This was a political operation. If it had not been, then the statistics tell us left-wing groups would have been harassed and abused, and seen their applications leaked to the press. There would be a left-wing equivalent to Catherine Engelbrecht.

And all of this apparently took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. Meaning that before that election, groups that were anti-Obamacare, or pro-life, or pro-Second Amendment or constitutionalist, or had words like ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ in their name—groups that is that would support Republicans, not Democrats—were suppressed, thwarted, kept from raising money and therefore kept from fully operating.

That is some kind of coincidence. That is some kind of strangely political, strangely partisan, and strangely ideological “poor customer service.”

IRS officials have complained that the law is murky, it’s difficult to define what the tax exemption law really means. But they don’t have any problem defining it. They defined it with a vengeance.