I added what I thought was a very temperate uncontroversial obvious if not particularly flattering to ALEC paragraph to the lede here Recently a dispute has arisen as to whether ALEC is a charitable educational organization as it insists or what one newspaper article called a stealth business lobbyist and advocacy groups have maintainedWhat is ALEC Common Cause Claims ALEC Violated Tax Exempt Lobbying Restrictions ataxingmatter April 24 2012 and it has since been deleted here here and here by some beltway person with an IP address of 209 6 69 227 The complaint against having this information in the lede according to 209X appears to be that Common Cause is the source of the allegation NOT WP RS News reporting ON the Common Cause allegation does not mean it is confirmed by RS Allegation already in Article This is simply not true There are some quotes from articles on the issue New York Times Title Conservative Nonprofit Acts as a Stealth Business Lobbyist Text The records offer a glimpse of how special interests effectively turn ALEC s lawmaker members into stealth lobbyists providing them with talking points signaling how they should vote and collaborating on bills affecting hundreds of issues like school vouchers and tobacco taxes Businessweek Bloomberg Title ALEC s Secrets Revealed Corporations Flee Text ALEC has attracted a wide and wealthy range of supporters in part because it s done its work behind closed doors Membership lists were secret The origins of the model bills were secret Part of ALEC s mission is to present industry backed legislation as grass roots work If this were to become clear to everyone there d be no reason for corporations to use it This is not Common Cause or People for the American Way these are major media publications and they are NOT just reporting Common Causes allegations