surfaced last week from an inspector general report that found IRS officials used inappropriate criteria for 18 months, such as flagging the names of groups that included "tea party" or "patriots," for additional scrutiny.

"Partisanship or even the appearance of partisanship has no place at the IRS," Miller said. "I do not believe that partisanship motivated the people who engaged in the practices."

"I think that what happened here was that foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their work load selection," he continued. "The listing described in the report, while intolerable, was a mistake, and not an act of partisanship."