Are We Not Men?

Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

-H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau-

I'd hate to make anyone think I'm an optimist. I'm not even sure I care too much about the human race aside from a few individuals, but that's what pessimism is about -- a cosmic frame of reference that sees no permanence; that sees everything that is on the way up as inevitably on the way down.

Perhaps not caring gives a clearer vision.  If it doesn't matter in the end that voting rights are in peril, or at least under continuing assault, then the failure of the Texas legislature to pass a bill further restricting abortion rights despite a ten hour filibuster by Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, is less likely to be overshadowed. She might have gone on but was ruled to have drifted off topic amidst a chorus of boos and catcalls, and the bill was declared dead at 3 AM.

For those of us who still hope for sweeping reformation and the triumph of truth and justice for all,  it's a little and perhaps temporary victory over the animal meanness of human nature and as Dr Moreau learned, you can dress up the animal and teach it to walk on two legs, you can make it recite pledges and formulae, you can make up stories about divine origins, but the beast is still a beast and evolution is so slow.

SCOTUS Decision Raises Jim Crow from the Dead

In the biggest disaster since Citizens United, the United States Supreme Court has struck down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The majority decision reads in part:

“Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” Roberts wrote.

For conservative justices on the Supreme Court, times have changed. For liberal justices, the historical tendency to engage in chicanery and erect new barriers has not changed, according to this dissenting opinion by Ruth Bader Ginsberg:

[The] record for the 2006 reauthorization makes abundantly clear [that] second-generation barriers to minority voting rights have emerged in the covered jurisdictions as attempted substitutes for the first-generation barriers that originally triggered preclearance in those jurisdictions.

Indeed, the Tea Party insurrection against common decency ushered in a new wave of second-generation voting rights restrictions, such as: Voter ID laws, new restrictions on voter registration, new laws that discriminate against student voters, renewed gerrymandering, the elimination of weekend polling and extended polling hours that have resulted in outrageously long waiting lines of up to 8 hours.

These newly imposed restrictions have only one goal: To target and suppress turnout among minorities, senior citizens, students, and other key constituencies that can sway the outcome of elections.

Even more outrageous than Citizens United, this decision guts one of the most important and effective civil rights laws, according to Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Law, who says: 

Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades. Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.

Perhaps the time is long overdue to take to the streets. Mass demonstrations. Civil disobedience. And a brick thrown through the window of every Republican headquarters in every city and town from coast to coast!  Am I angry?

HELL YES!

Godwin's Law Redux

There is a constant drumbeat from the right comparing Obama to Hitler. I mean, let's ignore the fact that Obama's signature legislation is a method to ensure that everybody can go to a hospital when they're sick without ending up living out of their car. Because that's exactly the same as slaughtering six million Jews and attempting to take over Europe in a bloody campaign of destruction.

Yeah, let's ignore that. Instead, let's ask ourselves why every single time that somebody disagrees with a politician, it's become de rigueur to compare them to Hitler? Why is the litmus test for political arguments the ability to reduce your enemy to the level of the worst dictator in history? Last week, I pointed out an unintentional violation of Godwin's Law, but let's consider the issue a little, shall we?

Following World War One, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty included Article 231, which is commonly called "the guilt clause":

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Using this as a legal basis, Germany was forced to pay reparations to the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, Germany didn't think they'd lost the war - the German High Command told their citizens that the Army had never been beaten in the field, and the defeat was actually due to actions by civilians, particularly Jews, Socialists and Communists (the Dolchstosslegende, or "Stabbed-in-the-Back Legend").

That's right - Hitler didn't start the rumor that Jews were destroying the economy. Antisemitism was well-established in the German culture long before he was born.

So the Weimar Republic resisted the reparations, and defaulted on payments quite frequently. The French and Belgians, realizing that the Germans were able to pay and simply weren't, eventually invaded and occupied the Ruhr valley, which was the center of coal, iron and steel production in Germany.

Take this reduction in raw materials for the Germans and the resulting reduction in cash-flow, and add to it the fact that the German government funded a passive resistance movement among the citizens of the Ruhr by simply printing more money. This led to the famed hyper-inflation of post-WWI Germany.

