As Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said “Americans were affected by the culture of political intimidation and discrimination that was cultivated by this targeting, for simply exercising their First Amendment rights — the freedoms of association, expression and religion, the IRS singled them out.”
The response from the left was predictable. Rep. Jim McDermott, D. Washington, said Republicans are looking to create a scandal. “None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We’re talking about whether or not the American taxpayers will subsidize your work. We’re talking about a tax break.”
However, John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, testified otherwise. He found out that opponents of his group received its confidential information, including a donor list that appeared to have come from the IRS. Inadvertent? Doubtful, and it worked. His donors were afraid to continue to help. The effect: silencing it through lack of funds.
Another silencing of an organization: Sue Martinek, president of the Coalition for Life of Iowa, testified that she was told not to protest at Planned Parenthood as a condition of receiving tax-exempt status. You can be tax exempt, but you can’t protest as you want, and provide information to PP patients. Silence, indeed.
Now there is speculation that the orders to target aren’t local as has been reported. It would seem that those 88 low level employees aren’t taking being chucked under the bus well. Apparently they’re willing to give up how high up the targeting orders came. While this remains to be verified, it wouldn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that employees willing to go along with targeting conservative groups, who in my estimation must largely be left leaning, aren’t willing to lie down and take being made the scapegoat for the Obama Administration.
Stay tuned, more shoes to drop soon…
Image: Exterior of the Internal Revenue Service office in midtown New York; author: Matthew G. Bisanz; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license
