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David French in National Review posts on our Egypt policy.

… For those keeping score at home, the Obama Administration waives human rights requirements when the Muslim Brotherhood is in power but then threatens to impose those very same waived requirements when the military — our decades-long ally within Egypt — threatens to assert control.

I erred in the title of my post by calling the policy “chaos.” It’s not chaos. It makes perfect sense in context with Administration actions from the Green Revolution to the “Arab Spring.” Allies are thrown under the bus with alacrity, enemies are wooed with money and weapons — and through it all, radicals prosper and Christians die.

Good thing for Egypt, John Kerry is trying to solve the Palestinian crisis. And failing, of course. Jonathan Tobin has the story.

Egypt is coming apart at the seams. The Syrian civil war has taken the lives of over 100,000 people and the Assad regime—which President Obama has demanded give up power—appears to be winning with the help of Russian and Iranian arms and Hezbollah ground forces. Iran has vowed to continue enriching uranium, as it gets closer to amassing enough to build a nuclear weapon. And the Putin government in Russia continues to thumb its nose at the United States by refusing—as did China—to hand over NSA leaker/spy Edward Snowden.

With all that on its plate, you’d think America’s foreign policy chief would be up to his neck dealing with these crises. But in case you hadn’t heard, Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t paying much attention to any of that in the last few days. Instead, Kerry was shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah like a low-level functionary attempting to craft an agreement that would finally bring the Palestinians back to the Middle East peace talks they’ve been boycotting for four and a half years. But at the end of his fifth such effort since taking office in February, Kerry left the region empty-handed again having failed to convince the Palestinians to talk while claiming that he is getting closer to success. He says just a little more effort will put him over the top, so expect him to be back again in the near future hoping to finally achieve his long-sought photo opportunity–though there is little reason to believe such an event would actually bring the conflict closer to resolution.

We’re supposed to think Kerry’s devotion to Middle East peace is admirable, but the more one looks at the situation, it’s clear the secretary is doing more harm than good. …

Josh Kraushaar posts on the incompetence. 

President Obama returned last night from a weeklong trip to Africa, seeking to position himself as part of ailing Nelson Mandela’s legacy and generating strategic photo-ops. On the other side of the continent, Egypt is awash in revolution, with hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square railing against the American-backed president, with some chanting slogans against the American passivity in the face of crisis. The Washington Post editorialized Tuesday: “For months, as the Morsi government has taken steps to consolidate power, quash critics and marginalize independent civil society groups, President Obama and his top aides have been largely silent in public. No effort was made to use the leverage of U.S. aid to compel a change of policy.”

While the president was in Africa, Secretary of State John Kerry spent time in Israel, using valuable political capital trying to jump-start peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, at a time when few serious foreign policy analysts believe it has any chance of success—beyond garnering favorable press for trying. (The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg calls Kerry’s a “delusion of the foreign policy elite” in his column today.) This, while the administration appears utterly feckless in neighboring Syria, where civil war worsens, chemical weapons-wielding dictator Bashar al-Assad strengthens his hold on power, and American influence dwindles. “The military situation in Syria is slipping away as the president ponders,” Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl wrote last week.

And on the domestic front, Obama was comfortably traveling on Air Force One when a Treasury Department functionary announced late Tuesday it would be delaying the mandate that businesses provide health care for their employee—a crucial component in the health care law that is shaping up as the president’s main legacy. Rather than give a speech explaining the delay, and informing the public about how this could affect their health care options, the administration dropped the bombshell news right before the July Fourth holiday weekend.

The administration is facing a crisis of competence. …

Boston Herald on yet another unintended consequence of the nanny state – student debt is flunking many first time home buyers.

They’re not yet an endangered species, but their steadily diminishing presence has some real estate analysts worried: First-time buyers are missing in action in housing markets across the country.

Traditionally first-timers have accounted for around 40 percent of purchases in the resale market. But in May, according to the National Association of Realtors, they were just 28 percent, down from 29 percent in April and 34 percent a year ago.

