EXTRA! EXTRA! NAACP PLEDGES TO WORK AGAINST BUSH: This AP story says: “The leader of the NAACP [Julian Bond] criticized President Bush and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, for challenging race-conscious admissions in colleges and vowed to work to unseat the president in 2004. . . .Bond also voiced his disappointment that neither President Bush nor his brother attended the 2002 NAACP conference in Texas or the 2003 meeting. He also said the group intended “to uproot the bigger ‘Bush’ in 2004.” (All emphasis mine.)

Point number one: duh. Anyone who professes to be shocked by this is either stupid or pretending to be.

Point number two: gee, I thought the NAACP was a tax-exempt organization. Non-profit organizations under IRC section 501(c)(3), like the NAACP, theoretically forfeit their tax exemption if they engage in “political activities.” The IRS’s description of “political activities” expressly encompasses “activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate, even on the basis of non-partisan criteria.”

Read again the quotes in bold above. Mr. Bond has expressly declared his intent to do exactly what the rule prohibits: to actively work against a particular candidate. How can he announce this so publicly — so brazenly? Isn’t he worried about his organization’s tax-exempt status?

Not in the slightest, because the IRS has given the NAACP a pass for years, a fact that has been repeatedly documented. Everyone reading this remembers the James Byrd ad from the 2000 presidential campaign, which cynically attempted to connect a notoriously brutal racially motivated murder to Bush and his policies as Governor of Texas. That ad was sponsored by the NAACP — remember?

As much I would like to say that Bond has finally crossed the line, I sincerely doubt it. If the IRS took action, Bush thinks it would make him look bad. So he would never permit the IRS to take action. The amplified screams of so-called “black leaders” would be deafening. It won’t even become an issue to begin with, because top IRS officials know not to make their boss unhappy. This is how such a blatant outrage becomes so commonplace that it is barely worth mentioning.