Technically, the inflation started when the Kaiser decided to fund WWI by borrowing money instead of taxing his people and using his own fortune: the value of the German mark fell from 4 to 9 per US dollar. But the war ended in 1919; by November 1923, the American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks. Or in more concrete terms, in 1919 a loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, a loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.

This was the situation when Adolph Hitler rose into power. During the course of his leadership, he brought his people back from the brink of ruin and ensured they could eat.

People want for life to be simple. They want their enemies to wholly evil, so that there's no question that "destroying them" is a bad thing. The reductive power of the human mind wants those we disagree with to have no redeeming features. Homophobes want gays to practice pedophilia and beastiality. Radical conservatives want liberals to be fascists and totalitarian dictators. Radical liberals want conservatives to be inhuman monsters who laugh as children starve in the streets.

The reality is that people are more complex than that. But to see that, to understand the forces that drive someone, is to understand that perhaps evil is not something simple. Perhaps evil and good are in all of us. That bad things are done by good people, and good things are done by bad people, and the world isn't the simple place we want it to be.

Would you like to see the most frightening picture of Adolph Hitler ever taken?

Hitler, holding hands with a little girl and walking in a park. Hitler loved children. He loved animals: he was a confirmed vegetarian and was opposed to vivisection.

Were you aware that Eva Braun took home movies?


Hitler was a human being. It challenges your worldview: he should be a monster, pounding on desks and ordering people to their deaths. But he lived, he loved, he laughed, he played with children.

He also destroyed much of Europe, threw the world into war, and established concentration camps where 11 million people were killed.

Perhaps "good" and "evil" aren't the simple concepts that some people want them to be.

FETAL HAND JOBS

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Cute, cuter, and cutest of all.

Claims of fetal masturbation, advanced by Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) in support of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act  (HR 1797), remind me of Gulliver’s Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnag, Glubbdubdrig, and Japan (Part III). As you may recall …

His ship attacked by pirates, Lemuel Gulliver finds himself marooned near India, where he is rescued by the kingdom of Laputa, a flying island known for raining down rocks on rebellious cities – the original “Shock and Awe.”  Gulliver tours the Grand Academy of Lagado and discovers the great scientific undertakings of the realm:  Reverse Photosynthesis (extracting sunlight from vegetables), Reverse Alimentation (turning feces into canapés and crudités), and Doo Doo Mining for Data (sniffing the excrement of suspicious persons for evidence of partisan conspiracies – see Darrell Issa).

According to Congressman Burgess, the Republican Uterus Emeritus and throbbing current member of the House Subcommittee on Health:

You watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. They feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?

What gives here? Is Burgess talking about fetuses or babies? How is a 15-week fetus developmentally equivalent to a 15-week baby?  Perhaps his sentimental attachment to babies accounts for the semantic legerdemain of Lagado men who swap words to bend science:  If a baby is cute, and a fetus is cuter, then a male fetus spanking the monkey is cutest of all – and especially venerated by male legislators who flog the log.

The key threshold set by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion on the basis of viability, i.e. that abortions cannot be banned until a fetus reaches viability at 24 weeks. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act moves this threshold to 20 weeks – with no exemptions for rape or incest or complications of pregnancy that threaten the health or life of the mother.

Are fetuses capable of feeling pain? Not according to this report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

In reviewing the neuroanatomical and physiological evidence in the fetus, it was apparent that connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation.

How will the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act apply to fraternal twins in utero?  In the annals of the Grand Academy of Lagado, a male fetus in utero masturbates and impregnates his fraternal sister in utero. Shall we consider this an act of rape or incest or both?  How will the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act impact on babushka pregnancies?  Shall the newborn male be handcuffed in afterbirth and put on trial as an unborn sex predator?  No doubt, Congressman Burgess will ride to the rescue of fetal masturbators with riders nested inside riders until he goes blind.

BRAZIL PROTESTS

My friend Tai posted a video to my facebook page and asked, “For my friends around the world, please support our fight for a better Brazil!” This was just a few days ago when there was no US news coverage of the protests going on in Brazil. I was surprised to see all that was going on and the number of people taking it to the streets.

