Hearings on the IRS have been going on for only a short time, and yet through them we have come to know a lot about the IRS.  Let's review:

* Top management of the IRS is detached.  Whoever is appointed IRS Commissioner, a presidential appointment with senatorial approval, is not that important.  We have seen two IRS Commissioners in these hearings - Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller (in Miller's case acting Commissioner) - and neither of them knows more about IRS operations that one would get from a fortune cookie.

* Lois Lerner, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations, the person in charge of the unit of the IRS that targeted Tea Party 501 (c) (4) applications, believes that if she answers questions about her activities as a high official of the federal government, she will incriminate herself.  Think about that. 

In a criminal courtroom, if defendants assert their Fifth Amendment rights, the jury will be instructed not to draw any conclusions from that fact.  But that is not the case for us as the public in a congressional hearing.  We are perfectly entitled to draw conclusions.  And the conclusion we can draw here is that the person best positioned to know the situation - the person being questioned - believes that answering questions about how she did her job will tend to incriminate her.  When you think about it, that is more than we are likely to find out if she is called back to answer questions. 

* By the statements of the people best positioned to know - the two IRS Commissioners - the IRS is already too large to be managed.  Thus you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to conclude that it is incapable of taking on a new mission, particularly responsibility for Obamacare. "

* It is clear from the fact that the people at the top take no responsibility for the actions of the agency - explicitly so in the case of Mr. Shulman - that employees are perfectly free to form cabals to use the essentially unlimited power of the IRS to do whatever they wish - target individuals or organizations, release allegedly confidential information to people who will use it to damage the people who gave it to the IRS.

So, drawing a picture from the testimony of its highest officials, the IRS is basically like a fraternity on a college campus which uses its power to reward the cliques it favors.  And since it regards the conservative movement as uncool, it sees it as its duty to make conservatives' lives miserable.

The Inspector General J. Russell George has done noble work without fear or favor.  But his assignment is temporary and we can expect that the Left will not make the mistake again of appointing an honest and diligent person to that position. 

The net net is we can't have the frat boys and girls at the IRS deciding whether we conservatives are worthy in their eyes for our sick children and our sick parents and ourselves get the medical care that we have already paid for.  And we know that management over them at the IRS either takes no responsibility or regards its tenure as a criminal activity.