Obama’s Church Finally Gets Some Good News
Remember the Internal Revenue Service poking into whether Barack Obama’s address to a United Church of Christ convention last year violated the church’s tax-exempt status? Comes word today from taxgirl that the IRS just issued a "My bad" about the matter:
The IRS determined that the UCC had made several attempts to stay in compliance noting that the invitation to Obama came “well before he announced his candidacy and that [he] was invited to speak … in a non-candidate capacity, on how his personal faith intersected with his public life.”
Additionally, the IRS found that the UCC had advised those in attendance that Senator Obama was there as a member of the church and not as a candidate for office, that the audience should not attempt to engage in any political activities, and that the church’s legal counsel had advised Senator Obama’s campaign on the ground rules for the speech.
I’d love to respond with a thoughtful evaluation of the issue and the IRS’ decision, but the best I can come up with right now is: Duh.
And: It took them three months to figure that out?
And: Didn’t they have anything better to do? | 501(c)
Of course they didn’t have anything better to do than harass a church affiliated with a potent political opponent–this is an administration that politicized the hiring of US Attorneys and threw a governor in jail for being a Democrat. Nothing it does can shock me anymore–except something like this, where it acknowledges its mistake and subsides.
Indeed — you are a fool if you did not think that this was politically motivated.
Such cynicism! Though given the administration’s heavy-handed tactics over the last seven-and-a-half years …