Tonight the network coverage began as the world became aware of a very serious citizenry fighting back against a corrupt government filled with greedy politicians. What started as a lament against a proposed bus fare hike turned into a revolution as people took up the call and focused on serious issues in their country.

The people of Brazil say they pay high taxes and see nothing in return. Their schools are inadequate, health care is abysmal and yet the government will spend billions (I think they are called real) hosting the World Cup and the Olympics.

Many Brazilians believe this money would be better spent improving schools, revamping hospitals and helping their people climb out of poverty.

My friend tells me that in her smaller city about 20,000 people started making their way to the local stadium but were met by police firing off tear gas and rubber bullets. But the government of Brazil is fighting a losing battle at trying to keep the protests quelled. Over 1 million people are expected to take to the streets of Rio de Janeiro this evening and it does not seem that the people of Brazil intend to give up their fight any time soon.

Of course, nothing is ever a simple matter, nor are all people in a country of one mind as we can attest to. Another Brazilian friend, Rafa, joined the conversation and his take is that while he supports many of the changes, he thinks the whole movement has gotten out of control and he is in favor a more peaceful, gradual change. He thinks there are those who are simply drawn to the chaos and anarchy. Which I think is probably true.

Another Brazilian friend, May is part of a student union – some of you will remember those from the 60s! She is also part of the protests and even though she voted for the current president, she says she should be able to demand the politicians serve the people and not themselves. Sound familiar?

I hope they can bring about the change they desire and that their lives will be better for it. I hope we Americans will be able to take a page or two out of their playbook and affect some change of our own. Brazil’s problems sound amazingly like our problems and goodness knows we could use to shake things up here.

Of course, when thinking of what is happening in Brazil one can't help but think about all the other protests and civil unrest taking place around the globe. Is this a symptom of the global economic depression and the systematic greed and corruption of our governments? Has the world reached the breaking point? And what does this mean for not only our future but the future of our world?

Points to ponder...

Can Godwin come down and rule on this?

You know, the GOP keeps trying to claim that they don't have a "War on Women." They claim that they respect women (even though the womenfolk can't be trusted to make decisions regarding their own bodies). But then they'll stumble, and somebody like GOP candidate Todd Akin will try to claim that rape is not a reason that abortion should be kept legal, because, after all, nobody gets pregnant that way.

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in a clip posted to YouTube by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Or you get somebody like, say, Trent Franks (R-AZ), who, after ten years in the House of Representatives, should know better.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), whose measure banning abortions after 20 weeks was being considered in the House Judiciary Committee, argued against a Democratic amendment to make exceptions for rape and incest by suggesting that pregnancy from rape is rare.

"Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," Franks said.

Franks continued: "But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that's impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that's what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment."

Now, let's ignore the fact that The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who make it their business to know such things, report that ten to fifteen thousand abortions due to rape occur each year, which makes statements like that "medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous." And we can ignore that particular piece of data because, after all, facts don't matter to this crowd.

Instead, let's all try and remember a wonderful little bit of information dug up by Tim Townsend and Blythe Bernhard for the St Louis Post-Dispatch following Akin's comments.

While U.S. Rep. Todd Akin cited only "doctors" as his source of information about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape, it is two pages, from Mecklenburg's 1972 article, "The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective," that have influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists hoping to build a medical case to ban all abortions without exception...

In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.

The Nazis tested this hypothesis "by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate."

Finally, Mecklenburg said it was likely that the rapists — because of "frequent masturbation" — were unlikely to be fertile themselves.

(I just threw in that last line as a bonus.)

So, are we clear on this? The GOP is trying to claim that there is no such thing as rape-babies, because the Nazis said there weren't. They are now basing their arguments on unscientific and inhumane experiments performed by Nazi doctors in death camps

Do you know how happy that one little fact makes me? I don't have to call the GOP racist, fascist, or Nazis! They're doing it to themselves!

Republikanische Partei über alles!

