{"id":25366,"date":"2015-04-13T21:28:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T01:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=25366"},"modified":"2015-04-13T21:28:20","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T01:28:20","slug":"defending-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=25366","title":{"rendered":"Defending Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/hatch-to-irs-abandon-rule-for-regulating-political-nonprofits\/article\/2562981\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Examiner<\/a> is reporting today that Senate Finance Committee Chairman <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Orrin Hatch\" href=\"http:\/\/hatch.senate.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Orrin Hatch<\/a> has asked <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Internal Revenue Service\" href=\"http:\/\/www.irs.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Internal Revenue Service<\/a> Commissioner <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"John Koskinen\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Koskinen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">John Koskinen<\/a> not to change the Internal Revenue Service&#8217;s rules regarding political speech by <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Nonprofits\" href=\"http:\/\/www.legalzoom.com\/nonprofits-guide\/non-profit-membership.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"legalzoom\">nonprofit organizations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The article quotes Senator Hatch:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>&#8220;The IRS is just beginning to recover its reputation, and your agency is just beginning to regain trust from lawmakers,&#8221; Hatch wrote to Koskinen. &#8220;Do not throw all of that away in a quixotic and bizarre mission to regulate the political activity of Americans.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Hatch said <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Congress\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8897222222,-77.0088888889&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8897222222,-77.0088888889 (United%20States%20Congress)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">Congress<\/a> will &#8220;have no choice&#8221; but to investigate the agency&#8217;s motivations if it issues the rules, claiming that it would be viewed as an act of political bias. He asked Koskinen to preserve all communications related to the rulemaking, in case the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Presidency of Barack Obama\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Obama White House<\/a> or <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Department of the Treasury\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8983333333,-77.0341666667&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8983333333,-77.0341666667 (United%20States%20Department%20of%20the%20Treasury)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">Treasury Department<\/a> is playing a role in shaping it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The IRS is not supposed to be a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Political organisation\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Political_organisation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">political organization<\/a>. Unfortunately under <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Barack Obama\" href=\"http:\/\/www.barackobama.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">President Obama<\/a> it has become one. It would be nice to have an IRS Commissioner who would uphold the political neutrality of the IRS. Evidently John Koskinen is not that person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Examiner is reporting today that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch has asked Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen not to change the Internal Revenue Service&#8217;s rules regarding political speech by nonprofit organizations. The article quotes Senator Hatch: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=25366\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,284,8897,8898,2720],"class_list":["post-25366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-internal-revenue-service","tag-nonprofit-organization","tag-senator-orrin-hatch","tag-the-washington-examiner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25367,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25366\/revisions\/25367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}