Most federal employees are career civil servants who continue to work for their agency no matter who is in the White House. Then there are the elite political appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the President and can be replaced at will.
Which category of employees do you suppose are more responsive to White House wishes? If you chose "political appointees" you chose wisely.
Testimony before the House committee investigating politically motivated misdeeds at the Cincinnati IRS office, aimed at withholding tax-free status from tea party organizations, has become interesting.
Peggy Noonan reports in The Wall Street Journal that IRS career employees have testified their harassment of tea party groups was directed from the office of the IRS chief counsel in D.C. And Noonan further reports that the IRS chief counsel is one of only two persons in the entire agency who is a political appointee, the other being the director.
You remember the rule we learned in Watergate: the cover-up is always more evil than the deed itself. If the committee can get the IRS chief counsel to pin responsibility for the political harassment on someone in the White House or the Committee to Reelect, this may yet turn into another Watergate. There a cascade of cover-up eventually caused the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
One can hope for a replay.
