Maryland roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

IRS scandal, cont’d: “It was pretty much a proctology exam through your earlobe” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

The Treasury Inspector General’s report on the affair, released yesterday, is here. (Coverage roundup: Paul Caron, TaxProf.) It makes clear that many groups were singled out because of their controversial political stances and then subjected to both objectively unreasonable document demands (e.g., for thousands of pages of documentation) and objectively unreasonable delays (e.g., for two years) in resolving their applications. (The Service seldom if ever actually denied applications from the singled-out groups, perhaps because its actions would then have come under more rigorous court review). Meanwhile, other groups with controversial views of a different political valence were waved through. It is not a question of whether applications for tax exemption should somehow be “approved without question,” as some have contended, but whether they should come under review that is even-handed and with no more delay and regulatory burden than is inherent to the process. At Time, Michael Scherer collects past examples that suggest IRS retaliation against political adversaries is something of a tradition in America. (Similarly: Cato video podcast).

P.S. Defending itself against the Inspector General’s report, the IRS says the applicants flagged for special scrutiny “included organizations of all political views.” It points to three such left-leaning groups — out of 471 in all singled out for extra screening. [Bloomberg via Newser] Much more: Gregory Korte, USA Today (“As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved … the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.”) Meanwhile, L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik is unafraid of going way out on a limb to defend what the Service did: if you don’t want to be harassed for your dissidence, it seems, you shouldn’t have sought (c)(4) status in the first place.

Yet more: Reuters has illuminating coverage of how the Service tried to break one of the year’s biggest stories on a Friday afternoon via a friendly question before a room full of tax lawyers. (“They made a bet that this would be the quietest way to roll it out,” [Eric Dezenhall] said of the IRS strategy. “It didn’t work.”) “Did Citizens United Critics Push the Agency To Misbehave?” asks my Cato colleague John Samples, while Tim Lynch adduces “Some Empirical Evidence of IRS Political Manipulation”. The BBC has a lexicon of political scandal euphemisms (“tired and emotional,” “hiking the Appalachian Trail,” etc.)

Was the IRS scandal a surprise? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Update: that “just a rogue field office in Cincinnati” story didn’t last long. AP is reporting that the agency’s acting head knew nearly a year ago that tea party groups were being targeted, a fact that might have been of interest to lawmakers pursuing constituent reports of overly onerous document demands from the IRS (see our earlier coverage of that here and here). Meanwhile, ProPublica, the generally liberal-leaning journalistic outfit, has disclosed that the IRS shared with it confidential data from nine conservative-leaning nonprofits.

Government is simply the name for the things we do together… is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

More: As the legal drinking age has been pushed upward in recent years, the average age of first use of alcohol has fallen markedly [Tuccille]

NYC proposes expansion of black market is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

P.S. While some of the Maryland commentary has treated the idea as new and experimental, thanks to commenters for pointing out that it’s already a familiar part of the scene elsewhere.

Maryland braces for “rain tax” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Another point where Ordered Liberty threatens but pulls back from challenging core Solid Liberal beliefs occurs during the discussion of Bob Jones v. United States. Ordered Liberty suggests that the Supreme Court in that case correctly ruled that religious organizations can be denied tax exemptions if they teach racism and other abhorrent doctrines. I confess to be troubled by the analysis. I suspect that most Jewish schools at the very least encourage students to date and marry other Jews, that these schools teach the doctrine that Jews are a chosen people, and that a great many other religions engage in similarly illiberal teaching. Given the importance of the welfare state in the lives of most citizens, a point Fleming and McClain make elsewhere in the book, I confess to some discomfort with the constitutional rule they eventually endorse that forbids religious coercion but permits religious groups to be denied state benefits that go to other religious groups with more liberally accepted beliefs. I think based on what the authors suggest elsewhere in the book, a case can be made that Bob Jones ought to be rethought.

Should the Bob Jones case trouble liberal pluralists? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Toward a more uneducated electorate is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Discrimination law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Later in the piece I draw a parallel to the recently dismissed Hudson Farm litigation in Maryland, in which a judge lambasted Waterkeeper Alliance for shoddy litigation conduct in a Clean Water Act suit. Is it worth rethinking the whole policy, which dates back to 1970, of broad tax deductibility for suing people in “cause litigation”? Related from Ted Frank at Point of Law.

P.S. The comments section on the Post piece is more substantive than most, and includes a statement from HSUS. (& response from ASPCA head)

The ASPCA’s lawsuit debacle is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system