Message to the IRS from the tea party: ‘We will not be silenced’

Like Rep. Darrell Issa, the tea party does not give up the fight. Mr. Issa, chairman of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has released his painstaking review of 1.3 million pages of IRS documents and transcribed interviews conducted following revelations that the federal agency had targeted conservative groups. “Conservative organizations were not just singled out because of their political beliefs - they were targeted by IRS officials and employees who expressed a general loathing toward them even while begrudgingly admitting that those organizations were in compliance with the only thing the IRS should care about: the federal tax code,” the report stated.

“There is no question that the IRS as an agency, and its leaders individually, directed and implemented a scheme to silence and demoralize tea party groups. We knew it was going on before Congress and the Treasury Inspector General confirmed it,” declares Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.

“The truth is that it is still going on. The IRS still plans to defy the will of hundreds of thousands of Americans by its plot to reissue cumbersome regulations early next year that will likely be little different from the regulations they proposed a year ago to shut down citizen free speech,” Mrs. Martin says. “We want the IRS and Treasury to hear us loud and clear: we are not going away, we will not be silenced and we will continue to fight every effort they devise to target and intimidate our movement.”