Bush was held accountable for matters outside his control. In fact, the Democrats and the media (redundant) effectively used the tragedy of Katrina to poison his second term. This despite the fact that Louisiana’s governor and New Orleans mayor were both incompetent boobs who botched things.

As Kimberly Strassel noted in her Friday column, Obama and his campaign created the poisonous atmosphere that encouraged rank partisanship at the IRS.

There was a recent study of the 50 states that determined that the five freest were North and South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma; the least free were Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Jersey, California and New York. The results shouldn’t be too surprising. The freest, after all, tend to be more conservative, the least free are all liberal. That stands to reason when you see how much leftists relish bureaucratic regulations and regularly elect nannies such as California’s Jerry Brown and New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Michael Bloomberg.

It occurred to me that even though I don’t watch Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman, I don’t read the trashy magazines or tune in to “The View” or Ellen DeGeneres, I am all too aware of people like Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna and the 4,000 women known collectively as the Kardashians. It’s as if all this vile protoplasm were floating in the air, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid sucking them in like human smog.

In the old days, movie stars and singers hired publicity agents. They paid good money to get their names and pictures in the press in order to promote their careers and enhance their images. Thus, nymphos, drunks and drug addicts, would be sold to the gullible public as if the next logical step in their lives wouldn’t be Oscars and hit records, but canonization as saints.

One of the few celebrities who was an exception was Frank Sinatra, who paid an expensive flack to keep his name out of the press. Even a guy who liked to play up his connection to Mafia dons didn’t want it to be headline fodder every time he sucker-punched some shrimp or had his thuggish bodyguards put some guy in the hospital.

But how the times have changed! Now every two-bit schnook can’t wait to go on TV and confess all. Instead of seeking atonement through private confession to a priest, these bottom-feeders seek out one of those aging sob sisters, like Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer or Oprah Winfrey, while 500 pinheads in the studio audience mindlessly applaud, and the viler the confessions, the louder the applause.

Whenever I see someone like Bill O’Reilly get dewy-eyed over Abe Lincoln, I wonder why. I know the 16th president has been passed down to us as a humble log-splitter who was killed during a valiant attempt to end slavery. But that doesn’t quite mesh with the fact that he only freed the slaves in the Confederacy, not those in the Union states. I also know that he didn’t care for black people and urged the freed ones to self-deport to Liberia.

On top of all that, although his fable tells of his walking five miles in the snow to school and five miles home, uphill in both directions, and being a poor, but honest, lawyer, he was in fact constantly running for one political office or another. In the meantime, he served as a very wealthy mouthpiece for the railroad barons, who, in turn, financed his successful run for the presidency.

Then there was also the blatant hypocrisy of his “malice toward none, with charity to all” malarkey, while constantly urging his generals to wage bloody havoc on women and children, burning down homes and farms, all the while waging a war that left 700,000 Americans dead. What’s worse, his overriding motive was to make it possible for the North to continue punishing the South with tariffs that protected the producers of steel and textiles, while ruining those who raised and exported cotton and other farm products.

To me, the greatest of our presidents was without question George Washington. Not only had he commanded the Army that defeated the mighty English forces, but he both rejected the crown and was probably the last president who couldn’t wait to leave the presidency and return home.

George (“First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen”) Washington was to American politics what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Ruth, while with the Boston Red Sox, was one of the greatest pitchers in the game. Then he went to the New York Yankees and became the game’s all-time greatest hitter.

One of the worst results of the Lincoln fable was that, to this day, politicians never stop bragging about how poor they started out. Did even a single day go by in 2012 when Joe Biden or Rick Santorum didn’t remind us of their humble origins? But neither, you may have noticed, bothered mentioning how wealthy they had become in the guise of being public servants.

Another subject of popular fairy tales are Indians, or Native Americans, as they’re referred to in certain effete circles. Although there were some peaceful tribes back in the day, don’t believe anyone who tells you that it was white men who introduced torture and genocide to the noble savages. Many of them even engaged in cannibalism.

These days, they have added something new and shameful to their resume. It’s called disenrollment. That is a process whereby tribal leaders get to decide who does and who doesn’t have a legitimate claim to tribal identity. This outrageous activity owes its origin to the success of Indian casinos.

The way it works is that the fewer members of the tribe, the bigger the payouts to those who survive these purges. What’s more, because the tribal leaders get to make these decisions unilaterally, there can be no appeal to state or federal courts. I guess some people would take heart from the fact that in this way, at least, the Indians have finally learned the ways of the white man.

Finally, although Bob Beckel, who, for some unfathomable reason has become the darling of Fox News, should be commended for being a recovering alcoholic, I have to confess that every time I see him blathering away on “The Five” or “The Factor,” I feel as if I’m being driven to drink.

Just remember how progressives are always citing a “climate of hate” or “culture of violence” to point fingers.

Was the White House involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an “independent” agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a “wealthy individual” with a “less-than-reputable record.” Other donors were described as having been “on the wrong side of the law.”

This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn’t account for what the president’s vilification has done to his business and reputation.

The Obama call for scrutiny wasn’t a mistake; it was the president’s strategy—one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as “less than reputable” to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn’t need a telephone; he had a megaphone.

The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, claiming that it “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests” (read conservative groups).

The president derided “tea baggers.” Vice President Joe Biden compared them to “terrorists.” In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. “Nobody knows who’s paying for these ads,” he warned. “We don’t know where this money is coming from,” he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: “All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation.”

Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having “failed to address” the “problem” of groups that were “improperly engaged” in campaigns. Because guess who controls that “independent” agency’s budget?

