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IRS Not Auditing Churches

By November 6, 2012July 16th, 2014No Comments

The Internal Revenue Service has officially reported what Liberty Counsel says it has been saying all along: The IRS is not auditing churches, because it does not have the authority to take away churches’ tax-free status, reports charismanews.com. For years, leftist groups, such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, have used deception and fear tactics to censor the church and muzzle pastors. A recent letter to religious leaders by Executive Director Barry Lynn inaccurately said, “If the IRS determines that your house of worship has engaged in unlawful intervention, it can revoke the institution’s tax-exempt status.” An IRS spokesman said last week that the agency has been inundated with complaints, but they are not going to do any audits because they do not have the authority to do so. “Churches are tax-exempt inherently,” says Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. “They don’t need a letter from the IRS to be tax exempt, so their tax-exempt status cannot be taken away by the IRS.” No church has ever lost its tax-exempt status for opposing or supporting a candidate for political office. Churches and pastors may speak on biblical and moral issues. They can educate about the candidates’ viewpoints. They can encourage people to vote and can assist them in getting to the polls. This year Liberty Counsel said it sent over 100,000 copies of its Take Back America: Silence Is NOT an Option to pastors and church leaders across America, to encourage pastors and church leaders to speak truth to this generation. More pastors have been involved this year than ever before, even pastors who have been silenced in the past. Billy Graham is running full-page ads in a number of newspapers across the country, urging voters to vote for candidates that support Biblical values of life, natural marriage, and religious liberty.

Other news:

  • A judge has granted an early victory to a company that’s challenging the contraception mandate in Obamacare, reports cbn.com. The owners of the Detroit-area Weingartz Supply Company are Roman Catholic. They argue the contraception mandate violates their constitutional rights by infringing on their ability to practice their religion. Under the new health care law, companies can be fined if they don’t offer medical insurance with contraception coverage. A federal judge ruled the government cannot punish Weingartz while the case is ongoing, saying even the brief loss of free speech and religious rights is an “irreparable injury.”
  • A Texas woman claims she was told that her “Vote the Bible” T-shirt may be offensive and was forced to cover up when she went to vote early at the City Hall in Taylor County, Texas, last week, MyFoxAustin.com reports. Attorney Jonathan Seinz, president of Texas Values, says Kay Hill was “targeted because of her religious beliefs.” He says he’s prepared to defend Hill because he believes she was asked to give up her religious freedom in order to vote. “This is obviously a religious free expression and no one should be put in a position having to choose religious freedom over deciding to vote,” he said.
  • The focus of the election has been on the marquee battle for president, but pro-life advocate needs to focus on these top Senate races, reports lifenews.com, which in its full story lists the key races. In order to have success in overturning Obamacare, de-funding Planned Parenthood, passing pro-life laws and approving the kinds of judges who would be open to overturning Roe v. Wade, pro-lifers are best helped if pro-life Republicans re-take control of the Senate from pro-abortion Democrats who currently run it. States where the races are include Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
  • Patricia Smith, mother of slain State Department employee Sean Patrick Smith has come out and blamed Barack Obama for her son’s death, which occurred during the Sept. 11, attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reports freedomoutpost.com. “I believe that Obama murdered my son,” she said Thursday from the living room of her Clairemont home. “I firmly believe this.” Smith’s view echoes that of Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, former Navy SEAL who died fighting in Benghazi. Charles Woods appeared on Fox News shows over the weekend to denounce decisions made by U.S. officials during the Libya attack. “I’m a retired attorney, and I know that these actions legally do not constitute murder. But in my mind the people in the White House, all of them who have authority to send in reinforcements to prevent what they knew was going to be the death of my son, are guilty of murdering my son,” Woods said Sunday on Fox’s Sean Hannity show.
  • Four years after Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and several other fictitious names that ACORN workers attempted to register to vote, John Adolf Hitler has turned up on a voter registration form in Cincinnati, Ohio, reports freedomoutpost.com. “It’s certainly not a joke. In Ohio, that kind of activity is a felony,” says Alex Triantafilou, an Elections Board member. “Any person who would engage in that kind of conduct with something as serious to our democracy as voting,” he continued, “is highly irresponsible and potentially criminal. . . . We have someone doctoring registrations, and the next step would be a serious move toward fraudulent voting. We are worried about it.” The person who registered listed his name as “Adolf Hitler, John” and address as “666 Heltz” in Los Angeles.
  • While millions of Americans were struggling with the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy on Tuesday, former Vice President Al Gore issued a statement blaming the devastating event on “global warming pollution,” reports newsmax.com. Referring to a storm that caused widespread flooding in Nashville, Tenn., two years ago, Gore said on his blog: “While the storm that drenched Nashville was not a tropical cyclone like Hurricane Sandy, both storms were strengthened by the climate crisis. Scientists tell us that by continually dumping 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every single day, we are altering the environment in which all storms develop. As the oceans and atmosphere continue to warm, storms are becoming more energetic and powerful. Hurricane Sandy and the Nashville flood were reminders of just that.” And he warned, “Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come.” But a real climate scientist, Martin Hoerling—a meteorologist in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory—downplays the link between global warming and Sandy: “The immediate cause is most likely little more than the coincidental alignment of a tropical storm with an extratropical storm. “As to underlying causes, neither the frequency of tropical or extratropical cyclones over N. Atlantic are projected to appreciably change due to climate change.” Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center, said that any connection between man-made global warming and hurricanes is “almost certainly undetectable.” Roger Pielke Jr., a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said, “Sandy doesn’t tell us anything about climate change.” Marc Morano, executive editor and chief correspondent for ClimateDepot.com, was more outspoken. “These new ‘Tabloid Climatology’ claims by activists attempting to link any weather event to manmade global warming [are] disgusting. They are exploiting any weather event to promote their religious-like cause and a storm like Sandy is shamelessly used to gin up fear.”
  • Add Washington Post George Will to the landslide column along with Fox News Channel’s Dick Morris and the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone, reports conservativebyte.com. On this weekend’s broadcast of This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, Will revealed his prediction and added a bonus surprise by saying traditional Democratic state Minnesota would go for Romney as well. “I’m projecting Minnesota to go for Romney,” Will said. “It’s the only state that’s voted democratic in nine consecutive elections, but this year, there’s marriage amendment on the ballot that will bring out the evangelicals and I think could make the difference.” Will predicts a 321-217 landslide for Romney. Breitbart.com reports that Romney now leads in Michigan. The poll was of “high participation registered voters and voters that fit Michigan General Election voting patterns.” The same poll had Obama up four points in early October.

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