Scowling face of the state

By George F. Will,June 12, 2013

As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into his campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman. Salvi studied for the bar exam during meals at campaign dinners.

He lost his campaign. Today, however, he should be invited to Congress to testify about what happened 10 years later, when he was a prosperous lawyer and won the Republican Senate nomination to run against a Democratic congressman named Dick Durbin.

In the fall of 1996, at the campaign’s climax, Democrats filed with the Federal Election Commission charges against Salvi’s campaign alleging campaign finance violations. These charges dominated the campaign’s closing days. Salvi spoke by telephone with the head of the FEC’s Enforcement Division, who he remembers saying: “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.” He was speaking to Lois Lerner.

After losing to Durbin, Salvi spent four years and $100,000 fighting the FEC, on whose behalf FBI agents visited his elderly mother demanding to know, concerning her $2,000 contribution to her son’s campaign, where she got “that kind of money.” When the second of two federal courts held that the charges against Salvi were spurious, the lawyer arguing for the FEC was Lois Lerner.

More recently, she has been head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, which has used its powers of delay, harassment and extortion to suppress political participation. For example, it has told an Iowa right-to-life group that it would get tax-exempt status if it would promise not to picket Planned Parenthood clinics.

Last week, in a televised House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), Salvi’s former law partner, told the riveting story of the partisan enforcement of campaign laws to suppress political competition by distracting Salvi and entangling him in bureaucratic snares. The next day, the number of inches of newsprint in The Post and the New York Times devoted to Roskam’s revelation was the number of minutes that had been devoted to it on the three broadcast networks’ evening news programs the night before: Zero.

House Republicans should use their committee chairmanships to let Lerner exercise her right to confront Salvi and her many other accusers. If she were invited back to Congress to respond concerning Salvi, would she again refuse to testify by invoking her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination? There is one way to find out.

Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, defeated Salvi by 15 points. He probably would have won without the assistance of Lerner and the campaign “reforms” that have produced the FEC’s mare’s-nest of regulations and speech police that lend themselves to abuses like those Salvi experienced. In 2010, Durbin, who will seek a fourth term next year, wrote a letter urging Lerner’s IRS division to pay special attention to a political advocacy group supporting conservatives.

Lerner, it is prudent to assume, is one among thousands like her who infest the regulatory state. She is not just a bureaucratic bully and a slithering partisan. Now she also is a national security problem because she is contributing to a comprehensive distrust of government.

The case for the National Security Agency’s gathering of metadata is: America is threatened not by a nation but by a network, dispersed and largely invisible until made visible by connecting dots. The network cannot help but leave, as we all do daily, a digital trail of cellphone, credit card and Internet uses. The dots are in such data; algorithms connect them. The technological gathering of 300 billion bits of data is less menacing than the gathering of 300 by bureaucrats. Mass gatherings by the executive branch twice receive judicial scrutiny, once concerning phone and Internet usages, another concerning the content of messages.

The case against the NSA is: Lois Lerner and others of her ilk.

Government requires trust. Government by progressives, however, demands such inordinate amounts of trust that the demand itself should provoke distrust. Progressivism can be distilled into two words: “Trust us.” The antecedent of the pronoun is: The wise, disinterested experts through whom the vast powers of the regulatory state’s executive branch will deliver progress for our own good, as the executive branch understands this, whether we understand it or not. Lois Lerner is the scowling face of this state, which has earned Americans’ distrust.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.

Old USCG RD2 wrote:

6/13/2013 6:47 AM EDT

Let’s see,

Clinton State Department Criminal Cover ups

CBS News: Cover-Ups Range From Prostitution Charges To Drug Rings

State Department memo reveals possible cover-ups, halted investigations

(No need to make Hillary look bad before the 2014/16 elections)

Benghazi

US Consulate is stormed by terrorists

Obama/Clinton refuse aid—tell US forces to stand down

US Ambassador and three others killed.

Obama/Clinton/Rice – all lie

----Liberal press yawns/claims it was a video

Fast and Furious

Obama and Holder send guns to Mexico to help frame their gun-grab policies.

Americans and Mexicans are killed.

Obama/Holder lie. Holder is held in contempt of Congress

----Liberal press yawns, says nothing happened

Fort Hood

Terrorist attacks US troops

Obama calls is workplace violence—not terrorism

----Liberal press yawns.

IRS Gate

Obama uses IRS to stifle & intimidate political opponents prior to election.

Violation of free speech & possibly election laws

----Liberal press cheers

Attacks on religious freedom

Obama/Sebelius scraps conscience clause

President can say when your religion is relevant

Talks about right to worship, not freedom of religion.

----Liberal press cheers, think Obama is so clever.

The DOJ taps AP phone lines.

Obama claims he’s a 'firm believer' in press freedom

----WaPo says: “The Justice Department’s actions are likely perfectly legal.”

Fox News Gate

Phones & emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen (and others) tapped & monitored.

Order signed by Holder—after judge shopping to find a colpliant one.

Obama admin. fought to keep Rosen warrant secret

Obama claims he’s a 'firm believer' in press freedom

Obama asks Holder to investigate.

----Liberal press covers for Obama—he couldn’t have known.

Solyndra-Gate,

Obama gives taxpayer guaranteed loans to 20 “green” companies.

Most are run by Obama donors and bundlers.

The companies donate money to Obama and the DNC.

The companies go bankrupt leaving taxpayers with the bill.

----Liberal press ignore the story

Navy Seals LeakGate

Obama leaks classified information to Hollywood movie producers.

Wants propaganda movie prior to the election.

----Liberal press ignore the story

Occupy/ACORN/SEIU-Gate

Occupy movement started by ACORN & SEIU

Obama used Occupy violence to derail Tea Party arguments.

Claim violent Occupy protesters are nonviolent and nonviolent TEA party people are violent.

----Liberal press ignore the story

Sure, we can trust these guys, sure!