IRS: OK, we gave, er, special scrutiny to conservative groups

If you applied for tax-exempt status from the IRS, and your name included words or phrases like "tea party" or "patriot," the IRS now admits that it's been giving groups like yours a little, shall we say, extra special attention.

Like, for instance, demanding to know who your donors are. Not the sort of thing IRS staff members are supposed to be asking you. Oops! Sorry about that. The L.A. Times reports:

The groups were applying for tax exemption as social welfare groups. Social welfare groups are able to participate in limited political advocacy as long as their primary activity remains social welfare, Lerner said. The IRS received 3,400 applications for social welfare status – more than double the number the agency received in 2010. Low-level staffers based in Cincinnati screened national applications to examine more closely any political activities the groups planned. She could not say when she informed higher-level officials of the matter, but said that when IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress in March 2012 that the IRS was not targeting groups based on their political views, he had not been informed of what was going on in the Cincinnati office. Lerner did not answer with any specificity questions about when she learned of the improper screening.

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Lerner said the staffers selected the applications with “tea party” and “patriot” in them for expediency, not out of political bias. She said the agency now requires the staffers’ screening methods to be reviewed by higher-level IRS officials. So if they were just picking out words for expediency, and not because of ideological bias - well then, it certainly stands to reason that they might also be looking for stuff like "occupy" or "LGBT" or, I don't know, maybe . . . "organizing for America?" Because it's just all about expediency, right? By the way, what's with the L.A. Times giving a rip about this? You don't suppose they're trying to send a message to the Koch Brothers, do you? Go buy somebody else, guys, we're practically Fox News in print here! I don't know. But on a day when the dam appears to be breaking on Benghazi coverage, now they're covering this too? What's next, an hour-long prime time special on the Gosnell trial? I like it, but I wonder where it's coming from.