Big deal? Yes. If predominantly young, first-time purchasers are not entering the home ownership pipeline at anywhere near their traditional rate, at some point the system begins to choke. Owners of modest-priced starter homes find it more difficult to sell and move up. They in turn can’t buy the larger homes they crave, reducing demand for houses in the more expensive categories. A shortage of first-time buyers at the intake level eventually triggers problems all the way up.

Where are these previously dependable first-time homebuyers in their late 20s and early 30s? A new national study released last week offers important clues: A lot of them are carrying such heavy debts from student loans that they’re postponing buying houses.

Researchers for the One Wisconsin Institute found that the rate of homeownership among individuals who are paying off student loans is 36 percent lower than their peers who have no student debt. The disparity can be seen at all income levels. Among individuals who earn $50,000 to $75,000 a year, those who are still paying down student loans have a 28 percent lower rate of home ownership compared with others in the same income group. …

Andy Malcolm has late night humor.

Leno: In the middle of all his scandals, President Obama got some good news. The IRS has ruled that he can write off the first half of his second term as a total loss.

Conan: From overseas Obama calls the two lesbians whose court case helped legalize California’s gay marriage. But it got awkward at first because the women had to put Bill Clinton on hold.

Live Science tells us how fireworks work. 

About halfway between the comparatively sedate Memorial Day and Labor Day holidays, you can’t miss the pyrotechnical gloriousness that is Fourth of July. Come nightfall, thousands of fireworks displays will boom brightly across the country, celebrating America’s birthday.

So how do these festive fireworks work? A firework, essentially, is a casing filled with explosives and combustible, colorful pellets called stars. These stars are the individual “dots” that glow in the sky. The most common type of firework, and the ones you’ll likely see this year wherever you watch a civic firework event, is called an aerial shell.  

“The aerial shell is the standard one people use … it’s the mainstay on everything for professional displays,” said Paul Nicholas Worsey, a professor of mining and nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri at Rolla and an expert in fireworks who teaches college courses on the subject. [Boom! 10 Fiery Facts About Fireworks] …

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In the Daily Beast, Lloyd Green says this president’s agenda will leave behind a strong government and a weak country.

In Barack Obama, America elected a chief executive whose Department of Justice has repeatedly targeted the press, whose Internal Revenue Service has gone gunning for conservatives, and whose government has elevated secrecy into a cardinal virtue. The Obama administration’s data grab is not just about national security, or Edward Snowden. It is also an epilogue befitting a candidate who delivered his 2008 convention acceptance speech in front of a temple façade dedicated to himself, and whose faith in government and the state is at the center of his presidency.

Under the Obama Rules, the unauthorized dissemination of non-classified government information is now “tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States.” Think Nixonism without the sweaty five o’clock shadow; Cheneyism without the dyspepsia, armed with a jump shot instead of a shotgun.

Forget Obama’s paeans to civil liberties. The Age of Obama is a celebration of ever-growing and ever-more intrusive government, with mandated healthcare, crony capitalism, and First Family daytime and late-night television appearances as the modern iterations of bread and circuses.

On Tuesday, Obama environmental adviser Daniel Schrag announced to the world that “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed,” only hours before the president rolled out his environmental regulatory scheme that would have the EPA issue more regulations, while constraining development of the Keystone XL Pipeline — jobs be damned. Talk about timing! Just a day later, first quarter GDP growth was revised downward to 1.8 percent.

Having previously been rebuffed by Congress over a carbon tax, the President didn’t propose anything to Congress this time. He simply announced what his executive branch would do unilaterally. …

Jennifer Rubin says Putin has slapped down the prez once again.

… Obama has an uncanny knack of simultaneously demonstrating a lack of spine and a lack of tact. In this case, that knack has proved doubly embarrassing. It is in this light that we should evaluate his recent pledge to cut our nuclear arsenal in hopes that Russia will follow suit. It was daft when he said it and it’s more so now that we see vividly how Putin operates.

