When Barack Obama fired the acting W head of the Internal Revenue Service (irs) earlier this month, he doubtless hoped to quell the hullabaloo about its seemingly partial treatment of applications for tax-exempt status from conservative groups. He failed. This week protests were held outside several irs offices, and Congress continued to investigate. The bureaucrat at the heart of the row refused to answer questions to avoid self-incrimina-tion. Republicans began to invoke the word "impeachment", if only to say, with a show of moderation, that it was not quite justified on the evidence revealed so far.
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