Well lookey here! The repugicans found out the constitution has more
provisions aside from the second amendment. Of course, like most things
including the second amendment, the tea party wing of the repugican cabal has a special way of understanding those other provisions –
especially the first amendment.
Exhibit 1.
The tea party is
suing the IRS alleging that the IRS violated their right to free speech, and that they were punished.
Ummm….. the first thing I wonder is how does additional scrutiny to
make sure that the tea party isn’t really a political movement dressed
in social welfare clothing before eventually granting them 501c status
violates their right to free speech.
The tea party and its other wingnut fiends claimed they
qualified for tax exempt and donor anonymity as a 501c group. While the
criteria that the IRS used to further examine their claims was not the
correct criteria it doesn’t mean these groups shouldn’t have been
scrutinized. In fact, if we look at the original intent of a 501c
group, they shouldn’t have been granted 501 \c status at all.
Lawrence O’Donnell
was the first to explain how congress originally intended 501c groups
to be exclusively involved in social welfare activities and how the IRS
changed the word “exclusively” to “primarily” in 1959. The President
was also aware of that point when he alluded to necessary fixes in the
law during his press conference on the IRS matter. I wouldn’t hold my
breath of this happening under the tea party controlled House of
Representatives. After all, 501c status is such a cash cow for the Koch
Brothers, and others who outspent their liberal counterparts by a ratio of 34:1.
One doesn’t have to be a policy wonk or a law wonk to understand that
keeping the word exclusively intact, would have clarified things and
definitely would have made it impossible for dark money to slither into
anonymity with tax free status to boot. When you don’t have ideas, you
better have lots and lots of dark money to run attack ads that are no
more factual than what passes for news on Faux.
The point is that granting or denying tax exempt and donor anonymity
status is not in itself instrumental in whether a group has free
speech. The inference that additional scrutiny was somehow intimidating
is a different matter, as repugicans know firsthand from when they
used the IRS to intimidate individuals
and groups who didn’t goosestep with the shrub junta. It’s
very difficult to feel sympathy for the hypocrites who won’t think twice
of using the IRS to say, intimidate the AARP. Oh right, that’s different because the AARP actually is a social welfare group.
As difficult as it is to have sympathy for the teapocrites. I will maintain that while the wrong
criteria was used by the IRS, groups with 'party' as part of their name
whose raison d’etre is to support one political party, should have to
undergo additional scrutiny when they’re trying to present themselves as
social welfare groups.
Let’s remember, that 501c groups like Crossroads, Americans for
Prosperity and the tea party are pushing their agenda on our dime. When
organizations like the above get the tax breaks that come with 501c
status, it means the rest of us have to make up the short fall. In that
sense, these political organizations are really getting subsidized by
we, the taxpayers.
Exhibit #2.
The madman governor of Maine,
Paul LePage, offered his two cents on Wednesday:
The minute we start stifling our speech, we might as well go home, roll up our sleeves and get our guns out,’
The context of this quote illustrates that LePage doesn’t have a clue
what he’s talking about. After the state house’s appropriations
committee refused to let him address the committee, LePage claimed to
all who would listen that his first amendment rights were violated.
The free speech provision is intended to protect speech by individuals, from government oppression.
Unlike the average citizen, Le Page is part of the government. So
what we really have here is the executive branch claiming his first
amendment rights were denied by the legislative branch.
He went so far as to suggest that this is comparable to the IRS
“censoring” the tea party, which of course, isn’t true. In fact, the
average citizen is typically arrested if they disrupt committee meetings
or other legislative sessions. Le Page was merely denied permission to speak to the
committee, which is a far cry from censorship. The fact that he left
freely after he was denied an opportunity to speak to the committee, and
spoke freely to the press about it, illustrates that point.
More fascinating is the fact that Le Page thinks the way to persuade
people that they’re missing out by refusing to hear his pearls of wisdom
is at the barrel of a gun. Yep, that’s freedumb all right.
Ibragim Todashev, an associate of the Boston Bombing suspects, 
If you're sad and you know it, don't cry a tear. Tweet instead!
This fantastically pink slug, Triboniophorus aff. graeffei, is
only found on Mount Kaputar, a mountaintop in New South Wales,
Australia. According to scientists, the slugs and several other strange
species are from the days when this region was a damp rainforest. When
Mount Kaputar erupted 17 million years ago, it preserved a very unusual
ecosystem. "A series of volcanos and millions of years of erosion have
carved a dramatic landscape at Mount Kaputar National Park, creating a
fascinating world with some very colourful locals," writes the NSW
National Parks and Wildlife Service on its 
