Watergate, redux?

Granted, I surely don't have all the answers--nor does anyone--yet.  The investigation is ongoing and, likely, just beginning.  I'm talking of the IRS scandal, which seems to be growing by the day.

Like Benghazi, the IRS is being covered up with lies, blatant lies.  (Benghazi, remember, was due to some unknown video on You Tube--well, that's what the Obama administration, including the President and Secretary of State, affirmed.  Other stooges were also sent out to peddle the lie, which is what it was.)  The IRS scandal was originally dismissed by the Obama-ites and their friends in the media as some rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati.  That, too, is a blatant lie as the mounting evidence is demonstrating.  Some of the Tea Party and conservative groups that were targeted received letters sent, not from Cincinnati, but other places such as Baltimore, not exactly a suburb of Cincinnati.  Testimony in Congress indicates that orders came from above.  In fact, it appears that, at least, the chief White House counsel was involved.  But, we'll see.

Ultimately, to me, the question harkens back to Watergate: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"  (That always seemed like two questions to me, but I suppose I quibble.)  Nixon was never proven to be initially involved in l'Affaire Watergate.  But, by the end, he was chin deep in it.

Nixon received everything he deserved, at least in my view.  I was one who was disappointed in President Ford's pardon.  But I admit now that I think Ford was wiser then than many/most of us were.  And, he paid the price for doing what was right, in large part costing him the election to Jimmy Carter.  How does one lose to Jimmy Carter?  We owe Gerald Ford and I hope history is kinder to him than voters were in '76.

But I think there's a substantive difference between Watergate and the IRS scandal.  Watergate involved a break-in (and subsequent dirty tricks) by Republican Party operatives against Democrats.  I'm not excusing any of this; it was reprehensible and, as I noted above, Nixon deserved what he got.  The IRS mess is much more troubling.

The IRS isn't an arm of a political party, but a part of the federal government.  It wasn't targeting another/an opposing political party, but American citizens.  I think there's a fundamental difference, using a political party for dirty tricks (Nixon involved in the cover-up) vs an already feared arm of the federal government to silence US citizen groups with views in opposition to the party in power.  The federal government was targeting Americans for their political views.

And, there's some preliminary word that the FBI had/has started its own investigation of the IRS.  I wonder if Congress can be trusted in its investigation.  Surely the media can't be trusted.

"First they came after the socialists, but I wasn't a socialist, so I said nothing......"

Stay tuned......