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IRS Tyranny Included Pro-Life Groups, No Tax Exemption Unless Letter Sent Promising to Not Protest Against Abortion-Giant Planned Parenthood (video)

Posted By on May 19, 2013

You taxpayer dollars hard at work… it’s beyond deplorable to discover that the Internal Revenue Service has been such a vigilant, vicious watchdog for abortion-giant Planned Parenthood.

Add pro-lifers to the growing list of exposed IRS targets.

Those who still believe the lies purporting that the IRS scandal is limited to a few rogue “going off the reservation” low-level IRS employees in Cincinnati need to start paying attention.

Unless those Ohio employees magically have the clout to try to suppress a pro-life organization in Iowa…

Reported by Washington Examiner, Report: IRS denied tax-exempt status to pro-lifers on behalf of Planned Parenthood:

IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”

Planned Parenthood endorsed Obama in 2008 and 2012.

It was a record-breaking year in 2012 for taxpayer-funded abortions and huge profits for Planned Parenthood. The organization not only has the iron-fisted protection of the IRS, but it received $542 million from American taxpayers.

This tweet was sent yesterday by the legendary country and Southern rock singer and fiddler Charlie Daniels:

From Radio Fox News, IRS Told Pro-Life Group Not to Picket Planned Parenthood:

The Internal Revenue Service allegedly told an Iowa pro-life group they had to sign documents promising not to protest or picket Planned Parenthood and they told a Texas pro-life organization they had to promote abortion, according to documents obtained by Fox News.

“The IRS was concerned about advocacy,” said Sally Wagenmaker, special counsel to the Thomas More Society. “The (agent) said picketing and protesting is not allowed.”

She said the IRS’s role “should only be to determine whether organizations fit the section 501(c)(3) test for ‘charitable, religious, or educational’ qualification, not to inquire about the content of prayers, protests, and petitions.”

It’s high time that the IRS be called to account for its workers’ potential to trample on our constitutional rights, through such ostensibly innocuous means,” Wagenmaker said – hinting that this may only be the tip of the iceberg of IRS abuses.

An IRS spokesman said they would look into the cases.

Wagenmaker was representing Coalition for Life of Iowa and Christian Voices For Life of Fort Bend County, Texas. Both groups were seeking tax exempt status. Their requests were eventually granted but only after they sought legal help from the Thomas More Society.

In 2009 the Coalition for Life received correspondence from the IRS raising questions about their prayer activity – specifically outside Planned Parenthood clinics.

“You then asked … to have all Coalition Board members sign a statement that the coalition will not ‘picket’ or ‘protest’ outside of Planned Parenthood or similar organizations and will not ‘organize’ others to do so,” Wagenmaker wrote in a letter to an IRS representative known only as “Ms. Richards.”

Wagenmaker said the IRS’s demand was clearly a violation of the pro-life group’s constitutional rights.

More on the IRS targeting from Hot Air:

Most have assumed that the obstructionism on the application from conservative groups came because the IRS assumed that they would get involved in politics, but the laws on 501(c)4s don’t prohibit that, as Mary Katharine explained yesterday.  Their purpose and work has to be primarily for “social welfare,” but that can take on any number of forms.

In this case, though, there wasn’t even a pretense of suspicion about electioneering.  If this is true, then the IRS was actively attempting to intimidate a pro-life group into curtailing its perfectly legal activism. In fact, protests against Planned Parenthood by this group would be exactly the kind of “social welfare” protected by an exemption.  This not only infringed on the group’s free-speech rights, but also its religious liberty, at least indirectly.

In another similar case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group’s involvement with “40 Days for Life” and “Life Chain” events. The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities.

“The application of Christian Voices for Life clearly indicated that the organization qualified as a charitable organization under section 501(c)(3),” stated Sally Wagenmaker. She added, “The IRS seemed to be intent on denying or delaying tax-exempt status based upon the organization’s pro-life message, rather than any legitimate exemption concern, through its exhaustive, cumbersome questioning. The implication that Christian Voices for Life somehow intended to engage in illegal activity was insulting.”

