CA Attorney General Tries To Silence Criticism of Government, Intimidating Non Profits

[From article]
Nonprofit organizations are some of the most effective critics of government, other powerful institutions -- and ambitious politicians -- making them especially vulnerable to the desire to bully and censor them. The Lois Lerner/IRS scandal is a good example.
[CA Attorney General] Harris decided to push the limits by telling charities that they may not solicit contributions unless they first file a list of their top donors, which is an extortionate prior restraint on speech. Those donors are found on a confidential “Schedule B” to the tax returns filed by nonprofits with the IRS.
Federal law protects confidential tax return information, and even provides civil and criminal penalties against federal and state officials who violate the confidentiality law. The IRS was ordered to pay the National Organization for Marriage for disclosing that organization’s Schedule B donor information to hostile blogs.
As or even more importantly, what Harris is doing flies in the face of the 1958 landmark Supreme Court decision in NAACP v. Alabama. That case held that membership lists are protected by the First Amendment from demands of states and their attorneys general.
[. . .]
The formerly accessible and collaborative Ms. Lerner has since been held in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about her activities at the center of an IRS scandal involving its treatment of conservative nonprofit organizations and their donors (“House votes to hold Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress,” The Washington Post, May 7, 2014).[4] Ms. Lerner remains in the news regularly, if not weekly, as information continues to come forth about IRS targeting groups and individuals for apparent ideological reasons
[. . .]
Which is to say that the presumption of benevolence the court of appeals accorded the government is misplaced. Information continues to trickle out under congressional investigations,[7] inspector general investigations,[8] private lawsuits,[9] and threats of contempt[10] involving government malevolence towards conservative nonprofits.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/kamala_harris_dem_rising_star_goes_for_the_jugular_on_conservative_nonprofits.html

August 17, 2015
Kamala Harris, Dem Rising Star, Goes for the Jugular on Conservative Nonprofits
By Mark J. Fitzgibbons