March FORTH and vote. Do you know the old joke? That March 4th is the only day of the year that tells you to do something?
So I think it's cool that Texas' primary is today.
I'm also glad that our primary finally matters...Well, more to one party than another, but still...
I'm still wondering why we don't have a national primary. Let everyone vote on the same day. Then maybe I could have voted for my first choice this morning.
It was weird being a player. It was like Texas was the prettiest girl at the ball, finally after the other 30 ladies left. So we finally got some attention. We have counted somewhere around 30 phone calls at our house. One even offered to give us a ride to the polls. They were all automated calls, but calls nonetheless. We got several from McCain, one from Obama (even though we are registered republicans, wow), several for local contests and a few celebrity types endorsing McCain. We even got a call from "Pastor John Hagee", that's what he called himself on the phone. He told us to vote for McCain. Seems like Hagee's a little late jumping on the victory wagon.
Anyway, voting is a cool thing and I'm glad for it.
- Charles Spurgeon
Trackback URL: http://thinklings.org/bloo.trackback.php/4448.
If Hagee didn't mention his view as a personal endorsement, separate from the church, from what I understand, his church is vulnerable to lawsuits.
The law you are referring to in this sitation - Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) - relates to the tax exempt status of non-profits, which covers most churches. The IRS rule is this: if you want people to be able to deduct their donations to your non-profit; your non-profit can't engage in political lobbying to influence legislation, or directly participate in political advocacy for or against any specific candidate.
If you do, the IRS can remove your tax exempt status, which simply means that donations to your non-profit are no longer tax deductable for the donor. It doesn't mean there are lawsuits or crimes, although there obviously are other campaign laws such as McCain-Feingold which restrict other things.
In any case, only political activities done by the non-profit with its own money or by its officers while performing their job functions are at issue. In other words, unless Hagee directly encouraged people to vote for McCain from the pulpit, or used church funds or equipment to record these calls (both of which are highly unlikely), there is nothing that stops him from doing calls like this as a citizen of this country.
The reason we don't have a national primary, is that in that case the candidate with the most money would have a huge advantage, since campaigning would be almost exclusively by television. If it was also just a popular vote primary, then candidates would give their focus exclusively to large cities, where you can reach more people more rapidly. So it's important to start with a few small states.
Having said that, it doesn't half to be Iowa, NH, and SC every time. There are lots of small states to choose from.
John Hagee called, telling you to vote for McCain?
Quaid was telling me that that's a pretty big offense under current rules, and could lose Hagee his tax-exempt status.
What's the deal there?