In the future, it may be good for a president to avoid going on bended knee to the Russian autocrats to bail the United States of a geopolitical loss (as Obama did on Syria), entering into arms agreements the Russians have no intention of abiding by, slashing our armed forces and promising to cut unilaterally our nuclear arsenal. Russian leaders tend to regard such behavior as unserious or downright foolish, which is precisely how Putin now sees Obama.

Peggy Noonan will not let go of the IRS scandal. 

‘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.

On Wednesday Russell George, the Treasury inspector general whose original audit broke open the scandal, answered Rep. Sander Levin‘s charge that the audit had ignored the targeting of progressives. In a letter released Thursday, Mr. George couldn’t have been clearer: The evidence showed conservative groups were singled out for abuse by the IRS, not liberal groups. While some liberal groups might have wound up on a BOLO list, the IRS did not target them. “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.” One hundred percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot” or “9/12″ in their names were given extra scrutiny. “While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria . . . including employee interviews, e-mails, and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention.” …

More from AllahPundit at Hot Air.

Righties on Twitter are citing this as proof that, contra desperate liberal claims, the scandal’s not over yet. Isn’t the real significance of this that it makes the scandal worse? Three days ago, the IRS’s new acting director hinted that the agency had been targeting progressives too, a claim supposedly confirmed by the IRS’s latest report to Congress. Lefties naturally took that to be a smoking gun that there was never any political bias. Now here comes IG Russell George to say that, according to his audit, it’s all basically a lie:

‘ “Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’ identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012,” George wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.

The inspector general also stressed that 100 percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12” in their name were flagged for extra attention. ‘

Rick Manning at Politico posts that timelines of the IRS scandal point to White House culpability.

… This leads a reasonable person to conclude that either the orders from the White House demanding that the targeting be discontinued were never issued, or the orders were ignored by those in charge of the IRS operation in spite of the extensive public scrutiny.

Neither conclusion is good. 

One indicates that the White House’s concern was merely about political backlash and not about the activity itself.  This wink-and-nod approach to the IRS abuse scandal gives them ownership of it, something that would not be surprising given the public calls for this exact political targeting in 2010 by Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.) and other Democrats.

If no one at the White House demanded that the action stop, in spite of admitted knowledge about the scandal by the White House chief of staff, it shows either a stunning complicity or an equally stunning incompetence.   

The other possible, but much less likely scenario, paints a picture of an out-of-control bureaucracy immune from a White House demand that it stop illegal activity and unwilling to bend to public outrage over its actions. …

Tory Aardvark writes on another unintended consequence of the liberal push against oil. It is the story of the 14,000 abandoned wind turbines in the U. S.

There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the pollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird choppers, the blight on people’s lives of noise and the flicker factor and the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year by these blots on the landscape.

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the  taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or  the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms. …

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Jeff Jacoby starts our look at the Supreme’s voting rights decision. 

Like everything else in our polarized age, reaction to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in ShelbyCounty v. Holder divided sharply along political lines. The court held Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, effectively lifting the burden on certain states to get federal approval before making any change to their election procedures. Predictably, conservatives and liberals clashed over whether the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts got the constitutional law right.

But I was struck less by the legal arguments than by the angry denial on the left, especially among minorities, that the ingrained racial disenfranchisement the Voting Rights Act was enacted to eradicate is dead and buried. The defeat of Jim Crow is one of the great progressive triumphs of American history. But to hear the outraged critics, you’d think the court had just thrown the door open to a revival of poll taxes and literacy tests. Worse, you’d think white Americans were eager to revive them.

It saddened me to hear an emotional John Lewis, who was on the front lines of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s and is now a congressman from Georgia, blast the court for plunging “a dagger” into black political emancipation. “Voting rights have been given in this country and they have been taken away,” he said. The gains made by freed slaves during Reconstruction “were erased in a few short years.” Lewis is sure it could happen again.

Other civil-rights advocates strike the same foreboding tone. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree insists that black voting rights are “being threatened at a level we haven’t witnessed . . . since before the Voting Rights Act was passed.” A spokeswoman for MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, says the court’s ruling “tries to disenfranchise Latinos and minorities from voting.” The NAACP’s Sherrilyn Ifill expresses alarm at a decision that “leaves virtually unprotected minority voters in communities all over this country.”