Signs, portents and frames of reference

It is the best of times, it's the worst of times and if you're like Glen Beck; if you're like nearly every blathering godsmitten idiot in the last few thousand years, it is always the end of times. There are always signs, always comets, always wars and rumors thereof -- earthquakes, storms, floods and droughts. There are always famines and pestilences, always cause to go to the mountaintop to await or dress in purple and take poison for the magic trip to the mother ship.  If Jesus said the end times would be during the lives of his followers, it's no contradiction.  There are always plenty of  editors, redactors and other verbal shell-game operators to redefine and revise the prophecy to suit the game.

Someone smart once said that if we live only in the moment, there is no difference between falling and flying and if we've read Einstein we know that truth is a matter of the frame of reference you occupy. If your idea of "the world" is the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire, the end of it means one thing.  If you mean the Universe, a mid 20th century concept of something incomprehensibly larger, the importance of things like coveting your neighbors' ass or eating a Philly cheese steak becomes hard to see or justify as is the importance of anything that concerns a peculiar, transitory trick of chemistry on an infinitesimal dust mote we call life.

But the Grand Wazir of Beckistan said yesterday on his radio show that  the Book of Mormon is "really a calendar" and perhaps like the Mayan Calendar, accurately predicts the end of all things.  It's a level of rank stupidity that, like the size of the universe itself, utterly defies any attempt at analogy.  He told his staff a long time ago, he said yesterday, that if he mentioned that book, it meant "we are at the end."  It's the "Story of America" he said, but a story of things that never happened, cities that never were and people who aren't who it says they are and a story written by a charlatan with a demonstrated history of fraud.

But of course although each Plank length of time (tP) the smallest possible interval according to quantum mechanics, is the end of something, it's not likely the end of anything we would notice -- like the end of Glen Beck.  It's not likely the end of the US government nor either political party, nor is it yet the moment of the "within 24 hour" predicted whistleblower he talked about earlier this week to an audience whose memory of world begins anew every morning


In a frame of reference where such a length is significant, not only are falling and flying indistinguishable, beginnings and ends are a bit meaningless in a frame that includes weeks and days and hours and indeed, human events.  In the frame of reference where the stupid dwell, where anyone would credit anything Beck might utter, a report of cannibalism, although at least as old as the Neanderthalers, is so unique as to mean impending cosmic calamity.  The Book of Mormon, like the Bible (only harder to read with a straight face) and many other religious texts inhabit a frame of reference so at odds with the physical universe and its properties and dimensions that talking animals magic fruit and other things and events that never existed abound,  can be and always are used to frighten us to the profit of prophets. 

"We are living in Biblical Times" Beck tells us; a statement hard to decipher since the last ravings of the Christian versions end sometime in the late first century, but of course there we have another blurry, woozy, foggy and crepuscular magic frame of reference where nothing really has much to do with anything outside of it; where nothing is true and all things are true and words have power.  No offense intended to individual Mormons, but the book in question is hardly a calendar unless it be for a universe that never existed, inconsistent with the observable universe and inconsistent internally -- just like the Bible and Quir'an and others  which speak of imminent calamities and events and places that are pure fiction.

Pure fiction, just like Becks mysterious 'whistle-blower.'  Predictions of the impossible based on things with no significance selected for the purpose. Concepts like the end of time are far beyond science at the moment.  We don't know when life will end, but the end of stupidity might just be as far off.  There are signs.

Glenn Beck again

"We are going to be greatly divided as a nation in the next ten days and you are going to witness things in American history that have never been witnessed before" Said Glenn Beck yesterday despite his recent claim that his vocal cords no longer worked. I was hoping that might have been the one true thing ever to escape his mouth.

It's true -- you're going to witness the last half of June, 2013 -- a historical first.  I'm pretty sure you're going to witness another spell of embarrassment for Glenn Beck too, not that he'll necessarily notice or acknowledge it.  There's a document, he says, that will "take down pretty much the whole power structure, pretty much everything" and he's going to announce it sometime today.

Those who remember back to last April, a set which obviously doesn't include his fans, might speculate that this new revelation will be as spurious and idiotic as his earthshaking revelation of a connection between Saudi Arabia and the Boston Marathon bombing.  Is anyone still waiting for an admission of error or a hint of humble retraction?

