>>AFAIK there is absolutely no evidence linking the IRS targeting of some Republicans to the White House. I take it as an overzealous local IRS office running amok. I don't know why there is no special prosecutor but isn't that a pretty rare thing reserved for major malfeasance by major figures? I think those in KC who were involved in this will be punished. As well they should be.
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>You're correct, there is currently no direct evidence. And that is because of the way the White House operates.
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>There is also no direct evidence that the White House had anything to do with a large supply of guns being allowed to walk across the border to Mexico (w/out the knowledge of the Mexican president) where border agents were told to stand down and not track the weapons or even stop anyone. Zero evidence of White House involvement. How do I know that? Because Barack Obama invoked executive privilege to block the Oversight Committee from seeing the roughly 75 correspondence memos between the White House and the DOJ on the matter. Sadly, hundreds of people were killed or wounded (including a U.S. Border Patrol agent) due to this.
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>If you think this was a local IRS office running amok, I'm sorry to say this, but there's far more to it. There are about a half dozen Democratic Senators who have been corresponding with Lois Lerner (including Elijah Cummings and Carl Levin) to pressure her/IRS to target conservative groups. There are emails to prove it. The DOJ has been working with Lerner, which is the one reason she's not afraid to talk to them but is afraid to testify before Congress. There are emails to prove it. Even Lerner's own attorney admitted to this. The IRS just lost a case in court where they leaked conservative information to a liberal group, and they are about to lose another case where they told a pro-Israel group that their application would be delayed because their views were not consistent with that of Obama's. I would definitely put Senators, the head of the DOJ, Lerner (a director herself) and the IRS Chief Counsel as "major figures". Are you saying you don't?
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>There is this belief (mainly communicated by MSNBC) that if there isn't a 100% smoking gun that links this to the president, that it's a non-issue. This is about as flawed a conclusion as can be imagined. Even if the president is not directly involved, he certainly isn't lifting a single finger (despite his initial, "I am mad as hell and I want to get to the bottom of this" reaction).
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>If you do not see these facts as compelling, there is nothing more I can say - other than this is why Mike Cole said what he said and I now generally agree with him that nothing further will come of this - it's the combination of a supine media, a pampered president, and a party of supporters who are convinced that any criticism of the president is because of his skin color and who will take any position to protect him.

If I can append to your last paragraph: And a large majority of a political party who care nothing more but to be in power and stay in power, and with that comes wanting to punish your political opponents.