The IRS targeted Commentary for purely political reasons:
As it happens, I know something about the chilling effect of an IRS investigation into a non-profit’s 501 (c)-3 status because in 2009, COMMENTARY (a non-profit) received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service threatening the revocation of the institution’s standing as a non-profit due to a claim that on our website we had crossed the line in the 2008 election from analysis to explicit advocacy of the candidacy of John McCain for president. (Non-profits are not permitted to endorse candidates.) The charge was false—all we had done was reprint a speech delivered at a COMMENTARY event by then-Sen. Joseph Lieberman in which he had endorsed McCain.
Taking away a non-profit’s ability to receive tax-exempt charitable contributions is equivalent to a death sentence.
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Yes, and?
People only donate to Commentary to get the tax receipt?
When you hook yourself up to the government, this is what you can expect to happen to you.
I’m a fan of Commentary, and I’m outraged by what’s being revealed about the IRS, although not shocked; Glenn Beck and many of his staffers were all suddenly audited a few years ago.
But: unless you withdraw from the game, you have to expect to get tackled once in a while.
Churches need to forfeit their non-profit status and so do many organizations, like magazines, if they want to be truly free.
Here’s some more disgusting “charity” crap, via Laura Rosen Cohen:
Two organizations bearing Anne Frank’s name are in a bitter dispute over the possession of the Frank family archive, in an echo of a court battle they fought in the 1990s over which one had the right to trademark the Holocaust victim’s name.
