The IRS's stunning and shameful record-keeping hypocrisy

They might as well say, "The dog ate my email"

IRS
(Image credit: (Illustration by Sarah Eberspacher | Photos courtesy Scott Olson, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images))

The IRS's recent claim that two years' worth of emails from Lois Lerner — the official at the center of the scandal regarding the tax agency's apparent targeting of conservative groups — evaporated due to a computer crash seems too convenient to accept at face value. It's so ridiculous that since the announcement, a fantasy sequence has kept playing out in my head.

Imagine IRS agents descending on a company or perhaps even a lone One Percenter to review tax records, suspecting some sort of fraud or other crime. "We're from the IRS," says an agent dressed straight out of a Mad Men episode, "and we need to see the last seven years' worth of your tax return records and receipts."

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Edward Morrissey

Edward Morrissey has been writing about politics since 2003 in his blog, Captain's Quarters, and now writes for HotAir.com. His columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Post, The New York Sun, the Washington Times, and other newspapers. Morrissey has a daily Internet talk show on politics and culture at Hot Air. Since 2004, Morrissey has had a weekend talk radio show in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and often fills in as a guest on Salem Radio Network's nationally-syndicated shows. He lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, and his two granddaughters. Morrissey's new book, GOING RED, will be published by Crown Forum on April 5, 2016.