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Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama could be impeached after it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted tea party groups.

The Associated Press learned last week that the IRS had apologized for what it was an "inappropriate" investigation into whether tea party groups were abusing their tax-exempt status.

"How stupid do they think we are?" Will asked during an ABC News panel on Sunday. "Just imagine... if the George W. Bush administration had IRS underlings, out in Cincinnati of course, saying we're going to target groups with the word ' 'progressive' in their title. We would have all hell breaking loose."

"This is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate summer," he added, reading a passage from former President Richard Nixon's articles of impeachment.

He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

"I think it would be irresponsible to start talking about impeachment over this," Democratic strategist Donna Brazile replied. "Clearly, there was some incompetence at some level or bureaucrats looking into all these applications in a rush after Citizens United [Supreme Court ruling] to see whether or not they were legitimate organizations with the word 'tea party' or 'patriot' in it. Yeah, there are progressive patriots as well."

"Given what George has just said, you better get ready for your audit," ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl quipped to Will.

"The IRS commissioner was a Republican appointed by [former President George W.] Bush, who his term expired in November," Brazile pointed out.

There is no evidence that President Obama directed or even knew of the targeting of tea party groups.

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President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist Matthew Dowd on Sunday lashed out at Congress for moving so quickly to fund air traffic controllers because lawmakers were personally "about to get delayed at the airports," while they couldn't pass background checks to protect children from mass shootings.

During a panel discussion on ABC's This Week, Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile noted that Congress had rushed through a bill to avert air traffic controller furloughs caused by automatic budget cuts in the so-called sequester, but ignored the pain the cuts were causing less-wealthy Americans.

"This sequester will have real impact on real people in real time, not just members of Congress, but people that work for the park service, medical research as the NIH begin to make those cuts, it's impacting Meals on Wheels, kids who are in kindergarten," Brazile explained. "So I really do think that Congress needs to take a second look at this."

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, however, called the air traffic controller bill "a real victory for fiscal conservatism" because Congress moved funds around, instead of undoing any budget cuts.

"Doesn't that mean the politically weakest are going to bear the biggest burden?" ABC host George Stephanopolous wondered.

"Not necessarily," Gingrich insisted. "It may mean the most corrupt are going to bear the biggest burden. It may mean the dumbest are going to bear the biggest burden. When you look at a $4 trillion government, you can find lots of really stupid things to quit paying for."

But Dowd found it "amazing" that the bitterly partisan Congress could only find a way to work together when they personally faced the possibility of spending some additional time on the tarmac.

"The only way they're bipartisan is to do something for themselves," he quipped. "It's amazing the speed at which they did that. We have this horrible shooting where all these children die in Connecticut, we can't pass gun control legislation. But oh by the way, you're about to get delayed at the airport through some small budget cuts -- which I still don't understand why we make policy the way we make policy. Everybody knows there's a fiscal crisis in this country, everybody knows we don't have the revenue to meet the expenses in this country, somebody has to bear pain, but we act in Washington like nobody has to bear any pain. So as soon as anybody bears any pain, we're going to take it back from them."

"I think many members of Congress have bought into a myth that doesn't exist anymore," he added. "I think most of what's gong on in gun control is there's not this huge vehement group of people saying I'm going to defeat you if you vote for background checks, I'm going to defeat you if you vote for high-capacity magazines... What there is, though, is a group of folks in Washington that are scared of their shadow on this issue, both some Democrats and a lot of Republicans."

"The myth doesn't exist anymore, but they're afraid to go launch themselves through it and do something about it."

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Republican strategist Karl Rove engaged in some friendly -- if not tone deaf -- banter with Democratic strategist Donna Brazile on Sunday, joking that she owed him some "fried chicken."

During a panel discussion on ABC, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan noted that many conflicts within the Republican Party would be healed after a strong presidential candidate emerged.

"That was Bill Clinton after Walter Mondale lost, after Jimmy Carter lost," Brazile pointed out. "We had a dynamic governor who was reform minded, who took those reform issues and brought them into the national forefront. He really helped recharge the Democratic Party."

