When party politics take precedence over the laws of the land

Kevin Williamson writes that

The characteristic feature of a police state is that those who are entrusted with the power to enforce the law are not themselves bound by it.

That's what has happened to the IRS during the Obama administration.

The most important question that must be answered in this matter does not involve the misbehavior of IRS officials and Democratic officeholders, though those are important. Nor is it the question of free speech, vital and fundamental as that is. The question here is nothing less than the legitimacy of the United States government. When law-enforcement agencies and federal regulators with extraordinary coercive powers are subordinated to political interests rather than their official obligations — to the Party rather than to the law — then the law itself becomes meaningless, and the delicate constitutional order we have enjoyed for more than two centuries is reduced to a brutal might-makes-right proposition.

Read more here.