ACORN has shut down its Michigan offices, Metro Times reports.

Another article of mine from the American Spectator.

It begins:

President Obama‘s radical union-backed nominee to the National Labor Relations Board lied to a Senate confirmation panel earlier this week about his ties to the embattled leftist advocacy group ACORN.

The nominee is Craig Becker, who, at least until recently, was longtime associate general counsel to SEIU. Becker is considered radical in part because he believes that “employers should have no role in the unionization process,” according to Brian Johnson, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom.

During a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Becker this question: “Do you perform work for and provide advice to ACORN or ACORN-affiliated groups while employed by your current employers or on a volunteer basis?“

Becker responded, “Senator McCain, I have never done so.“

But that answer – that Becker “never” provided advice “to ACORN or ACORN-affiliated groups” — is demonstrably false. Evidence abounds that he gave advice to SEIU Local 880, which, as I will show below, was part and parcel of ACORN before it merged with another SEIU bargaining unit.

As the Wall Street Journal noted, Becker acknowledged previously that he had “worked with and provided advice” to Local 880. [...]

Yes, you read that right.
 
Even with all its troubles, the ACORN organized crime syndicate is eligible for $4 billion (well, really $3.99 billion in CDBG slush funds) in President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget.
 
That’s because a federal court order issued by a Clinton-appointed judge prevents Congress and the Obama administration from cutting off ACORN.
 
Will the temporary injunction issued by U.S. District Court Nina Gershon be lifted?
 
Who knows.
 
Will ACORN boss Bertha Lewis, who is currently doing a victory lap across America’s TV screens as she celebrates the legal troubles of hidden camera videographer James O’Keefe, ever be investigated for her role in the cover-up of a nearly million dollar embezzlement within ACORN?
 
Who knows.
 
Read my article at the American Spectator.

Internet media entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart suggests James O’Keefe will be cleared — or at least I think that’s what Breitbart’s saying.

O’Keefe, who masterminded the ACORN hidden camera sting operation, was arrested earlier this week with three other young men for something or other involving the telephone system in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)

Does O’Keefe have evidence of some impropriety involving Landrieu, or perhaps ACORN, or both?

Is the mainstream media being set up by O’Keefe?

We’ll see.

A piece in the Washington Post suggests O’Keefe may have been running a sting against Landrieu:

[...] Conservative supporters say O’Keefe’s newest operation occurred just days ago. Federal prosecutors allege that he helped carry out a plot Monday in which two partners impersonated telephone repairmen to enter the downtown New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). O’Keefe, 25, waited inside the office and used his cellphone to record his two colleagues saying that the senator’s phone was not receiving calls, according to charges unsealed Tuesday.

Supporters say O’Keefe and his friends entered Landrieu’s office to conduct another undercover sting: to show on video that citizens trying to call Landrieu’s office could not get through. Now O’Keefe — a celebrated figure among some Republicans for his undercover sting last fall targeting the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) — and three other men face charges of entering federal property on false pretenses as part of a plot to tamper with the lawmaker’s phone. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Michael Madigan, O’Keefe’s attorney, could not be reached to comment.

Opponents of health-care reform legislation had complained this month that they repeatedly heard busy signals when they called Landrieu’s office to register their views.  [...]

James O’Keefe has been arrested, according to reports.

O’Keefe has been charged with aiding and abetting a plan to wiretap the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), Fox News reports.

An FBI affidavit outlining the allegations may be found here.

(Note: This post was updated.)

Filmmakers Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe III are being sued by a Philadelphia ACORN employee in federal court, according to America’s Right.

Hannah Giles (left) and James O'Keefe (right)

Here is the legal complaint filed by ACORN’s Katherine Conway-Russell who is apparently attempting to salvage her reputation after being caught on hidden-camera video condoning illegal activities.

Or this could be part of ACORN’s larger strategy to stamp out its critics through litigation. We’ll see.

I forgot to post the document filed by the Department of Justice in its appeal of federal Judge Nina Gershon’s ruling which found a congressional ban on funding for ACORN to be a bill of attainder. (see previous blog post)

Here is the document, filed Dec. 16.

My latest article on ACORN is in today’s American Spectator.

