This is ridiculous. Sooner or later somebody has to be held to account for this nonsense. This was not just any kind of finding but a stinging rebuke to the IRS by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

From The Washington Examiner:

A federal court ruled Friday that the Internal Revenue Service has not yet demonstrated that officials stopped targeting Tea Party groups in a decision that excoriated the tax agency for its “discriminatory” treatment of conservative organizations.

“This is a blistering rebuke to the IRS and its defenders,” Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute Center for Constitutional Studies, said of the court’s ruling. “It takes on squarely the defense the IRS had raised in this case which is, ‘Whatever happened, we promise not to do it again.'”

The court said  the IRS has not proven in any way they’ve changed:

In reviewing whether to support the tax agency’s claim that the targeting practices had ended, the court noted “it is absurd to suggest that the effect of the IRS’s unlawful conduct … has been eradicated” when the two conservative groups in question still had their delayed applications pending before the IRS.

The IRS had argued before lower courts in two separate lawsuits that the cases should be thrown out because officials had taken steps to end the “unequal” handling of Tea Party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status.

But the circuit court stated repeatedly in the 22-page ruling that the IRS’s actions “continue to affect” groups that still have not received a decision on their applications to become nonprofits.

While the court did say nobody at the IRS could be held legally accountable, there certainly seems to be room for civil penalties and the IRS should be open to being sued for what they did.