me if I'm wrong. The EPA first determines if the EPA needs to be investigated. Then the EPA does the investigation of the EPA. Then the EPA decides if the EPA is innocent (not at fault) or guilty (at fault). If the EPA finds the EPA guilty (at fault) then the EPA decides on the punishment. If that punishment entails the EPA fining he EPA, the he EPA pays the fine to the EPA. Now, that SHOULD be just a matter of the EPA transferring money to the EPA. But, it will come to the EPA being reimbursed by WE TAXPAYERS for the fine the EPA had to pay to the EPA. Just how wrong am I in this description, Congressman? Oh, and if the EPA has to pay Colorado, in this instance, do not we taxpayers across the nation pick up the tab for whatever the EPA pays to Colorado.

Exxon Valdea and British Petroleum didn't get reimbursed by the taxpayers when they had the oil spills. But the EPA will not suffer one whit for it's big blunder. See, even I use "its" instead of "their" when referring to an agency. When accountability is called for, there are suddenly no "persons" to point to. Only buildings and spokespersons for the suddenly invisible agency leadership.

We've got one pretty screwed up system since Congress turned it's responsibilities over to the EPA, the NSA, and all the other "A's" and the Directors and Czars who run them with virtual impunity.
Colonel Curtis D. Dale, PhD, USAF (Ret)

Imposing rules they don't live by

Mark Steyn on government bureaucrats:

The lesson of the IRS is that if you said to the IRS what they say to their congressional investigators, you'd go to jail. In other words, if you were to say to them, "Well sorry, I lost all the paperwork and accidentally deleted it and the server's broken and there's no way I can get it back", you'd go to jail if you were to say to the IRS what the IRS said to congressional investigators... Now we learn it's exactly the same thing with the EPA: what happened to British Petroleum is not gonna happen to the guys who run the EPA. And that's the way it is with every government bureaucracy. They impose rules on you that they don't live by...

Read more here.

A pugilist who has emerged at a time when someone needs to start throwing punches.

Ian Tuttle writes at National Review,

Senator McCain’s penchant for name-calling betrays an obliviousness to this mood manifesting itself within the Republican party — the suggestion that there might just be something to be angry about. It’s not, as Representative Joaquin Castro (D., Texas) suggested on Sunday’s Meet the Press, mere “stereotyping” against immigrants. It’s 12 million people in the country illegally, and an administration that wants to welcome them, then open the border to more. It’s Obamacare and mandates rewritten to convenience the president’s party in midterm elections. It’s terrorism and trigger warnings and Anthony Kennedy and Iran and the IRS. Many conservatives are having their Howard Beale moment: They’re as mad as hell, and they don’t want to sit down and take it anymore.

Read more here.

Is our fear and anger leading us to stupidity?

Andrew Klavan writes at PJ Media,

Why are Republicans supporting a man who, for all his millions, can’t even buy himself a decent hairpiece? Because he said something that sounded sort of kind of nasty about all the Mexican criminals pouring into the country and then refused to back down when the corporate left pulled its usual Frankenstein mob scene to shut him up.

Yoda is right. Our anger comes from fear. Fear of being bullied into silence. Fear of the IRS coming after us for our opinions. Fear of our businesses being destroyed by small-minded H8ers. Fear of a White House that finds myriad ways to harass and even imprison those who disagree with it. Fear of a media that lies and lies and lies, that covers up non-compliant reality in order to sell a left-wing narrative that will secure their sense of virtue and increase the political influence of their corporate bosses.

When a man like Trump seems to spit in the eye of the people we fear, we rally behind him thinking we’re fighting back. We’re not. We’re following our fear right down the rabbit hole.

You want to win back your country? Here’s how. Fear nothing. Hate no one. Stick to principles. Unchecked borders are dangerous not because Mexicans are evil but because evil thrives when good men don’t stand guard. Poverty programs are misguided, not because the poor are undeserving criminals, but because dependency on government breeds dysfunction and more poverty. Guns save lives and protect liberty. Property rights guarantee liberty. Religious rights are essential to liberty. Without liberty we are equal only in misery.