This past week, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill, questioned the IRS about targeting pro-life and conservative groups. The IRS rep would not say that it’s wrong for the government agency to demand records of members’ prayers.

 

Last year, Michelle Malkin wrote a searing historical article about the racist roots of Planned Parenthood — here are the first few paragraphs posted at Townhall, ‘To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit’:

If you aren’t creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren’t listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence always dulls the senses. Wake up.

When a bunch of wealthy white women and elite Washington bureaucrats defend the trampling of religious liberties in the name of “increased access” to “reproductive services” for “poor” women, the ghost of Margaret Sanger is cackling.

As she wrote in her autobiography, Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in 1916 “to stop the multiplication of the unfit.” This, she boasted, would be “the most important and greatest step towards race betterment.” While she oversaw the mass murder of black babies, Sanger cynically recruited minority activists to front her death racket. She conspired with eugenics financier and businessman Clarence Gamble to “hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities” to sell their genocidal policies as community health and welfare services.

Outright murder wouldn’t sell. But wrapping it under the egalitarian cloak of “women’s health” — and adorning it with the moral authority of black churches — would. Sanger and Gamble called their deadly campaign “The Negro Project.”

In other writings, historian Mike Perry found, Sanger attacked programs that provided “medical and nursing facilities to slum mothers” because they “facilitate the function of maternity” when “the absolute necessity is to discourage it.” In an essay included in her writing collection held by the Library of Congress, Sanger urged her abortion clinic colleagues to “breed a race of thoroughbreds.” Nationwide “birth control bureaus” would propagate the proper “science of breeding” to stop impoverished, non-white women from “breeding like weeds.”

Click here for the rest.

If you missed it the first time, check out this FCBZ post from April 2011:
Planned Parenthood Is Democrats’ “Golden Goose,” All American Taxpayers Have Made Political Donations to Dems for Past 16 Years — Thanks, Conservatives!

It is now 18 years.

planned-parenthood-birthday-aborted-babies

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Feel-Good Hero Dog Story: Rocky & His Owner Rescued Two Little Girls from Drowning in Freezing River in Alberta (video)

Posted By on May 19, 2013

Hero-dog Rocky and his owner Adam Shaw rescued two young girls from drowning in freezing river

Hero-dog Rocky and his owner Adam Shaw rescued two young girls from drowning in freezing river

 

Somehow, I missed this feel-good, dog-saves-kids story from last month. On Easter Sunday afternoon, a heroic oil worker and his equally heroic Labrador retriever-husky mix named Rocky saved two young girls from drowning in the freezing cold, glacier-fed North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, Alberta. The girls had fallen through the ice while tobogganing in a riverside park.

God bless Adam Shaw and his dog Rocky. Their quick, selfless actions, which put both their own lives at risk, saved the lives of the two children. Had Rocky and Adam been even a few minutes later, the girls would likely have been gone.

From Daily Mail, Hero Labrador called Rocky leaps into icy canyon river to rescue drowning girl, nine, as she holds onto his lead and is dragged to safety:

He’s a brave hero who never turns his back on a fight, and his name is Rocky.

Not the boxer famously played by Sylvester Stallone, but this labrador-husky cross, who helped his owner drag a nine-year-old girl to safety after she fell into the fast-flowing waters of Canada’s icy North Saskatchewan River.

Rocky’s owner Adam Shaw told how his dog jumped into the water, allowing Samara Sunshine – who had fallen in with her 10-year-old sister while out tobogganing – to grab on to his lead as he towed her back to the snow-covered riverbank.

Mr Shaw, 27, who was alerted by the sisters’ screams while out walking with his dog in Edmonton on Sunday, managed to haul Krymzen to safety, but Samara was swept out of his reach by the current, according to a CNN report.

He tried to throw his dog’s lead to the girl for her to grab on, but she was already too far away, so Mr Shaw reattached it to Rocky and instructed his dutiful dog to jump in the water.

‘He jumped in right beside her,’ said Mr Shaw. ‘I called him back and he swam toward the ice.’

