In the better-late-than-never department, the Internal Revenue Service has granted tax-exempt status to Friends of Abe. Variety magazine calls the group “Hollywood’s largest fellowship of conservative and right-of-center independents” in an industry known for tilting 320 degrees or so to the left.
The status comes three years after the Friends filed its application. But the belated approval does not mean that IRS’s politically motivated targeting has stopped and that all legitimate applications filed by conservative groups are now being granted with only standard quotients of bureaucratic lethargy.
The American Center for Law and Justice — representing 41 plaintiffs who say IRS violated their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly — attests that 13 of them have still not received tax-exempt status, with the oldest application having gathered dust since 2009. Meanwhile, the IRS officer until recently overseeing these applications, Lois Lerner, continues to plead the Fifth when asked to testify about the agency’s conduct.
We may never fully know what happened and is still happening here, given the stonewalling being done not only by Lerner but others in IRS and elsewhere in the government (like the Justice Department). But it is clear that IRS has abetted the freedom of speech and assembly of ideologically favored groups at the expense of others, and to the benefit of President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign; and that IRS wants even more power to thus discriminate. The policies being covered up are wrong, dangerous … and ongoing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
8 replies on “IRS No Friend of Friends of Abe”
It ought to be a condition of employment with the government, any government, that you cannot decline to answer questions posed by either the legislature or the judiciary, with the penalty being imprisonment for contempt. Permitting this kind of blatant cover-up of abuse simply enables corruption.
Congress is supposed to impeach those that commit federal crimes and violate their oath of office, not let them skate into a cushy retirement.
I’m even more in contempt of Congress than Lois Lerner is.
The system is imploding. It began with the Constitution at least. Try to get your friends to understand that it is not Obama only but all stripes of politicians. Most critical to get people to understand is that it is most of all the Admin. Agencies who are the actual depositories of power. The consequence of the Power of The State were not a surprise. It is important they understand it is not a particular Dem or Repub. If people do not learn,the all they will do is send a duplicate Repub to DC to repeat the same song, another verse.
If voting would fix the problem, Congress would have made it illegal.
Convention of States.
Excuse errors!Trying to type too fast.
It is NOT ONLY CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL GROUPS that have trouble getting their applications approved. I have a friend, an ordained clegyman, in his religion. His application has been pending for about four years. AND HE IS NON POLITICIAL,AS IS HIS FAITH.
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