Opinion

A massive tornado ripped through Moore, Okla. and surrounding cities yesterday, leaving scores of Americans dead. Photos from the scene show complete and total devastation, nothing but dirt and timber where once whole neighborhoods stood.

It's understandable that not everyone gives money to the poor. Sometimes people can't spare enough from their own budgets to give to the needy. Some people believe their tax dollars should serve this purpose in a more targeted manner. And there are those who believe that we are all responsible for ourselves and should make our own economic futures.

You don't have to believe in the tooth fairy or that the U.S. government has hidden the bodies of space aliens at Area 51 to think something is fishy in the way the news broke that the Internal Revenue Service had been singling out conservative political groups for special, even extraordinary, scrutiny.

"Remember, a fish always rots from the head down," a colleague of mine would cackle loudly in his Baltimorean accent. He would do this every time he observed an organizational foul-up at the magazine where we worked decades ago. His voice began ringing in my head last week as we watched a trifecta of scandals wash over the West Wing.