The national United Church of Christ is under attack from the IRS, the AP reports, because the church invited one of its members, Barack Obama, to speak at the church's national conference last summer. The invitation came before Obama had decided to run for president. What's at stake here is not just religious freedom, but the freedom of speech of all nonprofit groups. The danger is that when nonprofit groups are silenced, corporate America will be able to dominate even more thoroughly the public debate.
The IRS letter to the United Church of Christ is particularly disturbing, threatening to revoke the church's tax-exempt status. The sole basis for the letter is that Obama gave a June 23, 2007 speech to the church's members (he was invited before he decided to run for president), and Obama campaign staffers had tables outside the building promoting him. Inside the building, the church actually banned all Obama signs and literature, and announced that it was not a campaign speech.
If this rule is taken literally, it might ban all politicians from speaking at any nonprofit location. The IRS rules would have required the church to give the same speaking opportunity to every single candidate for president. Since Obama spoke more than six months before anyone voted in the 2008 elections, this rule would put no time limit on a ban. So far, that campaign for presidency has included nine Democrats, 13 Republicans, four Constitution Party candidates, three Green Party candidates, eight Libertarian Party candidates, and a half-dozen smaller party candidates, plus any potential challengers to Obama's Senate seat. Altogether, a nonprofit organization would need to invite nearly 50 people to speak for an hour at any event if they wanted to hear a candidate speak. This kind of logic would effectively mean that every nonprofit organization in the country is now banned from having any politician speak at an event at any time. These groups cannot afford to provide an outlet for every nutcase candidate to speak, and they cannot risk the legal liability of failing to invite every possible speaker.
Such repressive IRS actions are already causing fearful reactions from nonprofit organizations. As I noted last month, the School of the Art Institute in Chicago banned its Gene Siskel Film Center from showing a documentary about Barack Obama out of an exaggerated fear that it might be seen as violating IRS rules. There is a serious danger that colleges and other nonprofit groups will seek to silence political speech out of a misguided fear of what an IRS controlled by the Bush Administration might do to them.
Nonprofit groups are, correctly, banned from aiding politicians. But this law should have a narrow application that protects the integrity of the political process, not a broad interpretation that censors speech fully protected by the First Amendment. Churches and other nonprofit groups should be prohibited from funneling money to a campaign, raising money for candidates, or making membership in the organization dependent upon support for or opposition to a candidate. Beyond that, however, churches should be free to invite any candidates to speak without charge, and members of churches should be equally free to endorse any candidates they wish. When nonprofit groups violate standards of fair conduct (such as the efforts by right-wing Catholic groups to have liberal Democrats banned from speaking at Catholic colleges), the proper response is condemnation, not attempts to banish their existence as non-profit organizations.
I am a strong advocate of preventing politicians from exploiting nonprofit groups. In my 1996 book, Newt Gingrich: Capital Crimes and Misdemeanors, I criticized the IRS' lenient treatment toward nonprofit organizations run by Newt to aid the Republican Party and his personal presidential ambitions. Newt's political organization GOPAC effectively ran a nonprofit group, the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation, as a money-laundering scheme for its big donors who wanted to avoid political contribution limits and receive a tax-deduction. Corporations and foundations, which are banned from donating to campaigns, could also funnel money to Gingrich using this method, and Gingrich personally thanked donors for their commitment "to GOPAC and to ALOF." Gingrich decided to start another nonprofit group, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, to promote his videotaped college lectures where he explicitly banned "liberal ideas" and then lied about it to the House Ethics Committee. Gingrich wasn't alone. Bob Dole started the nonprofit Better America Foundation in 1994 and spent millions on polls and TV commercials before the 1994 elections that featured Dole and Gingrich asking viewers to "help turn Congress around." But these fraudulent groups can be stopped without suppressing the political speech of legitimate churches and activist organizations.
Why is the IRS so anxious to go after a Democratic Senator's church at the same time it is letting wealthy tax cheats get away with their crimes? Under the Bush Administration, the IRS has dramatically increased audits of low-income taxpayers while largely ignoring massive fraud by the very rich. This latest attack on Obama's national church by the Bush Administration closely follows the right-wing attacks on the pastor of his church in Chicago.
It might be tempting for some liberals to want to use the IRS to go after all of the right-wing churches that are deeply involved in supporting Republican candidates. But there's a principle at stake here. We should have freedom of expression for everyone, whether it's conservative or liberal groups. We have nothing to fear from the right in the open debate of ideas, but we have plenty to fear when the IRS is trying to suppress political discussions.
Crossposted at ObamaPolitics.
Note: I'm the author of a new book, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, but I'm not part of the Obama Campaign.
like the candidate obama, he cries wolf everytime and the media protects him. he parrots hillary during debates. just watch him. his 'present' votes in the IL. legislature means he can't think or worse he can't make a decision. if he can't make a decision then, do you think he can make the right decision when he is president? or is he going to say 'present?'
i am a democrat but will vote for mccain if obama is the democratic candidate.
Sorry. I will support whichever Democratic candidate wins.
I support Hillary, but you know, I support Obama too despite some reservations.
I have reservations about Hillary as well. I believe either of them would be good Presidents and have the opportunity to be great Presidents depending who they surround themselves with.
