Show trials are what Sheldon Whitehouse and the Democrats really want

Blacklists are back and the Dems’ have got ’em: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has demanded that the IRS strip the conservative college organization Turning Point USA of its non-profit status because it had held large events in the last year (similar to many Black Lives Matter protests during the same time period).

According to Whitehouse, the Turning Point USA events were “superspreader” events and a threat to public health. Apparently he also believes that the coronavirus can’t appear at comparable Black Lives Matter protests, nor does he appear interested in finding out if any such superspreader events actually occurred following the Turning Point USA gatherings (they did not). From Whitehouse’s letter:

“According to press reports and social media posts, many participants gathered and mingled indoors without wearing masks, in violation of Palm Beach County’s COVID-19 regulations,” Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, writes to the IRS chief. The powerful chamber has oversight over the IRS, among many other government agencies.

“In holding these ‘superspreader’ events, Turning Point USA knowingly exposed hundreds of young people and staff working at the events to serious risk of infection,” the letter continues. The legislator asks the IRS to review whether the group, which has more than 250,000 student members, should continue to enjoy its tax-exempt nonprofit status. “Established law has long held that an organization is not eligible for tax exemption under section 501(c)(3) if a purpose of the organization is contrary to public policy or is illegal,” the letter states, reminding the IRS commissioner of a three-part test established to determine whether an organization’s activities are consistent with tax exemption under the code.

Whitehouse’s concerns about the spread of COVID-19 are quite bogus, since he never raised this question about numerous other groups that had large gatherings in 2020, including many Democrats and leftist organizations. No, he focused his blacklisting skills only at a conservative organization, with the real goal being to damage and silence it.

If Whitehouse was some outlier or extremist in the Democratic Party we could giggle at his idiocy and then ignore it. He isn’t however. He is a long time established Senator (elected in 2007) who holds important positions on the Senate Finance Committee (which oversees the IRS), the Judiciary Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, and the Budget Committee. His attempts to use the IRS to silence conservatives is and has been a central Democratic Party platform since Obama used the IRS to squelch conservative organizations prior to the 2012 election.

Note also that this isn’t a new tactic by Whitehouse. In 2013 he demanded during a Senate Judiciary committee hearing that some conservative groups be prosecuted by the IRS, merely because they were conservative. That same year he blamed Republicans for causing a terrible tornado event in Oklahoma that killed 24 because of their skepticism of global warming. Then in 2015 he called for the criminal prosecution of fossil fuel companies for daring to express skepticism about global warming.

The voters of Rhode Island should be ashamed he is their senator, and should have removed him years ago.

They did not however, and so he — like Obama and their minions in the IRS — continues his effort to use the IRS’s taxing powers to squelch dissent and any opposition. He and his allies are totalitarians of the worst sort, and if they had their way, they would gladly build gulags to imprison those opponents.

And be warned, those gulags are coming if decent Americans from all sides of the political spectrum don’t rise up in protest.