Youth Ministries, Inc. – sounds like a nice charity, doesn’t it? Well, this group turns out to be some front for (or part of?) the notorious “Operation Rescue.”

The IRS has announced that they have revoked the status of Youth Ministries Inc as a Section 501(c)(3) and Section 170(c)(2) exempt non-profit organization.

The group and its leader, Troy Newman, have been under investigation by the IRS for money laundering and tax evasion. Sounds about right.

In case you don’t glean the significance of this… Operation Rescue is an anti-abortion activist group founded by Randall Terry in the late 1980s. It describes itself as “one of the leading pro-life Christian organizations in the nation … on the cutting edge of the abortion issue, taking direct action to restore legal personhood to the pre-born and stop abortion in obedience to biblical mandates.”

Direct action. Yup. Very direct.

Remember Randall Terry? He, along with Robert Schenck and Harley David Belew, were sentenced to five months in prison for arranging to have a fetus in a jar delivered to then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. In 1998, Terry ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in upstate New York as a member of the New York State “Right to Life” Party. His platform was one that was described as “no property taxes, no IRS, no social security, no abortion, and no homosexuals.” In 2000 Terry divorced his wife of 19 years and married Andrea Kollmorgen, with whom he had three children. The same month that he put the down payment on a $432,000 home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (for the purpose of entertaining “people of stature, people of importance”), the courts found he wasn’t paying appropriate child support to his ex.

You may remember that Terry was paid $10,000 to act as spokesman for the Schindler family to keep Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube connected after three courts ruled to have it removed. Terry’s adopted son Jamiel came out as a homosexual, and Terry disowned him. Both of Terry’s adopted daughters became pregnant outside of marriage, which ended their relationship with their father, too (one later became a Muslim). Terry claims interesting things, like that 90% of lesbians were sexually assaulted in their youth, and that gay men die at the average age of 42. Terry ran in the primary against Florida Republican state senator James E. King, in opposition to King’s work in attempting to block legislation which would have kept Schiavo on life support. On September 5 2006, Terry was roundly defeated – King took over 2/3 of the votes cast, even in Florida.

Sorry to get carried away with Terry Randall/Randall Terry (he has one of those names) but he is very creepy. I just about jumped out of my skin when I saw him on tv during the right-wing manipulation of the Shiavo case. Here was one of the people inciting violence toward doctors standing up to act as PR for the Schindler family; my loud, sputtering exclamation of disbelief irritated some of my family members at the time.

Anyway, back to Troy Newman, current president of Operation Rescue. This excerpt will give you an idea of his sense of mission…

From One Man’s God Squad: Troy Newman’s plan to stop abortions in Wichita, Kansas – Rolling Stone

In 2004, Sara was an administrative assistant at an abortion clinic:

.. hundreds of Phares’ neighbors received an anonymous postcard of a mangled fetus. This is abortion! read the big block letters. “Your neighbor Sara Phares participates in killing babies like these.” The postcard implored them to call Phares, whose phone number and address were provided, and voice their opposition to her work at the clinic. Another card soon followed. It referred to Phares as “Miss I Help to Kill Little Babies” and suggested, in an erratic typeface that recalled a kidnapper’s ransom note, that neighbors “beg her to quit, pretty please.” The third postcard dispensed entirely with pleasantries: “Sara Phares is not to be trusted! Tell her to get a life!” …

Before long, protesters from Operation Rescue showed up at her house. They parked a tractor-trailer across the street, plastered with twenty-foot-long images of dismembered fetuses. From its speakers came the kind of sweet, tinkling music that lures children from their back yards in pursuit of Dreamsicles. One protester, a somber man in a tan windbreaker with a three-foot crucifix thrust before him, performed an exorcism on Phares’ front lawn, sprinkling holy water on the grass to cast demons from the property….

Operation Rescue’s smear campaign against Phares is part of a new strategy to shut down abortion clinics by systematically harassing their employees into quitting. Banned by law from blockading clinics as it did in its early days, Operation Rescue has taken its offensive to the front lawns and mailboxes of clinic workers. In Wichita, members of the group rummage through employees’ garbage in search of incriminating information. They tail them around town as they run errands. They picket clinic staffers at restaurants while they’re inside having dinner and castigate them while they’re standing in line at Starbucks. Operation Rescue is also visiting companies that do business with the clinic and threatening them with a boycott if they don’t sever their ties with the facility. This is America’s new abortion war, and the objective, in military terms, is to cut off the supply lines to abortion clinics and demoralize their troops.

Troy Newman, the head of Operation Rescue, calls it the Year of Rebuke — and if it works in Wichita, he plans to unleash the campaign of intimidation on abortion clinics all across the country.

Intimidation tactics, smear, war metaphor – yup, a perfect fit with Rove/Bush, etc.

However, this particular money trail is still a no-go with the IRS.

The lesson is, follow the money. The money tells the tale.