This account of how the White House tried to deal with the IRS inquiry — based on documents, public statements and interviews with multiple senior officials, including one directly involved in the discussions — shows how carefully Obama’s top aides were trying to shield him from any second-term scandal that might swamp his agenda or, worse, jeopardize his presidency.

The episode also offers a glimpse into the workings of Obama’s insular West Wing, which has struggled to cope in recent weeks with the IRS scandal, the continued fallout from last year’s deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department’s tracking of journalists as part of leak investigations.

But Ruemmler and McDonough’s careful plan for the IRS was upended on May 10, when Lois Lerner, a senior official at the agency, broke the news by admitting that the IRS had given extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Senior White House officials were stunned to see the IRS trying to get ahead of its own story — and in doing so, creating a monstrous communications disaster for an administration that appeared not to know what its agencies were up to.

Full story.

If we give the president the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows the truth is going to come out, the question remains: Does the administration appoint the special prosecutor sooner or later? The calculus inside the White House is how to best protect the president’s political interests. They have two options. They could delay the appointment and let more of the story develop, weather the ugly piecemeal disclosures, give the players time to get their stories straight and lawyer-up and hope Republicans continue their overreach, giving the whole affair a nutty partisan patina. Or, they could accelerate the appointment of a special prosecutor, thereby slowing the congressional inquiries and giving Jay Carney some relief from his daily embarrassing routine by supplying him with the escape hatch of not being allowed to comment on matters associated with the special prosecutor’s ongoing investigation. Not to mention, the White House all the while could blast the appointed counsel as a partisan ideologue à la the hatchet job that was done on Ken Starr.

Full story.

To make matters worse in terms of press freedom, there are many reasons to assume the Obama administration is secretly spying on many other journalists and organizations. With Fox’s Rosen, the administration got an actual warrant to read his email and contends that he has committed crimes by pursuing and publishing a story about North Korea, even though the story apparently doesn’t include any classified information per se. Rosen hasn’t been legally charged as of yet, but as Glenn Greenwald notes, the accusations against Rosen parallel government charges against WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange. “Under U.S. law,” writes Greenwald, “it’s not illegal to publish classified information,” so the Obama administration is claiming that it’s illegal for journalists and publishers to “solicit” such information. That doesn’t simply fly in the face of the First Amendment and Vietnam-era rulings guaranteeing press freedoms, it declares “war on journalism” by essentially criminalizing the very act of investigative reporting.

Full story.

First they came for Fox News, and they did not speak out—because they were not Fox News. Then they came for government whistleblowers, and they did not speak out—because they were not government whistleblowers. Then they came for the maker of a YouTube video, and—okay, we know how this story ends. But how did we get here?

Full story.

The IRS controversy falls into a different category. It isn’t entirely clear how much the White House knew or should have known about the singling out of conservative groups for extra scrutiny. That question still is being sorted out, though it appears Treasury Department officials knew last year that an inspector general was studying the IRS, without knowing exactly what he was finding.

But the broader problem lies elsewhere. The IRS flap eats away at the underpinnings of what President Barack Obama promised when he first ran in 2008: a revival of confidence that government is capable of solving problems in a smart and nonideological manner.

Full story.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) on Tuesday morning said emergency personal were frantically searching for survivors after a massive tornado ravaged her state, calling the damage “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

“The tornado itself was very, very wide. It just wiped out miles of areas and homes and businesses. It’s probably the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Fallin on CBS’s “This Morning.”

Full story.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg used a commencement speech to push his gun-control agenda, telling graduates of Kenyon College in Ohio that gun control is “something you really should think about.”

Bloomberg, who co-chairs Mayors Against Illegal Guns, spent at least $14 million in support of legislation that would have required universal background checks for all gun-buyers. Although the bill died in the Senate on April 17, Bloomberg said the battle isn’t over.

“I believe we will win, sooner or later, because I believe that all of you, your generation more than any other at least since the 1960s, is reshaping society in fundamental ways by making your values known and your voices heard.”

Bloomberg said Congress’s failure to pass the gun control bill was “Washington at its worst — the worst thing that it’s ever done.”

Full story.

 The Arab Spring has unleashed the Arab Collapse. Everybody still standing in the region is picking the flesh of the helpless. The Islamist cancer proved more virulent than Arabs themselves expected, while dying regimes behave with unrestrained ruthlessness.

And our diplomats still think everyone can be cajoled into harmony.

