It is believed that the Internal Revenue Service has been giving extra scrutiny to the applications of tea-party affiliated groups for tax-exempt status for the past few years. Lois Lerner, an IRS official in charge of the tax-exempt department at the time, has denied any wrongdoing and has mysteriously lost a year or so worth of her emails in 2011. Quite predictably, reactions to the allegations have fallen along party lines.
My sense is that there in fact probably was inappropriate targeting - as that's how dirty politics have become in this country - and that there was a (rather sloppy) cover-up by some Democrats who felt that the Tea Party was a nuisance. No matter what your political leanings are, the misuse of federal agencies for partisan purposes is NOT okay.