Ending Democracy in the US?: Evidence of Obama's corruption in using IRS to destroy political enemies becomes too much to ignore

At this point the evidence clearly points to political appointees in Washington, DC coordinating the IRS to target conservatives.  The fact that the Obama administration has just as clearly hid this information and also stymied investigations at every possible point is evidence of what lawyers would call "a guilty mind."  Using the power of government to destroy his political enemies is surely what happens with governments move towards dictatorship.  In this case, with the IRS not granting tax exempt status to conservative groups, it made it much harder for Obama's opponents to organize and raise money.  Who knows how much of a difference this made in the 2012 elections, but the Obama administration was apparently willing to take a huge political risk so they must have throughout that this was important for them to do.

Without competitive elections and government putting its heavy hand on one side of the scale, those in power can pretend that they live in a democracy without actually living in one.

Fox News has some of the new emails that have just been released available here.  From Mediaite:

The Daily Beast columnist Kirsten Powers suggested that Congress simply submit Freedom of Information Act requests when they ask the administration to release documents. “It’s kind of hard to believe that they couldn’t have figured out that D.C. was involved in this,” she added.
“It gives lie to the administration claim that this had nothing to do with the election, nothing to do with targeting opponents of the administration,” Krauthammer submitted.
“This is a major abuse of power,” he continued. “They covered up for two years and now they say, ‘Hey, dude, two year old story.’ So it’s old news.”
He concluded by asking if the media would cover the story as he saw it, evidence of the White House “misleading America and covering it up.” . . .

Note that one of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon included his alleged misuse of the IRS. Article 2 of the Articles of Impeachment was carefully framed to charge that Nixon “endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

The key word here is "endeavored."  Nixon's efforts with the IRS were clearly disturbing, but they were also remarkably unsuccessful.  In University of Wisconsin–Madison historian Stanley Kutler's history of Watergate entitled "The Wars of Watergate," he mentions only one person who was audited for three years: Washington Post attorney Edward Bennett Williams.  Information had been acquired on others, but nothing was apparently done with it.  Indeed, Nixon's White House complained about their inability to do what they wanted.  For example, Nixon henchman Jack Caulfield noted that the IRS was a “monstrous bureaucracy…dominated and controlled by Democrats.”