How the mighty have fallen!

The fall of the NAACP:

The Internal Revenue Service has threatened to revoke the NAACP's tax-exempt status because the civil rights group's chairman, Julian Bond, "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush" during a speech this summer, according to documents the group provided yesterday.

The NAACP, which is based in Baltimore and is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, is incorporated under a tax-code section that prohibits participation in a political campaign. The group has long had a strained relationship with the Bush administration.

"The NAACP has always been nonpartisan, but that doesn't mean we're noncritical," he said. "As long as we've existed, whether Democrats or Republicans have occupied the White House, we've spoken truth to power." He said Republicans "practice racial division" but also criticized Democrats, saying that "when one party is shameless, the other party cannot afford to be spineless."