These things are true. They’re true for white people and black people, male people and female people, straight people and gay people. We should support the smartest, most proven, most statesmanlike candidate who best represents those principles. And we should do it out of — dare I say the word? — love. Love for our neighbors, our fellow citizens, white and black, male and female, straight and gay.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” That’s the word of #RealYoda, baby.

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads… well, to stupidity really. That’s what muppet Yoda should’ve said.

Read more here.

FBI, IRS, and DOJ officials illegally collaborated against Obama's political opponents

I love the work of Judicial Watch, and also the Washington Free Beacon. Time after time they break important stories and uncover important documents. Chris Safran reports in the Free Beacon that the IRS

supplied the FBI with 21 computer disks containing 1.25 million pages of confidential information from more than 113,000 tax returns.

...“The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection, and this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in the release.

...The new documents shed light on the relationship between various agencies in the Obama administration and their plans to gain access to unredacted documents forbidden under federal tax law, according to Judicial Watch.

Read more here.

Bank account seized by IRS. Why? Because he was only doing business in cash!

Lyndon McLellan has spent more than a decade running L&M Convenience Mart, a gas station, restaurant, and convenience store in rural Fairmont, North Carolina. Then, one year ago, without any warning, agents from the IRS seized his entire bank account, totaling more than $107,000.


Thanks to Instapundit

When party politics take precedence over the laws of the land

Kevin Williamson writes that

The characteristic feature of a police state is that those who are entrusted with the power to enforce the law are not themselves bound by it.

That's what has happened to the IRS during the Obama administration.

The most important question that must be answered in this matter does not involve the misbehavior of IRS officials and Democratic officeholders, though those are important. Nor is it the question of free speech, vital and fundamental as that is. The question here is nothing less than the legitimacy of the United States government. When law-enforcement agencies and federal regulators with extraordinary coercive powers are subordinated to political interests rather than their official obligations — to the Party rather than to the law — then the law itself becomes meaningless, and the delicate constitutional order we have enjoyed for more than two centuries is reduced to a brutal might-makes-right proposition.

Read more here.

It worked for her!

He's got a point

found here.

Democrat Senate candidates getting more money than their Republican challengers

Betsy Newmark has the details of how Democrats are outspending Republicans in this year's competitive US Senate election campaigns. Then she summarizes:

Many GOP donors have been scared by IRS targeting and audits of wealthy Republicans, prosecutorial attacks like the one in Wisconsin against Gov. Scott Walker's allies, and the Democratic demonization of GOP contributors. Not everyone has the thick skin of Charles and David Koch.

Many GOP donors try to avoid becoming political targets by writing checks to 501(c)(4)s, which don't have to disclose donor names. But under IRS rules these groups are largely limited to issue ads that don't advocate for or against a candidate. Super PACs like Mr. Reid's can say whatever they want, but 501(c)(4)s can't respond in kind on behalf of GOP challengers.

Read more here.

The IRS destroyed Lois Lerner's Blackberry device, too!

Bryan Preston reports:

After Monday’s bombshell about the federal government’s system-wide email back-up system broke, there was yet another bombshell.

The IRS “recycled” — destroyed — Lois Lerner’s hard drive in June 2011, just 10 days after Rep. Dave Camp had sent a letter to the IRS inquiring about the targeting of conservative groups that Lerner knew about and may have orchestrated.

The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry device, too. Even though there is no suggestion that it ever “crashed,” as the agency claims about her hard drive.

Even worse, the IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry after it knew of the crash, and while the congressional investigation was underway.

Read more here.

Exciting job opportunity!

Looking for a job? Manhattan Infidel knows about an exciting opportunity! Some excerpts from the job announcement:

Hard Drive Backup Technician for the Internal Revenue Service

Our ideal candidate will be the type of person that wants to get up for work everyday to keep the United States safe from her domestic enemies such as tea baggers, constitutionalists and other non-big government figures.

Read more here.

Lois Lerner's emails have vanished!

Roger Kimball:

So the IRS suffered a catastrophic hard disk failure and, lo and behold! two years of Lois Lerner’s emails have vanished: poof! Just like that. Imagine. Evidence of those happy days targeting conservative groups, gone. So much for the memoir. Eliana Johnson reports that Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is really steamed. He has even asked the Justice Department to look into it. “The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” he said in a statement. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”

Still laughing? Yes, that would be Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Don’t hold your breath, Mr. Camp.

