Republicans’ kangaroo court - By Dana Milbank

[DonViejo]

Impeachment is among the most severe and solemn powers Congress has, right up there with declaring war. Not since 1876 has an executive-branch appointee been impeached, and not in the history of the republic has Congress impeached an executive-branch official below the Cabinet level.

Now, Republicans in Congress would change that. On Wednesday, they wheeled out the sacred tool of impeachment — weeks before an election — for the purpose of smearing an honorable public servant, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, in service of a lie.

“The IRS has been abusing taxpayers and illegally targeting conservatives and getting away with it,” Rep. John Fleming, a Republican Senate candidate in Louisiana and leader of the House effort to impeach Koskinen, says in a new radio ad. “The head of the IRS ordered 24,000 emails erased before Congress could review them. .?.?. I’m fighting back with an impeachment vote against the head of the IRS.”

There are just a few wee problems with the Republicans’ logic. The targeting of conservative groups ended in 2013. The Treasury Department’s inspector general, originally a Republican appointee, reported no evidence of political motivation in the targeting. The Justice Department, too, found “no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives” and “no evidence that any official attempted to obstruct justice.” The official responsible for the targeting resigned before Koskinen came to the IRS at the end of 2013. And the same IG said last year that “no evidence was uncovered that any IRS employees had been directed to destroy or hide information from Congress, the DOJ, or [the IG].”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, eager to avoid the spectacle of the House voting to impeach an innocent man based on false charges without a proper hearing, got impeachment advocates to settle for Wednesday’s hearing in which Koskinen testified before the House Judiciary Committee. But that hardly improved matters: To say this impeachment inquiry is a kangaroo court would be an insult to marsupials.

-snip-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-kangaroo-court/2016/09/21/0015570a-803f-11e6-8327-f141a7beb626_story.html?utm_term=.9015d52ec638&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

[Gothmog]

1. K&R

[Cosmocat]

2. Lets be clear about what this is ...

Conservative groups, as conservatives are pathologically prone to do, abused the non-profit status and the proper oversight caught up to it and it was addressed.

Conservatives, being the off the chain holier than though partisan idiots see this not as the IRS doing its job, but as the IRS targeting poor, righteous conservatives.

This country, it's never ending hapless way of constantly indulging conservatives are too fucking distracted and stupid to have the common sense to follow what their bullshit detectors should have them following.