We’re witnessing a titanic event, the crack-up of a long-tottering civilization. Arab societies grew so corrupt and stagnant that violent upheaval became inevitable. That’s what we’re seeing in Syria and Iraq — two names, one struggle — and will find elsewhere tomorrow.

We can’t stop it, we can’t fix it, and we don’t understand it. But we can stay out of it.

Full story.

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

As the House voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer.

“Fully repealing ObamaCare will help us build a stronger, healthier economy, and will clear the way for patient-centered reforms that lower health care costs and protect jobs,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

Full story.

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.

Full story.

Nice try, Mr. President.

Feigning anger, firing an unknown bureaucrat and fleeing the podium won’t cut it with voters, or stop the hemorrhaging of the scandals that have spawned a Watergate-like feel around the Obama administration.

There was a certain panicky look about the way the president quickly delivered a rare evening White House statement to try to quell the growing outrage over the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. The move showed how damaging the scandal has become to Obama’s second term and maybe even his presidency.

But Obama took no questions and, more importantly, no responsibility for the ugly episode of the federal government abusing its power for political reasons. This was just political theater designed to distance Obama from something that happened on his watch. Obama sounded a lot angrier scolding Republicans for blocking his gun control bill than he did standing at the podium last night in a belated attempt at damage control.

Even worse, Obama had the gall to warn any critics in Congress to “treat (the IRS) with the responsibility it deserves and in a way that doesn’t smack of politics or partisan agendas.”

In other words, Republicans, don’t use it against him.

Full story.

While IRS officials attributed the agency’s heavy scrutiny on conservative groups to the spike in applications over the past few years, fresh reports and figures are raising questions about whether the agency knowingly applied a double standard.

A highly anticipated watchdog report, released late Tuesday by the inspector general’s office, depicted an even bigger spike in applications for tax-exempt status from a type of group that includes labor organizations. Yet, according to the report, the conservative groups were the ones singled out for special treatment.

This special treatment included the agency creating a unique “be on the lookout” list. The list covered “political-sounding” names like Tea Party, Patriots, and 9/12. The criteria, labeled by the report as “inappropriate,” later expanded to include groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes and other areas.

The IRS has explained that low-level staffers at an Ohio office were effectively scrambling to deal with an influx in applications from these groups, for tax-exempt status known in the IRS code as 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4).

Full story.

With Soros funding, anything is possible. The growing scandal where the IRS unfairly targeted politically-conservative groups can be traced back to a lobbying effort begun by George Soros-funded liberal groups in 2010, after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

The talking points of these groups then bounced around a carefully created progressive “echo chamber,” until they eventually made their way into established media outlets. Key IRS policy changes about how it investigated conservative groups took place soon after it received three separate letters sent by Soros-funded liberal organizations.

Several Soros-funded groups including the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, the Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones and Alternet have worked to pressure the IRS to target conservative nonprofit groups. The subsequent IRS investigation flagged more than 100 tea party-related applications for higher scrutiny, including applications that included the words “Tea Party” and “patriot.”

The IRS scandal can be traced back to a series of letters that the liberal groups Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Democracy 21 sent to the IRS back in 2010 and 2011. Both groups were funded by George’s Soros’s Open Society Foundations. The CLC received $677,000 and Democracy 21 got $365,000 from the Soros-backed foundation, according to the Foundation’s 990 tax forms.

Full story.

When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train.

‘Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,’ the IRS demanded. ‘Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training material.’

That question was part of the tax collection agency’s February 14, 2012 letter to Kevin Kookogey. founder of the group Linchpins of Liberty. He had submitted his application 13 months earlier.

‘Can you imagine my responsibility to parents if I disclosed the names of their children to the IRS?’ he asked MailOnline.

It’s ‘an impossible question to answer fully and truthfully,’ he said, ‘without disclosing the names of anyone I ever taught, or would ever teach, including students.’

Full story.

The first time the feds came after me, I was a reporter for Ch. 7. My local state rep had been indicted for attempted extortion, and I was covering the trial. One evening I was in an editing suite, putting together a piece based on what the feds believed was sealed grand jury testimony about my solon. The phone rang and it was an assistant U.S. attorney.

“You run that story and you’re in big trouble,” he said.

I thanked him for his concern and hung up. The next morning the prosecutor stormed up to me in the courtroom and snarled: “You still live in Somerville, don’t you?”

