Government Abuse Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Republicans went bonkers over the IRS supposedly targeting conservative advocacy groups for extra scrutiny on tax-exempt status.  The fact that liberal groups were also included didn't register on the Republican radar, of course.  But when it comes to using the power of the government to harass people based on partisan politics, Republicans have no problem when it comes to doing the harassing.

Fifteen Republican members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, including Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), are requesting detailed responses and thousands of pages of documents from approximately 60 percent of Navigator-recipients across the country by Sep. 13.

The tactic is reminiscent of the kind of practices Republicans had condemned over the summer, after news broke that the IRS subjected certain groups applying for 501 C4 nonprofit tax status to long, intrusive, questionnaires about their filings. Upton personally called such tactics a “thuggish abuse of power” and “simply un-American.”

But according to the GOP-backed letter, groups scrambling to begin enrolling individuals in coverage on Oct. 1, will have just two weeks to provide detailed written descriptions of their employees and activities, interactions with the Department of Health and Human Services, and “all documentation and communication related to your grant.”

Which of course is far more pervasive than what the IRS was asking for, and then, groups had months to get this information in to the IRS.  Obamacare Navigators?  They have two weeks to turn over everything related to the Navigator grant, personal info, communications, everything.

Now, I wonder why the same lawmakers who screamed that the federal government had no business prying into the information of citizens are suddenly okay with this.  Maybe it's because they're a bunch of hypocritical jackasses?

But freedom, right?