{"id":1944,"date":"2005-11-09T00:45:25","date_gmt":"2005-11-09T07:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/11\/08\/1944\/"},"modified":"2005-11-09T00:45:25","modified_gmt":"2005-11-09T07:45:25","slug":"1944","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1944","title":{"rendered":"IRS Cracks Down On Liberal Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/printedition\/la-me-allsaints7nov07,1,597130.story?track=mostemailedlink&#038;coll=la-mininav-business&#038;ctrack=1&#038;cset=true\"><em>The LA Times<\/em> reports<\/a> that a politically active, liberal church in California is being threatened with loss of tax-exempt status by the IRS &#8211; even though the author of the sermon in question carefully avoided explicit endorsement of either candidate. Meanwhile, literally thousands of right-wing evangelical churches routinely do the same thing to help right-wing candidates and causes, and even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mahablog.com\/2005\/11\/07\/iokiyar-for-churches\/\">coordinate their campaigning with the Republican Party<\/a>, apparently without the IRS ever saying &#8220;boo.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Disgusting.<\/p>\n<p>(Of course, I have to admit that perhaps the IRS under Bush is more evenhanded than I imagine, and maybe there are many instances of the IRS cracking down on equally political right-wing pulpit activism. I&#8217;d welcome being proved wrong on this one, but I don&#8217;t expect to be. Hat tips: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seeingtheforest.com\/archives\/2005\/11\/irs_cracking_do.htm\">Seeing the Forest<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.markarkleiman.com\/archives\/_\/2005\/11\/the_irs_as_political_enforcer.php\">The Reality Based Community<\/a>, and <ahref=\"http:\/\/www.mahablog.com\/2005\/11\/07\/iokiyar-for-churches\/\">The Mahablog<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The LA Times reports that a politically active, liberal church in California is being threatened with loss of tax-exempt status by the IRS &#8211; even though the author of the sermon in question carefully avoided explicit endorsement of either candidate. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1944\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}