Free Republic

The rabbit hole is getting ever deeper for the embattled IRS. Last Friday, Lois Lerner of the IRS tax-exempt-organizations division, issued an apology for the targeting of conservative groups in the screening process for 501c(4) tax-exempt status. She also claimed then that only low-level employees in a Cincinnati office had been guilty of singling out groups containing the words “tea party” or “patriot.” However, a report reviewed by both The Wall Street Journal and Reuters has indicated that the questions of who initiated the practice and how the conservative groups were targeted are more complicated than previously thought. The report...

Exclusive:In January and February of this year, the Internal Revenue Service began sending out letters to various local Tea Party groups across the country. Mailed from the same Cincinnati, Ohio IRS office, these letters have reached Tea Party groups in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio and Texas (we are hearing of more daily). There are several common threads to these letters: all are requesting more information from these independent Tea Parties in regard to their nonprofit 501c4 applications (for these types of nonprofit, donations are not deductible). While some of the requests are reasonable, much of them are strikingly onerous and, dare...