Update: See also: Bombshell: IRS cancelled email backup contract just weeks after Lois Lerner’s computer ‘crashed’

Make no mistake: the weaponization of the IRS and the subsequent cover-up is the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States, and the survival of the Obama presidency now rests in the hands of a compliant mainstream media continuing to ignore the patently ridiculous claims of lost emails and crashed servers.

So when a major mainstream media pillar like the Chicago Tribune takes up the story and raises a few editorial board eyebrows, it makes a difference. The “World’s Greatest Newspaper” editorializes today:

On a matter this serious, the administration can't adequately investigate itself. Given the amount of smoke now rising from the IRS, many Americans won't be much interested in what one arm of the administration concludes about other arms, including the IRS, the Treasury Department of which it's part, and possibly the White House.

That's why we've urged Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor — a phrase that, like "customer support" or "designated hitter," provokes Pavlovian suspicions. We've been skeptical of some special prosecutors and their tendency toward mission creep. But we've also seen situations where only a special prosecutor has the independence and credibility to resolve a case that drips with politics, as when then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago investigated (and convicted of perjury and other offenses) I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Why Holder won't act is a mystery he's inviting Americans to resolve, uncharitably, in their own minds. (snip)

This 13-month refusal to name a special prosecutor has become its own curiosity.

While the Tribune is a local not national paper, it is the former home of David Axelrod, and the paper was the entity that went to court to unseal the divorce records of the Republican candidate who stood a good chance of defeating Barack Obama in his run for the Senate – the key step in his march to the presidency.  

The continued ability of CBS, NBC, ABC, and the New York Times to ignore the story of the biggest political scandal in history depends on other lesser media organs continuing the boycott. One the story moves beyond the Fox News/conservative media ghetto, editors at the capstone liberal media start to get embarrassed, because their core reader- and viewership is no longer clueless.

I have no way of knowing what kind of pressure is being exercised behind the scenes to keep the story out of the consciousness of the low information voters and the liberal mainstream, but it has to be considerable. I wonder what kind of blowback the Trib will experience?

But with the revelation that email archiver Sonasoft has a contract to back up the IRS emails, the story could bust wide open. For Sonasoft to proclaim that their own servers miraculously malfunctioned would be to proclaim that their backup services are useless. They have a strong incentive to cough up the goods.

Stay tuned. This weekend could eventually prove to be the turning point.

Or not. The IRS holds unique power over corporate America.