Here’s the top of it:

With help from docile Democratic politicians and journalists, ACORN is attempting to perpetrate yet another spectacular fraud on the American people.

After the American public saw the true face of ACORN last year, hidden camera videos showing its workers across the nation bending over backwards to facilitate underage prostitution, fraud, immigrant smuggling, and tax evasion in the name of social justice, ACORN realized it needed to take emergency action to protect its revenue streams.

So among other measures the embattled radical advocacy group is changing the name of its largest state chapter in an effort to keep tax dollars and foundation grants flowing into its coffers. ACORN feels it needs to do this because California ACORN is a critical component of the ACORN empire, boasting 37,000 dues-paying members.

With the fallout from the hidden camera videos, congressional funding of ACORN’s election fraud and racketeering business is no longer guaranteed, so ACORN decided to reconstitute its California operation as the “new” group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE).

ACCE claims that it is “up and running as an independent state-wide organization with no legal, financial or structural ties to ACORN.”

Of course we know that ACCE is lying. [...]

If you believe California ACORN is really and truly breaking away from ACORN, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

Amazingly, ACORN actually believes Americans are dumb enough to fall for the scheme reported in today’s Los Angeles Times.

The new fake group will be called Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE).

Esquire writer John H. Richardson is a smart man and a good writer but he clearly doesn’t know much about the organized crime syndicate ACORN.

His interview with Bertha Lewis, chief organizer of ACORN, reads like Scott Levenson’s talking points. No discussion of ACORN’s million-dollar embezzlement, money laundering, abuse of government funding, or the role the group played in causing the subprime mortgage crisis.

Shame on him. 

And so Mr. Richardson earns a spot on the list of ACORN’s useful idiots (supplement to list here) alongside Joe Conason, Whoopi Goldberg, Ezra Klein, Michael Tomasky, Adam Serwer, Glenn Greenwald, Amanda Terkel, David Neiwert, Jamison Foser, Eric Burns, Jay Bookman, John Cole, and Charles Cooper.

This list is hardly exhaustive, by the way.

Apparently Congressional Research Service employees are as good at research as ACORN employees are at registering voters.

Not surprisingly, the new Congressional Research Service report on ACORN continues the Democrats’ coverup of President Obama’s favorite advocacy group.

I’m on vacation so I haven’t had a chance to go through the CRS report thoroughly but from what I’ve read so far the report commissioned by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) –both longtime ACORN allies– is a whitewash.

The first finding Conyers and Frank crow about in a press release is this:

There were no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees and who were reported “attempting to vote at the polls.”

This is demonstrably false.  Darnell Nash of Cleveland, Ohio, was registered to vote nine times by ACORN. After fraudulently casting a ballot, he was convicted of both vote fraud and voter registration fraud and sentenced to six months imprisonment. ACORN remains under investigation by the elected Democratic prosecutor Bill Mason in Cuyahoga County (at least according to Mason’s spokesman the last time I spoke to him).

And to think — our tax dollars paid for this worthless report.

So said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) when I interviewed him recently.

The interview appeared in the American Spectator.

Here’s the top of the article:

ACORN critic Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is mystified that both the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama administration aren’t doing much about the tax-subsidized organized crime syndicate ACORN even as evidence of its wrongdoing continues to pile up.

In an exclusive interview, the House Judiciary Committee member describes the ACORN saga as “the largest corruption crisis in the history of America.”

“It’s thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys,” said King. “By the time we pull ACORN out by its roots America’s going to understand just how big this is.”

Unlike the Nixon-era Watergate scandal, the ACORN scandal reaches not only to the highest levels of government, but also to states and localities across America. The president himself and his political advisor Patrick Gaspard used to work for ACORN and the radical advocacy group has allies throughout congressional leadership who are bending over backwards to protect it. President Obama has also hired as White House counsel Bob Bauer, whom King described as “the number one defender of ACORN in the country.”

ACORN has ties to unions such as SEIU and has business relationships with Wall Street. It has offices across the globe in places like Canada, Kenya, and India. Quite apart from the hidden camera videos that emerged in September showing ACORN employees providing advice on establishing a brothel and financing it with government grants, in the U.S. it stands accused of political corruption, election fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and countless other violations of the law. It is involved in major campaigns pushing for socialized medicine, green energy and cap-and-trade, enhanced welfare benefits, higher minimum wages, greater federal regulation of the financial services industry, and for a major expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act.

