I was chuckling to myself while reading Patrick Howley’s article on the Daily Caller, “Issa to IRS Commissioner: Lerner’s Lawyer Contradicted Your Testimony… Want To Try Again?”. In that article he says that Ms. Lerner’s attorney claims “that Lerner did not know she was supposed to comply with federal law.” According to Wikipedia, Ms. Lerner “is a member of the Massachusetts bar having earned her juris doctorate from Western New England College School of Law and graduating cum laude. She completed her undergraduate studies cum laude at Northeastern University.” She sounds like a pretty smart student. Before her stint at the IRS she was the lead counsel for the Justice Department and Acting General Counsel for the Federal Elections Commission. It sure looks like the Justice Department and Federal Elections Commission thought she has a pretty sharp legal mind. Now we are being asked to believe that she did not know that she was supposed to comply with federal law? So let me see if I understand this correctly. Her lawyer asserts that she made an innocent mistake by not complying with the Federal Records Act and due to an unfortunate disk drive crash the evidence that would have proven her innocence of illegally targeting conservative organizations is now missing. These circumstances are way too convenient for me to believe Ms. Lerner and the IRS were that stupid. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, “71% Think IRS Likely to Have Destroyed E-mails to Hide Guilt”. Most of the people use a different standard concerning government corruption. They will assume the IRS and Ms. Lerner are corrupt until the IRS finds her missing emails. It may be unfair but it is hard to tell the difference between government incompetence and corruption. If we want to change future outcomes we have to stop treating government incompetence as a kinder, gentler form of corruption.