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Last week, the Democratic party website Media Matters hired long time Clinton family friend and advisor James Carville to write for the site. This is just the latest in a series of moves made by the Democratic party organ to boost the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. But, as the Washington Examiner points out, Media Matters is a tax exempt organization, prohibited by law from engaging in political activity. The site is run by another Clinton confidante, David Brock, and the website hasn't been shy about defending Mrs. Clinton in this latest scandal over her emails. Media Matters has published...

The Obama administration announced new rules under Obamacare on Monday that target nonprofit hospitals’ efforts to get paid by their patients.Nonprofit hospitals, which serve a charitable purpose and are often religiously affiliated, will now be subject to strict rules on when and how they can collect payments from customers, thanks to regulations included in the health-care law. As a condition of their tax-exempt status, these hospitals must “take an active role in improving the health of the communities they serve,” Treasury Department deputy assistant secretary for tax policy Emily McMahon wrote in a blog post Monday. Under the new IRS...

"Lois Lerner Caught Granting Muslim Brotherhood front groups Tax Exempt status as far back as BUSH ADMINISTRATION" One of the reasons Republicans like Rep. Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania won’t come forward with the truth about Malik Obama’s tax exempt status and Lois Lerner’s role in it likely has to do with what she was permitted to do when a Republican president was in office. Calling attention to Lerner’s signature being at the bottom of the Barack H. Obama Foundation’s (BHOF) approval letter is certain to cause the Republican Party headaches over its complicity in taking the country to where it...

First, an entirely and uncharacteristically reasonable reaction from the IRS on its proposed new rules governing 501(c)s, a classification of tax exempt groups that was the area of improper targeting of Tea Party activists. When Democrats realized the best way to deal with personnel abusing tax law was to create more tax law for them to abuse, the IRS went to work on more specific ways to crack down on social welfare groups. Their proposed rule caused backlash from both conservatives and liberal activists: The Internal Revenue Service is prepared to rewrite a proposed rule regulating the political activities of...

<p>A request by Sen. Ted Cruz to have a special prosecutor appointed to probe allegations the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting conservative groups was denied by the Department of Justice.</p> <p>The IRS has been accused of targeting conservative groups and denying them tax-exempt status based on political views.</p>

We now know that Obama Administration actions were intentional and partisan when the Internal Revenue Service targeted, harmed, and intimidated conservative and tea party organizations. Keep in mind the timetable while reading this – that the plot against conservatives inside the IRS was gearing up in March 2010 and in full force in September 2010, according to recently released Lois Lerner emails. Also keep in mind that Lois Lerner previously worked enforcement at the Federal Election Commission. The Obama Administration offered excuses that disparate treatment of conservatives was a result of confusion or accidental mishandling by lower-level staff. Yet these...

The Obama administration launched an attempt Tuesday to limit the same class of politically active non-profit groups the IRS was accused of targeting last summer. Under the proposed new rules, organizations that fall under the tax-exempt 501(c)(4) umbrella would also be more clearly identified during campaigns. The new guidance would curtail activities such as running ads, distributing campaign literature and other get-out-the-vote initiatives. The groups in question are able to raise millions of dollars to influence elections. Smaller organizations that are similarly classified were the subject of unfair targeting practices earlier this year by IRS employees, leading to the eventual...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration Tuesday launched a bid to rein in the use of tax-exempt groups for political campaigning. The effort is an attempt to reduce the role of loosely regulated big-money political outfits like GOP political guru Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and the pro-Obama Priorities USA. The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department said they want to prohibit such groups from using "candidate-related political activity" like running ads, registering voters or distributing campaign literature as activities that qualify them to be tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations. The agencies say there will be a lengthy comment period before...

Recently Mortimer Caplin announced his retirement at the age of 96. Caplin may have been the only IRS chief to appear on the cover of Time Magazine back when he was targeting JFK’s political enemies with audits as part of Kennedy’s “Ideological Organizations Project.” “I remember that the president made a speech and I got a call from the White House again,” Caplin would later write. “The right-wing organizations were believed to be overstepping their tax-exemption bounds.

One of the groups at the center of the IRS scandal has finally received its tax-exempt status after a three-year delay prompted by a politically driven move to block Tea Party and other conservative groups, many that slammed the president during his re-election, from winning the special status.

A California bill that could strip tax-exempt status from the Boy Scouts of America and other “discriminatory” nonprofit youth-serving groups could come up for a final vote this week. The first-of-its-kind bill, SB 323, passed the California Senate and sailed through Assembly committees to a floor vote, possibly this week. But opponents are taking heart that there might not be enough votes in the state Assembly to pass the bill. The chamber did not consider the bill in its Monday session, but may take it up when it convenes Friday. The bill, introduced by State Sen. Ricardo Lara, names the

Rep. Darrell Issa has announced that he is expanding his investigation into IRS targeting of conservative groups to deal with alllegations that the tax agency put groups already tax exempt under additional scrutiny. The Hill: The IRS subjected conservative groups already granted tax-exempt status to additional scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged on Monday. Issa called on a Treasury watchdog already looking into the IRS to investigate the matter, and signaled he would expand his committee's probe into improper targeting of political groups given the new revelations. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the...

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’...