“The legislative branch will not investigate. [House Judiciary Committee chairman John] Conyers will not. [House Judiciary subcommittee chairman Jerrold] Nadler will not. It’s not going to come out of [House Ways & Means Committee chairman Charles] Rangel’s committee. It’s not going to come out of [House Financial Services Committee chairman] Barney Frank’s committee or from anybody in the Senate. They’re going to protect ACORN.”  [...]

The House Judiciary Committee has unveiled the Congressional Research Service report on ACORN.

I’m on vacation now but I’ll go through it over coming days.

These things have a way of disappearing over time so I’ve archived a copy of the report here. (PDF)

This just in from the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:

DOJ Files Papers to Urge Reversal of ACORN Funding Ruling

WASHINGTON. D.C. – House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) released the following statement today regarding the Department of Justice’s decision to file papers in federal court arguing for a reversal of the Eastern Court Judge Nina Gershon’s ruling last week which found a congressional ban on funding for ACORN to be a bill of attainder:

“Given the numerous ongoing investigations being conducted surrounding ACORN’s criminal activities, the federal government will and should vigorously defend what the President signed and Congress overwhelmingly passed—a bipartisan recognition that ACORN is not fit to receive federal funds to perform duties on behalf of the American people,” said Issa, also a member of the House Judiciary Committee.  “There is no plausible way we can allow a left-wing activist Judge usurp the authority of the President and Congress in an effort to bypass Constitutional authority so that a criminal organizations plagued by criminal accusations can have a court-ordered to entitlement to taxpayer dollars.”

Earlier in the week, Ranking Member Issa and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent Attorney General Eric Holder a letter urging the department to immediately appeal the ruling.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, has opened an investigation into ACORN.

It’s unclear to me if the GAO did this on its own initiative or was ordered by Congress to do it. I remember a few months ago Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) had offered an amendment to legislation that would have directed GAO to investigate ACORN and report back to Congress within 180 days.

Post Script: GAO said it decided to launch the probe at the request of Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and other lawmakers.

“ACORN’s criminal acts over many years have robbed taxpayers and charitable donors of the honest public services ACORN was paid to provide,” Issa said. “This GAO study should be another step toward understanding the scope of funds from across the federal government that were sent to ACORN yet cannot be verified that they were used as intended.”

I profiled Organizing for America, the community organizing branch of the DNC, for Townhall magazine.

A copy of the article is posted here in PDF form, with the kind permission of the magazine.

Here is the top of the article:

Liberals responded with howls of indignation when Rudy Giuliani mocked community organizers at last year’s Republican National Convention.

The former mayor of New York City said that Barack Obama “worked as a community organizer.” “What?” Giuliani said as he burst out laughing. Speaking over a boisterous crowd, he continued. “He worked—I said—I said—OK, OK. Maybe this is thefirst problem on the resume. He worked as a community organizer.”

GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, former mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, also got laughs when she belittled Obama’s work with ACORN and other radical groups. “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” Palin quipped.

Conservatives roared approval, but now the Left is aiming to have the last laugh. Conservatives are justifiably suspicious of Obama-style community organizing, so it’s no surprise that Organizing for America (OFA) is the kind of organization that makes those on the Right uneasy.

Prior to last year, most Americans had never heard of community organizing. But what exactly is community organizing?

In the specific sense the Community Organizer-in-Chief uses the term, it’s not about church bake sales, picking up litter, little leagues or parent-teacher associations. Obama-style community organizing is pure leftist, anti-capitalist agitation. It’s about that nebulous Marxist concept of “social justice.” It’s about making people angry so they push for change. It artificially creates pressure for government spending on whatever project is fashionable in leftist circles that day.

OFA attempts to make progressive agitation hip and mainstream. [...]

OFA is “more than a spinoff of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign—it’s housed at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) but is free to let the Party do the political dirty work, and it keeps his enthusiastic supporters engaged, active and primed for his re-election bid,” according to a recent Washington Times article.

The White House may not legally use the 13 million e-mail addresses compiled during last year’s campaign, so Obama created OFA so he could continue to proselytize between elections.

