Creeping totalitarianism. One baby step at a time. Worked for Hitler!----------The patent office goes out of bounds in Redskins trademark case

The patent office goes out of bounds in Redskins trademark case - The Washington Post:
The problem is that the Redskins case is just the latest example of a federal agency going beyond its brief to inappropriately insert itself in social or political debates.

Few people would have expected the future of the Redskins to be determined by an obscure panel in a relatively small government agency.
Yet the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board showed little restraint in launching itself into this heated argument — issuing an opinion that supports calls for change from powerful politicians, including President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
The board had at its disposal a ridiculously ambiguous standard that allows the denial of a trademark if it “may disparage” a “substantial composite” of a group at the time the trademark is registered.

As federal agencies have grown in size and scope, they have increasingly viewed their regulatory functions as powers to reward or punish citizens and groups.
The Internal Revenue Service offers another good example. 
Like the patent office, it was created for a relatively narrow function: tax collection. 
Yet the agency also determines which groups don’t have to pay taxes. 
Historically, the IRS adopted a neutral rule that avoided not-for-profit determinations based on the content of organizations’ beliefs and practices.
Then, in 1970, came the Bob Jones University case.
The IRS withdrew the tax-exempt status from the religious institution because of its rule against interracial dating on campus.
The Supreme Court affirmed in 1983 that the IRS could yank tax exemption whenever it decided that an organization is behaving “contrary to established public policy” — whatever that public policy may be. Bob Jones had to choose between financial ruin and conforming its religious practices. It did the latter.