Election Law Blog

Here.

See the Update at the bottom of this Pro Publica story.

Bloomberg View:

Until Congress passes the Disclose Act, which would end the practice of anonymous political spending, the IRS will continue to oversee groups that spend millions to influence the political process. What’s more, well-financed, powerful groups with deep political connections and access to first-rate legal advice will continue to whiz through the IRS express lane while genuine citizen organizations, Tea-Party-inspired and otherwise, will endure long waits to have their applications approved. The inspector general found one hapless applicant waiting 1,138 days for approval. We don’t know the victim’s name. We’re pretty sure it wasn’t “Rove.”

I make the pitch for DISCLOSE II to solve the broader IRS problem here.

Must-read Pro Publica deep dive.

Jonathan Bernstein wants unlimited disclosed contributions to candidates.

Here.

NYT on today’s hearing.

WaPo reports.

Andy Kroll reports for Mother Jones.

Important item in the Chronicle of Philanthropy (via Jonathan Adler).

Whether or not the total number of c4 applications were going up, c4 political spending was exploding, beginning with WRTL and continuing into Citizens United.  See my charts here from last year’s presentation at Stanford PACs, based upon data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

WaPo went to talk to the Cincinnati office workers.

A picture’s worth a 1000 words.

Following up on this post, it turns out that not only was Lerner going in prepared to bring up the tea party targeting; the question was planted too.  Watch.

Apparently the Lerner response on Friday (to a question, not in her prepared remarks) on Tea Party targeting was planned.  {Update: It’s even worse than we thought: the question was planted too}

Look: the IRS should have revealed its targeting of Tea Party groups much sooner, and it should not have had officials fail to report it (or perhaps even lie about it) when asked by Members of Congress.

But simply as a matter of PR, if the IRS decided it needed to get out in front of the damning upcoming TIGTA report, this was not the way to do it.  It should have issued a press release later that day on Friday, ahead of the weekend.  But it did it this way, in an offhanded, almost cavalier way (look at the exact text of what Lerner said: “So I guess my bottom line here is that we at the IRS should apologize for that, it was not intentional, and as soon as we found out what was going on, we took steps to make it better and I don’t expect that to reoccur.”) as part of the answer at a tax meeting where word was sure to leak out; it then was unprepared for questions at the press call afterwards (including the Lerner line that she was not good at math—true she’s a lawyer, not an accountant, but the optics) and then no formal response for a few days, and then apparently posting further private information about who was approved and put through this process on its website.

The bumbling nature of this seems to demonstrate that Lerner and others did not realize, at all, the extent to which this was politically radioactive and damaging.  The IRS probably isn’t an agency used to interacting often with the national press, and it shows, very starkly, in this incident.

More about today’s hearings later.

Andy Kroll writes for Mother Jones.

Watch Bloomberg (via Political Wire)

Politics, money and power: Inside the IRS’ targeting of conservative social welfare groups

The Problem of IRS’s Dwindling Credibility

Gary Bass and Beth Kingsley have written this oped for the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

‘Tea party’ nonprofits rarely endorsed political candidates

Do nonprofits’ names imply political activity? Most social welfare nonprofits don’t have politically charged names

Matea Gold, soon of WaPo, writes this article for the LA Times.

WaPo reports. [corrected link]

Here.

Important Peter Overby report for NPR.

Roll Call:

Tea party conservatives may never fully trust Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but the Kentucky Republican was talking about the dangers of limiting political speech long before the tea party movement existed.

An expansive view of the First Amendment when it comes to political speech has been a signature issue in McConnell’s Senate career. He led the crusade against the 2002 campaign finance overhaul championed by Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin even after enactment, taking the case to the Supreme Court.

Here.

Steven Rattner for NYT Opinionator.

Yes, yes, we are at the point that it everything has been said but not by everybody.

Here at Democracy Now!.

CRP: “Conservative nonprofits that received tax-exempt status since the beginning of 2010 and also filed election spending reports with the Federal Election Commission overwhelmed liberal groups in terms of money spent on politics, an analysis of Internal Revenue Service and FEC records shows.”

Jessica Levinson writes.

Yet another real scandal piece, this one in Chicago Business.

Fred Wertheimer Politico oped.