Lawrence O'Donnell takes yet another victory lap. This time in response to the fact that Congress has finally realized that the REAL IRS scandal is that it has been breaking the law for fifty years.

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As everybody who watches the Last Word well knows Lawrence has been the lone voice reporting that the IRS should not be giving 501 tax exempt status to ANY of these political groups. And now Darrell Issa's Oversight Committee has FINALLY recognized a truth that might just mean that ALL of these Tea Party groups, and even Democratic ones, will soon lose any tax exempt status.

There is a murmur on the internet that I had been poo-pooing, but now I think it deserves some consideration. And that is a kind of conspiracy theory, if you will, that suggests that perhaps many of these recent leaks, the IRS 501 leak, the drone strike leak, the leak about the collecting of AP reporter phone records, the Verizon data collecting leak, might in fact be coming from inside the Obama White House as a way of getting these very touchy subjects out into the media so that they can be discussed and the administration can then be "pressured" into doing something about them.

But nah, that's just silly.

I mean NOBODY could be that far ahead of the curve. Could they?

Well at least one MSNBC host was pretty damn far ahead of the curve. THAT MUCH we do know!

Hardball: Lois Lerner pleaded the 5th during the House IRS probe because she had no other choice.

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Marcus Owens, who held Lerner's job from 1990 to 2001. reports that since she had been accused of lying by members of Congress and there is talk of a criminal investigation that she had no choice but to refuse to answer the questions before Congress.

This was the best explanation that I saw yesterday for her choice.

Personally I just liked it because is damn near made the Republicans on the committee's heads explode.