TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 49.

PEGGY NOONAN TO THE PRESS: Cover the IRS, Don’t Cover for It.

“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. 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. Progressive groups were not targeted.

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

No, it’s not.

“TRAIN WRECK” WITNESS: Rachel Jeantel made it sound like Travon Martin profiled George Zimmerman… or… what is a “creepy ass cracker”? Somebody ask Paula Deen.

But here’s the key: Obama and the Democrats would actually prefer an acquittal here. That’s because the whole point of the ginned-up Zimmerman affair was to inflame racial sentiment to boost black turnout in 2012. With any luck, they can turn an acquittal into another racial rallying cry, which will help in 2014. It’s not about Zimmerman; he’s just one of those eggs you have to break to make an Obama omelet.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Lux writes: “If their goal is prepping the battlefield then they might get their wish. The mainstream coverage of the trial is so abysmal that I don’t think casual observers realize what a farce this is and how weak the State’s case is (Andrew Branca’s tweeting has been indispensable). If there’s an acquittal, many people will be outraged because they’re so ill-informed.” That’s not by accident.

MATT K. LEWIS: The Case For Polygamy. “This is not some straw man argument. As BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins pointed out, polygamists are, in fact, celebrating the court’s decision. And they have every reason to do so. After all, why shouldn’t marriage equality apply to them, too? . . . What’s magical about the number two? . . . As a man, I can only imagine how much more efficient it would be to have one wife in the workforce and another wife at home with the kids. This would be much better for the children than shipping them off to some nursery school. And having three parents is a lot better than having just one … or none.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON the Supreme Court’s work this week.

It’s worth taking a step back from the emotions and technical details of all of these events to ask about the broader trend they point to. Superficially, they point to a schizophrenic public: leaning pro-life; increasingly in favor of gay marriage; divided on gun control but unwilling to pull the trigger, so to speak, on significantly tightened gun laws. But on a deeper level, these all look like examples of the biggest cultural-political trend in America: a response to the growing complexity of 21st century life that revives individualism and states’ rights.

Individualism sometimes work for the Right and sometimes for the Left. The right to marry who you choose is as individualistic as insisting on your right to bear arms. With abortion, that same logic is muddier, which is why the public is still divided. Pro-choicers lay claim to the individualism mantle by stating that women should be free to control their own reproductive health, while pro-lifers do the same by arguing that abortion involves two individuals with rights, not one.

Similarly, when it comes to classical federalism, the Supreme Court’s decisions on the gay marriage cases are both deferential to the states involved. Again, states’ rights is sometimes a liberal and sometimes a conservative cause. The DOMA case said that the national government can’t deny federal benefits to the marriages recognized by the states. But the Voting Rights Act decision, for good or for ill, is an attempt to give back to the nine states in question some powers lost in the Civil Rights Era. Two wins for states’ rights; one each for the Left and the Right.

The federal government is reaching for broad new powers. President Obama wants the EPA to assert the power to regulate (or at least to force all the states to regulate) emissions of carbon dioxide. Obamacare similarly involves some major new federal interventions in the lives of millions of Americans. And it appears that under President Obama federal surveillance of Americans has surpassed anything that transpired under President Bush.

But here, too, the Supreme Court and public opinion are demanding the return of more powers to individuals and states.

Read the whole thing.

NOTE THAT HE DIDN’T RULE OUT DRONE STRIKES: Obama: I’m not “scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.”

SO MUCH FOR THE SPIN: IRS auditor reaffirms that conservatives, not liberals, were targeted.

“TIGTA concluded that inappropriate criteria were used to identify potential political cases for extra scrutiny — specifically, the criteria listed in our audit report. From our audit work, we did not find evidence that the criteria you identified, labeled “Progressives,” were used by the IRS to select potential political cases during the 2010 to 2012 timeframe we audited,” Inspector General J. Russell George said.

He said that while 30 percent of groups that had the word “progressive” in their name were given extra scrutiny, 100 percent of groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names were pulled out for strict scrutiny, which involved what the IRS since has said were invasive and inappropriate questions.