Obama’s 2008 campaign was “the most technology-savvy political operation in American history,” writes Jose Antonio Vargas, the Huffington Post’s technology editor. [...]

U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon, a Bill Clinton appointee, issued a temporary injunction prohibiting Congress from cutting off funding for ACORN.

This injunction is premature, unconstitutional, and an affront to the separation of powers. It appears to rely on a novel, insidious legal doctrine known as legislative due process. In other words, groups have rights in the appropriations process. Congress no longer has the power of the purse regardless of what the Constitution says.

Only in the through-the-looking-glass world of a leftist activist judge could the organized crime syndicate ACORN be deemed a victim because Congress decided to stop funding it. Only in such a world could a cutoff of such funding be deemed a punishment prohibited under the Constitution’s ban on bills of attainder.

If cutting off funds is a punishment, ACORN therefore must have a right to funding. This is patently absurd.

(hat tip: Kyle Olson at BigGovernment.com)

ACORN activists protested a proposed fare hike on Toronto, Canada’s public transit system, the Toronto Sun reports.

Even though Canadians are drowning in welfare assistance, ACORN’s Toronto chapter wants paying customers to subsidize the city’s poor.

I was on the “G. Gordon Liddy Show” earlier today talking about how Congress and Citigroup appear poised to begin funding ACORN again.

Listen to an audio podcast here or watch a video version here.

I also wrote about the topic in the American Spectator.

Are Congress and Citigroup gearing up to start funding ACORN again?
 
It sure looks like it.
 
Read the whole story at American Spectator.
 
I’ll be on the “G. Gordon Liddy Show” in a few minutes discussing this at 11:30 ET today.

I assess former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger’s report on ACORN in this morning’s American Spectator.

From the top of the article:

The newly released “independent” review of the ACORN undercover prostitution video saga is a breathtakingly audacious work of fiction.

There is hardly a word of truth to be found anywhere in the document’s 47 pages. The report unveiled yesterday by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger is an all-you-can-eat buffet of lies and distortions that faults ACORN only for poor management practices.

No wonder those who organized the news teleconference yesterday kept the event so brief. The call lasted just 36 minutes, an amazingly brief period considering the level of public interest in ACORN’s ongoing scandals and the complexity of the issues involved. Within that, the question-and-answer session was barely 23 minutes long.

Only five reporters were called upon and four of them lobbed softballs. One of the so-called reporters was actually politics professor Peter Dreier of Occidental College, a consultant to ACORN who wrote a report blaming the media for the group’s woes. In “First They Came for ACORN,” one of Dreier’s over-the-top Huffington Post op-eds, the radical academic likened ACORN critics to Nazis.

Although I joined the electronic queue to ask a question, the teleconference was abruptly cut off after John Fund of the Wall Street Journal asked a series of tough questions.

Nonetheless the conference call was revealing.  [...]

So reports Capital Research Center contributor Fred Lucas of CNSNews.com.

I attended the hearing in the House Rayburn Building yesterday but am swamped with work so I don’t have time to blog about it today. Sorry.

I have an article in today’s American Spectator about ACORN’s racketeering and money laundering activities.

Here’s the top of it:

Is ACORN engaged in a massive money laundering scheme?

Although evidence abounds that the radical left-wing advocacy group-cum-organized crime syndicate is recycling funds mafia-style, government investigators and the media have paid scant attention to ACORN’s money trail.

Red flags that appear to signal unlawful activities by ACORN are everywhere yet ACORN’s collaborators in the White House, Justice Department, and House Judiciary Committee, smugly ignore them.

If senior executives at a troubled publicly traded corporation were to provide completely different accounts of their company’s financial standing, how long would it be before federal investigators stormed their offices? If federal authorities failed to act, how long would it be before the media and the public began to accuse the powers that be of complicity in their wrongdoing?

We shall see.

I have just discovered that three senior ACORN officials have recently given wildly divergent accounts of the size of ACORN’s budget.

ACORN current CEO and chief organizer Bertha Lewis claimed in October that ACORN had an “average budget” between “$20 [million] and $25 million a year for everything, all of the offices combined.”

