Free Republic

The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to issue new rules that would curtail political activity by tax-exempt nonprofit groups, with potentially significant ramifications for one of the fastest-growing sources of campaign spending. The proposed rules, announced by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, would expand and clarify how the I.R.S. defines political activity and then establish clearer limits for how much activity nonprofits can engage in. Such a change — long urged by government watchdog groups — would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity. The move to curtail nonprofits follows...

The following are photos taken on Friday, September 20, 2013 at the Ronald Reagan Sports Park in Temecula, California. The Reagan statue and monument was likely vandalized either the night before or in the early morning hours of Friday September 20. The cause of the damage appears to be vandalism by arson. Local police were called to the scene and an investigation is ongoing. - Photo of the Reagan Monument with missing damaged tiles. - The missing/vandalized tiles were removed by city staff ... notice the burn marks at the base of the structure. - Burned/damaged tiles on both side...

Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status. Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event. “We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they...

Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status. Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event. “We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they...

The IRS outrages just continue. During the 2012 election season -- when conservative groups were being targeted and GOP donors were being audited and just being a GOP donor meant heightened scrutiny from the IRS -- Obama-friendly nonprofits, including black churches and black nonprofits, were regaled with special advice from the agency on how far they could participate in politics campaigning for the President and other Democrats, according to Paul Sperry writing in IBD. What's more, it wasn't just top officials at the IRS who were meeting, for example, with black churches -- it was also top officials at Eric Holder's...

At the same time the IRS harassed Republican nonprofit groups during the 2012 political campaign, it selectively advised black churches and other Democrat nonprofits on how far they can go in campaigning for President Obama and other Democrats. This raw exercise in political favoritism has not been reported in the context of the still-smoldering IRS scandal, in which the agency in 2012 audited big GOP donors and blocked Tea Party groups trying to obtain tax-exempt status as part of what House investigators suspect was an effort to re-elect the president. But that same year, top officials with both the IRS...

At the Senate committee hearing today on the IRS targeting scandal Senator Mike Enzi said the IRS is even targeting Christian churches in Wyoming. Acting Commissioner Steven Miller, former Administrator Doug Shulman, and Inspector J. Russell George testified today in front of a senate committee. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)

"Can you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort, but that they didn't intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?"

In May 2011, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate the Barack H. Obama Foundation, which was soliciting tax-deductible contributions from the public although it was not tax exempt. The Foundation is named for Obama's father and is based in Kenya. Its founder and chairman is Abon'go Malik Obama, whose father is also the father of President Obama. The IRS not only failed to investigate, but in June 2011 it retroactively granted the Obama Foundation tax-exempt status. Click here to see the letter from Lois Lerner (in photo), Director of the Exempt...

The first time religious organizations were given an exemption from paying taxes was with The Wilson Tariff Act of 1894. The next year this act was overturned by the Supreme Court, but every tax code since has allowed the exemption to be part of the tax code. However, up until 1954 religious organizations still had the freedom to participate in political and lobbying activities. That is when, then Senator Lyndon B Johnson, introduced amendment 501(c)(3) to the tax code during a Senate floor debate on the 1954 Internal Revenue Code. Without hearings, testimony, or comments by any tax-exempt organizations,...

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution contains two clauses addressing religious liberty: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It's a shame that in their modern misguided zeal to read the first clause as mandating a complete separation of church and state, liberals do great damage to the second clause and defeat the overarching purpose of both: ensuring religious liberty. Ever since the so-called Christian right began its organized activism during the 1980s, liberals (and some others) have become increasingly nervous about (and critical of) Christian influence in politics,...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has unexpectedly and retroactively granted tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation following our formal Complaint that the Foundation was soliciting tax-deductible contributions without such status. The Foundation is headed by Abon'go Malik Obama, President Obama's half-brother, and named for their common father. It came under scrutiny earlier this year when NLPC raised questions about its tax status and what has happened to the money it has raised. It normally takes at least six months, and usually longer, for the IRS to grant tax-exempt status to an organization following its application....

Media Matters for America is organized as a tax exempt 501(c)3 organization. Under IRS guidelines, they must abide by several rules to maintain this status. Specifically, 501(c)3 organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. You can read an interesting article on this subject “Is Media Matters Breaking the law in its ‘war’ on Fox News?” The article strongly suggests that Media Matters is violating its exemption as an educational foundation by actively participating in partisan political activities. Specifically...

Any remaining doubt that Media Matters reason-for-being is to take down FOX News? Check this out. Turns out the progressive, non-profit watch dog website has a FOX News "war room" that operates in four separate shifts from the hours of 5am to 1am. According to FishbowlDC, they employ specific teams that focus on Glenn Beck's radio and television show. Considering those folks will be out of a job come the end of the week -- Beck's last show is Friday -- and Media Matters

Darling Daughter is interested in founding a non-profit and has asked her ever resourceful, infinitely wise and all knowing father for guidance. Help. Does anyone know of a good source for information, perhaps a textbook, guide or recipe for success? What are the practical considerations, workable models, things to avoid, tax and regulatory requirements, etc. Assume we're starting from a point of near total ignorance...

JUPITER — Edward M. Ricci, an attorney who lives in Jupiter, has been named the new president of Jupiter's El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center. The position is voluntary. Ricci, an El Sol board member since 2009, is consumer justice counsel to Burman, Critton, Luttier & Coleman, LLP of West Palm Beach. He has served as volunteer counsel and member of the board of directors of Hope Rural School in Indiantown since 1980.

501c3 Cowards Oh, say can you see, in the rapidly decaying twilight, Today’s churches throughout America cowering in fright. So easily selling away what is their God given birthright! How can they surrender their proud American heritage? They once fueled the fires of freedom in patriots galore, Triumphing o’er tyranny establishing a nation to adore. Their leadership once shined as brightly as any sage of lore! How can they dishonor their God’s glorious heritage? His church built with martyrs’ blood their duty to preserve, What of their oaths of loyalty and all they pledged to observe? How easily they...

Media Matters, the George Soros-backed legion of liberal agit-prop shock troops based in the nation's capital, has declared war on Fox News, and in the process quite possibly stepped across the line of legality. David Brock, MM's founder, was quoted Saturday by Politico promising that his organization is mounting "guerrila warfare and sabotage" against Fox News, which he said "is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel. The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as a political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement,...

I have been reading the facts about a free church and not requiring a 501c3 in many places, including this forum: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1702880/posts Just wondering if anybody knows any Lawyers or Accountants in the Dallas area that are very familiar in with this issue (free church, non-incorporation and no 501c3. Thanks