FEC FILED LAWSUIT AGAINST CHRISTIAN COALITION UNDER LERNER’S LEADERSHIP
By Mitch Odom
Published: May 23, 2013 | 0 Comments


Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups refused to testify at a House hearing Wednesday by invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. However, her troubles are far from over and will not be blown into the abyss by a single puff of wind.
An apparent pattern is beginning to rise to the surface. The very same practices that are now being uncovered in the IRS scandal were present under Lerner’s leadership of the Federal Election Commission. Lerner was the head of the enforcement division of the FEC from 1986 until 2001. During her tenure, the FEC sued the Christian Coalition for violating campaign laws.
The Christian Coalition won the case and that might have been the end of the story but for the IRS targeting conservative groups in much the same way as the Christian Coalition was targeted. FEC questions asked of the Christian Coalition were remarkably similar to some of the questions presented to conservative groups seeking tax exempt status from the IRS.
One of the FEC lawyers went so far as ask Pat Robertson if he prayed for him in an apparent attempt to present a violation of church and state. James Bopp who was the Christian Coalition’s lead lawyer at the time of the suit said recently,
“Both political activity and religious activity are specifically protected by the First Amendment. One of the most shocking things about the current IRS scandal is the revelation that the agency asked one religious pro-life group to detail the content of their prayers and asked clearly inappropriate questions about private religious activity.”
Bopp had this to say following his testimony at a 2003 Congressional hearing,
“The FEC conducted a large amount of paper discovery during the administrative investigation and then served four massive discovery requests during the litigation stage that included 127 document requests, 32 interrogatories, and 1,813 requests for admission. Three of the interrogatories required the Coalition to explain each request for admission that it did not admit in full, for a total of 481 additional written answers that had to be provided. The Coalition was required to produce tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of them containing sensitive and proprietary information about finances and donor information. Each of the 49 state affiliates were asked to provide documents and many states were individually subpoenaed. In all, the Coalition searched both its offices and warehouse, where millions of pages of documents are stored, in order to produce over 100,000 pages of documents.”
Bopp told The Weekly Standard that the Christian Coalition investigation was egregious and uncalled for.
“We felt we were being singled out, because when you handle a case with 81 depositions you have a pretty good argument you’re getting special treatment. Eighty-one depositions! Eighty-one! From Ralph Reed’s former part-time secretary to George H.W. Bush. It was mind blowing.”
When Bopp learned that Lerner had been promoted to her position at the IRS, he said,
“She was in effect being promoted for what she had done at the Federal Election Commission and now was going to be expected … to replicate that at the IRS and now we know that’s exactly what happened.”
Lois Lerner is still on the job where she remains an active IRS employee, drawing her regular salary. One can only imagine where the enforcement of Obamacare is headed if this train does not wreck. The IRS should not be involved in the enforcement of Obamacare. No matter how non-political the IRS may be presented as, reality presents a far different picture.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which maintains an online database of political contributions, individuals listing their employer as “IRS” or “Internal Revenue Service” donated a total of $48,827 to Obama in 2012 and gave just $20,361 to Romney. That gap was even wider in 2008, when IRS employees donated $59,959 to Obama, and just $1,950 to his challenger John McCain.
It is far too easy for those in power to limit and to deny health care to people who may oppose their agenda or have a vastly differing political perspective. The scandal has resulted in bipartisan calls for a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations against the IRS, as well as calls for delaying or repealing full implementation of Obamacare.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) said on the Republican weekly radio address in e mid-May
“The power in our health care system should belong to patients and their families, not politicians—and certainly not the tax man.”

http://www.libertynews.com/2013/05/f...rs-leadership/