The IRS and Political Activity of Tax Exempts

The Associated Press reports today that the IRS has finished an investigation of political activity by churches and other tax exempt organizations during the 2004 election. They found that three out of four churches they examined had, in fact, violated the restraints on political activity. Most were given warnings, a few were fined, and three non-church tax exempts had their tax exempt status revoked.

All of this may be fine and good if it's being done in an even-handed manner, but the IRS did not name any of the organizations warned or fined, so it's impossible to tell whether they handled this properly. The only thing I know from the public press is that an Episcopal church in Southern California was threatened with loss of its tax exempt status by the IRS because it had a guest preacher who gave an antiwar sermon. I've never heard that any of the churches on the far right have been warned even though many of them were making outright political calls. One Baptist minister excommunicated (or whatever Baptists do) every Democrat in his church. And, recall that the Catholic Church refused to give communion to John Kerry. That seems to me to be far more blatant political activity than an antiwar sermon.

Frankly, with Bush in power, I don't trust the IRS (or any other branch of this government) to do something like this in an even-handed way. They are much more likely to be just as "fair and balanced" as Faux News.