Now that Christmas is over and the New Year beckons, it’s time for Watchdog.org’s annual parade of malfeasance and miscreants.

The Scariest People of 2015 is a frightening list indeed, filled with bureaucrats and functionaries who, shall we say, do not share an affinity for liberty.

No one can stop them from plying their trade — bad government is as old as government. But we can keep an eye on them, report their misdeeds to the world and once in a while help the good guys win.

Through New Year’s Day, we’ll highlight the most egregious examples of nanny statism, overweening bureaucracy and just plain old bad government from the past 12 months, encompassing local, state and federal officialdom.

Here’s No. 6.

When Lois Lerner is one of your personal friends, you’re bound to end up on the naughty list.

Kevin Kennedy, the embattled director of the state Government Accountability Board, has acknowledged that “Ms. Lerner is a professional friend who I have known for more than 20 years.”

What we’ve learned this year is that Kennedy has traded recipes on politically motivated investigations like Wisconsin’s defunct John Doe probe with his old pal Lerner, the former director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations Unit, and the central figure in the IRS’s shakedown of conservative groups.

LOIS & KEVIN: Close friends Lois Lerner and Kevin Kennedy share a common bond in targeting conservatives.

In July, the Wall Street Journal reported on emails it had viewed showing Kennedy and Lerner in “contact on multiple occasions” between 2011 and 2013, “sharing articles on topics including greater donor disclosure and Wisconsin’s recall elections.”

“The emails indicate the two were also personal friends who met for dinner and kept in professional touch,” the Journal reported.

And documents obtained by Wisconsin Watchdog indicate Kennedy early on sought the involvement of federal agencies — including the IRS – in the unconstitutional campaign finance probe his agency helped lead into 29 conservative groups and GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign.

The documents raise some serious questions as to whether the GAB violated its own confidentiality statutes as well as the John Doe secrecy order in presenting information to federal agencies and others not admitted into the investigation. If so, Kennedy and other GAB staff members would be subject to jail time and costly fines.

At a hearing in October, Kennedy invoked the ghost of long-dead U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

“Seriously? Have you no decency?” Kennedy sharply responded to state Sen. Chris Kapenga’s question about Kennedy’s relationship with Lerner.

This from the guy who backed armed raids on the homes of conservative citizens who were never charged with any wrongdoing.

Nothing brings left-leaning bureaucrats together like targeting conservatives.