The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders—openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president’s “animosity” toward Citizens United, might he have “appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those . . .” Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with “That’s a preposterous assertion.”

Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is “outraged” and “angry” that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to “operate with absolute integrity.” Even when he does not.

Wes Pruden

There’s an immeasurably deep cleavage between left and right in America, illustrated vividly in the way Americans regard the Benghazi scandal and outrage. It’s in the DNA.

Democrats generally and liberals in particular can’t understand what the noise from Benghazi is about, though they’re willing to concede that the deaths of the American ambassador and three colleagues was a shame and maybe even a tragedy. The families of the dead deserve the nation’s thoughts, and even the prayers of the guns-and-religion clingers, and if any of the families can find condolences in mass-produced clichés they’re welcome. But whatever bad happened in Benghazi was a bureaucratic failure and the word at the White House is that bureaucrats can fix it.

Republicans generally and conservatives in particular can’t figure out why the ambassador and his three luckless colleagues were allowed to twist slowly, slowly in the toxic smoke of the burning consulate, and can’t understand why everyone else is not as outraged as they are. How much is a human life reckoned to be worth?

The left, which weighs everything on the scales of political expediency, can’t understand why American “special operations” standing by in Tripoli were so eager to fly to the rescue. Liberals and lefties can’t understand why, after being told to stand down, the soldiers were “furious,” as Gregory Hicks, the No. 2 diplomat in Benghazi, eloquently described them in his testimony to the House committee inquiring into the episode. The ambassador and his colleagues died pleading for help that never came because the president’s men and women were too surprised, too timid, too frightened to send it. “None of us should ever have to experience what we went through in Tripoli and Benghazi,” Mr. Hicks told the panel.

Ordinary Americans have thrilled with pride to the stories of blood and flesh spent to attempt the rescue of the helpless, whether the exploits of the famous 7th Cavalry riding through heat and choking dust to save the settlers and their families on the plains, or George S. Patton’s Third Army racing through ice and snow to relieve the 101st Airborne at Bastogne at Christmas 1944, or the Marines’ fighting retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in similarly frozen Korea in the winter of 1950. Soldiers throughout the nation’s history have redeemed the promise that no one will be left behind. The retreat from the reservoir, though not a triumph of arms, is rightly regarded as a special moment in the history of the Marine Corps. The photographs and newsreel footage of the Marines bringing out their wounded and frozen dead, stacked on their tanks, are iconic reminders of the debt fighting men owe to each other. Somebody tried.

The besieged defenders of Bastogne owed their rescue to Patton, often reckless and always spoiling for a fight. The Americans were trapped at Bastogne, having been ambushed by the Germans in a last attempt to force a negotiated surrender. They seemed on the lip of success. Patton promised the skeptical Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in Europe, that he could turn his three divisions around overnight and fight their way more than a hundred miles to the rescue: “The kraut’s got his head stuck in a meat grinder, and this time I’ve got hold of the handle.” Ike gave the word, Patton gave the order, and Bastogne was soon relieved. Thousands of Americans were saved and the Germans never again mounted a sustained offensive. Somebody tried.

This is the lesson of the fighting spirit that seems no longer prized in certain precincts in Washington. There’s no evidence that this White House appreciates courage, reckless or otherwise, and the can-do spirit that saves causes otherwise lost. Barack Obama prefers to lead from behind. He’ll take the credit if everything works out OK – and if nothing good works out, he’ll make a nice speech (though lately even his gifts of gab have departed from him). He’s willing to mock the guns-and-religion clingers and still hasn’t figured out where the nation’s enemies are.

Hillary Clinton, celebrated at the Clinton White House for throwing lamps and for her contempt for anyone in uniform, has always had trouble recognizing enemies, too. (She thought it was the vast right-wing media conspiracy.)

Maybe we can’t blame these folks. It’s in the DNA. But a nation won’t long survive inability to recognize enemies and indifference to incompetence. It has to defend itself from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Let the investigations begin.

One thing that I hope is not lost in the political maneuvering surrounding the IRS scandal: This is not mainly about the president, the Republicans, or either party’s political prospects. The first sentence out of practically every Democrat’s mouth has been: There’s no evidence the White House was involved. And that’s true enough, though there is very strong evidence that at least one Senate Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan, was pressuring the agency to investigate tea-party groups.

Whatever happens politically in the next few years, Barack Obama will leave office at the end of his term — and the IRS will still be there. The permanent bureaucracies have political interests of their own, which may or may not align with the interests of any given candidate or any given party at any given moment. A dangerous, abusive, and politicized IRS is a serious threat to the well-being of our country: The rectitude of such institutions is an important part of what makes a free society and a free economy work. Labor is cheap in Haiti and Afghanistan, but there is a reason that people do not invest in those places. Even India, which has relatively good law and honest courts but a great deal of piddling corruption, especially in the lower levels of the bureaucracies, suffers economically because of political corruption. If you do not have credible institutions, it is difficult to thrive…

But the Senate is another story:

Karl Rove in the WSJ:

The abuse of power may not be confined to the IRS. It might also involve high-ranking Senate Democrats who pressured the IRS to conduct such witch hunts and threatened action if it didn’t.

In September 2010, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus wrote to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, requesting that the agency survey major nonprofits involved in political campaign activity for their possible “violation of tax laws.” In February 2012, Sens. Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, Al Franken, Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen, Tom Udall and Sheldon Whitehouse wrote a similar letter to Mr. Shulman, and promised to introduce legislation if the IRS failed to “prevent abuse of the tax code by political groups.” In July 2012 and again in August, Sen. Carl Levin complained to the IRS about its apparent passivity.