I realize that part of this is posturing for effect by those with a vested interest in provoking racial anxieties. …

Jennifer Rubin has more.

… The decision is typical in some ways of the Roberts court. It is cautious, and in this case chose to leave open the possibility that Congress could craft some formula that would still allow for pre-clearance. But in practice this may be harder than it seems. If the baseline becomes, for example, 1980, how many jurisdictions would still be subject to pre-clearance? In sum, although the court’s ruling is technically limited in practice, conservatives who find the Voting Richts Act entirely out of date and an unfair burden on states that have long since departed from their past history of discrimination may find Voting Rights Act pre-clearance severely limited.

George Will says the Court paid a complement to the Voting rights act.

… Tuesday’s decision came eight months after a presidential election in which African Americans voted at a higher rate than whites. It came when in a majority of the nine states covered by the preclearance requirements, blacks are registered at a higher rate than whites. It came when Mississippi has more black elected officials — not more per capita; more — than any other state. …

… Section 5 is now a nullity because it lacks force absent a Section 4 formula for identifying covered jurisdictions, and today’s Congress will properly refuse to enact another stigmatizing formula. On Tuesday, however, the court paid the VRA the highest possible tribute by saying the act’s key provision is no longer constitutional because the act has changed pertinent facts that once made it so.

Jonathan Tobin tells us why the decision has the left in high dungeon.

… Why then are political liberals and the so-called civil rights community so riled up about the decision? Some are merely offended by the symbolism of any alteration in a sacred piece of legislation. But the reason why the left is howling about this isn’t so much about symbolism as it is about their ability to manipulate the law to their political advantage. Under the status quo, enforcement of the Voting Rights Act isn’t about reversing discrimination so much as it is in applying the political agenda of the left to hamper the ability of some states to enact commonsense laws, such as the requirement for photo ID when voting or to create districts that are not gerrymandered to the advantage of liberals. By ending pre-clearance until Congress puts forward a new scheme rooted in evidence of systematic discrimination going on today, it has placed all states on an equal footing and made it harder for the Obama Justice Department to play politics with the law. It has also given racial hucksters that continue to speak as if a nation that has just re-elected an African-American president of the United States was little different from the one where blacks couldn’t vote in much of the country. …

It must have pained them to say so, but WaPo had to admit the scary sequester stories were not true.

Before “sequestration” took effect, the Obama administration issued specific — and alarming — predictions about what it would bring. There would be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings. Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14.

At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal food aid.

But none of those things happened.

Sequestration did hit, on March 1. And since then, the $85 billion budget cut has caused real reductions in many federal programs that people depend on. But it has not produced what the Obama administration predicted: widespread breakdowns in crucial government services. …

The Post also had to admit Bush has helped Africa more. Power Line has the story.

George W. Bush isn’t a man to gloat. If we were, his message to Africans, as he visits the continent at the same time as President Obama, would be: “Miss me yet?”

The answer, according to the Washington Post, is a resounding “yes.” Consider this passage from the Post’s story “Bush AIDS policies shadow Obama in Africa”:

[A]cross this continent, many Africans wish Obama was more like Bush in his social and health policies, particularly in the fight against HIV/AIDS — one of the former president’s signature foreign policy aid programs. Bush poured billions of dollars into the effort to combat the spread of the disease that once threatened to consume a generation of young Africans, and as Obama has spent two days touring South Africa, the shadow of his predecessor has trailed him.

For once, Obama even felt compelled to praise Bush. And, reportedly, he’s considering a joint appearance in Tanzania with his predecessor.

Obama’s words have carried him far in America. But on matters of life and death, actions speak much louder than even Obama’s words. In South Africa, Bush’s actions helped reduce the HIV infection rate by 30 percent and put nearly 2 million people are on antiretroviral drugs.