Democrats have argued that the IRS‘ scrutiny of applications for tax-exempt status hit both ideological sides equally, which would cut at the GOP’s argument that it was politically motivated. Instead, Democrats have said the scrutiny is the natural result of a jump in applications after campaign finance rules changed following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case.

But Mr. George’s letter suggests that’s not the case.

Another excuse bites the dust. Related: Treasury: IRS targeted 292 Tea Party groups, just 6 progressive groups.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Britain Banning U.S. Bloggers On The Basis of Ideology.

SCOTT JOHNSON: UNDERSTANDING THE IRS SCANDAL.

DEALS GALORE at the Amazon Fourth Of July Sale.

Also, today only: Zwilling J.A. Henckels Twin Cuisine 8-Inch Chef’s Knife, $57.99 (65% off). I have that knife. It’s great.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Solar Flare poses huge threat.

SHE MUST HAVE INHALED: Author Terry McMillan takes heat for tasteless tweets about Mexicans, quickly backpedals.

ED MORRISSEY: Incompetence and Abuse Call for a Clean Sweep of the IRS. “The IRS has never been popular with Americans. Tax collectors have been unpopular since the time of Jesus, after all, and their public relations haven’t improved much in the succeeding two millennia. Lately, though, the reputation of America’s tax collectors has hit bottom. It started with a ham-handed attempt to defuse the results of an Inspector General audit that showed the tax-exempt unit had singled out conservative groups for heightened scrutiny, and arguably harassment.”

WHEN DEMONIZATION WORKS: 26% of Obama Supporters View Tea Party as Nation’s Top Terror Threat.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Think NSA Spying Is Bad? Here Comes The ObamaCare Hub.

Not to worry, says the Obama administration. “The hub will not store consumer information, but will securely transmit data between state and federal systems to verify consumer application information,” it claimed in an online fact sheet .

But a regulatory notice filed by the administration in February tells a different story.

That filing describes a new “system of records” that will store names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, taxpayer status, gender, ethnicity, email addresses, telephone numbers on the millions of people expected to apply for coverage at the ObamaCare exchanges, as well as “tax return information from the IRS, income information from the Social Security Administration, and financial information from other third-party sources.”

They will also store data from businesses buying coverage through an exchange, including a “list of qualified employees and their tax ID numbers,” and keep it all on file for 10 years.

In addition, the filing says the federal government can disclose this information “without the consent of the individual” to a wide range of people, including “agency contractors, consultants, or grantees” who “need to have access to the records” to help run ObamaCare, as well as law enforcement officials to “investigate potential fraud.”

And it absolutely, positively will be abused politically.

POLITICO: Democrats Who Backed DOMA Now Laud Its End.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act “a great, historic day for equality in America.”

He went on: “The idea that allowing two loving, committed people to marry would have a negative impact on anyone else, or on our nation as a whole, has always struck me as absurd.”

Pretty strong words from a guy who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. . . .

Even Bill Clinton — who signed the bill into law — heralded the court’s decision.

“By overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, the Court recognized that discrimination towards any group holds us all back in our efforts to form a more perfect union,” Clinton said in a statement also signed by Hillary Clinton.

Virtually all of the Democrats say, “move on, nothing to see here” — they dropped their support for DOMA years ago. But the Supreme Court ruling allowed them to blast their words of praise to the world without a hint of regret over DOMA — or even an acknowledgment that they had any role in making it the law of the land.

Like Sen. Chuck Schumer, who declared that “the Supreme Court did the right thing here and helps us understand that the march to equality in America is unstoppable.” He voted for DOMA as a House member in 1996.

So did Sen. Dick Durbin, who said the ruling “reaffirmed a founding principle of our nation: equal justice under the law.”

And what about Patrick Leahy, who was ready to put the immigration bill at risk over an amendment to let same-sex couples sponsor immigrant spouses to get their green cards — and who declared that the ruling “confirms my belief that the Constitution protects the rights of all Americans”?

He voted for DOMA in the Senate, too.

