Pete, here's the two minute, hope to be objective, summary.
1. In the wake of President Obama's election, a lot of groups organized as what are called 501c organizations here in the US. These are non-profits that (a) don't pay taxes adn (b) to whom donations are deductible off of the donators taxes.
2. One of the tests these organizations have to pass is to show they are not organized for a political purpose.
3. Well, guess what. The flood of organizations applying for 501c status after 2008, mostly "Tea Party" groups, were in fact political.
4. One IRS office in Ohio developed a set of code words and other search criteria to help sift through the avalanche of applciations to help determine which ones were to get more scrutiny. Basically, if you put "Tea Party" or "America First" or "Constitutionalist!" or "Lonesome Nutjob" in your application, your application would get flagged for screening.
5. While this process caught some left wing groups seeking 501c status, it (primarily because more of them applied) caught more right wing groups.
6. It was wrong, and a form of profiing that is not allowed in the US.
7. At the end of the day though,as a percentage, more "conservative" groups were approved for 501(c) status than "liberal."
8. This process ws aparently devised at the request of a Democratic congressman who was -- rightfully -- concerned that political groups were going to misuse the 501(c) process to operate (improperly) as tax free exempt organizations.
9. THere is zero evidence anyone at the White House knew about it, or ordered it, or directed it, or anything.
10. What has Larry and Bob and others visibly erect at this "scandal," is that in conjunction with the investigation, Lois Lerner -- the top IRS official responsible -- had her hard drive crash and some of her emails were lost. Not all. Many were recovered from the "in boxes" of people she sent emails to. A few other low level IRS folks also lost data. HOwever, HUGE volumes of data were recovered.
11. For the most part, most Republican members of Congress do not believe there was any wrongdoing and want to move on. See quote from Senator Lyndsey Graham above.
12. However, our right wing attack media and one or two members of Congress -- Dan Issa in particular -- won't let this go, much like they won't let BENGAHZI! go even after teh House investigation that put to rest most of the crazy theories you see/read/hear about here.
13. Was what the IRS did wrong? Yes. Was losing emails suspicious? Yes. Does anyone have evidence of anything other than a Cleveland, Ohio office of the IRS coming up with an improper shortcut procedure to find political action groups improperly seeking 501(c) status? No.