Ken Berwitz
Obama\’s stonewall strategy has generally worked well.Scandals fade from the front pages when there are no new developments, and ifinformation finally emerges, Democratic Party reporters treat it as old news.So the IRS scandal has pretty much disappeared from public awareness.Nevertheless, via InstaPundit, welearn that yet another IRS computer hard drive has been destroyed. How many isthat now? I\’ve lost track.
Most people probably don\’t realize how astonishing this is. Ipracticed law for 41 years before retiring at the end of last year, all of itdoing litigation. Preserving evidence is a routine obligation in lawsuits; itdoesn’t depend on a court order. But if a federal judge has ordered a party topreserve a hard drive, as happened here, you can be assured that the hard drivewill be protected like the crown jewels. Every company in America understandsthis: if a court has ordered you to preserve evidence, you guard it with yourlawyers\’ lives.
And yet, time after time, the IRS has either inadvertently orintentionally destroyed hard drives that courts have ordered them to preserve.In the private sector, this is unthinkable. Private companies obey courtorders. They know that if they don\’t, millions of dollars in sanctions arelikely to result, and executives will lose their jobs. Only in governmentagencies do we see this kind of irresponsible scofflaw behavior. This isbecause most bureaucrats have a deep loyalty to the left-wing cause, and thereis no accountability.
