At the Wall Street Journal via NewsMax, the Former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Brad Smith, expressed grave concerns of the IRS scandal on free speech rights of Americans:
The IRS scandal is anything but “phony,” as President Barack Obama has labeled it, and is instead an assault on the Constitution’s First Amendment, says Bradley Smith, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.“The IRS scandal is part of a long-term assault on First Amendment rights,” Smith, now chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, writes in the Wall Street Journal.The scandal involved the targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, giving their applications more scrutiny than others. The groups sought 501(c)(4) tax status, which requires a group to be engaged in “the promotion of social welfare.”