“Secret money has become the scourge of the political system and needs to be eliminated regardless of the inconvenience to nonprofit groups, whatever their ideology. Republicans have blocked Congress from dealing with the problem, so now it is up to the I.R.S. to do its job.”

* * *

Those lines are from an editorial in the Times this morning calling for the Internal Revenue Service to start moving against not-for-profit groups that Congress has refused to regulate. They are one of the most astonishing combination of sentences we’ve seen in a while for the schematic way in which they illuminate the dictatorial mindset. Where in the world did the Times, once a paper of liberal progress, get possessed of the notion that the executive branch should do things that Congress decided it didn’t want to authorize it to do?

Feature the phrasing of the Times. “Republicans have blocked Congress from dealing with the problem . . .” Who are these Republicans? Are they parking lot attendants who won’t let the Congressmen park their cars? Or elevator operators who won’t transport the solons to the voting floor? Or picketers clogging the granite steps? The tone of the thing suggests the Times couldn’t possibly be referring to committee chairmen in the House who might, despite the will of the minority, be refusing to solve a problem.

Could the Times possibly be referring to ordinary members in the majority of one of the chambers who have had the audacity to block the minority from passing a law? Is the Times referring to the effrontery, the hooligan nature of the Republican majority that won’t vote with the Democrats? It just must give the Times nightmares. Maybe the President should declare martial law. After all, blocking a democratically elected minority from dealing with one of the country’s problems, that’s serious stuff. Maybe the Times should send in the Marines.

The idea that something should be done in the face of a Congress that refuses to authorize it, this has long since become a recurring theme of the Obama administration. He’s got his pen. He’s got his phone. And the Times has got this notion that because the Republicans control one house of Congress it’s okay for the administration to do things the Congress would have passed if the Democrats had controlled it. Even that doesn’t quite catch the baldness of the situation. The Times wants the IRS to do things not only that the Congress hasn’t authorized but that the Supreme Court has ruled against.

Let us just say, we are old, and maybe we have grown feeble. But we cling to Lincoln’s locution about how one can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Eventually they will assert themselves. Either they will hand the Senate to the Republicans or the House to the Democrats. Or a way will be found for the Supreme Court to make its orders felt. But eventually the American institutions will make it clear that the refusal of the Congress to do something — raise taxes, lower taxes, declare war . . . whatever — doesn’t mean that it’s okay for the Internal Revenue Service to go ahead and do it anyhow.