In the News
Reason: To End IRS Abuses of Free Speech, End the IRS
By J.D. Tuccille
That’s especially true since the rules are a moving target. Organizations across the political spectrum object that the federal government plans to tighten rules based on the proximity of communications and events to elections, with 60 days as the magic cut-off. In response to the proposed revisions, a letter signed by Bradley A. Smith and Alan Dickerson of the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) “questions whether the IRS should be engaged in the minutiae of regulating political or politically-related speech at all,” although it goes on to recommend a streamlined regulatory process that would keep tax collectors in the game.
Here’s a thought: Recognize that the IRS is too dangerous to be allowed to play with politics, in any way. Strip it of the power to distinguish among types of speech and to anoint “acceptable” educational verbiage while penalizing “forbidden” politicking.
That can only be a first step, since the tax agency’s depredations against free speech predate the regulation of nonprofit organizations, and its worst actions have been overtly malicious. Dismantling the IRS is a necessary next step in terms of protecting free speech—if necessary, sow the place where it once was with salt.
Wall Street Journal (LTE): Conservative Group Intimidation: More Than the IRS
By Terry Hill
Regarding Bradley A. Smith’s “Connecting the Dots in the IRS Scandal” (op-ed, Feb. 27): President Obama, Sens. Levin, Durbin and Schumer and many other prominent Democrats wanted conservative 501(c)(4) groups muzzled for political reasons—a reprehensible abuse of power, but one that is understandable as a matter of pure self-interest. The mainstream media’s complicity in the Democratic abuse of power seems more ideological in nature, with news reporters branding tea partiers and other conservatives as dangerous, hate-filled, racist right-wingers clinging to their Bibles and guns. The only true unifying theme of all the independent tea-party groups, however, is a desire for a smaller federal government that operates within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution.
IRS
Washington Post: The IRS’s behavior taxes credulity
By George F. Will
What’s been said of confession — that it is good for one’s soul but bad for one’s reputation — can also be true of testifying to Congress, so Lois Lerner has chosen to stay silent. Hers, however, is an eloquent silence.
The most intrusive and potentially most punitive federal agency has been politicized; the IRS has become an appendage of Barack Obama’s party. Furthermore, congruent with exhortations from some congressional Democrats, it is intensifying its efforts to suffocate groups critical of progressives, by delaying what once was the swift, routine granting of tax-exempt status.
So, the IRS, far from repenting of its abusive behavior, is trying to codify the abuses. It hopes to nullify with new rules the existing legal right of 501(c)(4) groups, many of which are conservative, to participate in politics. The proposed rules have drawn more than 140,000 comments, most of them complaints, some from liberals wary of IRS attempts to broadly define “candidate-related political activity” and to narrow the permissible amount of this.
Wall Street Journal: Lois Lerner’s IRS ‘Immunity Deal’
By James Freeman
Justice says that it does not take into account political views of employees when assigning tasks and that in fact it would be illegal to do so. But Mr. Jordan has asked Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz to determine how this case landed with Ms. Bosserman, a civil-rights attorney, instead of a prosecutor in the department’s public integrity section.
Mr. Jordan says he’d like to get a transcript of Justice’s Lerner interview but doubts the department will turn it over since the executive branch still hasn’t complied with a Congressional subpoena to turn over all of Ms. Lerner’s emails.
Fox: Slow Lerner
The issue is, what part of the Justice Department is she talking to? An issue like this would normally be handled by the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice. It’s always been done that way. She is not talking to them. She is talking to the Civil Rights Division, which is run by Barbara Bosserman, who is an Obama partisan. That makes you wonder, what is the point of her talking to the Department of Justice?
I think what is going on here is that the Obama people understand they are on very thin ice with this IRS investigation because abuse of power is not merely a political expression. It’s a federal felony. You start pulling on that string and finding other people who conspired to impede a federal investigation, a lot of individuals are going to have very significant legal and political exposure. Lois Lerner is the one they are all hanging on to.
