Free Republic

The senior pastor at Seattle’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church told followers to “raise Cain” in response to Saturday’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman was accused of shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to death nearly a year-and-a-half ago. His defense was Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. In his morning sermon, Rev. Aaron Williams said it was important for the African-American community to “not allow this to die down” and to highlight perceived “injustice” within the nation’s criminal justice system. “We should be raising Cain because if we don’t,” Rev. Williams said, “history has a way of repeating itself. “There...

Which brings us to the curious point that even though OFA tweet in the name of the leader of the Democratic Party, they are legally a non-partisan organization. Figure out how that works. The arms-length relationship between Obama and Organizing For Action is based on its legal status as a non-partisan organization. As Politico reported in February, the organization updated its guidelines to make that point clearly. [The Atlantic Wire] “The organization on Wednesday quietly posted new guidelines on its website formally declaring its intention to stay out of campaign politics. “Neither OFA nor its chapters will be involved in...

Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of whether Internal Revenue Service employees broke the law when they targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status — the latest setback for an agency that is the subject of withering bipartisan criticism and multiple congressional inquiries. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Tuesday that the Justice Department and the FBI began the probe after the IRS acknowledged that it selected conservative groups with the words “tea party” and “patriot” in their names for special reviews. “We are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations,” Holder said at a news...

Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years. According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval. Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting...

I have watched over the years how publicly unaccountable foundations have amassed billions of dollars, tax free, and spend it on dangerous, leftwing, often anti-American and anti-Israeli outfits, conferences and promoters. Taxpaying citizens opposed to abortion without restrictions, open borders, balkanization of the country, erosion of their constitutional rights, dumbed down education of their children and environmental extremism are fighting opposition very generously funded by these groups. The irony of this development is that capitalists -- like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Pew -- who owed their fortunes to American free market policies, started most of these foundations. Further, the notion of...

......Robert Goldfarb, an attorney for the state, said that nobody would visit the club if the dancers didn't remove their clothes. He also argued that the exemption applies to "choreographed" performances, and what the Nite Moves dancers do doesn't qualify. At least three members of the seven-judge panel questioned the notion that a performance must be choreographed to be considered artistic. Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman suggested "creative artists in particular" often improvise......

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights group that has frequently drawn fire from conservatives, has regained its tax-exempt status. The Washington, D.C.-based CAIR and its related foundation were two of about 275,000 nonprofits that lost tax exempt status last year for not filing tax returns for three years in a row. Last month, the Internal Revenue Service sent a letter to the CAIR-Foundation Inc., saying the nonprofit had regained its tax-exempt status.

In an exclusive interview at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told The Daily Caller that he doesn’t know if his plan to promote Media Matters for America‘s new book violates the legal requirements of its 501(c)(3) non-profit status. When TheDC asked Reid whether he will be helping Media Matters’ David Brock promote the book, “The Fox Effect,” he said he would assist Brock “any way I can. … I have the greatest respect for [him], and his co-author [Ari Rabin-Havt] worked for me for many years.” (RELATED: More stories in the investigative ‘Inside Media Matters’...

Congressional Republicans are now interested in examining Media Matters For America‘s tax-exempt status, The Daily Caller has learned. Doing so would cause the GOP to wade into the complex world of tax laws that govern “exempt organizations” such as Media Matters and more than 1 million other charitable organizations that are exempt from federal income tax. Media Matters’ critics have questioned its tax-exempt status for some time. The Internal Revenue Service has a series of requirements that must be met before organizations can qualify. Successful applicants pay no federal income tax because the government presumes such charities perform services that...

David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs. Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe. The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled. ...more...

If 501(c)(3) organizations were suddenly able to engage in partisan politicking, and donors were able to give on a tax-deductible basis, donors could ostensibly deduct currently non-deductible political donations simply by funneling these monies through churches. Churches would not only pass the collection plate for their religious mission, but churches would also be able to use these tax-deductible donations on behalf of particular candidates. Large churches could bankroll entire political campaigns and receive favorable treatment from those who support them. Politicians could visit with church pastors and lobby them for their campaign support. The lines of mutual respect between church...

On the Sunday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to give a political speech, in support of her boss (Barack Obama) and congressional Democrats: "Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress--well let me be specific--because the Republicans in Congress," Jarrett told the crowd. According to the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, at this point, "Before she could finish her sentence, people in the congregation were laughing, and applauding." At the Sunday service, Jarrett also brought up Osama bin Laden's death in order...

C. Boyden Gray, former White House counsel to President George W. Bush, filed a civilian complaint with the IRS against the nonprofit Media Matters on July 27, demanding the agency yank its “tax-exempt status.” Citing a pattern of “unlawful conduct,” Gray writes in his petition, which FOX Business has obtained, that the nonprofit has “executed a partisan strategy” in violation of U.S. tax law as it exists “no longer to educate the public but, rather, to declare ‘war on FOX,’” Gray says, quoting from an interview its founder, David Brock, gave to the website Politico. Also unlawful, Gray says, is...

Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks has been arrested in connection with an investigation into phone hacking and bribery. The 43-year-old was arrested by appointment by Operation Weeting police at a London police station. Met Police said she is currently still in custody. This is the 10th arrest made by police investigating hacking allegations by the News of the World newspaper. She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption allegations. The Operation Weeting team is conducting the current investigation into phone hacking.

A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.” Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not. The group’s website said it...

David Brock, the conservative turned liberal advocate, has recently garnered a considerable amount of press coverage for his attacks on Fox News for, among many other things, allegedly taking over leadership of the Republican Party. What the news coverage has ignored is his use of tax-free funds for his organization, Media Matters for America (MMA), for these attacks - a form of government support for activities that clearly do not merit tax-exempt status and that as a result infringe on Fox News' First Amendment rights.

The first direct link above is to Soros' own web page. Many of you will choose not to click on it and well that's your choice. But some of you should actively look and see for yourself. Open the PDF, scroll down to the year 2008. Electronic Frontier Foundation got 300,000 dollars from Soros. Now scroll down to the year 2007. Another 100,000 dollars. So the total is 400k. And there is more. Let's take a look at who it is that sits on their various boards: http://www.eff.org/about/advisoryboard I am aware of Ethan Zuckerman being a Soros buddy because of...

After creating a huge post regarding all the different ways that the left shuffles funding around towards NPR, I realized it was probably a bit too long and I thought there might be a better way. So here is a visual which should help make it easier:

As you start to read all this, you'll laugh at how incestuous it all gets. Let's start with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which as I've noted in the past is tied in with the Soros foundation. Together, the two worked on something called The Project on Death in America.(PDIA) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2341083/posts And speaking of Mr Soros, he himself(his foundations) have given directly to NPR. Compared to some of the other numbers I'm seeing, it's a small amount of $250,000. But it doesn't matter. Soros money is soros money in my book. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2396058/posts Additional information about RWJF can be found here....

The war on conservative speech has moved from the White House to your neighborhood pews. Left-wing church leaders want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on "hate speech" over cable TV and right-leaning talk-radio airwaves. President Obama's speech-stifling bureaucrats seem all too happy to oblige. Over the last week, an outfit called "So We Might See" has conducted a nationwide fast to protest "media violence" -- specifically, "anti-immigrant hate speech, which employs flawed arguments to appeal to fears rather than facts." Their ire is currently aimed at Fox News and conservative talk-show giants. But how long before they target...