On the down Lois

Since the dog (presumably Cerberus) supposedly ate all of Lois Lerner's emails involved in the crucial moments of the IRS scandal, it's actually pretty amazing what we're learning about this dedicated civil servant. The House Ways and Means Committee released some correspondence Lerner had that concerns Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is the dictionary definition of crusty. The link is a PDF, but I'll give you a screen shot to illustrate the way our dedicated civil servant thinks.

First, the background -- it appears that Lerner and Grassley were both invited to participate in an event in Washington, but that the invitations were mixed up and that Lerner received Grassley's invitation. The event organizers offered to pay for Grassley's wife to attend the event as well, which seemed to trigger Lerner's Spidey Sense:

Since it's the IRS, it's likely a rectal exam

At this point, her underling has to remind Lerner that for a violation to be investigated, you might actually have to wait for a violation to take place:

Probable cause being he's a #@%! Republican, of course

Which leads to this utterly charming response:

I'm sure Grassley feels the same way

So what are we to make of this? Well, first of all, it's not exactly reassuring that the IRS official who is in charge of enforcing compliance with tax law doesn't seem to understand the law itself. More importantly, it's even more disturbing that she was apparently eager to drop the hammer on Grassley without any evidence that wrongdoing had taken place. Civil servants aren't supposed to act as Lord High Executioner, but Lerner was apparently quite comfortable with that role.

I don't know what the endgame is in this investigation, but one thing seems clear enough -- it's long past time to give the IRS a thorough housecleaning. And it's equally clear that John Koskinen is not the guy to do that job.