Obama, by contrast, produced a budget last year that reduces AIDS funding globally by roughly $214 million, the first time an American president has reduced the U.S. commitment to fighting the epidemic. He has proposed additional cuts for 2014. …

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Mark Steyn reviews a day in the life of the Republic.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 — just another day in a constitutional republic of limited government by citizen representatives:

First thing in the morning, Gregory Roseman, Deputy Director of Acquisitions (whatever that means), became the second IRS official to take the Fifth Amendment, after he was questioned about awarding the largest contract in IRS history, totaling some half a billion dollars, to his close friend Braulio Castillo, who qualified under a federal “set aside” program favoring disadvantaged groups — in this case, disabled veterans. For the purposes of federal contracting, Mr. Castillo is a “disabled veteran” because he twisted his ankle during a football game at the U.S. Military Academy prep school 27 years ago. How he overcame this crippling disability to win a half-billion-dollar IRS contract is the heartwarming stuff of an inspiring Lifetime TV movie.

Later in the day, Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota and alleged author of the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the immigration bill, went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and, in a remarkable interview, revealed to the world that he had absolutely no idea what was in the legislation he “wrote.” Rachel Jeantel, the endearingly disastrous star witness at the George Zimmerman trial, excused her inability to comprehend the letter she’d supposedly written to Trayvon Martin’s parents on the grounds that “I don’t read cursive.” Senator Hoeven doesn’t read legislative. …

… Say what you like about George III, but the Tea Act was about tea. The so-called comprehensive immigration reform is so comprehensive it includes special deals for Nevada casinos and the recategorization of the Alaskan fish-processing industry as a “cultural exchange” program, because the more leaping salmon we have the harder it is for Mexicans to get across the Bering Strait. While we’re bringing millions of Undocumented-Americans “out of the shadows,” why don’t we try bringing Washington’s decadent and diseased law-making out of the shadows? …

… As I say, just another day in the life of the republic: a corrupt bureaucracy dispensing federal gravy to favored clients; a pseudo-legislature passing bills unread by the people’s representatives and uncomprehended by the men who claim to have written them; and a co-regency of jurists torturing an 18th-century document in order to justify what other countries are at least honest enough to recognize as an unprecedented novelty. Whether or not, per Scalia, we should “condemn” the United States Constitution, it might be time to put the poor wee thing out of its misery.

Speaking of corrupt, Jennifer Rubin says we have the worst of Washington in Holder and Comey.

If you think the federal government is populated by pols without principles and/or shame, then James Comey’s nomination for FBI will not surprise you. For those who harbor some faith in the morality of elected leaders, I hate to burst your bubble once again. Comey has made a career of feigning moral high-mindedness. But a brief reflection on his conduct over the years shows that, like an average pol, he operates in a world of back-scratching and disingenuous compliments.

In Dec. 2008, he authored a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Attorney General Eric Holder’s nomination to that post. On one hand, Comey advised the committee that he was the chief prosecutor in the Marc Rich and Pincus Green matter and the infamous pardons that were a key objection to Holder’s confirmation as attorney general. He wrote: “I have come to believe that Mr. Holder’s role in the Rich and Green pardons were a huge misjudgment, one for which he has, appropriately, paid dearly in reputation.” But wait. There is a back to be scratched: “Yet I very much hope he is confirmed.” Now mind you, he wasn’t “suggesting errors of judgment are qualifications for high office,” but he sure didn’t think they were disqualifying. He gilded the lily to be sure, arguing that Holder “is a smart, humble, decent man.”

Rather stomach-turning isn’t it? …

WSJ Editors agree.

President Obama on Friday nominated James Comey to run the FBI, and the former prosecutor and deputy attorney general is already garnering media effusions reserved for any Republican who fell out publicly with the Bush Administration. Forgive us if we don’t join this Beltway beatification.

Any potential FBI director deserves scrutiny, since the position has so much power and is susceptible to ruinous misjudgments and abuse. That goes double with Mr. Comey, a nominee who seems to think the job of the federal bureaucracy is to oversee elected officials, not the other way around, and who had his own hand in some of the worst prosecutorial excesses of the last decade.

