TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 118.

AS GOES NOKIA, SO GOES FINLAND? Plus: “It’s hard to imagine now that the first article for which I was paid money was a piece on the antitrust suits that were supposed to keep Microsoft from taking over the world. Ten years later, it has lost out on search, and again on mobile. The most prominent portent for the company’s future is that it’s coming out with an awesome game console this holiday season.”

BILL GERTZ: Misfire: Joint Chiefs Chairman Criticizes Leak of Syria Military Plans, Delay in Syria Strikes as Forces Moved.

UPDATE: Rand Paul’s Syria Amendment Throws Obama’s Words Back In His Face. “The amendment quotes from a response Obama gave The Boston Globe back in 2007 as a Senator, in which Obama said that ‘the President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.'”

IT’S AS IF THEY LACK FAITH IN “SMART DIPLOMACY” AND “SMART POWER” FROM THE UNITED STATES: Japan Plans to Arm Itself to the Teeth as Neighborhood Gets Scarier.

The top dangers facing Japan these days are an increasingly belligerent North Korea and an aggressive China. Japan’s military plans to enhance surveillance and maintain a marine defense force that can be deployed to defend or retake far-flung islands. Japan already has the fifth-largest defense budget in the world, as Time reports, and its navy “bristles with modern submarines and surface warships, with highly trained crews.”

Still, is the increase enough to balance China? Several analysts who spoke to Time said it isn’t. China spent three times as much as Japan on defense in 2012. Japan has also signaled a need to partner with its neighbors in South and Southeast Asia to combat China’s “bullying.” Indeed, the increase in defense spending isn’t likely to add much to Japan’s military capabilities. Much of the increase will go to paying salaries that were cut after the tsunami, and it’s not clear the rest will bring in new attack helicopters or surveillance equipment anytime soon.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that Shinzo Abe’s hawkish government intends to stand up to Japan’s aggressive neighbors. Meanwhile, many of those neighbors (and even the quieter ones, like India) are themselves pursuing bigger military budgets, more capable navies, and more aggressive defense of disputed territory.

Hey, lots of Americans are stocking up on weaponry, too.

UH, REALLY? Obama on Syria: ‘I didn’t set a red line’ … ‘My credibility is not on the line.’ “That claim directly contradicts Obama’s remarks in August of last year, when he announced his ‘red line’ for action in Syria during a White House press conference.”

Of course, as several wags on Twitter are noting, you can’t “put on the line” what does not exist. . . .

UPDATE: “President Pass-The-Buck.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Obama on the ‘red line’: I didn’t draw that. Somebody else made that happen.

NICK GILLESPIE: College Isn’t Over-Priced, It’s Over-Subsidized.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” BY ITS FRUIT THE TREE IS KNOWN: Special report: We all thought Libya had moved on – it has, but into lawlessness and ruin.

COMING TO CONGRESS: The IRS Abuse Protection Act. “Senator Lamar Alexander and Representative Stephen Fincher will introduce the IRS Abuse Protection Act, which requires that the secretary of the U.S. treasury notify taxpayers in writing each time the IRS accesses their tax accounts, tax returns, or other information. The notice must include who accessed the information, the reason for doing so, and the method of access. In addition, taxpayers will receive a copy of the accessed information and any report issued on how it was used. . . . The IRS has been under investigation by the House Oversight Committee after reports that the agency singled out conservative and tea-party groups requesting tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny.”

The legislation should also waive official immunity on the part of any IRS employee violating it, making them subject to civil suit, with statutory damages starting at $50,000 per occurrence.

JAMES TARANTO: Obama’s Cakewalk: The Syria debacle and the lessons of Iraq.

The appeal of Barack Obama in 2008 lay not only in his status as the only serious Democratic candidate to have opposed the war from the outset, but also in the belief that his conciliatory rhetoric, along with his “multicultural” identity (black, with Muslim ancestors and an Arabic middle name to boot!) would “restore our moral standing,” as the future president put it in his nomination speech, and usher in “a new beginning,” as he announced in Cairo in June 2009.

Obama’s supporters would now have us believe that his swaggering words are as powerful as his soothing ones were supposed to have been. . . .

This is an example of magical thinking that is not wishful. It would indeed be a big tactical mistake for Assad either to attack U.S. forces or again to use chemical weapons while congressional action is pending. But that is because of Obama’s political weakness, not his rhetorical strength. Congressional assent to Obama’s request for military authorization is far from assured; if Assad wants to keep it that way, he will lie low as the debate plays out.