"But you know, the Republican Party is out to lunch," she added, turning to Rove. "I watched CPAC, Charles -- I mean, Karl... Charles was former friend."

"I thought I was a current friend," Rove laughed.

"You're always a friend," Brazile replied. "But you owe me some chili."

"You owe me some fried chicken," Rove joked with his best Southern drawl.

"Well, I saved your life with malaria once," the Democratic strategist recalled.

"Well, yes you did," Rove admitted.

"We go back a long way," Brazile quipped before moving on to point out that the Republican Party "continues to reject the majority of the American people."

"They don't want to be associated with a party that talks down to them, that's condescending, that attacks their rights and them calls them victims," she observed.

While Brazile did not appear to be offended by Rove's remark, certain foods like fried chicken and watermelon have a history of been used to stereotype and slur African-Americans.

"A bucket of fried chicken may suggest nasty racial stereotypes by virtue of its unwholesome image... as much as by its particular history as a plantation staple," Jesse Bering explained in a 2011 column for Slate. "As an unhealthy and inexpensive food, fried chicken invokes images of poverty, ignorance, sloth, and other racist associations."

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Last week, it was Barbara Walters on The View asking Callista Gingrich what she thought about Gen. David Petraeus resigning over his affair. I guess the network decided they hadn't embarrassed themselves enough already, because this Sunday, guess who was the first person asked about the Petraeus affair during the panel segment on This Week. You guessed it -- Newt Gingrich.

Why a professional "scam artist" like Gingrich is a regular guest on these shows in the first place is beyond me, but then, I could say the same thing about most of the guests that are chosen to go on these shows week after week and one George Will who is on this show almost every single week.

Although we did get a break from Will last week. Probably because he didn't want to be asked any questions about his brilliant prediction of a Mitt Romney electoral blowout.

RADDATZ: I think we've made that pretty clear right here. I think we've made that pretty clear. Let's move on to Dave Petraeus. You know he was in these hearings. We have -- we thought this might calm down this week; it has not.

Let me start with you, Speaker Gingrich. Is it a national security risk to have your CIA director involved in an extramarital affair?

GINGRICH: Well, I think Petraeus concluded -- and I think he's probably right -- that he couldn't be effective. I mean, I think what he did is he...

RADDATZ: You don't think it was because he got caught?

GINGRICH: Well, that's what made him ineffective. I mean, I think by definition, if something had remained secret, it would have been secret. He would have had no reason to confront it.

RADDATZ: But the president actually spent 24 hours thinking about it.

GINGRICH: But I think Petraeus, in offering his resignation, was communicating that he didn't think he could lead the CIA, he didn't think he could deal with the Congress, and that he would be consumed -- you're much better off to have people saying, "Gee, he's a great patriot. Isn't it a pity he's gone?", than to have people say, "Let me focus on this, why isn't he gone?"

And I think, from his perspective, he'd have been in a very, very difficult position, if he stayed in office.

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Mitt and Ann Romney appeared on Piers Morgan's show this Thursday evening and when asked about his time at Bain Capital, Romney's response was to claim that people just want to demonize "success," or in other words, those people who are jealous just hate me because I'm rich. Sorry Mitt, but it's not a matter of whether you have a lot of money or not. It's a matter of how you acquired it.

People who've had their jobs, or their friends, family and neighbors' jobs shipped overseas aren't going to be particularly enamored with someone who made their fortune squeezing every dime they could get out of companies for their profit, with no regard for the circumstances the employees found themselves in once you made your money for yourself and your investors.

And as Donna Brazile wrote about this interview, sometimes facts about how you conducted your business and whether you've been honest with the public matter as well: Mitt Romney vs. stubborn facts:

John Adams once said, "facts are stubborn things." These days, another Massachusetts politician has found that saying to ring especially true. While it's still unclear how Mitt Romney can be the CEO, chairman, president and sole shareholder of Bain Capital, a company that he claims no responsibility for, it's become increasingly evident that candidate Romney simply doesn't want to talk about the facts of his business record. In an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, Romney suggested that to question his experiences is to "attack success." If this is the case, and if we're also not supposed to talk above a whisper about Mitt's record as governor, including his signature accomplishment in health care reform, then which parts of his biography remain on the table?