The list includes his overzealous pursuit, as U.S. Attorney for New York’s Southern District, of banker Frank Quattrone amid the post-Enron political frenzy of 2003. Mr. Comey never did indict Mr. Quattrone on banking-related charges, but charged him instead with obstruction of justice and witness tampering based essentially on a single ambiguous email.

Mr. Comey’s first trial against Mr. Quattrone ended in a hung jury; he won a conviction on a retrial but that conviction was overturned on appeal in 2006. This May, the QuattroneCenter for the Fair Administration of Justice was launched at the University of Pennsylvania thanks to a $15 million gift from the banker, perhaps with Mr. Comey partly in mind.

There is also Mr. Comey’s 2004 role as deputy attorney general in the Aipac case, in which the FBI sought to use bogus “secret” information to entrap two lobbyists for the pro-Israel group and then prosecuted them under the 1917 Espionage Act. The Justice Department dropped that case in 2009 after it fell apart in court—but not before wrecking the lives of the two lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Or the atrocious FBI investigation, harassment and trial-by-media of virologist Steven Jay Hatfill, falsely suspected of being behind the 2001 anthrax mail attacks. Mr. Comey continued to vouchsafe the strength of the case against Dr. Hatfill in internal Administration deliberations long after it had become clear that the FBI had fingered the wrong man. Dr. Hatfill ultimately won a $5.8 million settlement from the Justice Department. …

Power Line’s Scott Johnson gives context to the Danny Werfel appointment at the IRS.

When the Bush administration had to contend with enormous public distrust of the Department of Justice in its last year, President Bush sought out and appointed a man of impeccable integrity as Attorney General. In his short time in office, Michael Mukasey added luster to an already distinguished career.

Contrast the Obama administration’s approach to the crisis in which the IRS finds itself today. It is embroiled in genuine scandals. At the outset Obama acknowledged the gravity of the misdeeds revealed in the Inspector General report that kicked off the scandal, but his actions since then reflect nothing but spin and coverup. Consider, for example, the case of Elijah Cummings, a faithful servant of the Obama administration. Cummings has done his best falsely to disparage and to obstruct the investigation of the IRS by the House committee on which he serves as ranking member.

Obama pretended to address the scandal in some meaningful fashion by relieving Stephen Miller of his duties of acting commissioner, although Miller’s time was up. In place of Miller Obama appointed one Danny Werfel as acting commissioner.

Who is Danny Werfel. By all appearances, he is an Obama loyalist. Like Cummings, he has done his best to obstruct the investigation with deflecting falsehoods. The latest example is the report Werfel released this week finding no wrongdoing by the IRS. Werfel’s report, however, was “incomplete.” He is peddling rather obvious falsehoods, rather obviously designed to obscure the truth in the service of his political masters.

Werfel has a brief record of public service, all of it in the Obama administration. It may have been difficult to get a bead on him at the time of his entry onto the scene. In his short time at the IRS, however, Werfel has proved himself a weasel. That Obama has sent a factotum and fixer over to the agency is another sign of the gravity of the IRS scandals.

Remember when Pickerhead said public safety goobers are out of control? Charlottesville’s Daily Progress tells us about the UVA student who bought some water and spent a night in jail. 

When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.

That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the BarracksRoadShopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.

A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot.

“They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” she recalled Thursday in a written account of the April 11 incident.

“I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were … terrified,” Daly stated.

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman read Daly’s account and said it was factually consistent.

Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the agents were. But that wasn’t good enough for ABC agents, who charged her with three felonies. Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can’t understand why she sat in jail. …

Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.

Letterman: Remember Iran’s Ahmadinejad, the ‘Death to America’ guy? His successor Hassan Rohani is supposed to be a moderate. So, he says ‘Lingering Illness to America.’

Leno: Obama’s approval rating dropped eight points in just one month. He vows to win those people back by tracking them down through their phone calls and emails.

Leno: The LA City Council has voted to ban plastic bags. You can have plastic boobs, plastic faces and plastic asses. You just can’t have plastic bags anymore. …