Is it credible that they have no back ups of two years’ worth of emails of a senior staff person—a senior staff person who just happens to be at the center of a huge scandal? What do you think?

I have a couple of other questions. 1. How will The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and the rest of the extended White House Public Relations team cover this story? Will they cover it? And 2. what will it take to rouse the public from its supine attitude of hapless acquiescence to this administration’s increasingly brazen lawlessness?

Please read more here.

Scandals, or fundamental transformations of the United States government?

Victor Davis Hanson asks the question: was Benghazi a scandal?

Obama had gone to bed early the night of Benghazi and washed his hands of the inconvenience, and for the last two years the military, the intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the media have been blame-gaming one another.

On another front, a majority of Americans are furious about the partisan corruption of the IRS, and the fact that Lois Lerner took the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about why her department focused inordinately on conservative groups. In the initial, but transitory, media furor, Barack Obama called the corruption of the IRS “outrageous.” After the buzz quieted, Lerner et al. rated from the president the assertion that there was not “a smidgen of corruption.”

So was the IRS abuse a scandal or an act of fundamentally transforming America?

In other words, the IRS mess successfully sent out a signal that progressive politicians will alert the IRS to monitor their opponents, their opponents will be monitored, and, if the agency is caught, not much will happen to it. Like it or not, the Obama administration has created a sort of deterrence by fundamentally transforming the IRS into an agency of progressive change. The result is to discourage high-profile donors from giving to conservative causes — or, conversely, to buy exemption by giving generously to liberal causes.

Was the Bowe Bergdahl mess a scandal? Ostensibly, no president in his right mind would trade five high-profile Taliban operatives, with ties to al-Qaeda, for an American deserter. What president would ignore the judgment of the intelligence community and the military, mock the law mandating consultation with Congress about such releases, and then conduct the most bizarre PR stunt in recent political history by wheeling out Sergeant Bergdahl’s father, in Taliban-like beard, no less, reciting Islamic prayers in native tongues?

But was the Bergdahl scandal also an effort at fundamental transformation? The administration had ordered the military to “salute” and to get on board with the Bergdahl party line. Susan Rice, as is her wont, misled the country by claiming the deserter had served with “honor and distinction.”

The Bergdahl swap was just part and parcel of negotiations to get out of Afghanistan without fanfare before the Taliban retake Kabul.

If the virtual destruction of the VA system is a scandal that has come and gone in less than a week, was it a scandal at all? Or a transformation in the way we envision the VA?

How about all the non-enforcement of immigration laws? The surges across the borders of illegal aliens in anticipation of a border rendered irrelevant? The sort of executive-order amnesties that Obama warned before he was reelected that he simply had no legal authority to issue? The dumping of hundreds of immigrants in Arizona to punish the recalcitrant governor?

New influxes of illegal aliens represent a fundamental transformation of America. Many of them look to government for help; they will in time become proper Democratic households; and they are a club to hit conservatives with, as being insensitive to Latino needs.

Was the Associated Press monitoring a scandal or a warning of what Obama is willing to do to get the media to cool it? Were the lies that helped sell Obamacare a scandal or also the necessary means to reach the desired ends? What will history remember, Obama wonders: that the president of the United States lied about keeping your doctor and your insurance plan under Obamacare, or that the Affordable Care Act was finally enacted?

For the nobly progressive, the desired equality of result at home and greater fairness toward nations abroad require a sort of deconstruction of “settled law.” Liberal elites may be forced to emasculate their enemies, if need be, by politicizing the IRS, or by ignoring the law through executive orders, or by sending out officials to peddle untruths, or by doing almost anything necessary to enact social justice here and abroad. Some call it scandalous, but others see it as empowering and long overdue.

The more such scandals occur in the next two years, the more they will not be seen as scandals, but as mere bothersome hurdles to fundamentally changing America. In the age of Obama, you win the race not by playing by the fossilized rules of jumping over the track’s hurdles — but instead by running right through them to reach the finish line first.