Romney clearly prefers his largely undisclosed experiences in the private sector over his publicly poor record in Boston. At every turn, Romney and his campaign have attempted to steer the discussion toward business matters for just this reason.

But when the Washington Post took him up on it last month and published an article headlined "Romney's Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas," the Romney campaign was caught flatfooted. The Post found that Bain Capital, the firm Romney spent much of his professional life building up, had invested in companies that had not only shipped jobs overseas -- a practice of some concern to working- and middle-class Americans -- but had pioneered the practice. Read on...

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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While discussing the potential choices for vice president and who Mitt Romney may eventually pick, ABC This Week regular George Will expressed his support for the Republicans' poster-boy for privatizing Medicare and Social Security, for that very reason. Apparently Will believes a full-throated debate over eliminating our social safety nets as we know them would be a good thing for the GOP.

BRAZILE: You know, George, I would pick George Will, because he's a reliable, consistent conservative. I've known George for many, many years. He could stand up to the scrutiny, and he's solid on all of those things that matters to conservatives. Thank you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What are you going to do with that endorsement, George?

WILL: I would pick someone 30 years younger than I am, which is Paul Ryan or Bobby Jindal, who's been a governor. I think Mr. Romney needs some kind of excitement, that is, go young, go conservative, and go someone who's so deeply in the weeds on the entitlement crisis that the country's having, and, finally, look forward to, say, Paul Ryan debating Joe Biden.

I think the selection of either Rep. Paul Ryan or Gov. Bobby Jindal would go over just as well as Brazile's kidding about Mittens picking George Will, although the media does love Paul Ryan and continually praises him as very, very serious for wanting to lead us to a "path to poverty" with that cruel budget proposal of his.

Regardless of the media's love affair with Ryan, his budget proposals did not go over well with the public or with senior citizens, who Republicans cannot afford to lose in the upcoming presidential election. I don't see how they'd want to add that demographic to the women and Hispanic voters that are already leaving them in droves right now.

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Liberal commentator Keith Olbermann on Sunday suggested that the price of gas had been artificially manipulated since President Barack Obama took office to hurt his chances at re-election.

In an appearance on ABC, Olbermann noted he had become suspicious after gas prices increased from $1.61 a gallon when Obama took the oath of Office in January 2009 to nearly $4 a gallon earlier this month.

"The lowest gas prices in the last six years, the nadir of gas prices at the pump, was the day of this president's inauguration in 2009," Olbermann explained. "There has to be some connection between that being the least-busy political moment of a president's career -- when you're not going to hurt him and you're not going to harm him that way -- and the price of gas."

"There has to be an almost deliberate or at least a side-effect quality to that. There must be."

Last week, the president proposed measures that would give regulators more power to limit manipulation of the oil markets.

“We can’t afford a situation where some speculators can reap millions while millions of American families get the short end of the stick,” he told reporters.

But Republicans like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) quickly dismissed the proposal.

During a recent interview with the blog Shark Tank, Bachmann insisted that new legislation wasn’t necessary because Obama “already has the tools and he knows it.”

“This is just about waving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is the problem. I have never seen a more irresponsible president who is infantile in the way that he continually blames everybody else for his failure to, first, diagnose the problem and, second, to address the problem. It’s always everyone else’s fault.”

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While discussing the upcoming arguments before the Supreme Court starting Monday on whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, ABC's Terry Moran and guest Matthew Dowd both pointed out the obvious, much to the chagrin of This Week regular George Will, that there is politics involved with the Supreme Court deciding to hear this case.

MORAN: They took it at a different time, in some ways. The Republicans, Michele Bachmann, are making this the number-one issue. Some of the biggest mistakes the Supreme Court has ever made is when they decided cases they didn't have to. And John Roberts as chief justice, loves the court, is very protective of its institutional authority. The more it gets involved in politics, the more that authority comes down.