CPI: CPAC activists urged to fight IRS
By Michael Beckel
And numerous top conservatives declared that the IRS’s new proposed regulations of politically active nonprofits should be quashed — and that agency officials who inappropriately scrutinized tea party nonprofits should be severely punished.
“The IRS is a criminal enterprise” and a “cancer” that has been “intimidating Americans who are conservative,” Huckabee said.
NY Times: For I.R.S. Chief, a Challenge Too Big to Pass Up
By Albert Hunt
WASHINGTON — In today’s bitterly polarized environment, the Internal Revenue Service has become even more of a whipping boy for United States politicians as it struggles with deep budget cuts and accusations of incompetence and, some say, illegal actions.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: The Really Big Money? Not the Kochs
By Kimberley Strassel
Harry Reid is under a lot of job-retention stress these days, so Americans might forgive him the occasional word fumble. When he recently took to the Senate floor to berate the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch for spending “unlimited money” to “rig the system” and “buy elections,” the majority leader clearly meant to be condemning unions.
It’s an extraordinary thing, in a political age obsessed with campaign money, that nobody scrutinizes the biggest, baddest, “darkest” spenders of all: organized labor. The IRS is muzzling nonprofits; Democrats are “outing” corporate donors; Jane Mayer is probably working on part 89 of her New Yorker series on the “covert” Kochs. Yet the unions glide blissfully, unmolestedly along. This lack of oversight has led to a union world that today acts with a level of campaign-finance impunity that no other political giver—conservative outfits, corporate donors, individuals, trade groups—could even fathom.
Mr. Reid was quite agitated on the Senate floor about “unlimited money,” by which he must have been referring to the $4.4 billion that unions had spent on politics from 2005 to 2011 alone, according to this newspaper. The Center for Responsive Politics’ list of top all-time donors from 1989 to 2014 ranks Koch Industries No. 59. Above Koch were 18 unions, which collectively spent $620,873,623 more than Koch Industries ($18 million). Even factoring in undisclosed personal donations by the Koch brothers, they are a rounding error in union spending.
More Soft Money Hard Law: Not a Distortion, Really: A Quick Reply to Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center
By Bob Bauer
The position Trevor takes up here is fully consistent with the course over many years of the reform argument about negative advertising. Whether the solution proposed was the 30 and 60-day election advertising plan, or the “stand by your ad” requirement, the expectation(or hope) was that with appropriate regulation, the amount of negative advertising could be reduced. This was certainly the intent behind the “stand by your ad” requirement, as recognized by critics and supporters alike. But it was also the reform community objective to attack the problem by more sweeping disclosure requirements. None other than John McCain has said: “if you demand full disclosure for those that pay for those ads [attack ads], you’re going to see a lot less of that.” John Samples, The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform 4 (2006) (citing 107 Cong. Rec. S3,116 (2001) (statement of Sen. John McCain)).
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
NY Times: Issa Hands Democrats Weapon to Use on Him
By Jonathan Weisman
WASHINGTON — Since Republicans took control of the House in 2011, Representative Darrell Issa has tried gamely to play the thoughtful, even-tempered investigator, even as he has accused the Obama administration of the most heinous crimes: thuggery, political witch hunts, even homicide, in the case of Benghazi.
But when on Wednesday he silenced the microphone of his committee’s ranking Democrat with a finger dragged dramatically across his throat, Mr. Issa may have given House Democrats — a minority largely screaming into the wind — an opportunity to pivot from Republican accusations and paint him as an overzealous inquisitor.
FEC
CPI: FEC wants millions in new cash to fix security woes
By Dave Levinthal
The Federal Election Commission is asking Congress for nearly $3 million to address what it says are serious security breaches and an obsolete IT system.
The requests follow an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity that in December revealed Chinese hackers infiltrated the agency’s computer systems.
