Analyst's note:  Here is what Bill Warner, Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam had to say about the subject article:

'It appears that the Obama administration is spying on churches and using the IRS to punish churches about their 501c3 tax exempt status (H/T AtlasShrugs). According to the article, the Obama administration has a program of snooping on the activity in and by churches. The collected church intelligence deals with members who are with Tea Party or who speak publically about guns. (Remember: "cling to their guns and Bibles".) Some ministers believe that agents may have joined churches to spy.

As bizarre as this may seem, it dovetails with other known Obama administration views. Homeland Security has a profile (yes, all law enforcement uses profiling) of the pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Constitution and pro-Bible white Christian as being a potential terrorist.

We do know that the IRS has targeted conservatives, pro-Israel, pro-life, Tea Party and even Billy Graham. When the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association backed the North Carolina ballot initiative about gay marriage, it was notified by the IRS that its tax exempt status was going to be revoked. In the end it was not revoked, but the threat cost money, time and hassle.

All of this has the desired effect of chilling free speech in the churches.

Here is the point: there is no outcry from the churches! This lack of outrage is a measure of the health of Christianity in America-so weak that it cannot even protest the abuse. But, we already knew how morally weak the church is in its response to rape, theft, enslavement and murder of Christians throughout the Islamic world. Christians are the most persecuted demographic group in the world. Over 100,000 thousand Christians died last year, and the response of the churches is to smile and hold a dialog with Muslims who are brothers with the jihadist persecutors. Dhimmi ministers speak of loving their Muslim neighbors, but show no concern for dead Christians. The day of a minister having a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other is over. The new gospel is: What, me worry?

Why does the moral and spiritual decay of the church matter to a counter-jihadist? This is a civilizational war and our spiritual flank is unprotected. Instead of the church being a guard dog, it is a poodle. Ministers cannot even protect their own flocks, much less the nation. Back in the past the church was the foundation of the nation and a guardian of our society. But now the church won't even bark at an enemy-foreign or domestic. All the church wants is a scratch behind the ears by the intruder. (In fairness, only 95% of the churches are being condemned here.) To be complete, the synagogues are a swamp of ignorance and cowardliness, as well.

So, to the counter-jihadist the church is at best a dead weight of massive ignorance and is frequently found in bridge-building dialogues with the enemy-Islam."

******

On Thursday the Examiner provided an exclusive report indicating that the Obama administration had implemented a covert program beginning in 2009 that was intended to spy on conservative, evangelical Christian churches.

That program involved infiltration -- sending in government operatives to join churches for the purpose of data collection. The government snoops would keep their eyes and ears open for criticism of the Obama administration, talk of Tea Party participation, conversations about gun ownership, and a number of other issues.

But a special report issued today by Fox News indicates that the program went far beyond infiltration and snooping. The IRS was used to harass Christian churches if they were identified as places where large numbers of anti-Obama citizens congregated for worship.

The Obama administration, according to the report, considered any public criticism of administration policies to be political in nature and should therefore impact whether or not these congregations were allowed to gain or keep their tax exempt status.

[....] Such chilling attempts to curtail citizen rights to free speech and the free practice of religion have become the hallmarks of an administration that is so drunk with power that it knows absolutely no bounds and tolerates very little opposition of any kind to its policies.

Notice!

A new entry is now available in my Musings After Midnight series titled, "Vindication is Sweet but the Facts are Dire -- A Field Report on Proactive Patriots."

An index of all of my entries in "Musings After Midnight" is available at The Liberty Sphere.