Ben Carson's IRS Audit Can't Possibly Be Coincidence

Read the whole thing at IBD.  Excerpts:

IRS Abuse: It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that the IRS audit of Dr. Ben Carson can't be a mere coincidence. In any powerful syndicate, the capos know who to whack without the godfather ordering it.

We might never know the exact origin of America's tax collectors harassing President Obama's political adversaries. Maybe there was never an explicit order. 

The IRS and the Obama administration are on the same page when it comes to big government: Tea Partiers and other conservatives threaten the massive state they love, and the IRS' powerful army of bureaucrats is a pretty handy weapon for use against them.

In the already blossoming IRS scandal, political organizations' applications for tax-exempt status were delayed or denied during last year's presidential campaign, and well into this year, simply because their names sounded too conservative. The IRS audit of renowned neurosurgeon Carson looks like exactly the same kind of abuse, and it must be subject to a formal independent investigation.

Carson on Wednesday told Fox's Bill O'Reilly that the IRS began examining his real estate holdings after his speech to the National Prayer Breakfast in February, in which he used tithing in the Bible to make a compelling case against progressive taxation. A humiliated Obama sat steaming a couple of seats away.

Carson recounted that ultimately the IRS conducted a full audit on him, finding no violations. Before giving his speech critical of Obama, the tax agency had never bothered the 62-year-old doctor.

Someone — either within the IRS bureaucracy or above it — saw what Carson did, didn't like it, and decided to make him pay. The American people must know who it was.

Whether or not Obama instigated IRS abuse for political objectives, he is responsible for a culture within the bureaucracy that tolerated and even encouraged it.