My memory is long enough to remember that the IRS did everything possible to prevent Tea Party and Jewish conservative groups from claiming nonprofit status in the years leading up to Obama's 2012 re-election.  We know that wasn't accidental.  Likewise, there's no accident behind the fact that the IRS continues to give tax-deductible status to a group that even the Ninth Circuit conceded is a terrorist organization in a piratical mode.  The federal bureaucracy does not exist for America's benefit; it functions entirely for its own.

Daniel Greenfield reports on the pass the IRS keeps giving to Sea Shepherd, a violent leftist anti-fishing organization.  What's really stunning about the IRS's stance is that it's the Ninth Circuit, the hardest-left federal district in America, that acknowledged that Sea Shepherd is a violent enterprise:

A decade ago, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling stated that, "you don't need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate."

The group in question was Sea Shepherd: a trendy anti-fishing organization whose celebrity supporters included Pamela Anderson, Martin Sheen and Sean Penn. And a decade after the Court of Appeals stated that Sea Shepherd's alleged acts were "clear instances of violent acts for private ends, the very embodiment of piracy", Sea Shepherd maintains a presence on Facebook, Amazon, YouTube and other Big Tech platforms that purged conservations for "extremism", where it sells merchandise featuring its version of the skull and bones pirate flag.

And it has retained its status with the IRS as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charity for over 40 years.

In 2002, the Domestic Terrorism Section Chief of the FBI told the House Resources Committee that Sea Shepherd was an example of "eco-terrorism". The IRS took no action even when it was caught harboring a nonprofit that federal law enforcement had described as eco-terrorists.

What's amazing is that Sea Shepherd is such a menace on the high seas that, Greenfield writes, it's "shown up on Interpol's Red Notice while being the subject of international incidents."  Additionally:

While the IRS has ignored conservative protests over tax deductible status being granted to domestic terrorist groups, the Japanese government spent years lobbying to suspend Sea Shepherd's nonprofit status. After a court ruling described the group as pirates, the Japanese could not believe that the Obama administration still refused to take action. Finally the Japanese embassy turned directly to the IRS, including contacting Lois Lerner, who would become infamous for her role in the IRS targeting of conservative and Jewish opponents of Obama.

The IRS went through the motions of auditing Sea Shepherd, then it dispatched a letter claiming that "our examination of the information return(s) indicated above disclosed that your organization continues to qualify for exemption from Federal income tax." The Internal Revenue Service does not however seem to have consulted the Court of Appeals, the FBI or the law.

Regardless of how one feels about saving the whales, illegal activity is still illegal activity, and the IRS should not be giving it a pass as a tax-deductible pursuit.

Here's another thing that will amaze you: provided the cause is pure in a leftist kind of way, pirates aren't the only "non-profits" to which the IRS will give a pass.  It turns out that Front Page Magazine has been documenting myriad groups that the IRS believes deserve tax-deductible status: "we have covered Chinese Communist front groups, art vandals, domestic terrorists, pedophiles, illegal alien smugglers and the enablers of murderers."

Americans tolerated the increasing number of federal agencies over the past 100 years in part because they were assured that these were neutral institutions that were necessary to run an increasingly populous country.  Nobody could expect a small executive office to carry out these functions.  However, a white-collar class of educated, non-partisan men and women receiving the kind of salary that could fund a nice, middle-class life in the burgeoning post-WWII suburbs could be trusted to apply in an honest, even-handed fashion the laws our representatives passed.

That was the Big Lie told to us by statists who believed that an expert class under their control would perfect America.  Their idea of perfection, though, turns out to be a tax collector — which has the power of federal guns, judges, and prisons behind it — giving pirates a pass while doing what it can to destroy anyone and anything that refuses to get with the statist program.

Image: The Sea Shepherds hurl something (Smoke bombs? Acid?) at a ship they plan to ram.  YouTube screen grab.