A week later, I got a letter from the IRS saying that I was being audited. I took the letter to court the next day and showed it to my state rep’s defense lawyer. He didn’t seem surprised. He took a letter out of his pocket — it was from the IRS, too.

“Let me handle this,” he said. He wrote a scorching letter to the IRS, demanding to know how he’d been singled out. Then he wrote the same letter on my behalf. And that was the last either of us ever heard from the IRS. My accountant kept calling the pencil-pusher who had signed the letter, but he would never even return the call.

A few years later, the obnoxious prosecutor was nominated for a judgeship. I called up the lawyer and asked him what we were going to do.

Full story.

 When Marion Bower decided to start her tea party organization in 2010, she didn’t know that it would take nearly two years for the Internal Revenue Service to approve her request for tax-exempt status.

The Ohio woman also did not expect that providing information about the books her group read would be part of the application process.

“I was trying to be very cordial, but they wanted copies of unbelievable things,” Bower told ABC News today. “They wanted to know what materials we had discussed at any of our book studies.”

She ultimately sent one of the books, “The Five Thousand Year Leap,” promoted frequently by Glenn Beck, to the IRS official handling her tax-exempt request in Cincinnati. She also sent a paperback copy of the Constitution.

“They wanted a synopsis of all the books we read,” Bower said. “I thought, I don’t have time to write a book report. You can read them for yourselves.”

Full story.

President Obama’s second-term campaign slogan was “Forward,” but instead we’ve got cover-ups, congressional investigations and the government persecution of political opponents and reporters.

That sounds like “backward” to me. All the way to, say, 1972.

Who would have guessed that just a few months into his second term, President Obama would be compared to Tricky Dick. And by a liberal Massachusetts Democrat — U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano.

Republicans could not even have scripted this one. The agency most hated by voters, the Internal Revenue Service, admits to going on a Nixonian witch hunt against Tea Party and conservative groups during the re-election campaign.

This is a story even the most partisan Massachusetts liberal cannot defend. It’s so bad that even Ed Markey is calling for heads to roll.

Now we learn that the Justice Department has secretly obtained the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors in what appears to be an investigation of an AP story that disclosed details of a CIA operation that stopped a terrorist attack.

Going after the Tea Party is one thing, but the media? What an outrage. Who knows, the press may get so mad they won’t laugh at Obama’s jokes during the next White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Full story.

There is an immediate political reason why it is important to deny that the IRS abuses had any political effect: If they did have a political effect, then the question becomes whether that effect was sufficient to change the outcome of the 2012 election. That is to say, unless Plouffe’s denial is true, the very legitimacy of the president’s re-election is in doubt.

Yet even if we assume Obama would have won re-election without any IRS shenanigans, that is no excuse for the wrongful conduct. Richard Nixon carried 49 states and nearly 61% of the total popular vote in 1972. No one thinks the burglary at the Watergate office complex was necessary for his re-election. Yet even a landslide does not mitigate an abuse of power.

Full story.

The latest, but probably not the last shocker, is a report in The Daily Caller about CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, who has “steadily covered the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack in Libya,” reportedly frustrating CBS News executives who claim her unrelenting coverage is “bordering on advocacy” on the issue. Now, according to Politico, Attkisson can’t get some of her stories about Benghazi on the air. Oh, did I fail to mention that CBS News President David Rhodes is the brother of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes? Coincidental? Attkisson is reportedly in talks to leave the network. Is it because she chooses to behave like a real journalist instead of a cheerleader for Obama?

On Friday, Carney held a “secret briefing” on Benghazi for a select number of White House reporters, raising the ire of reporters not in the room. Is this what the Obama administration calls transparency?

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has asked Speaker John Boehner to name a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack with full subpoena powers that could place witnesses under oath. Boehner should. Meanwhile, House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-LA) has demanded the IRS turn over by Wednesday all communications containing the words “conservative,” “patriot” or “tea party.” And the IRS should.

Full story.

Yet again, we have an example of Democrats simply not managing the government properly and with discipline. This is just poisonous at a time of skepticism about the efficacy of government. And the President should know this: the absence of scandal is not the presence of competence. His unwillingness to concentrate — and I mean concentrate obsessively — on making sure that government is managed efficiently will be part of his legacy.

Previous Presidents, including great ones like Roosevelt, have used the IRS against their enemies. But I don’t think Obama ever wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon. In this specific case, he now is.

Full story.