IRS Also Targeted Groups Who Seek To Teach The Constitution

Because, of course, they are a danger to the Republic ...

From the Washington Post:

At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general. 

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post  from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who  oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later. 

But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to groups that applied for tax-exempt status as “social welfare” groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.,” according to the appendix in the IG report, which was requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has yet to be released. 

The new revelations are likely to intensify criticism of the IRS, which has been under fire since agency officials acknowledged they had deliberately targeted groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their name for heightened scrutiny.

Also, from the Wall Street Journal:

 The Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to "make America a better place to live," according to new details of a government probe. 

The inspector general's office has been conducting an audit of the IRS's handling of the applications process and is expected to release a report this week. The audit follows complaints last year by numerous tea-party and other conservative groups that they had been singled out and subjected to excessive and inappropriate questioning. Many groups say they were asked for lists of their donors and other sensitive information. 

On Sunday, a government official said the report will note that IRS officials told investigators that no one outside the IRS was involved in developing the criteria the agency now acknowledges were flawed.

And, let us remember Nixon loved to use the IRS to attempt to intimidate and silence his "enemies":

For decades now, the left has pointed to tapes in which Nixon called for the IRS to audit the taxes of his political enemies. But there was only silence this past year asconservative groups complained they were being subjected to unreasonable demands for information that cost them thousands of dollars and countless hours. 

Now, the IRS is blaming the outrage on a bureaucratic snafu by “local career employees” in its Cincinnati office that no senior officials was aware of.Which sounds suspiciously like the same kind of excuse the Justice Department used for its Fast and Furious debacle and the State Department offered for the deadly fiasco at Benghazi. 

And with the same degree of credibility.

DENNIS KUCINICH: HOW "CAN IT NOT BE" POLITICAL TARGETING?

Former Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich slammed the unethical targeting of conservative Tea Party groups by the IRS on Fox News Sunday’s panel, unequivocally suggesting that this was political targeting at its worst. 

After dropping the disclaimer that he is a “liberal Democrat” and does not celebrate Tea Party politics, Kucinich firmly claimed politics has no place with the IRS: 

“We can not have a condition in America where peoples politics are the basis for IRS attacks.”

Wallace countered, asking if Kucinich thought the IRS’s missteps were straight up political targeting: 

“How can it not be?” Kucinich concluded.

Keep reading…