NOT EVEN A SMIDGEN OF CORRUPTION: After 3 years, 2 months and 10 days the Tea Party Patriots are granted tax exempt status by phone call on eve of congressional testimony.

Here's where it gets interesting: the exempt status was granted only after TPP co-founder Jenny Beth Martin was announced as a last-minute addition to the panel testifying before Congress. Here's what Ms. Martin had to say before the committee investigating pending 401(c) regulatory changes:

One of the most egregious is the requirement that we track, calculate, and report the activities of thousands of volunteers. The army of citizens who volunteer for their country is the backbone of every group in America: tea party, moderate, or progressive. Volunteerism is one of our greatest character traits. These proposed regulations would treat volunteers as a problem, annihilating relationships that are at the heart of an informed electorate.

The proposed rules create cracks in the trust that is the foundation of our nation. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people must trust the people, and the people must trust the government. When the people are afraid of a government agency, when they see that agency as a bunch of bullies who abuse power, the trust is shattered. Free people should not fear a politicized bureaucracy that delves into their social media and communications to determine what they said, whom they heard speak, and what they think about their government.

Something stinks at the IRS, and it's not a dead fish.