America’s Promise has asked the three presidential candidates about their views on children’s issues and how they were personally affected by the organization’s five promises to today’s young people — providing caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, effective education, and opportunities to help others.

The politicians’ video responses have been posted on the group’s Web site. While short on detail, the videos offer some insight to the three’s priorities.

Sen. Hilary Clinton, a Democrat from New York, cites her experience working with the Children’s Defense Fund and supporting children’s health care.

Sen. John McCain, Republican from Arizona, says his generation was lucky to have parents who were able to fulfill the five promises with their children, but today’s young people face more obstacles.

Sen, Barack Obama, Democrat from Illinois, discusses his dedication to...

Sen. Barack Obama is under fire again for his ties to a charity leader.

FrontPage Magazine, a conservative online publication, and conservative blog writers are lambasting the Democrat from Illinois because his Web site listed as a supporter Hatem El-Hady.

Mr. El-Hady is the former chairman of KindHearts, a Muslim charity in Ohio that was closed in 2006 by the federal government for allegedly raising money for Palestinian terrorists.

Mr. El-Hady and the nonprofit organization have denied the charges.

What’s more, senators during a hearing this month questioned about how the Bush administration was investigating Islamic charities.

Mr. El-Hady’s profile was posted on My.BarackObama.com, a social-networking site of Obama supporters.

According to some blog authors, the profile of Mr. El-Hady was no longer available on the site once questions were raised about him....

Following in the footsteps of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Sen. John McCain is touring southern states to draw attention to American poverty.

While not declaring a “war on poverty” as Mr. Johnson did in the 1960s, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate proposed providing tax incentives to telecommunications companies to spur Internet service in small towns and supporting job-training programs at community colleges, reports The New York Times.

“There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent,” he said in a speech in Alabama.

Mr. McCain did not propose any specific programs to support charities, but he did highlight several nonprofit efforts on his tour.

In Gee’s Bend, Ala., he visited a...

Questions are being raised about how the federal government is prosecuting charities accused of ties to terrorists.

In an article in The New Yorker, the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe examines the case against the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, in Ashland, Ore. The group had its assets frozen in 2004 for alleged ties to Al Qaeda, which the charitable organization denies.

Mr. Keefe looks at how the government has relied on classified intelligence information to build a case against the charity and its practice of “‘Al Capone-ing’ suspects — charging them on whatever will secure a conviction.”

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing this month, Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana who chairs the committee, also raised concerns about how the U.S. Treasury Department is investigating charities.

“We have also seen prosecutions failing in some high-profile trials...

The Internal Revenue Service says that in this election year it is making “extensive efforts” to educate charities and churches about federal law that bans their political campaign activity.

At the same time, the tax agency plans to enforce the law with “a focus on cases involving allegations of egregious violations,” says Lois G. Lerner, director of the IRS’s office on exempt organizations, in a press release.

By law, the IRS notes, churches and charities may not “participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of any statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”

The IRS says it is sending letters to the national political party committees that explain the law’s prohibition about churches and charities. In March, a letter from the revenue service was published in the Federal Election...

The Internal Revenue Service is inviting charities to recommend the “tax issues” that the government should focus on over the next year as it issues guidance to help organizations understand federal law.

In a notice published today, the IRS said it it hoped the public would offer suggestions for its annual Guidance Priority List that it uses “to identify and prioritize the tax issues that should be addressed through regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices, and other published administrative guidance.”

The IRS said that the Treasury Department and the revenue service “recognize the importance of public input” so that the government “focuses resources on guidance items that are the most important to taxpayers and tax administration.”

Charities should submit ideas by May 31 for them to be considered for inclusion in guidance the IRS issues from July 1 of this year...

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee are introducing a bill that would renew and extend a key provision that benefits donors with individual retirement accounts.

Until December 31 of last year, donors who are 70 1/2 or older were able to transfer up to $100,000 to charity from their individual retirement accounts each year without paying income taxes on the money.

The new bill would extend this provision to the end of 2009, according to its authors, Sens. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, and Charles Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s senior Republican.

Additional provisions in the bill drafted by Mr. Baucus and Mr. Grassley would renew and extend other provisions for charitable giving, including one involving certain donated property used for conservation purposes and another for certain deductions allowed for donations of food.

Project Vote Smart, a voter education nonprofit group, is poised to remove Sen. John McCain from its board of directors because the Arizona Republican has not responded to a political survey it sends to presidential candidates, according to an article in Mother Jones, a liberal magazine.

The bipartisan organization, in Philipsburg, Mont., asks all candidates for presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative offices to answer its Political Courage Test, which asks questions about taxes, the federal budget, and other policy issues.

Neither of the Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, have answered the survey, reports the magazine.

In Mr. McCain’s case, Mother Jones reports that Vote Smart’s executive committee voted in February to remove the senator from the board if he doesn’t respond by today. The senator was a...

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut is challenging the Internal Revenue Service’s investigation into alleged political activities of the United Church of Christ and is asking the IRS to explain why it began the inquiry.

Mr. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said he found the investigation “especially troubling because of the service’s inadequate guidance” for churches trying to follow federal law when they invite candidates to appear at gatherings.

The IRS notified the United Church of Christ in February that the government had a “reasonable belief” that the church had engaged in forbidden political activities because Sen. Barack Obama spoke at a major conference held by the church last year in Hartford. The IRS also said that 40 volunteers for Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, “staffed campaign tables outside the [convention] center to promote” Mr. Obama’s presidential...

In a New York Times profile of Sen. Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the newspaper describes her as “the parent who most shaped” the Democratic presidential candidate and discusses her work in the nonprofit world and international development.

Ms. Soetoro served as a program officer in Ford Foundation’s Indonesia office focusing on helping women’s rights and microfinance. In her role, she rubbed shoulders with “leaders in the Indonesian human-rights movement, people from women’s organizations, [and] representatives of community groups doing grass-roots development.”

In addition to Ford, she did microcredit work for the United States Agency for International Development, Women’s World Banking, and an Indonesian bank.

“She was a very, very big thinker,” Nancy Barry, a former president of Women’s World Banking, a nonprofit group, told the newspaper. Ms. Soetoro...