Victimhood - A Tea Party FortéAn article over at the Wall Street Journal traces the political usage of the IRS through history. It's a Republican slanted article that only cites one Republican president as abusing the authority of the agency, Richard Nixon. That seems to be the MO of a lot of right wing mouthpieces nowadays, using Nixon as a scapegoat to make it look like they are being nonpartisan.
Anyway, it points up the willingness to use the agency for political gain. The FBI has used the IRS a lot, too, for criminal investigations & prosecutions.
As far as proving you're a non-profit, hell, PayPal raked me over the coals when I set up an account for a neighborhood non-profit that was completely above board - something the tease certainly are not.
But this "scandal" gives them their time in the spotlight, wailing and gnashing their teeth over being poor defenseless victims. It gives them more "links" to the Marxist, Muslim, terrorist Kenyan. Nothing new, just another day on the schoolyard.