AllMilitary.com

(insert VAJoe.com disclaimer here…The Crawfish is The Crawfish, not Joe)

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all IRC section 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches and religious organizations, are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made by or on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise tax.

Well, isn’t that just special.  The IRS actually has some rules that are written in plain English.  Of course, since it is plainly written, it happens to be one of the few IRS rules that is NEVER enforced.

Lately, this rule could have (and should have) been applied to Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.  Yes, the supposed “church” that is famous for Rev. Wright and Senator Obama.  Rev. Wrong clearly went over those lines many a-time, and his young successor has continued in his mentor’s footsteps.  The rants last week at TUCC by Rev. Pfleger, who officially is still a Catholic, but is in reality anything but (as evidenced by his embrace of TUCC’s Black Liberation Theology, which puts God below Black Man in the grand scheme of things, and his praise of Calypso Louie Farrakhan and the Nation Of Islam), just put up another flag that the politicians in DC who control the IRS are sure to ignore.  If the IRS were to go after TUCC and revoke their tax-exempt status, they’d be tarred as racist and the vassals of George W Bush and John McCain, even though they would be simply upholding the law.

This is nothing new.

Actually…none of that is new.  Not the IRS ignoring simple rules.  Not DC politicians ignoring the law.  Not DC politicians being afraid of being called bad names.  Not others in DC and around the country wanting to call those who uphold the law “racist.”  But I digress.

Churches have a LOOOOOONG history in the USA as being places where campaigns go to the people.  While predominantly black churches have had their political activity more in the open, with many of their political leaders either being Reverends (Dr. King) or calling themselves Reverends (Jesse-be-the-Jackson, Al “Tawana Brawley” Sharpton), and having political activism being one of their hallmarks for a VERY long time, they aren’t alone.  Predominantly white churches have been doing it for much longer.  We don’t even have to go through all of the classic names of American political history to find it.  We just need to go back through the past 30 years.  The whole Christian Conservative movement was based upon political activism in churches, mostly white and mostly in The South.  Reverend Jerry Falwell’s church and the school that it gave birth to (Liberty University) were based on fundamentalist Christian philosophy and political activism.  The Christian Coalition gave pastors throughout the land pamplets and talking points to put forth.

Where is The Crawfish going with all of this?  I guess it all comes down to one of the main points of my political philosophy.  The law is the law, whether it be tax code or The Constitution.  The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, and all FEDERAL laws must abide by it (The Crawfish is dreaming again, since over a quarter of all federal laws and over 40% of all federal spending is in direct opposition to the Constitution).  If the law is in place, and it is Constitutional, it must be enforced, no matter the political consequences.

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