Friday is the day government agencies and politicians have traditionally used to unload their unwanted, embarrassing, and otherwise distasteful news. This Friday is no different, as it finds the internal Revenue Service issuing an extremely rare apology:
The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” she added.
The blame is tossed onto the backs of “…low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.”
Unless it was. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that admission.
And if all this apology seems like familiar ground, it should. Or it least it is if you watch “South Park.”
