If something this obvious had happened to a liberal organization, you can bet the mainstream media would be all over it. But being a conservative, pro-traditional-marriage group, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has been afforded no such luxury. On March 30 the Human Rights Campaign posted a scanning of NOM’s 2008 tax Form 990, complete with confidential donor information – including that of GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, who is listed as having given a $10,000 donation to NOM. Shortly after the HRC posted the documents, the Huffington Post followed suit (h/t Daily Caller).
Here’s the problem: The donor information on a 990, which tax-exempt groups are required to file, is meant only for Internal Revenue Service eyes, and revealing it constitutes a felony. In a twist that seems not at all to be coincidental, the HRC is headed by Joe Solomonese, a recently appointed national co-chair of the Obama reelection campaign.
Following a public call by NOM last week for federal investigation into the matter, the documents are no longer available for general viewing on the HRC website. NOM has determined from document analysis that the scanned papers had to have come from within the IRS – meaning there was a high-level security breach, apparently for political purposes, at a government agency to which every citizen of this country routinely entrusts classified information.
Given that this all happened in the run-up to tax day, where was the outrage? Where was the swift condemnation by pundits and organizations on both sides of the political aisle? After all, this is not a gay-marriage issue; this isn’t even just a conservative issue (and if it were, it would still merit examination).
The fact is this is a matter of legality. A crime appears to have been committed, and an investigation is indeed in order. That this matter is not getting the attention it deserves is testament, yet again, to the left-wing bias of the mainstream media.
As NOM President Brian Brown said in a statement last week: "It is shocking that a political ally of President Obama's would come to possess and then publicly release a confidential tax return that came directly from the Internal Revenue Service.”
Fishy doesn’t quite cover it.
Big Government
