During Greg Dworkin's morning roundup, we wondered whether maybe the biggest casualty of this week's scandalpalooza has really been the Benghazi hoopla. Conservative fire remains concentrated on the IRS story, though that seems to be the one that offers the most angles for firing back. But it works as a way of not concentrating on what was, until last week, the zOMG stories of the century: the debt & deficit, now plummeting at record pace. Discussion of the IRS story continued around selections from FiveThirtyEight's "I.R.S. Approved Dozens of Tea Party Groups Following Congressional Scrutiny," an old LA Times article on IRS targeting of a liberal California church, the actual Nixon White House tapes regarding political use of the IRS, Rick Perlstein's "Washington Misses the Point on the Tea Party and the IRS," Mark Sumner's "The IRS 'scandal'--all smoke, no fire," and David Cay Johnston's "The other IRS scandal." Armando chimed in from the road on these stories as well. Finally, a word about the ridiculous "wish we'd had some AR-15s up in Boston" talking point, and a short catch-up on new filibuster reform talk.