WILL: I really disagree with Terry on this. I think the Supreme Court is composed of nine intelligent, conscientious judges who are prepared to judge in this case. Why did they take it? Because the circuits are in conflict, and the circuits -- some important circuit judges say -- in very persuasive opinions -- that portions of the law -- at least two portions -- are unconstitutional, the Medicaid expansion, which is a burden that eviscerates (ph) federalism and, of course, the mandate.

What Will, Moran or any of the rest of them on this panel failed to mention was the name Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni and whether Thomas ought to be recusing himself from the case. It's been astounding to me to watch most of the media coverage over the last week and not see their names mentioned once.

If anyone needs a reminder of why Thomas should not be hearing this case and just how "political" his involvement is, I'll just refer you to these posts:

Clarence Thomas "Forgot" 20 Years of Disclosure? Really?

Justice Clarence Thomas Should Resign For His Egregious Conflicts of Interest and Unethical Behavior

Ginni Thomas as Lobbyist? Really?

Clarence Thomas Fails to Disclose Citizens United In-Kind Contributions

Full transcript below the fold.

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Matthew Dowd, President George W. Bush's former chief strategist, on Sunday observed that the same conservative legislatures and governors who are championing so-called Christian values like prayer in schools are also pushing for dangerous gun laws that are counter to Christian teachings.

During a panel on ABC, "Nightline" anchor Terry Moran noted that Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law gave officials cover to not arrest neighborhood watch vigilante George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African American boy.

"No other state has a law like this," Moran explained. "Not only is it a 'Stand Your Ground' law -- in the olden days under common law you had a duty to retreat. 'Stand Your Ground' says, no, you don't have to. Florida goes one step farther. 'Stand Your Ground' is self defense -- defense at trial. It would go to trial where the jury would figure out what happened."

"In Florida, the law says if you raise a claim of self defense after killing someone in public, you can't even be arrested," he added. "It's why prosecutors and police hated this law. It sabotaged our justice system. All this discussion we've heard -- What did Zimmerman do? What did Trayvon do? -- Juries are supposed to figure that out. The Florida law destroys that American system."

"There is such irony about this," Dowd agreed. "Most of the states that have passed this including Florida and the 'Stand Your Ground' laws and the expanded gun-ownership laws where you can carry a concealed weapon are also the same states and the same legislatures and the same governors who sort of pushed for prayer in the school."

Dowd continued: "To me, there is such and irony here, that we want to be a Christian nation and we want to act in a Christian manner, but oh, by the way, we don't believe in the turn your other cheek and we don't believe in love your enemy. We believe in loading citizens and basically giving them an opportunity to shoot people."

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If Mary Matalin's remarks here are any indication, Republicans are really unhappy with Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry and the other GOP presidential candidates for breaking St. Ronnie's eleventh commandment and attacking Mitt Romney for his "I like being able to fire people" gaffe. I find her remarks ring pretty hollow considering that not long ago as Steve Benen noted, Mitt Romney shamelessly took President Obama's "words out of context, and changed the meaning of a sentence, for the sole purpose of misleading the public."

Now they're crying foul because the DNC is doing the same thing to him. Apparently Matalin and others don't believe turnaround is fair play.

Transcript via CNN:

BLITZER: Let's get to our "Strategy Session right now." Our CNN political contributors are joining us, the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and the Republican strategist, Mary Matalin. They're joining us from New Hampshire.

Mary, this tough talk on Mitt Romney, it sounds like it could come from Democrats, but it's coming from Republicans. How does that make you feel?

MARY MATALIN: It has come from Democrats and Mitt Romney's right, and it's good practice for him. But for the Republicans to be doing is philosophically incoherent, intellectually dishonest.

I think it's shameful, other than Senator Santorum and Congressman Paul, they've been shameful on it. On the issue of firing people, if we don't have choice and competition, we don't have the kind of insurance that we've come to enjoy in this country.

That was 100 percent right. He's not an evil man looting companies. He saved companies and created jobs. I'm saying this as an unaffiliated person, but in philosophical incoherence and intellectual dishonesty will be a shame for some of these candidates to wear going forward.

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