The Latest IRS Power Grab -- By Bradley A. Smith, The Wall Street Journal

The left wants the disclosure of private information about conservative donors 

Six months after the Internal Revenue Service's inspector general revealed that the tax-collection agency had been targeting conservative organizations for added scrutiny and delaying their applications for tax-exempt status, the IRS has proposed new rules for handling political activity by nonprofits. The proposed rules would plunge the agency deeper into political regulation.

The rules would upset more than 50 years of settled law and practice by limiting the ability of certain tax-exempt nonprofits, organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, to conduct nonpartisan voter registration and voter education. Such organizations would be forbidden to leave records of officeholder votes and public statements on their websites in the two months before an election. 

 It is tempting to pick the proposed rules apart—and there is much to pick, such as restrictions on a nonprofit discussing any aspect of a president's judicial nominees in a public communication any time between Feb. 2 and a national election day nine months later. But it is more important to ask how we got here. Why is the IRS regulating political activity at all?

 The answer is that many Democratic politicians and progressive activists think new rules limiting political speech by nonprofits will benefit Democrats politically. Stymied by judicial decisions restricting direct government regulation of political speech, and by a Federal Election Commission whose bipartisan makeup prevents Democratic commissioners from forcing through partisan rules on a party-line vote, these politicians and activists have decided to dragoon the IRS into doing their work.

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