IRS Targets Tea Party Groups
The IRS has set its sights on at least 20 Tea Party groups, demanding that they “reveal the internal workings of their organizations, including the identification of members, how they are selected, who they associate with, and even what they discuss.”
The American Center for Law and Justice is rightfully none too pleased and has taken up the cause. This from CNSNews:
“This appears to be a coordinated attempt to intimidate Tea Party organizations by demanding information that is outside the scope of legitimate inquiry and violates the First Amendment,” said Jay Sekulow, ACLJ’s chief counsel.
”These organizations have followed the law and applied for tax exempt status for their activities as Americans have done for decades. The problem here is the IRS has gone beyond legitimate inquiries and is demanding that these organizations answer questions that actually violate the First Amendment rights of our clients.”
…
“This intimidation campaign is as onerous as what the IRS did to the NAACP in the 1950’s and is simply unacceptable. We will aggressively defend our clients and are prepared to take the IRS to court if necessary,” ACLJ said Wednesday in a news release.
The ACLJ has started a petition to have Congress conduct oversight hearings on the IRS action, and it’s already gathered upwards of 30,000 signatures. How far beyond “legitimate inquiries” does the IRS go? Get ready for some long reading. A partial list of what the ACLJ calls the some of the “most egregious questions” can be found here.
It shouldn’t come as any great surprise that big government is doing its best to harass and disrupt Tea Party groups. At least some measure of small comfort can be taken that government agents aren’t overtly targeting American citizens for outright termination.
Wait, what?
“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”
While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances.
So apparently it’s now considered acceptable for the IRS to target select groups with intimidating and unwarranted inquiries and for the attorney general to selectively interpret or outright ignore whole sections of Constitution.
Move along, citizen, nothing to see here.
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