Confirmation of Tax Division Chief Delayed Over Past Position On ADF's Pulpit Initiative

The Chicago Tribune last week reported that President Obama's nomination of Cono Namorato to be Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, is being held up in the Senate Judiciary Committee because of the position he took in the past on church involvement in partisan political activity. In 2008, while a lawyer at the Washington firm of Kaplan & Drysdale, Namorato along with two other attorneys wrote the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Professional Responsibility complaining about the Pulpit Initiative being promoted by Alliance Defense Fund (now known as Alliance Defending Freedom). The letter urged an investigation of ADF's lawyers for "explicitly soliciting churches across America to violate Federal law" that bars partisan political participation by tax-exempt organizations.