Bitcoin is simply a group of individuals pursuing their own interests. There is no "ship" or other central authority. The Bitcoin Foundation is simply a group of Bitcoiners who decided to call themselves a "Foundation" and they have no official status.
In any case an e-mail sent by one person asking for a clarification is not going to change everything and there is ample opportunity for others to comment or seek their own clarifications.
It's great you take care of this, I just thought it should be handled by a central "authority" to reach consent for the whole community. If BF doesn't want or can not do this, we maybe should try to bring them this way.
One point is that it would be hard to FinCen to back up that a pool miner is doing a financial transaction. A pool itself is bundling transactions together so while I don't agree they should be regulated there is room for FinCen to play.
As of my understanding, as long as a pool makes no conversions of Crypto Currencies (BTC -> LTC etc.) or exchanges to real currencies (BTC -> US$ etc.) and only sends the pro rata outcome of the mining itself, it's not regulated. But youre right, it's ambiguous and could be interpreted as transmission, though I doubt thats the stuff they're after.
Realized (cashed out) earnings of this activity (fees, donations etc.) have to be stated as income.