The proper lessons of the unfolding IRS scandal are twofold. First, any effort to have the IRS police advocacy activities of social-welfare organizations is bound to be clumsy and prone to degenerate into either selective or broad witch hunts. Second, the remedy is not to further limit political speech by nonprofit entities—which would certainly raise significant constitutional issues—but to encourage such speech by imposing fewer restrictions.
That combines with this:
Via Peter Baker of The New York Times, comes this…gem. Baker quotes David Axelrod, long-time senior advisor to President Barack Advisor and heavy-hitting campaign supporter in 2012, as saying this:
[T]he reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you’re saying.
So, the plain, unvarnished truth isn’t practical, is that it?
In response to the IRS’ appalling targeting of administration-disfavored groups applying for tax-exempt status, President Barack Obama’s senior advisor David Plouffe tweeted
David Plouffe @davidplouffe 12 May
What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $.
As The Wall Street Journal notes, all that matters in Plouffe’s moral world is
partisan advantage rather than…apolitical tax enforcement….
It’s clear to me from all of the scandals exploding in DC that this view of “morality” is typical of the Progressives and is not at all unique to Plouffe.
With the permission of Day by Day:
Which requires no further comment.
Here’s a short list:
Joseph Muto was an employee working on a Fox News opinion program when he was caught stealing material from the show and using it for personal gain. What he and his lawyer said about the matter is instructive.
Muto:
I wouldn’t have done it had I known I’d end up in this courtroom. To answer your question of “was it worth it?” I wouldn’t have done it.
President Barack Obama wants to forgive another batch of debt, this time owed by America’s youth. This is another of those tidbits buried in his latest pseudo-budget proposal.
Obama wants to
increase the number of borrowers eligible for a program known casually as income-based repayment, which aims to help low-income workers stay current on federal student debt.
Borrowers in the program make monthly payments equivalent to 10% of their income after taxes and basic living expenses, regardless of how much they owe. After 20 years of on-time payments—10 years for those who work in public or nonprofit jobs—the balance is forgiven.
Last month US Federal Judge Edward Korman ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must permit the morning after pill—the so-called Plan B pill—to be sold over the counter, to be stocked on store shelves rather than held behind the pharmacist’s counter, and to be saleable to “women” of all ages—i.e., including to children. And saleable to these children without any parental involvement, which is the outcome of eliminating the FDA’s by-prescription and age-limited sales. That’s bad enough.
Recall that in the last election season, the Internal Revenue Service demanded of a number of nonprofit organizations information about the nature of their politics, who their contributors were, even asking about family members. The IRS intended to use this information to challenge the organizations’ nonprofit status. That this was a biased request is demonstrated by the fact that only conservative nonprofits were targeted, and they were targeted on the basis of the presence of terms like “patriot” and “tea party” in their organizational names.
The then-IRS commissioner, of course, denied this. Douglas Shulman told Congress in March 2012,
When a Progressive says so.
Former New Mexico Gov Bill Richardson said Sunday that Republican Sen Ted Cruz, whose father was a Cuban immigrant, should not be “defined as a Hispanic” because of his stance on immigration legislation.
Richardson justified his redefinition with this:
I don’t like his politics…. No, I don’t think he should be defined as a Hispanic[.]
Just like conservative blacks must be uppity Uncle Toms and conservative women must be sluts, so an Hispanic who holds views that are disapproved by Progressives must be drummed out and denied his heritage.