ACORN national president Maude Hurd reported in the ACORN entry of Erica Payne’s handbook for liberal activists, The Practical Progressive, that ACORN’s annual budget last year was $50 million. [...]

In “Understanding ACORN,” an essay published earlier this year, ACORN founder Wade Rathke said ACORN’s annual budget was north of $100 million. “Each year we raise and spend over $100 million, of which a significant part comes from dues and internal fundraising, but big chunks come from campaign support and labor and corporate partnerships,” he wrote.

So, is it $100 million, $50 million, or $25 million? [...]

New York State’s highest court has cleared the way for an ambitious $5 billion taxpayer-funded development to be built in Brooklyn.

On his TV show Monday Glenn Beck pointed out that a group that claims to protect the interests of poor people, ACORN, helped make possible the deal that will make current inhabitants of the Atlantic Yards project footprint homeless. (See video from the show here.) ACORN has long prided itself on fighting the so-called gentrification of neighborhoods as rising property values force the poor to move.

But not anymore. ACORN sold out in exchange for a bailout.

Specifically, ACORN sold out its own constituents for $1.5 million in loans and grants from project developer Bruce Ratner, whose communist brother Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. (The anti-American public interest law firm is also representing ACORN in its vexatious lawsuit in which it claims to have a constitutional right to feed at the taxpayer trough.)

In 2005, ACORN signed an agreement with Forest City Ratner Companies, LLC, a megabucks real estate development firm, pledging its support for the Atlantic Yards project. The 22-acre mixed-use project will be built in the neighborhood of Prospect Heights and would include the Barclays Center, a proposed sports arena that would become the new home of the New Jersey Nets basketball team.

Forest City Ratner indicated in a letter to ACORN that it would disburse $500,000 in grants but the money wouldn’t go to ACORN directly. The grants were to be made to the ACORN Institute, one of ACORN’s 100-plus tax-exempt nonprofit affiliates.

Whether the money will stay at the ACORN Institute, which trains aspiring community organizers, is anyone’s guess. ACORN routinely shuffles cash around its network. Its nebulous legal status and opaque corporate structure allow it to keep its activities largely hidden from public view.

For all Americans know, ACORN is being funded by the communist government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. It’s not that farfetched an idea.

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis is friendly with the Marxist anti-American governments of two South American countries.

Within Lewis’s storied rogues gallery of a rolodex may be found contact information for then-Bolivian ambassador Gustavo Guzman and for Sabine Kienzl, a professional propagandist employed by the Venezuelan embassy. The listing for Guzman contains what appears to have been a direct office telephone number.

Add to this a listing in the rolodex for CITGO executive Andres Rangel and the whole picture begins to come into clearer focus.

Remember that CITGO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). PDVSA is owned by the government of Venezuela and has been described as a “black box” because it is believed to also fund Chavez’s overseas political ambitions. Oil export revenues fuel Chavez’s petro-diplomacy.

I don’t have proof that Chavez is funneling money to ACORN but it is not outside the realm of possibility, especially given ACORN’s well-established criminal propensities and convoluted finances.

The despot sends the equivalent of millions of dollars to the U.S. every year as part of his public diplomacy campaign aimed at getting the American public to warm up to his government. Venezuelan oil flows to Citizens Energy Corp., a nonprofit headed by former Rep. Joe Kennedy II (D-Mass.) that gives some of the home heating oil away and sells some at a discount to poor people.

Citizens Energy is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which means obtaining information about its donors is virtually impossible.

The Obama White House has released a new visitors list.

Of specific interest…

#97,98 Joan E. Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org

#251 Leslie Dach, super-lobbyist for Wal-Mart brought in to move the company to the left; longtime Democrat operative.

#413,414 David Fenton, leftist PR maestro responsible for Alar apple scare and other frauds

#458,459 Michael Gaspard, brother of White House political director and longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard and lobbyist with Scott Levenson’s The Advance Group which represents ACORN

#877,879 Peter Lewis, which could be the founder of Progressive Insurance (his middle initial is “B,” but no middle initial is provided in the database); Lewis is a big player in George Soros’s Democracy Alliance

#960,961 Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos infamy; surname misspelled once but it’s got to be him

#1040,1041,1042 Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org (variation of first name shown as Elijah but it’s probably the same person)

#1448, 1449 another two visits by SEIU’s Andrew Stern

Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.

Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.

But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.

Holder, whom I’ve long argued is unfit to serve as the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer, supports ACORN’s goals.

ACORN wants to use the power of government to bring about a radical transformation of American society.

So does Holder.

He is unapologetic about his desire to force Big Government down the throats of Americans. Holder rarely misses an opportunity to advocate expanding the size and scope of the federal government. He told a 2004 gathering of the left-wing American Constitution Society, “Government has been the primary force for positive social change in our country’s history. It can be again.”

Like ACORN, he thinks electoral fraud is a myth manufactured by people who want to disenfranchise minorities and the poor. “I think there is a feeling among Republicans that there is a widespread amount of voter fraud out there. I don’t think the statistics actually would substantiate it,” he told Fox News in 2004.

When Darnell Nash, whom ACORN registered to vote nine times, was convicted of vote fraud –not just mere voter registration fraud— in Cleveland earlier this year, Holder couldn’t be bothered to comment. A spokesman for Cleveland prosecutor Bill Mason, a Democrat, told me last month that a local investigation of ACORN remains wide open.

Like ACORN, Holder supports the so-called Fairness Doctrine that would force conservative talk radio hosts off the air Hugo Chavez-style. He told the American Constitution Society:

The nation must be reminded that the word liberal is more than a conservative slur. The nation must be reminded that it was the progressive, liberal tradition that brought about the social and economic changes that were necessary many years ago. The nation must be convinced that it is a progressive future that holds the greatest promise for equality and the continuation of those policies that serve to support the greatest number of our people. In the short term this will not be an easy task. With the mainstream media somewhat cowered by conservative critics, and the conservative media disseminating the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and you know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number of people is not easily accessible.

Also like ACORN, Attorney General Holder hates conservatives. Viscerally.

His public utterances are weighted down with the same old tiresome liberal clichés about those on the right one might find on the ultra left-wing Daily Kos hate site.

Holder told the American Constitution Society gathering that “conservatives have been defenders of the status quo, afraid of the future, and content to allow to continue to exist all but the most blatant inequalities.” They have “made a mockery of the rule of law.” Conservatives try to “put the environment at risk for the sake of unproven economic theories, to play to the fears of our citizens, and not to their hopes, and to return the nation to a time that in fact never existed.”

Conservatives are “breathtaking” in their “arrogance,” Holder claimed. “From redistricting schemes, to attacks on abortion rights, to energy policies that are as shortsighted as they are ineffective, to tax cuts that disproportionately favor those who are well off and perpetuate many of the inequities in our nation, the conservative movement has been unafraid to push the limits in advancing this agenda.”

Holder denounced what he called “the conservative agenda of social division, mindless tax cutting, and a defense posture that does not really make us safer.”

ACORN’s chief organizer Bertha Lewis couldn’t have said it better.

Holder also has a long history of involvement in charities and nonprofits that seek to stick it to conservatives.

He has been a member of the board of directors of the American Constitution Society. The ACS believes in the myth of the “living” Constitution and views the limits that great charter places on government power as quaint anachronisms to be overcome through clever legal sophistry.

ACS is, of course, funded by the big players in left-wing political finance, including members of the billionaires’ club, the Democracy Alliance. Reliably liberal benefactors of ACS include George Soros’s Open Society Institute ($2,201,500 since 2002), Ford Foundation ($600,000 since 2003), Sandler Foundation ($200,000 in 2003), Tides Foundation ($25,000 since 2002), Barbra Streisand Foundation ($20,000 since 2002).

Meanwhile, it has been exhaustively documented that Holder has what could charitably be called a cavalier approach to a key civil right, you know, that inconvenient, archaic one described in the Second Amendment that the media wishes we would all forget about.

As the Independent Institute’s Stephen P. Halbrook, author of The Founder’s Second Amendment, told a Senate panel considering Holder’s nomination at the beginning of the year, “many Americans have reason to be uneasy about Mr. Holder’s nomination for attorney general. They deserve to have a person in this role who is committed to upholding all parts of the Constitution, including the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, Mr. Holder has proven himself not to be that person.”

As deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, Holder pushed for federal licensing of handgun owners and federal registration of guns, waiting periods for gun purchases, and rationing of handgun sales. The former Janet Reno acolyte signed on to a pro-gun prohibition amicus curiae brief in District of Columbia v. Heller, last year’s groundbreaking Supreme Court case in which justices struck down the District’s oppressive handgun ban.

Like Holder, ACORN has long supported gun control. Content to leave poor people in the inner city defenseless at the hands of violent criminals, ACORN intervened in court to defend a Jersey City, N.J., gun control ordinance.

So asks BigGovernment.com.

It’s a perfectly reasonable question.

I previously wrote about the sham probe.

Left-wing slime factory Media Matters for America is still on the warpath about my (accurate) report that White House political director Patrick Gaspard is a longtime ACORN operative.

Tedious.

So reports James R. Hagerty of the Wall Street Journal.

Disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke says the group he created might not make it another year, reports the (Memphis, Tenn.) Commercial Appeal.

“The organization has become the focal point of the Right,” Rathke said.

The article says little more worth repeating.

Christopher Edwards, a former Nevada ACORN executive, received a sentence of three years probation and a $500 fine today for his role in an illegal voter registration conspiracy, the Las Vegas Sun reports.

In August the former ACORN field director pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit a crime of compensation for registration of voters. The newspaper reported

The attorney general’s office said Edwards organized and operated a quota system called “blackjack” or “21+” through which the group paid canvassers based on the number of voter registration cards they collected each day. The canvassers were to gather at least 20 completed cards daily and anyone who turned in 21 or more would be given an extra $5.

Edwards has agreed to testify against Amy Busefink, a former regional director for ACORN who allegedly participated in the scheme.

ACORN the group is also charged in the case. The trial is scheduled for April 19 next year.

Meanwhile, lawyer Chris Berg wonders why there is no serious investigation of ACORN happening at the federal level.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s inspector general says ACORN and its affiliates took in $200,000 in Justice Department grants from 2002 through this year, The Hill reports.

“No DOJ grants went directly to ACORN, but a handful of grants were awarded either to ACORN affiliates or to other organizations that sub-contracted projects to ACORN,” says the article.

Here is the report. (PDF file)

I have an article in today’s American Spectator.

The top of it:

Californians have plenty of reasons not to trust their state attorney general to conduct an honest probe of ACORN and the hidden-camera videos that helped expose the group’s criminal inclinations for the world to see.

That’s because Jerry Brown’s one gnarly dude. Like, totally.

The radical, perpetual office holder who handed out acorns during mayoral inauguration festivities in 1999 — describing them as symbolizing “seeds of change” — goes way back with ACORN.

The New Left crusader known as Governor Moonbeam when he was the state’s chief executive from 1975 to 1983 has had close ties to the group for years, according to a former ACORN official.  [...]

That’s the question Jay Fitzgerald asks in today’s Boston Herald.

“They just can’t tear themselves away from the activist left,” I told him.

I have an op-ed in today’s Washington Times.

It begins:

Growing up, I always thought Jesus’ admonition in the Book of Matthew, “The poor you will always have with you,” wasn’t meant to be taken literally as a directive to ignore the poor, but that’s exactly what a prominent Roman Catholic charity believes.

As this Sunday’s “second collection” approaches, most Catholics planning to donate to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development probably think their money will be used to help the poor by funding soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Well, the joke’s on them. CCHD has never provided direct relief to the poor. That’s not its purpose.

It is an extreme left-wing political organization created to feed and foster radical groups like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Most Catholics are blissfully unaware of its true mission, though it says right on its Web site that it aims to support “organized groups of white and minority poor to develop economic strength and political power.” [...]

Both ACORN and CCHD were inspired by radical agitator Saul Alinsky, the Marxist Machiavelli who dedicated his activism opus, “Rules for Radicals,” to Lucifer, whom he called “the first radical.” The late Mr. Alinsky developed the concept of “community organizing” in order to mobilize poor neighborhoods to make demands, long and loud, on public officials and the private sector.

CCHD gives generously to the Industrial Areas Foundation, which Mr. Alinsky himself founded, and to similar leftist groups including the Gamaliel Foundation, People Improving Communities Through Organizing (PICO), and Direct Action and Research Training Institute (DART). [...]

