Outliers: … meanwhile back in Washington

A hearing over the Internal Revenue Service and Affordable Care Act, alas, didn't have quite the collegial tone as the MGMA meeting. Indeed, it got downright devilish.

The Oct. 9 hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee started with Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) bickering for 40 minutes with ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) over what should be entered into the record. McClatchy DC reported that Issa refused to allow photos of the main witness—Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS official in charge of implementing a big part of the new healthcare law—standing next to President George W. Bush.

“What's the big deal, that we want to see pictures of the witness with President Bush?” asked Cummings, who was seeking to show Ingram's ties to the earlier administration.

General sniping followed, with Issa offering, “I appreciate your resentment, but I will continue.”

The quarrelsome tone took a bizarre turn once Ingram was called to testify when Rep. Gerald Connolly (D.-Va.) took great pains to establish that Ingram did not in fact consort with the devil. Apparently she can't fly either. Connolly was trying to mock Republican efforts to demonize Ingram, asking her several unorthodox questions about witchcraft as part of the hearing.

Some GOP lawmakers have been hammering Ingram for months because she once headed the IRS division that targeted conservative political groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. Hall said she left to run the agency's healthcare office in 2010, about six months before a top deputy learned about the targeting.

According to MSNBC, some of the questioning went like this:

Connolly: You're under oath. Have you been consorting with the devil?

Ingram: Not to my knowledge, sir.

Connolly: Are reports that you can fly accurate?

Ingram: Uh, greatly exaggerated, sir.

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