With Syria sucking up all the media attention in Washington, other stories about the operation of the Obama administration have been reduced to background noise. One such story is the IRS scandal about the targeting of conservative groups for special attention when it came to tax exempt status. Yep, that one; the one in which former Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner pleaded the Fifth during an appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in May.

At the initial hearings, Lerner and former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller tried to pass off the agency’s overzealous enforcement as the work of a couple of “rogue” employees in Cincinnati. Undeterred, but with little media coverage, the House committee is continuing its investigation, and the committee uncovered email exchanges between Lerner and her staff which would seem to affirm that the targeting was politically motivated.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in a February 2011 email, Lerner advised her staff that a Tea Party matter is “very dangerous,” and is something “Counsel and [Lerner adviser] Judy Kindell need to be in on.” Lerner’s emails show the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was fearful that outside money could cause the Democrats to lose their Senate majority in the 2012 congressional election, and that Lerner was eager to assist by sharing Federal Election Commission information about conservative groups with the IRS, which is prohibited by the Internal Revenue Code. “Perhaps the FEC will save the day,” she wrote.

Unfortunately, such news is no longer being widely reported, despite the revelation last month (which we noted at the time) that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, months after the scandal first erupted.