WELL, BY THEN WE’LL HAVE A WAR TO DISTRACT PEOPLE

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Rogue IRS Shamefully Targets Nation’s Veterans. “If the president wants to get angry about something, how about getting mad about the IRS leaping on the American Legion, requiring individual Legion posts to provide proof of their members’ eligibility, virtually accusing the veterans organization of being a cover for and sanctioning tax fraud? . . . ‘Unconscionable’ is an overused word in describing the abuses of power and the continual overstepping of legal and constitutional boundaries by this administration. But it certainly applies in this case. The American Legion is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit veterans organization chartered and incorporated by Congress in 1919, and now has more than 2.4 million members in 14,000 posts worldwide, according to its website. It has never had to deal with such a requirement until now.” It’s like they want to keep close tabs on veterans for some reason.

Posted at 8:13 am by Glenn Reynolds  
WELL, BY THEN WE’LL HAVE A WAR TO DISTRACT PEOPLE: Treasury tells Congress nation will breach debt ceiling in mid-October.

Posted at 8:11 am by Glenn Reynolds  
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Democracy’s Dog Days. “The great lesson of the Obama administration is that the abuses of democratic plebiscites abroad are not contrasted, but amplified by the increasingly lawless American model, when it uses the IRS and the Justice Department to go after political opponents, allows senior officials to lie under oath to the Congress, and fails to execute faithfully those laws passed by the legislative branch. If we are to offer America as a model, then there must be some honesty and transparency about the Benghazi, Associated Press, IRS, and NSA scandals.”

 H.L. Mencken observed 80 years ago, “The bureaucrat begins, perhaps, by doing only what he conceives to be his sworn duty, but unless there are very efficient four-wheel brakes upon him he soon adds a multitude of inventions of his own, all of them born of his professional virtuosity and designed to lather and caress his sense of power.”
And of course the current administration, far from equipping its bureaucrats with such brakes, instead strips them of brakes and installs upon them turbo-charged engines.