In a brief statement, President Obama addressed the growing IRS scandal.  Calling for cooperation between his administration and Congress in its “oversight role,” President Obama promised that the responsible parties will be held accountable and that new measures will be enacted to make sure this kind of targeting never happens again.

President Obama also said that: “This is fixable.”

With all due respect, if this is “fixable,” it’s going to take some work.  An agency of the United States government specifically targeted groups based on partisan criteria, which included the organization’s purpose being to  educate Americans about the Constitution.  As a result of the IRS’ actions, Tea Party and other conservative groups had their applications for non-profit status held up for years.  All the while, the IRS denied to Congress that it was specifically targeting these groups.

It’s difficult to “fix” a situation where Constitutional rights were violated.  You can provide restitution and enact new policies to prevent similar actions from happening in the future, but it’s a stretch to casually announce it “fixable.”

Outrageously, proponents of speech regulation are trying to use this as an opportunity to expand the government’s role in political speech.  Calling for new disclosure regulation, the speech regulatory community is hell-bent on placing more power in the hands of the very people who have just admitted to abusing what power they already have.  In the span of less than a week, the regulatory community has forgotten what happens when we empower the government by letting them make decisions about what constitutes political speech.

We look forward to the forthcoming hearings.