Rocky managed to tow Samara close enough to the bank for his owner to grab her arm, and his pet, and get them away from the water’s edge.

[...]

Fire crews arrived shortly after Samara was pulled on to the riverbank and the sisters were taken for treatment.

Mr Shaw, who said it was ‘a bit of a miracle’ that everything had worked out, and his dog were honoured for their efforts at the local fire station on Monday.

Fire chief Ken Block, who said the Sunshine sisters were ‘very, very fortunate’ that Mr Shaw and his pet came along, presented the 27-year-old with a fireman’s hat, while Rocky was rewarded with a giant rawhide bone.

Dog Helps Rescue Two Girls from Icy River

 

From CNN, Hero dog helps pull girl from icy river:

Rocky’s been a fictional hero for decades, but in Edmonton, Alberta, today there’s a hero named Rocky who is definitely real — only he’s 8 years old and has four legs.

This Rocky, a Labrador retriever-husky mix, is being hailed for pulling a 9-year-old girl from an icy river on Easter Sunday. His owner, Adam Shaw, 27, is getting similar praise.

“If that man and dog weren’t there — I just try not to think of it,” Miranda Wagner, the mother of Samara, 9, and her 10-year-old sister, Krymzen, said in an interview with CNN affiliate CTV.

“I just want to give him a big hug and tell him he’s my hero. If he wasn’t there I wouldn’t have my girls,” Wagner said. “Doctors said two more minutes and Samara would have been gone.”

From Calgary Herald, Hero says dog helped save girls from icy river:

A Fort Saskatchewan oil worker who rescued two girls from the icy waters of the North Saskatchewan River credits adrenalin and his adventurous dog for saving their lives.

Adam Shaw and his family were walking on a footbridge around 4: 30 p.m. on Sunday when they heard someone screaming. They thought it was kids playing, but looked down and saw one girl floating in the water, her sister reaching to pull her out.

“I just really didn’t want to fail. I really wanted to save them,” Shaw, 27, said at a Monday news conference at a downtown fire station. “I was just really scared.”

After yelling to the girls to stay there and try to hold onto the ice, Shaw handed his backpack to his wife, Kelsey, who called 911 and stayed with their two small children.

Shaw sprinted down the bridge with Rocky, an eight-year-old, 110-pound Labrador retriever-husky cross. The pair ran through the bushes and onto the shore.

[...]

Shaw’s wife told dispatchers the girl appeared to be unconscious, while her husband raced out of sight following the girl downriver. He found her bobbing up and down a metre or two from the edge. He yelled to the girl, asking if she could swim closer to the shore. She said she couldn’t move her arms or legs.

Shaw stepped toward her and the ice crumbled beneath him, plunging him and Rocky into freezing water.

After a few attempts to scramble back on the ice, Rocky managed to get his front paws up out of the water. Shaw pushed the dog’s hind end up onto the ice, then grabbed his leash and pulled himself out with the dog’s help.

Soaked and freezing, Shaw searched for the girl, spotting her a few seconds later 50 to 60 metres downriver. After getting close enough, he yelled to the girl that he would send his dog toward her and asked her to try to grab Rocky’s leash. Rocky jumped in and the girl managed to grab the leash one hand at a time. Shaw called the dog back, and Rocky tried to scamper up the ice. Shaw pulled the dog up, followed by the girl.

As he sat on shore, Shaw’s phone started to ring. It was the Edmonton Fire Rescue water rescue team.

By the time firefighters met them on shore, the girl was hypothermic. Rocky sat protectively beside the pair, growling as firefighters approached.

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Talk Radio Host Mark Levin & Conservative Hispanics Also Targeted by IRS, ObamaCare Headed by IRS Official Who May Have Spearheaded Targeting, Growing Government Scandal Now Center of FBI Criminal Probe (video)

Posted By on May 18, 2013

Sarah Hall Ingram, senior IRS official, is in charge of ObamaCare and appears to be a key player in the IRS targeting scandal

Sarah Hall Ingram, senior IRS official, is in charge of ObamaCare and appears to be a key player in the IRS targeting scandal

 

The liberal media is finally taking notice of the shocking IRS scandal, with new tyrannical revelations coming to light daily, nearly hourly. This scandal is growing like a toxic weed.

