Amid the liberal mud-slinging and smears that were the 2006 mid-term elections, there were some other notable stories this fall. One of these was the five firefighters who died tragically when their engine was engulfed in flames when that wicked arson fire in Esperanza near Palm Springs, California turned on them. Naturally, area residents wanted to do what they could to help them families through this tragedy and collected nearly $1 million. Despite the fact that they funneled the money through the local United Way chapter, the IRS had to get in the way:

Tax problems have stopped the United Way from distributing more than $1 million in donations to some families, mainly families of the five firemen who died in the Esperanza fire near Palm Springs in October.

Just days after the deadly blaze that killed five firefighters, donations from the public poured in.

"Our bank account is standing at about $960,000 we are told there is more money coming there will probably be over $1 million," said Bob Duistermars of the United Way.

So much money, Riverside County asked the United Way to step in and set up a fund for the fallen firefighters families. The problem is the tax exempt organization made a mistake and broke IRS tax law.

"It's just unbelievable that the IRS definition of charity doesn't include that, and so we were really outraged it looked like to us this was the Grinch that tried to steal Christmas," said Marion Ashley of Riverside County.

Although special laws were passed to help the families of 9/11 victims, donations like these are supposed to help large groups of people not individuals unless a need can clearly be documented.

I'm thinking that it ought to be pretty easy for need to "clearly be documented" in this case. After all these families not only lost husbands, fathers, brothers etc. they presumably also lost the primary breadwinner in the family. There ought to be some simple way of making sure these families get the money that has been collected for them. But as we all know, nothing is simple when you're dealing with the bloated federal bureaucracy.