Our Lady Of The Dolphins has a death grip on the IRS dumbassery like it's a glass containing the last Grey Goose in all of Christendom. She's back at again, listening to the tiny cartoon canaries that flitter in and out of her ears, and flogging the deadest horse in all of Washington while onlookers gaze in horror and somebody sends for the Jaws Of Life and a Thorazine tablet the size of Seattle Slew.

"Documents Show Liberals in I.R.S. Dragnet," read the New York Times headline. "Dem: 'Progressive' Groups Were Also Targeted by IRS," said U.S. News. The scandal has "evaporated into thin air," bayed the excitable Andrew Sullivan. A breathlessly exonerative narrative swept the news media this week: that liberal groups had been singled out and, by implication, abused by the IRS, just as conservative groups had been.

(No. The report revealed that nobody was either "singled out" or "abused." Dear Jesus, help me get through this.)

Therefore, the scandal wasn't a scandal but a mere bungle-a nonpolitical series of unhelpful but innocent mistakes. The problem with this story is that liberals were not caught in the IRS dragnet.

(There was no "dragnet.")

Progressive groups were not targeted.

(Because nobody was.)

The claim that they had been rested mostly on an unclear, undated, highly redacted...

(I warned you that the black spaces of the redaction were just big enough for crazy people to find space in which to hide.)

...and not at all dispositive few pages from a "historical" BOLO ("be on the lookout") list that apparently wasn't even in use between May 2010 and May 2012, when most of the IRS harassment of conservative groups occurred. The case isn't closed, no matter how many people try to slam it shut.

(Not as long as I have breath in my body and gin in my glass, by god.)

According to a House Ways and Means Committee source, only seven of the 298 cases flagged by the IRS for extra scrutiny appeared to represent progressive causes. Not one of the seven was subject to harassment or abuse. Of the seven, only two were even sent follow-up questionnaires after their applications for tax-exempt status were received. Neither of those two was asked inappropriate or invasive questions. And all seven saw their applications approved.

(Shhh, Congressman Issa. There's still one person in America who believes you!)

Conservative groups were treated differently, sent to a secondary review group after being flagged for scrutiny.

(There were more of them.)

They were subject to undue burdens and harassment-lengthy and invasive questions about donors and even prayer habits.

(If you pray for the president to die, that perhaps is not "social-welfare" work under the existing campaign-finance law.)

There, in the secondary offices, some of them languished for years. "Some of them are still languishing," said the source.

(Actually, it's their files that are languishing. They're out running around, suppressing votes and praying for the president to die.)

Danny Werfel, the acting head of the IRS, who manages at the same time to seem utterly well-meaning and highly evasive, further muddied the waters this week with a report on how the IRS is dealing with the aftermath of the inspector general's audit. The report seemed to exonerate-"we have not found evidence of intentional wrongdoing at this time"-while admitting, further in: "We are digging deeper . . . to determine if there are instances of wrongdoing." Which is it?

Actually, "We haven't found any wrongdoing yet but we're still looking to see if there was any wrongdoing" is pretty much what I want my acting head of an agency struck by dumbassery to say. It's also what I want my homicide detectives to say. The canaries have to be twittering pretty loudly for this to be taken as "highly evasive."

The report claims that part of the problem is that those who were targeted and abused didn't "leverage" the Office of Taxpayer Advocate. But when Sen. John Cornyn contacted the local advocate's office on behalf of the targeted Texas group True the Vote, his letter went unanswered for 11 months, and the eventual reply didn't answer his questions.

Because True The Vote is a voter-suppression scam masquerading as a "social-welfare" outfit and because it was seeking 501 (c) (3) and not (c) (4) status, and, oh, hell, why do I have to go through this every week?

Forget how they'd treat an average citizen-that's how they treat someone who has power.

(Actually, my experience with the Taxpayer Advocate office has been right neighborly. Of course, I haven't been trying to get in on a campaign-finance scam.)

The Werfel report makes no mention of the agency's disclosure of confidential tax information-the leaking of the confidential tax and donor information of the National Organization for Marriage to the liberal Human Rights Campaign, and the leaking of the applications of conservative groups to a liberal news outfit.

(Because those matters were dealtwith weeks ago.)

More than 10 pages of the 53-page report are devoted to explaining how important the IRS is, and how excellent its workforce, in spite of lower budgets.

(My god. Nearly 20 percent of the report! Unpossible!)

There will be "negative repercussions" in future years, it darkly warns, "if our funding is inadequate."

(Yes, this is undeniable. Oversight costs money.)

That would have been a good place to mention the bonuses the IRS has been giving itself-almost a quarter-billion dollars the past few years.

(The IRS does not "give itself" bonuses. It is not an entity. It is several thousand people in an agency. Please state your point more clearly before ordering up another.)

But no word of that. There is a muted mention of IRS boondoggles-the conferences, the suites, the "Star Trek" and "Gilligan's Island" parody videos: There were "management lapses" that led to "wasteful spending." "Many of these failures reflected a lack of judgment that, unfortunately, was not uncommon across the Federal Government in the years leading up to 2010." Ah, that explains it.

(It also explains billions of dollars disappearing off the tarmac in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the blowing of Valerie Plame's cover, the political defenestration of United States Attorneys, and the complete looting and utter destruction of the country economy by an unregulated financial-services energy, so what was your point again?)

The report is written in a way that is beyond bureaucratic.

This column is written in a way that is beyond frantic.

The report's weaknesses were played out in person during Thursday's Ways and Means questioning of Mr. Werfel. Chairman Dave Camp said the report fails to address central issues. "Where is the internal oversight?" Under questioning, Mr. Werfel admitted he had not interviewed his predecessors, who led the IRS in the scandal years, nor exemptions unit chief Lois Lerner.

Did Ms. Lerner attempt to cover up the targeting? "I don't know the answer. . . . There's no evidence on the record." Who was the person responsible for the Cincinnati office's targeting of tea-party groups? "We are looking into the facts and circumstances that arose."

Who in Washington told IRS workers to hold up the applications? "I don't know the answer to that question."

How do you know the circumstances within the tax-exempt unit aren't more widespread within the IRS?

"I've asked them to look for evidence of problems." He did, however, agree that it appears tea-party groups were sent on for extra scrutiny. "We did not find evidence . . . we found no indication . . . that progressives was a term" used to alert screeners.

So there's that.

Who initiated the targeting of donors to apply gift taxes to their donations? This is "subject to further investigation." Who leaked the donor lists? "I do not have that information" Who at the IRS was involved in covering up the patterns of abuse? That's being investigated, too. In fairness to Mr. Werfel, there are a lot of people he can't talk to because they are talking to investigators. But if that's the case, he can't declare there's no evidence of intentional wrongdoing by individuals at the IRS. How would he know?

When he says he's trying to find this stuff out, the canaries twitter to you that he's being "highly evasive" and you quote them in your newspaper column. The man can't win. The canaries win. The canaries always win.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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