Ralph McCloud, director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)

* * * * *

Earlier today Ralph McCloud, director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), offered an eloquent but unconvincing defense of the radical charity he works for. He provided the commentary at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Fall General Assembly in Baltimore. Listen to the platitude-heavy discussion about the charity that finally cut off ACORN last year here.

An amusing exchange from the USCCB streaming video from the event today that sounded strangely like a PBS telethon:

PRIEST: You know that old axiom: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. As I read more and more about CCHD it’s about teaching fishing and it seems like that’s part of where these monies go, that our own generosity helps others to sustain themselves and also to contribute to the life of society as well, right?

MCCLOUD: Sure. I would take it even a step further in that it’s kind of like teaching an individual to fish but in addition teaching an entire community to fish where they can be supportive of one another.

That’s not quite the way I see CCHD. The charity only reluctantly cut off ACORN last year and continues to fund the equally radical community organizing group Industrial Areas Foundation that was founded by Saul Alinsky himself. It also funds PICO, DART, and the Gamaliel Foundation.

CCHD funds groups that teach a man to steal another man’s fish so that he will survive at the expense of the other man for life.

That’s “social justice.” That’s what CCHD believes in.

The Roman Catholic bishop who oversees the radical left-wing Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) defiantly lashed out at critics earlier today. (audio file here)

“This year some of the allegations and the claims [about CCHD] have simply been outrageous,” said Biloxi, Miss., Bishop Roger P. Morin. Morin chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) subcommittee on CCHD.

Since its creation in 1969 –the year before ACORN was founded— CCHD says it has given more than $290 million to fund what it calls over 8,000 “low-income-led, community-based projects that strengthen families, create jobs, build affordable housing, fight crime, and improve schools and neighborhoods.” Some observers say the grand total is closer to $450 million.

The charitable arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, CCHD has never provided direct relief to the poor. That’s not its purpose.

CCHD is an extreme left-wing political organization that was created to feed and foster radical groups, but most Catholics are blissfully unaware of its true mission. CCHD says right on its website that it aims to support “organized groups of white and minority poor to develop economic strength and political power.”

The speech came days before this Sunday’s “second collection” from parishioners that funds CCHD. Prominent conservative Catholics including Richard Viguerie are urging Catholics to boycott the collection that traditionally takes place every year on the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Morin made the speech at the USCCB’s Fall General Assembly in Baltimore.

From the bishop’s speech:

Some others it seems to me may not understand or accept the church’s social teachings on justice, having a priority for the poor, or being focused on the root causes of poverty and eradicating them or highlighting a need for institutional change. There are a few who have their own ideological or political agendas. They repeat and spread outrageous claims.

[...]

We do not ever grant funds to any group that is specifically involved in any activity contrary to church teaching. No group that acts against the Catholic social or moral teachings is eligible for CCHD funding and if and when such problems are discovered, and as soon as they are reported, all funding is cut off.

As you recall CCHD was the first national organization to cut off all funding to ACORN when the national problems of fiscal accountability, organizational direction, and political partisanship became apparent. Long before the federal government and other groups severed relationships with them we were the first and this will be the third consecutive year of CCHD collections where no ACORN group at any level is even considered for CCHD funding for any purposes. If any CCHD-funded group violates the conditions of a grant and acts in conflict with Catholic teaching the funding is terminated in consultation with the local dioceses.

I have a new piece in today’s American Spectator.

Here’s the top of the article:

As its financial resources dwindle, radical advocacy group and organized crime syndicate ACORN may have to file for bankruptcy protection before Christmas, ACORN insiders say.

“They may have to file for bankruptcy if they don’t have several big pending grants approved or get emergency loans,” a highly placed ACORN source told me over the weekend. This information bolsters Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) claim last week that ACORN is in turmoil amidst internal power struggles and on the verge of bankruptcy.

Given that ACORN is a network of hundreds of affiliated nonprofits, it’s not exactly clear how a bankruptcy filing would work, but the idea is under serious consideration by ACORN’s leadership. It was discussed at length at the group’s most recent national board meeting, which took place in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., during the Oct. 14-15 weekend, ACORN sources told me.

But even if ACORN were to go bankrupt, that doesn’t mean it would disappear. [...]