IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: House Republicans want Justice Department to provide details of IRS probe, possible interview with Lois Lerner.

Related: Power Isn’t Funny: Obama bombs when he jokes that he’ll sic the IRS or the Secret Service on his critics.

The president’s latest witticism was inspired by his much-debated appearance on Between Two Ferns, during which he traded carefully scripted barbs with actor Zach Galifianakis. “Zach actually was pretty nervous,” Obama explained to Ryan Seacrest in a postmortem interview. “His whole character is to go after the guest, and I think he was looking around and seeing all these Secret Service guys with guns and thinking, I wonder what happens here if I cross the line? But we had a great time.”

Gettit? Because if Galifianakis had said something that the president didn’t like, the president’s armed guards would have killed him. In consequence . . . and prepare yourself, because this is hysterical . . . the comedian self-censored, permitting Obama to get in a nice little barrage of prepared zingers and sitting by quietly while he hawked his vision for the federal government! Nice thing you’ve got going here, matey. Shame if anything were to happen to it. Funny or Die! Ha, ha, ha. . . . The joke in each case is simple and similar: I’m more powerful than you, and, if I want to, I can kill you. Is it funny?

Funny as an assassination joke. Likewise with the audits. As noted, I made a similar observation back in 2009. What’s interesting is that Obama hasn’t matured at all in the interim.