Mark Levin, lawyer, political author, and popular conservative talk radio host, shared on his show last week that he and his Legal Landmark Foundation were also targeted by the Internal Revenue Service when they applied for nonprofit status. More groups and individuals are coming forward with disturbing stories of the government’s abuse of power, including conservative Hispanics and Jewish groups and others who, not so coincidentally, are also considered to be “political enemies” of the Blamer in Chief.

The fabrications (euphemism for “bold-faced lies”) that these government targetings were conducted solely by low-level IRS employees in Ohio have been exposed as a pile of steaming horse puckies. It appears now that this violation of law and public trust may go all the way to the top of the IRS food chain. Evidence is indicating that Sarah Hall Ingram, a senior IRS official who is also heading ObamaCare, is a major player in this scandal. Information about the IRS targeting conservatives has been deliberately suppressed since long before the November presidential election. This vengeful political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was, in part, an effort to defund and cripple the Tea Party. And we’re learning that more people in the federal government have known about it, but did nothing.

The FBI is now conducting a criminal probe. Let us hope it amounts to more than a dog and pony show to appease angry Americans.

Pres. Obama hasn’t said much about the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, and the DOJ/AP phone records confiscation scandal, nor much of anything about the American outrage that is coming to a boiling point, but he has pooh-poohed the shocking news events of the week, saying he does think it’s merely “politics.”

Dream on, Barry.

ABC News: IRS Tea Party, Conservative Groups Scandal Now Center of FBI Criminal Probe

 

Video of the stunning audio of Levin’s radio show from earlier in the week — he discusses his own experience with the IRS targeting and that his formal complaint likely was the catalyst for the IRS coming forward last Friday to “confess” and “apologize.” The government agency’s efforts to put a lid on this has failed.

Mark Levin Decimates IRS for Targeting Him, Reveals His Formal Complaint Led to Investigation

 

Partial transcript for the video below, from Levin’s radio program that broadcast on May 15, via Real Clear Politics:

MARK LEVIN: “Yes, we’re going to cover the ins and outs of this — we’re going to come into the weeds, but folks, it’s time to kill the IRS. That’s the bottom line. This agency has been corrupt since its founding. And the bigger the government gets, the more corrupt it gets, the more ubiquitous it gets. And I don’t just mean political partisanship and cronyism, I mean its abuses. We must fight the expansion of the IRS under Obamacare. We must fight to kill the IRS or critically wound it — politically — with either a flat tax or a fair tax. Now is the time to advance a liberty agenda. Now is the time to advance a Constitutional agenda.”

This Mark Levin Show clip is lengthy, but is well worth the time to listen to it.

Epic Mark Levin Show: The IRS Should be Politically Killed | May 15, 2013

 

This IRS scandal is exploding — a round-up of just a few of the myriad headlines and links from this week. If you value liberty and the US Constitution, these will make your stomach churn:

IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo
Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted In IRS Scandal
IRS Lied to Congress about Targeting Tea Party
In wake of scandal, Obama ousts IRS chief — who was leaving anyway
WaPo: IRS targeting of Tea Party, conservative groups also in Washington office
Attorney: “Every single application of a Muslim nonprofit has flown through the IRS, with less scrutiny”
IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office
The IRS Scandal Started at the Top
Why did the IRS keep the scandal quiet until after the election? Update: Treasury Dep’t knew last year
Surprise: IRS officials in DC also involved in singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny, leaking info
IRS: ‘Please Detail the Content of Your Members’ Prayers’
IRS Targeted Catholic League
Obama Dodges Big Question On IRS Scandal
USA Today: Liberal groups received non-profit status quickly while conservative groups were put on hold
FLASHBACK: Romney donor vilified by Obama campaign, then subjected to 2 audits
Report: IRS facing class action suit for stealing 60 million medical records
IRS Stalled Conservatives While Giving Liberals a Pass on Tax Exemptions
Transparent: IRS Freedom of Information Act public reading room closed to public
Conservative group says IRS approved nonprofit status after applying with ‘liberal-sounding name’
IRS Office That Targeted Tea Party Also Disclosed Confidential Docs From Conservative Groups
‘Very Frightening’: Prominent Catholic Prof. Claims IRS Audited Her After Speaking Out Against Obama and Demanded to Know Who Was Paying Her

