THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 21, 1996 TAG: 9603210010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 40 lines
Bravo and congratulations to staff writer Marc Davis for the exceptionally fine article on the infamous IRS ``raid'' on the Jewish Mother.
What is most alarming is that this type of treatment is not uncommon, and I fault the press at large for turning a blind eye to it for so long. Because the press has chosen to ignore this increasingly common law-enforcement abuse, commentators like G. Gordon Liddy become the only ones to sound the alarm.
Americans really started to become uneasy following the debacle at Waco but rationalized that it was all the fault of a child-molesting, religious gun freak. They became alarmed, though, with the killing of a child and a mother holding her baby at Ruby Ridge. Americans want to believe that this type of legalized thuggery does not happen in this country, that it happens only in places like Russia, Burma and China. Well, wake up, folks: It happens in Virginia Beach.
We also generally like to believe that we have the best law-enforcement agencies in the world, and by and large we probably do. But when Keystone Kops enforcement agents of bureaucracies like the IRS arm themselves and assume an attitude of legal invincibility, the results can be ugly.
Even more disturbing, the IRS has involved our local police forces. Given the amount of hardware waved around by the raiders along with their aggressive posture, it is extremely fortunate that no one was killed. This saga is an outrage and an obscenity.
I intend to send your article to Senators Robb and Warner with a demand that they pressure the attorney general to investigate this injustice. We should watch this closely, because it affects us all.
MICHAEL J. BURKE
Virginia Beach, March 7, 1996 by CNB