A must-read piece of investigative journalism for any nonprofit: Mother Jones' "There's Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole" -- which mole infiltrated gun control organizations for the best part of a decade, culling in the guise of volunteer activist turned board member "what the grassroots of the gun violence prevention movement intended; where our priorities are shifting; which legislation we would be promoting or fighting against and what sort of effort we would be putting into that; who our targeted legislators would be; what states and districts we deemed important enough to put an effort into; our messaging, what our messaging would be before we put it out there."

Shocked to learn that [Mary Sapone, aka Mary] McFate was a spy, gun control advocates have pondered the obvious questions: How did she manage to fool everyone for so long? How much money did she earn for being a mole? To whom in the gun lobby did she report? The NRA? The firearms manufacturing industry? Did her covert effort extend beyond mere intelligence gathering? Did she manage to shape the decisions and actions of anti-gun groups to the gun lobby's liking? And was she the only one?

A qualitatively different affair from the recent Maryland troopers spying on peace and death penalty activists affair, but it puts a fine point on it, no?

So there's this:



... and then there's the consideration that maybe that's the point after all.