Read the whole thing, including his section on how Obama’s flipflopped. Oh, heck, here’s the best bit:

These past statements indict the president for hypocrisy, but they do not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In his defense one might claim that his moral sensibility has matured over the past six years. Perhaps, that is, he has grown in office–though he has not grown nearly enough by other measures that one can say he is up to the job.

Unless in the next week or so he discovers a heretofore unrealized capacity to move public opinion on substantive matters of policy, the expedient thing for lawmakers of either party to do will be to vote “no” while smugly minimizing the moral stakes by noting that while Assad is of course “a bad guy,” he poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, the Syrian economy is in shambles, there are lots of other mass-murdering dictators and we can’t bomb ’em all, and so forth.

Any opportunistic lawmaker who takes that path will be following the example set by the man who is now president of the United States.

Ouch.

REMEMBERING THE “URBAN AGONY” behind Norman Mailer’s run for mayor. Speaking of urban agony, by the way — if folks on the right were truly Macchiavellian, they’d be joining the critics of stop-and-frisk. The big Blue enclaves are where the crime and racial strife mostly are; letting those get worse would probably benefit folks on the right. Luckily for the hipsters, righties are too principled for that sort of “heightening the contradictions” thing.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Could Amazon and Jeff Bezos Make the Washington Post Profitable?

AUSTIN BAY: Obama’s Smart Diplomacy: Keystone Kops, Emily Litella and Kabuki. “Obama promised to restore America’s international reputation. Has he?” Hey, he’s trying his best.

DON’T BE CRITICIZING PRESIDENT OBAMA: “He’s trying his best.” This from his defenders.

ROLL CALL: Senate’s Syria Resolution Sets Time Limits, Won’t Authorize Ground Troops.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Outrage Is Not A Strategy:

Importantly, by saying we have “proof” of war crimes committed by Assad, we are saying we have proof that Assad is a war criminal. Assad knows the likely scenarios from here:

1) Fight to stay in power and prevail.
2) Fight and lose, and be killed on the streets like Gaddafi, hanged like Saddam, or life in prison.

President Obama has ipso facto called President Assad a war criminal. Assad does not need a powerful calculator to figure his odds if he fails to maintain power.

I wonder if our smart power folks thought this through.

LAW-SCHOOL GRADUATES READY TO GO STRAIGHT INTO PRACTICE? “Millenialist fantasy.”

COLBERT KING: Obama’s Pathetic Syria Strategy. “He is only seeking buy-in from Capitol Hill because of public pressure to do so, not because he reached that conclusion on his own, either in anticipation of a serious Assad regime challenge or as part of a larger administration strategy for dealing with Syria and its enablers in the region. Obama’s decision was wholly reactive. That’s not reassuring behavior from a superpower’s commander in chief.”

ACCOUNTING TODAY: IRS Pressed to Explain Audits of Veterans’ Organizations. Somebody wants a database of organized veterans?

ED DRISCOLL: Neville Again: With This, I Give You Deja Vu In Our Time.

JUDGING NUDGING: My question is, why don’t we find better ways to “nudge” politicians to leave us alone?

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Debbie Wasserman Schultz says ‘dozens’ of countries stand with US on Syria, can’t name them.

THE HILL: Boehner backs Obama on Syria, but House leaning toward ‘no.’ I see a lot of Republicans angry at Boehner and Cantor for siding with Obama on this, but it seems to me to be a way of defusing any blame-the-GOP spin if the vote fails. “We tried, Obama just couldn’t close the deal” seems pretty good here, especially as Syria strikes are polling dreadfully and there’s plenty of visible Democratic opposition, too.

Related: Rice: White House has ‘no expectation’ of losing Syria vote. Yeah, they didn’t expect the “red line” to be crossed, either. . . .

Also: Hillary Clinton Throws Weight Behind Syria Strikes. Well, when “smart diplomacy” fails, can smart bombs be far behind?

The difference is, the bombs are actually smart . . . .

HISTORIC IRONY: John Kerry won’t completely rule out use of U.S. ground troops in Syria.

OUCH: “Throughout the Arab Spring, Obama has clearly been playing checkers while everyone in the region plays three-dimensional chess, and that may be the biggest confidence-sapper among leaders in the region. A few missile strikes won’t solve that problem, either.”