Atheist group sues government for claiming they are a "religious organization" and for trying to give them a tax exemption. I know, right?

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

The leader of an atheist group sued because she didn't believe she qualified for tax exemptions afforded to clergy. When the government says she does qualify - as a minister - she got even angrier. 

"We are not ministers," Annie Laurie Gaylor, chief of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, told The Tennessean newspaper. "We are having to tell the government the obvious -- we are not a church." 

The lawsuit is over the personage exemption for clergy, which allows ministers to claim part of their salary as a tax-free housing allowance. 

Gaylor's Madison, Wisc.-based group is organized, united by faith that there is no deity, and essentially builds fellowship around those beliefs. Thus, the Department of Justice filed a brief stating that Gaylor, as the group's leader, is eligible for the exemption since atheist groups can essentially function as a religion. 

That complicates the foundation's federal lawsuit, first filed in 2009, after the foundation board voted to give Gaylor and her husband Dan Barker a housing allowance of $15,000 per year. The couple then claimed they didn't qualify for the same tax exemption as clergy so the foundation sued the federal government. In August 2012, a federal judge ruled the case can move forward. 

But the Justice Department contends that since Buddhism or Taoism don't include a belief in God and are still considered religions, atheism could qualify as well. Thus, a minister can be seen as a spiritual leader and provide services for a religious organization - and a belief in God isn't legally necessary. 

"Plaintiffs may not presume that a law's reference to religion necessarily excludes beliefs that are specifically non-theistic in nature," the government argued in a motion to dismiss the suit. 

Gaylor contested, "That's not what we are after."

Now imagine, just for a moment, imagine a Christian church arguing to give back a tax exemption. 

Can't do it can you?

That's right because the Christian religions is basically a business who is often focused on bringing in as many dollars as possible, and avoid having to pay out as many dollars as possible.

Now if you will excuse me I have to spend the rest of the day walking around with an overinflated sense of superiority.

In Pennsylvania, tickets to see Sarah Palin are a tax deductible bargain!

From Mount Penn GOP:

Sarah Palin is coming to Hershey, Pa., on Friday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. as the keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania Family Institute's Friends of the Family Banquet.

Tickets are at $200 per person ($150 of which is tax deductible) but the price includes a gourmet meal at The Hershey Lodge.

How often do you get a chance to meet Sarah Palin?

So let me get this straight.

Tickets to this banquet are $200. 

But $150 of it is tax deductible.

So essentially this organization is now using the promise of a tax break to lure people in to listen to the crazy ass rantings of Sarah Palin?

Sorry, even with the tax deduction it still sounds like much, too much money to spend to have your intelligence insulted to me.

And lest we forget this is just one day before she and Glenn Beck spit in the face of African Americans by holding their "Restoring Honor Rally" on the hallowed ground where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Every day that goes by we see Sarah Palin self destruct just a little more. You know we should have been prepared for this. After all in the movies it always took until the very last ten minutes of the film before we finally saw the creature take its last breath..