There are quite a few things that disturb me about Obaama, his surrogates and most of all his supporters that are in the Progressive blogosphere.
If I judged Obama by them I would not be able to support him at all.
If these are the people who are attracted to him then who is he or rather, what is it about him that attracts these kind of people who have more intrest in smearing their shit all over Hillary and perpetrating Hatred and malice toward her than actually living the message they purportedly support.
Lip service is not really rolling up your sleeves and working to change America.
As Obama says, Word's matter. The words they say tell a story in stark contrast to Obama,
There are more concerns about Senator Obama and some of his tactics that I have written about in many posts in my desire to promote some kind of fairness and objectivity on this site. (fat chance)
That being said I also have issues with Senator Clinton. Her campaign has been unraveling so I have to ask who has she surrounded herself with and who has she listened to.
That is really what I am most concerned about with her.
I supported Obama before but for the reasons I've outlined here and elsewhere I moved over to support Hillary. I fully investigated her from the early 1970's on. I know I won't agree with every decision she makes or support every thing she wants done. I'm a grown up. We have to be realistic.
Well anyway, the bottom line is if you vote for McCain you will be helping brink bring Hell back. We see what happens when people make a
protest vote. We have had 7 years so far and while I would love to have 3 parties, or more for that matter, we do not have that now. Voting for anyone but a democrat is madness.
We need to get over the divisiveness that the Obamatons have been perpetrating on the Progressive blogs.
We don't have to follow that lead. Rising above is the only way to go.
As I said when you read their comments you have to wonder about Obama. Its such a turnoff.
Why be like them, take the high road, suck it up and do what is best for the country.
Please.
You are NOT A DEM!
No matter who the Dem Nominee in November is, Dems will vote for the ticket.
Leave this site and go help McWar. He and the entire GOP are looking for volunteers
and money.
As one who lived through the Nixon era, I am saddened--to say the least--to learn that yet another Republican administration is using the IRS to go after its 'enemies list.'
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I'm betting they've opened Pandora's box that will hurt almost exclusively the right wing churches that have openly campaigned for the Republicans themselves.
REPUBLICANS WANT OBAMA SO BAD THEY CAN TASTE IT. I HAVE WORKED IN D C AND THEY KNOW VERY WELL THEY WILL EAT OBAMA ALIVE IN THE GENERAL. REPUBLICANS KNOW BY FAR OBAMA IS WEAKER THAN CLINTON.
THE MOST LIBERAL SENATOR IN THE SENATE WHO VOTES FOR PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION. ( THAT ALONE WILL BRING THE CONSERVATIVES OUT IN MASS)
THINK OF THE COMMERCIALS THEY COULD RUN:
Obama, the most liberal senator in D C has no problem with partial birth abortion. He and his wife even hold fund raisers to kill innocent children whom have have taken their first breath. These innocent baby American citizens would live outside their mothers womb. That is if Obama didn't vote over and over and over and over against them.
Then the person in the commercial will speak over crying mothers and graves about what partial abortion is: ( it is a form of late-term abortion and infanticide. The term infanticide refers to the killing of a newborn infant: )
In 2003, as chairman of the next Senate committee to which BAIPA (Born Alive Infants Protection Act) was sent, Obama prevented it from even getting a hearing. BAIPA stated that all live-born babies were guaranteed the same constitutional right to equal protection, whether or not they were wanted. Obama killed the bill. In all, BAIPA had been introduced and failed four times in four years in Illinois, due in large part Obama.
THE REPUBLICAN COMMERCIAL WILL GO ON TO DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENS TO A INNOCENT BABY DURING THE PROCEDURE THAT OBAMA VOTED FOR OVER AND OVER AND OVER OVER AGAIN. AND RAISED MONEY FOR:
The surgeon inserts a sharp object into the back of the fetus' head, removes it, and inserts a vacuum tube through which the brains are extracted. The head of the fetus contracts at this point and allows the fetus to be more easily removed from the womb.
Obama will be crushed in the general. If you want a REP in the WH vote for Obama. He will get a REP in the WH for the DEMS like that.
There is nothig that gets REP faster to the polls than a liberal that votes for partial birth abortion. Nothing.
funny, because a Clinton supporter yesterday gave me her unsolicited opinion that he wasn't liberal enough, so I shouldn't vote for him, and that's why Republicans actually support him.
So which is it? Clinton supporters (if indeed you are one) can't seem to get their messages straight, and I'm tired of having them trying to tell me who to vote for.
It would be a wonderful world if when the nice people get a chance to govern, they just shake hands with everybody who was lately marching against them with a pitchfork pointed at their bellies. That way, there would be no more unpleasantness, no more partisan rancor, and we could all get back to the fiction of our unified purpose here in the USA, which incidentally can be boiled down past obfuscating rhetoric to 'screw the little guy'.
But we tried that. It's called Watergate. And Iran-Contra. And everybody who the democrats just left unprosecuted plotted and planned, and when they had the run of the White House this last time, mangled our constitution past recognition, eviscerated our republic and bankrupt both the treasury and our international standing. Prosecution for the guilty! The full weight of the law brought against the promoters and enablers!