So Tim Geithner beat the rap that he didn’t pay income
taxes….unintentionally, mind you…and has finessed his way to
confirmation to head the Treasury Department and the IRS, tasked with
collecting taxes from Americans and taking no excuses for failing to do
so.

The benefit of having a lame opposition party and a complicit media.

Then late today, on a Friday evening when most people were off work
with attention distracted, the news comes out that Secretary-designate
for Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, scurried to pay $100,000 in back taxes for benefits he did not report….until he was being vetted for the Cabinet position.

Mr. Daschle made the payments to cover a luxury car and
driver provided to him by an investment firm where he was an adviser
after leaving the U.S. Senate in 2005, but which he didn’t report as
income, people familiar with the report said. The payments also covered
unreported consulting income and unwarranted charitable deductions. The
tax period covered 2005 through 2007.

Mr. Daschle told committee staff that he had grown used to having a
car and driver as Senate majority leader and didn’t think to report the
perquisite on his taxes, according to staff members.

Oh…didn’t think to report the perqs. How convenient. What a minor slip of the mind, just like Geithner. An “unintentional” mistake, a “hiccup”, ’scuse me.

And these nominations sail through? What double standards.

Obama has been excusing his nominees, one by one (including Attorney
General nominee Eric Holder’s inexcusable pardon of financier Marc
Rich, which even Holder admits was a big mistake) and touting them as
great nominees nonetheless.

Politicians, even the administration, acting as if the rules don’t apply to them. Where’s the change?