Vague

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

WASHINGTON - In spring 2010, agents in the Cincinnati office of the Internal Revenue Service, which handles applications for tax-exempt status, faced a surge of filings by new advocacy groups, with little guidance on how to treat them. Their decision to deal with the problem by singling out tea party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny has now triggered a criminal inquiry, congressional investigations, the departure of two top IRS officials and the naming of a new acting commissioner Thursday.

Re the TV rating game: S-stupid; L-lengthy; V-vague; D-dull. VERONA DURFEE Northridge

WASHINGTON - When a Russian intelligence service told the CIA that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become an Islamic radical looking to join underground groups, the agency put his name in the government's catch-all database for terrorism suspects. The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, known as TIDE, was the government's attempt after the Sept. 11 attacks to consolidate a hodgepodge of watch lists, and ensure that every law enforcement agency would be alerted when it came into contact with a possible terrorist.

Barry Bonds' statement of "I forgive you" in a interview this week was somewhat vague. What exactly does he forgive us for? For finding more proof he is a cheat? For someone writing a book about it? For noticing his head has swelled to the size of a basketball? Very vague, indeed; but at least we are forgiven. DAN VANDERMEULEN Torrance

Vague, vague, vague. That describes the reassurances we get from the backers of Prop. 1. Regarding a citizens oversight committee, a thoughtful voter will wonder by whom, how and how often will reviews take place? How can a citizen find out regularly whether performance and cost are on schedule? What will the lines of communication be? Can the project status be viewed on the Internet? Can we get a commitment from the press to publish an article, say, quarterly on progress? Something is needed beyond promises that there will be oversight committees.

Where does Mr. Stern draw the line when deciding where a team is putting forth its best lineup? How many minutes must each starter play? Will he also decide whether each player is giving his best effort? If Mr. Stern is going to hand out fines for coaching decisions, he should explicitly state the rules, and not leave it up to the coach to divine the league's vague expectations. JAMES FRAZIER Pacific Palisades

Re "Getting a Grip Is All We Can Do," by Norah Vincent, Commentary, Oct. 25: Surely you must be out of your minds in publishing this fear-inflaming piece. Does Vincent know something we don't but The Times does? "Al Qaeda has nothing to lose. We do. Game over." And, a ". . . nuclear threat more real and imminent. . . ." To put this commentary above the fold, presented without rebuttal, is to implicitly endorse its apocalyptic vision. Vincent and The Times want us all to get a grip by offering such unsupported musings and assessments?

I am surprised you let the proponents of Prop. 167 get away with talking in such vague simplicities as "tax the rich." Readers deserve to know that the tax increases in the initiative will hit everybody. The promoters also talk about a long list of government programs that would benefit from this tax tantrum. Again, they are not telling the whole truth. There are no guarantees in Prop. 167 that any of the money would be spent on anything the promoters say it would. It is a blank check for the politicians in Sacramento.

A snake lover who shares his one-bedroom apartment with 16 boa constrictors and pythons can keep his reptilian roommates despite a law prohibiting pets deemed "uncommon," a judge says. Macomb County Circuit Judge Raymond Cashen ruled that an ordinance banning such rare pets as snakes was vague and constitutionally unenforceable, and said Eric Larson's snakes are timid, harmless creatures. Larson, whose snakes range from 2 feet to 18 feet long, said he planned to celebrate quietly.

Hey, reader. If you bristle ever so slightly at the presumed familiarity of that salutation, you're almost surely over 40, and you likely grew up well north of the Mason-Dixon line. If you say "hey" back, the demographic possibilities are a lot broader. Everyone from anywhere who was born after 1980 seems to have adopted this onetime Southern regionalism, as have over-40s who work in a business that uses "trending" as a verb and requires them to stay forever young. I get "hey" emails and in-the-hallway greetings from students who've never been as far south as Philadelphia, who hail from India and Austria, from the Northeast and the Midwest and Canada.

For anyone who has avoided seeing a Cirque du Soleil show for fear that the world-music soundtrack, fantasy costumes and relentless gymnastic performances would lead to eye-gouging and running for the aisles, the new film "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away" will likely confirm all those presuppositions. The movie has a vague storyline, as a young woman pursues a male circus performer and they both wind up in an alternate world, but it is mostly just a pretense to feature set-piece performances from seven separate Cirque shows.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Seated on a muddy hill, Sulieman Masri glumly scanned the giant crater that was once a smuggling tunnel used to support his family. After the Israeli airstrikes of the last week, Thursday morning was the first safe time to venture out. He discovered his tunnel was among 140 Israel destroyed. Now it's now a massive sand pit coated with gray explosives residue. It would take two months to rebuild at the cost of $20,000. "But I've heard that they are going to open the borders, which could put the tunnels out of business," he said.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Clayton Kershaw visited an orthopedic surgeon in New York on Tuesday, but he and the Dodgers didn't offer many details about what he was told about his ailing right hip. After the Dodgers' series-opening game against the Washington Nationals was declared a rainout, the team released a vague and carefully worded 127-word statement that said Kershaw has an impingement in his hip and is soliciting the opinions of other specialists ...

KABUL, Afghanistan - Not so long ago, if a senior U.S. official appearing in a high-profile setting were asked about corruption in Afghanistan, the response might have been a stern reminder that the government of President Hamid Karzai needed to do much more, and quickly, to fight graft and cronyism. On Saturday, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fielded just such a query as she stood next to Karzai in the tranquil, leafy compound of his presidential palace in Kabul, her reply was far more equivocal.

The Simpsons of Springfield, U.S.A., will mark their 500th episode as a TV family Sunday. "The Simpsons," in its 23rd season on Fox, is already the longest-running cartoon, the longest-running situation comedy and the longest-running scripted prime-time series in the history of American television. There is something especially improbable about this particular household, with their goggle-eyes and cantilevered overbites and complexions betokening an advanced case of jaundice, claiming these crowns.

Thank you for your attempt to tally up Dolly Parton's earnings over the years for "I Will Always Love You" (Pop Eye, Jan. 17). Some months ago I pondered this question and, having no idea how much money a hit song is worth, arrived at the sum of "an awful lot." While this may seem vague, I know it's more than $1.89 million (your estimate). See, you forgot to pay Dolly for Linda Ronstadt's 1970-something version of "IWALY." $$$--ka-ching--$$$. PAULA PASCHAL Valencia

The Rev. Robert L. Morley ("On Rock 'n' Roll and Gays in the Military," Sermon, Voices, March 15) has rightly pointed out that the issue of homosexuality has largely been a matter of the heart rather than a matter of the head in our society. But instead of trying to inject some reason into the debate, he advocates keeping the debate on its current emotional level, stating: "You lead with your heart." How can we hope to have a better society by asking our citizens to check their brains at the door before they decide the policies that will guide our nation?

When the orbiter Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, ending the 30-year-old space shuttle program, NASA will have its sights set on the next big exploration mission: sending astronauts to an asteroid in about 15 years. But the path to that goal remains poorly defined, jeopardized by a bleak budget outlook and a weak political consensus. It has left a deep angst that U.S. leadership in space flight is in rapid decline and the very ability to fly humans off the Earth is at risk.

The landmark Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 stated very clearly that people with disabilities had a right to take their service animals along with them wherever they went. But in retrospect, the law wasn't as clear as it might have been on one little point: What exactly is a service animal? The law termed it "any animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability" — but here was the rub: That seemed to imply that an elephant, just for instance, could make an excellent service animal.