The Observation Deck

Document: IRS ordered conservative educational group to turn over a list of high school and college students it trained
Federal government demanded a list of everyone a Tennessee organization had ever trained, or planned to train
Linchpins of Liberty mentors high school and college students and teaches them conservative political philosophy, but is not tea-party-linked
'Can you imagine my responsibility to parents if I disclosed the names of their children to the IRS?' asked the group's founder
IRS Inspector General report listed seven questions the agency should never have asked, but this wasn't one of them

The IRS came after Billy Graham, too, his son charged Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama.

Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010.

Internal Revenue Service employees were told as early as 2010 to "Be On the Look Out" for Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations seeking tax exempt status, according to a lengthy inspector general report released Tuesday.

An investigation by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration found that IRS agents used "inappropriate criteria" to flag certain conservative groups for additional scrutiny, including those with "Tea Party," "Patriot" and "9/12" in their names. The agency also was targeting those groups at least a year longer than previously thought.

The Associated Press on Monday revealed that the Department of Justice had secretly spied on AP reporters, obtaining two months' worth of telephone records in what was most likely an attempt to crack down on internal leaks.

According to the AP, the Justice Department acquired records for more than 20 different phone lines associated with the news agency — including reporters' cell, office, and home lines — that could affect more than 100 staffers. Calling the move a "massive and unprecedented intrusion," AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt demanded that the DOJ explain why it had gone after the records. He also insisted that the government return the phone records and destroy all other copies of them.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters," he said in a strongly worded letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. "These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news-gathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's news-gathering operations, and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know."

Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.