IRS Works for Administration

This is not unlike some of the activities during the Nixon Administration. President Bush may be avoiding the NAACP, but the Internal Revenue Service isn’t. The Washington Post reports the IRS "has threatened to revoke the NAACP’s tax-exempt status because the civil rights group’s chairman, Julian Bond, ‘condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush’ during a speech this summer." In that speech, Bond criticized the president’s "divisive" policies on education, civil rights and the Iraq war, and chided him for becoming "the first sitting president since Warren G. Harding not to address the NAACP." Frances Hill, an authority on non-profit groups at the University of Miami Law School, called it "amazing" that the IRS would audit a group based on a public speech. "Usually you would look for some activity other than disagreeing with policies," she said.