Of course to those folks who follow Beck in the way people used to mock dancing bears or court jesters, this is nothing new.  Students of buffoonery  and the charlatans who move their card tables and shells from one corner to the next in search of fresh idiots may not even notice this latest tantrum, but the clock is ticking Mr. Beck and there's not much time before the waitress brings you another plate of crow.  Do us a favor -- take a bite.

UPDATE:

Well days have gone by now and no whistles have been blowing and Beck has only some mumbling about immigration which is hardly the stuff of unprecedented division much less something to "take down the power structure."  

Do his faithful listeners remember as far back as a day or two or are they just so choked up on each new day's revelation that they don't care about yesterday?

So, want so fries with that crow Glenn?  Can I supersize it?

A Victory for Safety and Common Sense

If you follow California politics, you will undoubtedly be aware that the inactive San Onofre nuclear power plant will be permanently closed and hopefully safely decommissioned at a tremendous cost over the course of the next few years. This plant has continuously supplied electric power to Southern California from its activation in 1968 until January of 2012. There was never a serious accident or threat to workers or neighboring communities during that time. The only real ecological damage done by the facility, other than the big hole in the beach and the blight of an enormous structure on the coast was to raise the temperature of the adjacent ocean waters in what was undoubtedly once considered a very innovative approach to cooling the vast byproduct of heat associated with reactor power. The relatively uneventful and small leak of radiation from brand new yet defective steam pipes manufactured by Mitsubishi late in 2011, had it occurred in an earlier time of lesser awareness and a more complacent political climate, very likely might not have caused a permanent closure, but only a short period of repair and renovation. Because this all happened on the heels of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, issues of the safety of San Onofre were first and foremost on the minds of Californians. Concerned Californians at the recent meetings of the California Public Utilities Commission as well as protesters did not forget the Fukushima disaster. I recall after watching the horrifying tsunami and reading about the citywide release of dangerous amounts of radiation, one of the first things I did was to look up earthquake history near San Clemente and Oceanside California. Of course, our local republican congressman, Brian Bilbray advocated bringing the poison fire steam generator back on-line at the earliest possible day.

Here are some of the things that I found. The San Onofre nuclear power plant is located at the northwest corner of the County of San Diego at approximately 33.4⁰ latitude and -117.6⁰ longitude, just south of Nixon’s Western White House in San Clemente on the northern tip of the twenty miles of coastline occupied by the mostly undeveloped Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton maybe about fifty miles NNW of beloved La Jolla and UCSD. We often laughed at the huge “titties” of the radiation containment domes, clearly visible from that desolate stretch of I-5. This is obviously in a very active earthquake corridor. The largest local earthquakes have occurred in the Mojave desert, but several dangerous earthquakes have been centered right on the coast in nearby metropolitan Los Angeles, notably the devastating Northridge Earthquake which miraculously occurred at 4:31 a.m., January 17, 1994 on the federal holiday, MLK Jr. Day, thusly limiting loss of life. Read for yourself about the widespread damage done to parking structures, tall buildings, homes and freeway overpasses. This led to the earthquake retro-fitting of every freeway overpass and bridge in Southern California. These L.A. quakes are easily felt throughout the southland to the Mexican border. I live within bow and arrow distance of the famous San Andreas fault, but have little to fear because there is no subduction of techtonic plates in a north-south running faultline. I was much more threatened by the possibility of nuclear radiation leaking from San Onofre just over fifty miles away from my home in the event of a large offshore earthquake. Here is my evidence.

September 7, 1984 an offshore earthquake with a magnitude of 4.8, the first entry of the table I cited, occurred at 32.94⁰ latitude and -117.81⁰ longitude, approximately 31.7 miles due west of Torrey Pines State Beach, at a distance of about 33.3 miles from the failed San Onofre nuclear reactors. Sure, nothing we know of happened to the facility. Units two and three were on-line for the second of the thirty-eight years they provided electricity in 1984. But no one can say what might have happened anytime in the next one hundred years in the event a major Southern California earthquake anywhere within fifty miles of the facility.

Aren't we tired of this yet?

Much like Benghazi, the Congressional Republicans, desperate for any scandal they can find, are trying to flog the IRS story into some impeachment-worthy conspiracy, when it's actually just a simple case of a group of bureaucrats trying to do their jobs.

