IRS 101: Seven questions about the tea party scandal

The Internal Revenue Service is under the microscope now, as revelations have emerged that the agency wrongly targeted conservative groups seeking nonprofit status. Here’s an accounting of what has happened, along with the ramifications.

2. Why is this such a big deal?

There’s a reason entities across the political spectrum, including House Speaker John Boehner (R), Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine, President Obama, and the American Civil Liberties Union, have called the revelations “outrageous” and “chilling.” As an agency with immense power and ability, the IRS is charged with being nonpolitical, nonpartisan, and neutral – in other words, not being an organization that would target groups for their political positions.

That’s why the ACLU’s Michael Macleod-Ball called the situation “about as constitutionally troubling as it gets,” and Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California called it “the kind of thing that scares the American people to their core, when Americans are being targeted for audits based on their political beliefs.”

And then there’s the specter of Watergate, when the Nixon administration used the IRS to target political enemies. Those activities were among the articles of impeachment filed against President Nixon before he resigned. They also resulted in additional legislation to ensure that the agency wouldn’t be used for intimidation or abuse.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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