OMB Watch and a coalition of numerous other civil liberties groups sent a memo to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee outlining concerns with a bill stalled in the Senate, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (S.1959). On May 8 Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced a report, "Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat," addressing how the internet is used to spread homegrown terrorism.

Our coalition memo states that "this focus on the Internet could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet. . . . If the Internet is a focus of efforts to stop "homegrown terrorism" it should be because it can be a tremendous tool for dissemination of vast amounts of material that could counter the messages of the terrorists. The Internet, and the free speech it facilitates, can be an antidote to terrorism."

On March 5, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services held a hearing on the budget of the Department of the Treasury, with Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., testifying. OMB Watch submitted testimony for the subcommittee to include in the official hearing record, which included suggested questions we sent in for the hearing, along with recommended language for the committee report.

A comparison of two high profile Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigations into allegations of election intervention - the All Saints Church and NAACP cases -highlights the vagueness of the regulation and the inconsistency of IRS enforcement. Read our new analysis: Inconsistent Enforcement: IRS Findings in NAACP and All Saints Church Cases