They’ve got plenty of company in the club. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer cheered on the Supreme Court even though he voted for DOMA. So did Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who’s rarely, if ever, accused of being a moderate Democrat. And so did Sens. Ben Cardin and Robert Menendez, both of whom were in the House when they voted for the law.

It was opportunism then, and it’s opportunism now. Both times wrapped in self-righteous moralism, as opportunism in Washington generally is.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: ABA Proposal to Tighten Bar Passage Requirement Alarms Law School Diversity Advocates.

THE HILL: Obama orders sweeping Cabinet review of federal marriage regulations.

WAR ON MEN: Biological Father Loses Custody Battle To Adoptive Parents. “The court said the father could not rely on the Indian Child Welfare Act for relief because he never had legal or physical custody at the time of adoption proceedings, which were initiated by the birth mother without his knowledge. . . . The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled last year for the biological father, Dusten Brown, who had sought custody after Veronica’s birth. He is a registered member of the Cherokee Nation and is raising the child in Oklahoma.”

The issue is complicated by federal Indian law, but the fact that a mother can unilaterally adopt out a child without the father’s consent, even when the father wants custody, is evidence that when people talk about reproductive rights, they’re really talking about women’s reproductive rights.

UPDATE: Reader Bart Hall writes: “Glenn, as an adoptive father I must disagree. The bio-father texted a relinquishment. Sloppy, but not ‘war on men’. We hired four separate attorneys: for ourselves, the birth-mother, the birth-father, and the baby herself. It cost a bit more, but all the paperwork was perfect, and the judge loved it. Nevertheless, the birth-father did not give a rat’s rump about that kid, either during the pregnancy or for a couple of years afterwards. To pull a child out of a loving home on the basis of 1% Indian blood (I have more than that myself) when the child never had anything to do with any tribe or reservation would have been pure power politics and entirely abusive. That poor kid has been through enough bullshit already. This had nothing to do with ‘war on men’ — the birth father was nothing more than a sperm donor.”

Would we accept a text-relinquishment from a mother? But a fair point. Note however, that a father who is “nothing more than a sperm donor” can still be on the hook for 18 years of child support.

EVERYTHING EXPLAINED FOR YOU: Terrorists are so smart, we must upend the Constitution to stop them. But they’re so dumb, they just learned we read their emails last week.

RISE OF THE MACHINES: NYC flooded with drones. “Last March, an Alitalia pilot claimed to have seen a three-foot-wide drone buzzing within 200 feet of his Boeing 777 while on approach to JFK Airport. At the time, the FBI reported that the unidentified device had been flying 1,750 feet over a densely populated neighborhood and could have caused a calamitous midair collision. The operator was never located.”

CHANGE: As IRS Chief Heads to Capitol Hill, GOP Rep. Introduces ‘Taxpayer Bill of Rights’.

“The IRS is in full spin mode,” Representative Peter Roskam tells National Review Online. The Illinois congressman says Werfel’s recent revelations are merely an attempt to “take the attention away” from the targeting scandal and to “muddy the issue.” “This was all about political philosophy,” he insists, “and it has to stop.” . . . In addition to grilling Werfel on Thursday, Roskam will also introduce a package of four bills that together he is calling the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. It is intended to address the slew of scandals roiling the IRS, from the targeting of conservative groups to the lavish spending on employee conferences. The four laws would, among other things, require the IRS to notify taxpayers every time their information is shared, prohibit the agency from asking citizens questions about their political, religious, or social beliefs, and forbid the IRS from holding conferences until it implements the corrective measures made by the inspector general in mid-May.

Strip them of official immunity while you’re at it.

FROM F.I.R.E.: Senator McCain Demands Answers from DOJ over Campus Censorship “Blueprint.”

CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS: How to Get More Women (and Men) to Call Themselves Feminists: Focus on injustice, poverty, and women in parts of the world beyond the United States.

Nonsense. Employer-paid manicures in the United States are more important than clitoridectomies in Egypt.

A CALL FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION in response to the DOMA decision.

Well, if they do call one, I’ve got some ideas.