Local Reaction to IRS Scandal

 

From The Week, The IRS scandal: Is Sarah Hall Ingram the next head to roll?:

Well, a scandal needs fuel — here’s today’s, courtesy of ABC News: Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS commissioner who once oversaw the division that processes tax-exempt organizations, now heads the IRS office responsible for overseeing the new tax laws in ObamaCare.

Hall’s successor, Joseph Grant, “is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012,” say John Parkinson and Steven Portnoy at ABC News. On Thursday, he tendered his resignation. Grant was deputy or acting commissioner during that period, but only took permanent control of the office on May 8.

Ingram’s connection to the scandal is sort of murky. An employee of the IRS since 1982, Ingram was named commissioner of the Tax Exempt/Government Entities Division in 2009, and ABC News suggests she held the job though 2012. But the IRS tells CNN that Ingram left for the Affordable Care Act division in December 2010, at which point Grant took over as acting commissioner.

Still, staffers in the sinister-sounding Determinations Unit started singling out Tea Party applicants for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status in mid-2010, so that puts Ingram in charge of the broader division when the scandal began. This is catnip for Obama critics — even if she had no role in putting conservative-sounding groups on the infamous “be on the lookout” (BOLO) list (and the inspector general’s report suggests she wouldn’t have).

Why? “Republicans had already tried to tie the IRS scandal to the health-care law, simply by virtue of the fact that the IRS is responsible for a huge amount of the law’s most significant provisions,” say Sam Baker and Bernie Becker at The Hill. “A more direct connection to the Tea Party scandal, though, could inflame GOP criticism.”

That’s a pretty safe bet. The House’s latest quixotic attempt to repeal ObamaCare on Thursday was largely framed as a way to protect Americans from the IRS.

From the Washington Free Beacon, Cover Up: IRS accused of hiding existence of Tea Party targeting documents:

The Internal Revenue Service denied the existence of any documents related to its policy of targeting Tea Party organizations in response to a 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, even though such documents were later discovered by the IRS inspector general.

The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a conservative nonprofit group, filed a FOIA request in 2010 through investigative journalist Lynn K. Walsh seeking all IRS documents related to the agencies tax-exempt division specifically mentioning the Tea Party.

IRS headquarters responded in 2011 that it “found no documents specifically responsive to your request.”

However, the May 14 inspector general report found that the “first Sensitive Case Report [identifying Tea Party groups] was prepared by the Technical Unit” in April of 2010.

The report’s timeline chronicles the existence of numerous 2010 emails, memoranda, and policies related to the targeting of conservative organizations.

More from the Twitterverse:

More from Breitbart’s Big Government:

There are a lot of numbers out there. Some say Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status averaged 27 months for approval, while applications from liberal groups averaged nine. In one extreme case, according to the Washington Post, the IRS granted the Barack H. Obama Foundation tax-exempt status in a speedy one-month timeframe. Yet some conservative groups waited up to three years, and some still haven’t received approval.

But there can be only one reason for the stalled-out approval process for conservative groups. The IRS was trying to put them out of business. Thus far, there’s not one wit of contradictory evidence.

To the many liberals who have been giddy with joy over the government’s discrimination and targeting of non-liberals, or who have angrily spouted that this IRS scandal is much ado about nothing, that it’s a contrivance manufactured by the evil Republican party, or who sincerely believe that conservative and religious groups deserve to be bullied and targeted and denied fair application of the law by the IRS, imagine if the tables were turned.

Get your ostrich heads out of the sand.

dont-tread-on-me-irs

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