Today we publish a commentary by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), arguing against legislation to require expanded campaign finance disclosure. The senator points to the current furor over how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) mishandled applications from tea party and other conservative groups for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. We certainly agree with him that the IRS failed to meet basic standards of fairness in selectively pressing the groups for more information and in delaying their applications.

THE MOST far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s immigration system in a generation has emerged mostly unscathed from the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill’s bipartisan sponsors showed that, even in Washington, the center can sometimes hold. Though the legislation, all 800-odd pages of it, contains provisions that pained Democrat and Republican backers alike, they gritted their teeth and voted it out of committee and onto the Senate floor.

APPLE HAS BROUGHT American consumers such popular wonders as the iPad, iPod and iPhone and earned billions of dollars in the process. It’s in hot water with Congress now, however, because of something it has not done: regularly paid the top U.S. corporate income tax rate of 35 percent on every dollar it earns around the world. From 2009 to 2012, in fact, Apple managed to avoid taxes on nearly a third of its worldwide net profits, some $30 billion, which were booked to its Irish subsidiaries, according to a report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Apple’s actions “undermine the fairness of the U.S. tax code,” the report says.

ONE OF THE FIRST things D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) did after taking over the newly constituted education committee was host a dinner aimed at establishing a new tone of collaboration for those involved in D.C. public education. The dinner was held on a night when D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson had long been scheduled to be out of town. That was an early tip-off to Mr. Catania’s notions about cooperation.