“It was pretty much a proctology exam through your earlobe." Conservative groups talk about being targeted by the pain-in-the-ass IRS and detail the flaming hoops that inspectors and investigators forced them to leap through—in violation of the law.

Confronting a bizarro reality where Tea Party acolytes look legitimately aggrieved and sympathetic, President Obama has fired the acting head of the IRS. Never mind that the deposed director, who blamed rogue employees in Cincinnati, wasn't in charge when the targeting took place. He replaced a longtime Bush appointee in November.

While we wring our hands over the IRS and the AP and Benghazi, congressional Republicans are doing what they do best: Plotting to hold the national economy hostage with brinksmanship over trophies like a trans-American oil pipeline and an erosion of abortion rights.

A bleeding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Boston Marathon bombing suspect, reportedly scrawled a confession on the walls of the drydocked boat where cops eventually found him. The note, according to reports, called victims of the blast "collateral damage" for Muslim victims of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The savagery in Syria's civil war has hardly been dim, but videos emerging in recent days—celebrated executions and purported cannibalism—show sectarian violence and cruelty flaring with a previously unseen intensity.

May remains the deadliest month this year for NATO forces in Afghanistan. A suicide car bomber in Kabul plowed into a convoy, killing 15 people. Two were American.

Wow! More blood on our clothing and shoes—this time after the collapse of a sweatshop in Cambodia where, so far, six people working in lousy conditions so we can put smaller purchases on our credit cards are dead.

Iran's ruling cleric has decreed what everyone already knew, just in case anyone thought they might not be serious about that whole brutality and intolerance thing: Only men can serve as president.

Twenty counts of attempted murder have been filed against a 19-year-old New Orleans man arrested in connection with a shooting during a Mother's Day parade that left 19 people injured.

The mayor of Detroit decides to shout "NEXT!"

Climate change deniers, among scientists, are distinctly in the minority. How do we know this? Because 97 percent of all academic papers written on the subject over the past 20 years definitively agree that humans are to blame.

Sports news! The NBA continues to torment Seattle (birthplace of the Oklahoma City Thunder!) by denying the Sacramento Kings' relocation bid.

More sports news! The English husband of Posh Spice doesn't want to play soccer anymore.

Thieves are thieving the fee money Oregonians place inside unmonitored tubes at federal parks up and down the coast.

You can be kicked off TriMet, a judge says, if you argue with or criticize an employee and that employee decides to say you were making "excessive noise."

PREVIOUSLY ON BLOGTOWN, ICYMI: An adorable Carson Ellis mural in St. Johns. A brewing fight over a no-parking apartment in Kerns. And one more debacle for Portland's arts tax.

REMEMBER TO FILL OUT YOUR BALLOTS BEFORE NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT. READ UP AND REMEMBER, WE ENDORSED WATER FLUORIDATION ALONGSIDE EVERY OTHER NEWS OUTLET IN TOWN.