The current version of the "conspiracy" here is: Obama ordered the IRS to investigate right-wing political organizations because he is a power-hungry tyrant!!

I think that pretty much covers it, but by the time you read this, it might have morphed into something that sounds even scarier.

The Republicans know that power-hungry tyrants do this kind of thing, because this is something that Republican presidents have done for decades: Nixon tried to use the IRS against his political enemies (it was one of his articles of impeachment), but wasn't allowed to; and the IRS under George W Bush was infamous for targeting liberal groups, like Greenpeace, the NAACP, and churches that spoke out against the war.

Congress has convened five hearings, and have turned up nothing but lies and half-truths in their efforts to smear the president. IRS officials have resigned or been fired, because people further down in the organization were trying to do their job as best they could.

The entire administrative structure of the IRS has been lambasted by the Republicans for their "lack of leadership" (completely ignoring the fact that there is no leadership because the Republicans in Congress have blocked every appointment Obama has made - including his appointment of an IRS director - for the last five years).

The IRS is an easy target, because nobody likes paying taxes. The fact that they already have a negative image in most people's eyes makes smearing them much easier. But, for once, they aren't the bad guys.

Let's start from the beginning. The tax code gives us a number of different classifications based on what we do. One of them, a tax-exempt status, is designated 501(c)(4), and it's defined as "Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, ...the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes."

This allows groups to be formed to construct basketball courts for inner-city kids, build a gym for a high school, set up after-school reading programs, operate food banks, or any other activity that can be defined as "social welfare." And it goes further: to prevent people from arguing that defeating a politician would qualify as "social welfare," the IRS specifically excludes political organizations from this particular tax-exempt status.

(ii) Political or social activities. The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.

And that inconvenient fact is what the Teabaggers want everybody to forget.

So, after the Citizen's United ruling in 2010, the number of groups applying for 501(c)(4) status doubled, and an already overworked IRS tried to keep up. A couple of workers in the Cincinnati office realized that they could pull up a large number of the "bad" applications by searching for political terms in the applications. (Remember - politics are't allowed for these guys.) Unfortunately, all of the terms they came up with happened to be conservative - probably because conservative groups, and particularly Tea Party groups - had a long history of financial discrepancies.

But when the Cincinnati group explained their test to IRS exempt organizations division chief Lois G. Lerner, she objected to it and it was changed. A few months later, the IRS would release new guidance that suggested scrutinizing “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement,” and after that, “organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit.)”

Which showed that the GOP was just playing political games when they called for the resignation of the acting IRS Commissioner, since the language had already been corrected by the time he sat down in the big chair. The Commissioner in place when the "bad" language was there? Bush-appointee Douglas Shulman.

Were more conservative groups reviewed than liberal groups? Absolutely. And you know why? Because there were more conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Conservative groups accounted for about 84 percent of the spending reported to the FEC — mainly through Crossroads GPS, Americans for Prosperity and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Liberal groups spent 12 percent of the dark money. Nonpartisan groups made up the rest.

In actual fact, the congressional investigation has not only found nothing, they now have evidence clearing the White House. But Darrell Issa (R-CA) is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating this lack of a scandal, and he's been running one witch hunt after another since Obama came into office. And now, it turns out, he's sitting on the evidence.

House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings on Sunday said that the so-called scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of tea party groups was "solved," but Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has refused to release the testimony of a "conservative Republican" IRS manager because it indicated that the White House was not involved.

Last week, Issa had told CNN host Candy Crowley that IRS agents "were directly being ordered from Washington," but he declined to produce complete transcripts of the testimony of IRS employees to back up his claims.

On Sunday, Cummings explained to Crowley that he had "begged" Issa to release the full transcripts. "He's the chairman of the committee, we're not in power," the Maryland Democrat pointed out. "If he does not release them, I will. Period."

"I’m willing to come on your show next week with the chairman, with the transcripts, if he agrees to do that," he added. "But if he doesn't, I'll release them by the end of the week."

These are some of the little facts you need to remember if the subject of the IRS "scandal" comes up.