Government is not, by its nature, a trustworthy agency

Government is not, by its nature, a trustworthy agency.  On which fact, here’s the great George Will.  (And here’s the concluding paragraph of his most-recent column):
Government requires trust. Government by progressives, however, demands such inordinate amounts of trust that the demand itself should provoke distrust. Progressivism can be distilled into two words: “Trust us.” The antecedent of the pronoun is: The wise, disinterested experts through whom the vast powers of the regulatory state’s executive branch will deliver progress for our own good, as the executive branch understands this, whether we understand it or not. Lois Lerner is the scowling face of this state, which has earned Americans’ distrust.

POLL: Most Americans Think IRS Targeting An Intentional Act To Punish Political Opponents. “Two-thirds of American voters (66 percent) think the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups as part of a high-level operation to punish political opponents. Far fewer — 23 percent — think it was a mistake by a handful of lower-level IRS employees. Even Democrats, by a seven percentage-point margin, are more likely to think the targeting was a punitive measure ordered by higher-ups.”

Related: Obama “joked” about auditing enemies back in 2009.


HEY, TEA PARTIERS WERE THE PRIORITY: Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers. “Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. . . . The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped.”