Yesterday we noted that Lois Lerner, the IRS official in charge of the unit overseeing tax exempt groups, would apparently plead the fifth at today’s hearings (here’s video of her testimony today). Rick Hasen said he thinks the issue is that she’s the person who is most likely to have lied or actively misled Congress when asked about the targeting issue earlier. People above her may not have had as direct information.

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Chuck Todd: “You can’t look at this and see it as anything other than an attempt to basically scare anybody from ever leaking anything ever again. So, they want to criminalize journalism and that’s what it’s coming down to.” Watch.

Information is still coming in on this, but overnight, an FBI agent reportedly killed a Florida man connected to the Boston bombing suspects.

AP: “Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place.” Read more here.

At the risk of stating the obvious, one big reason the James Rosen and AP controversies have become front page news is that “the news” is a key stakeholder in the story itself. Replace ‘reporters from accredited outlets’ with ‘nihilistic hackers’ or ‘advocacy orgs’ and the tone of the coverage we’re reading, and questions we’re hearing, would be much, much different. Instead reporters are, quite naturally, behaving in both their normal journalistic capacities here and in their ancillary roles as trade association members — and so the whole thing has taken on much more valence with the press than we’ve come to expect when the DOJ is discovered taking liberties with its investigative powers.

That’s something everyone should consider the next time we learn a non-media figure has been subjected to secret, invasive federal subpoenas, etc. Until then, I’d note that in this case the coverage disparity is due in part to the fact that — to coin a recently misquoted White House official — the reporting does not reflect all relevant equities.

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At the end of the day, a big budget agreement that passes both the House and Senate is pretty unlikely. But before it can happen, there have to be negotiations, and before there are negotiations, Republicans have to allow themselves to negotiate.

In the Senate, what’s holding that up is an effort on the part of the tea party backed members to block formal negotiations until Democrats agree that the debt limit will be off limits — so that in the event the chambers do finalize a budget, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and other Republicans can still demand concessions in exchange for increasing the debt limit later this year. After four years of blistering Democrats for not passing a budget, this has an unwanted downside of making the party look terrible. And now Republican frustrations with Cruz’s and Paul’s tactics are bubbling to the surface.

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The conservatives on Fox got the hearings they were itching for in the IRS mess but none of the answers.

Full-size version.

IRS official will plead the Fifth rather than testify to Congress tomorrow.

Sen. Inhofe says Oklahoma relief won’t be like Sandy because Sandy relief was a slush fund.

At the risk of drawing more obloquy upon myself, I have to second the questions Jack Shafer raises in this piece just published by Reuters: What was James Rosen Thinking?

There are a few points that seem important to make about this story.

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