Outside the Beltway

The IRS will allow all married gay couples to file joint returns, but that still leaves couples in most of the country with more hoops to jump through.

Time to “pivot to the economy” again.

Looking for a quick overview of recent developments in the IRS Tea Party Scandal? Here are two links to help.

A new round of documents from the IRS, that aren’t really new, doesn’t really change the basic narrative on the IRS “targeting” story.

A new theory circulating on the right asserts that IRS targeting of Tea Party groups had an impact on the 2012 elections by diminish the Tea Party’s effectiveness. It’s mostly nonsense.

President Obama’s poll numbers seem to be suffering under the weight of nearly two months of scandals and/ media attention.

Today is the deadline for Darryl Issa to respond to a request from Elijah Cummings to defend a decision not to release IRS interview transcripts. What happens if Issa doesn’t respond?

Without full transcripts, the excerpts released by the House Oversight Committee are worthless.

The IRS spent $50 million on 225 employee conferences. What did the taxpayer get in return?

The TIGTA audit reveals the BOLO “Tea Party” list was right 81% of the time. But does that change anything?

Tax analyst Martin A. Sullivan finds that 1/3rd of “potentially political applications” approved by the IRS were from non-conservative groups.

Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is under fire for academic fraud.

Just about all of the substantive information in the excerpts was already revealed in the TIGTA audit.

Apparently, some people don’t want to let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

When does politics become the “primary activity” of a 501(c)4?

It’s a mistake to think of the Bill of Rights as only protecting people who are “innocent” or “guilty.” It exists to protect all of us.

The GOP’s latest investigatory crusade could end up backfiring on them.

Darrell Issa’s Committee seems headed for a battle over the Fifth Amendment.

So far, three weeks of bad news hasn’t really had much of an impact on the public’s view of how President Obama is handling his job.

President Obama faces some perilous times ahead now that his Administration is under fire.

What happened at the IRS looks a lot more like deliberate political bias than simple incompetence.

Partisan targeting by the IRS should not be permitted to stand.

For several years, Tea Party and other conservative groups have contended that they were being targeted for investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and it turns out that they were right.

The Defense Of Marriage Act didn’t fare very well during today’s Supreme Court oral arguments.

The man who played Captain Kirk is not amused by an IRS training video featuring his iconic character.

New rules mandating full-time benefits for instructors teaching 30 hours predictably led to their hours being cut.

The issue of same-sex marriage will be before the Supreme Court early next year.

Harry Reid is a scoundrel, not a hero.

Reports that Nikki Haley might be indicted stemming from a tax fraud investigation are not true.

Starting tomorrow morning, the Supreme Court dives into the most significant case that has been before it in many years.

The reaction to the release of Mitt Romney’s tax returns is about what you’d expect.

AP does a FACT CHECK: Are rich taxed less than secretaries? The answer: Generally speaking, no. But it’s complicated.