Confirming once again that the U.S. has full devolved into a total banana republic, moments ago CNN reported that the US Department of "Justice" is closing its two-year investigation into whether the IRS improperly targeted tea party and other conservative groups. There will be no charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner or anyone else at the agency, the Justice Department said in a letter.

The DOJ's finding:

The probe found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime." "We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution," Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said in the letter. "We also found no evidence that any official involved in the handling of tax-exempt applications or IRS leadership attempted to obstruct justice. Based on the evidence developed in this investigation and the recommendation of experienced career prosecutors and supervising attorneys at the department, we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges."

They must have searched real hard, especially once they found all those deleted lost emails.

CNN adds that the IRS mishandled the processing of tax-exempt applications in a manner that disproportionately impacted applicants affiliated with the tea party and similar groups, leaving the appearance that the IRS's conduct was motivated by political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motive.

So now we know that in addition to insider traders working for SAC, targeting conservatives is, according to the DOJ, also not a crime.

What is a crime? Blowing the whistle on the Big Brother state, where every single electronic communication among US citizens is processed and recorded in perpetuity.

Now that is nothing short of treason.

And now back to your regularly scheduled market meltup which at this point may last forever: after all, it is only a matter of time before the DO"J" pulls a page out of the Chinese playbook and decides that selling any stock is also a criminal offense punishable with years of hard time.