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| JAMES MATTIS |
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| INTERNAL REVENUE
SERVICE |
WELCOME ABOARD: So that took awhile — Chuck
Rettig was officially sworn in Monday as the 49th commissioner of the IRS, more
than seven months after he was first nominated and closing an almost 11-month
span when the tax collector was without a confirmed chief.
While you're getting settled: It
might have been Rettig's first day, but Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the
Finance Committee, is already buttonholing the new commissioner on policy
points. Wyden, who led the opposition to Rettig's nomination over a separate
Trump administration policy change that allows political nonprofits to disclose
less donor information to the IRS, pressed Rettig on Monday to confirm that he
would continue to enforce the provision that bans churches and other 501(c)(3)
nonprofits from engaging in political campaigns.
President Donald Trump has blasted the Johnson Amendment — which
the evangelical conservatives who are a major part of his base have spent years
trying to repeal — since he was just a candidate, and has even wrongly
suggested that he's scrapped the ban. Along those lines, Vice President Mike
Pence said as recently as a few weeks ago that the administration would no
longer enforce the Johnson Amendment, after the White House released an
executive order mandating that the Treasury Department avoid taking
"adverse action" against churches and other groups that have
"spoken about moral or political issues from a religious
perspective."
For his part, Rettig said in his confirmation hearing that he
would ensure that the IRS enforced the law "in an impartial and nonbiased
manner." But in his letter Monday, Wyden calls on the IRS chief to give a
full disavowal of Pence's comments. [POLITICO's
Morning Tax, October 2, 2018]
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| HIDDEN IN THE ATTIC |
On October 14, 1863, Confederate Gen. A.P.
Hill’s corps collided with two corps of the retreating Union Army of the
Potomac at Bristoe Station. Hill attacked without proper reconnaissance,
falling into—as one observer termed it— “as fine a trap as could have been
devised by a month’s engineering.” Outnumbered nearly 5-to-1, the Confederates
were cut down in waves. It all lasted scarcely an hour, and the Army of
Northern Virginia suffered its most one-sided defeat in more than two years. On
surveying the field strewn with nearly 1,400 killed or wounded Confederate
soldiers he could ill afford to lose, Confederate chieftain Robert E. Lee
angrily said, “Well, General, bury these poor men and let us say no more about
it.” [Civil War Trust,
October 13, 2017]
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| ENVIRONMENT |
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| NATURE & OUTDOORS |
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| SPACE |
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| SCREEN |
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| WOMEN |
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| MEDICINE |
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| RACE |
2018 WATCH -- "Missing in the G.O.P.: Black
and Hispanic Nominees for Governor," by NYT's Astead W. Herndon: "The Republican falloff is
striking after past election seasons when party leaders attempted to identify
and then rally behind minority candidates for governor in major states, like
Ohio and Pennsylvania. But several Republican leaders, pollsters and former
candidates said they see the lack of diversity as a consequence of President
Trump's offensive language on race." NYT [POLITICO
Playbook PM, October 3, 2018]
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| READ |
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| IVORY COAST |
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