Darrell Issa Lunges for the White House, Misses, Wins Anyway

The headline at the New York Times reads "House I.R.S. Inquiry Shows No Connections to White House." Over at Salon, it's "Issa's Final Flop." California Representative Darrell Issa is dropping the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee gavel—he's term-limited—and his final effort is generally being treated like a news-dump, a defeat.

It isn't. Technically, sure, the committee's last official product under Issa reveals no direct orders from the White House that led to the IRS targeting Tea Party activists and conservatives for special scrutiny. This might be disappointing to the people who believed Fox News's Carl Cameron, when in 2013 he suggested that Issa could follow the scandal "all the way up into the White House," or the people who believed House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rodgers when he said special targeting was based on "the enemies list out of the White House."