Kabuki and the T-Men

The most interesting thing about the gubmint shutdown is that it appears to have also shut down the interest of the MSM in covering other things that are going on in Washington. Here I'd thought that the IRS scandal had gone away. Maybe not:

Earlier this week, the House Oversight Committee asked Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel some hard questions about the shifty, irresponsible, and possibly illegal transmission of confidential taxpayer data through private email accounts held by such key scandal figures as Werfel’s predecessor, Douglas Shulman, and Tax Exempt Organizations head Lois Lerner.

It turns out these emails were part of a collaboration between IRS officials and the White House, a discovery that would have triggered “Countdown to Impeachment” news specials under a Republican Administration, but barely even rates media attention during the Great Shutdown Drama.  Try to imagine left-wing groups mounting a legal challenge to Bush Administration policies, only to discover IRS officials were sending their confidential tax data to White House advisers, to assist the Bush team in preparing a defense.

The link has a particularly amusing round "I don't recall" theater in an exchange between Cong. Jim Jordan of Ohio and IRS staffer Sarah Hall Ingram, which you need to see to believe.

But here's the punchline: Ingram is now in charge of Obamacare enforcement:

The IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare and may have illegally shared confidential tax data.

It's bad enough that no one at the Internal Revenue Service has been meaningfully punished for the targeting of conservative groups before the 2012 election. Now we learn that, for some, the unconstitutional and illegal action was a good career move.

Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division from 2009 to 2012, was so good at her job of suppressing the political speech of administration opponents by using the tax code as a bludgeon that she was rewarded during her tenure with four bonuses totaling $103,390.

Her salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during that period, and she would also be rewarded with the post of director of the IRS' Affordable Care Act division.

It's nice to see people get ahead.