POLITICO: Conservative Media Scoring Scoops. By ignoring important stories, the Legacy Media are creating new competition whose presence they’ll regret. They could have forestalled that by simply doing their jobs.
Plus this: “ABC ‘World News’ anchor Charles Gibson seemed caught off guard by the ACORN tapes on Tuesday when he told Chicago radio hosts Don Wade and Roma that he hadn’t heard of them.” Now if Sarah Palin had said something similarly ignorant . . . .
JOHN FUND: ACORN Runs Off The Rails. “We’re just community organizers, just like the president used to be.”
Plus this: “A growing number of people once affiliated with Acorn want nothing more to do with the group. Marcel Reid, for example, was one of eight national Acorn board members who were removed last year after demanding an audit of the group’s books. She notes that Acorn received $7.4 million in contributions from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) between 2005 and 2008 but actively fights unionization efforts by its own employees. Ms. Reid also notes that Acorn was sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board in 2003 for illegally firing workers trying to organize a union.”
AN L.A. TIMES EDITORIAL ON THE ACORN SCANDALS:
Unfortunately for ACORN, this isn’t the first time the liberal advocacy group has been in the news. It became a liability for then-Sen. Barack Obama during the presidential campaign after almost a third of the 1.3 million new voters it registered were rejected, in some cases because they were fraudulent. During one of the debates, Sen. John McCain questioned Obama’s past relationship with the group, which Obama had represented as a lawyer in a 1995 lawsuit.
Given all the scrutiny, one would have expected ACORN to be doing everything in its power to make sure its activities were squeaky clean. Yet since the initial video was released last week showing ACORN workers in Baltimore who appeared to be aiding and abetting criminal activity, activist filmmaker James O’Keefe has released two more showing similar behavior at ACORN offices in Washington and Brooklyn. The response from ACORN? Fire the workers involved and blame Fox News.
Hey, it’s worked before . . . .
But what’s the sniffing about how hidden-camera videos are “distasteful”? I’ll bet they wouldn’t be saying that if a hidden-camera reporter had turned up Boy Scout leaders speaking well of child prostitution . . . .
NOBODY TELL ANN ALTHOUSE: Power Outage Caused By Squirrel. Kinda reinforces my point about the need for resilience in important systems . . . .
TEACHER CERTIFICATION: A “painful farce.”
WSJ: Acorn Confronts More Pressure Over Videos. “Federal and local authorities are considering pulling back on funding Acorn, a leading community organizing group, after videos showed employees at a number of Acorn offices allegedly advising a filmmaker how to evade taxes in operating a brothel.”
NEW YORK TIMES: Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe. “For months during last year’s presidential race, conservatives sought to tar the Obama campaign with accusations of voter fraud and other transgressions by the national community organizing group Acorn, which had done some work for the campaign. But it took amateur actors, posing as a prostitute and a pimp and recorded on hidden cameras in visits to Acorn offices, to send government officials scrambling in recent days to sever ties with the organization. Conservative advocates and broadcasters were gleeful about the success of the tactics in exposing Acorn workers, who appeared to blithely encourage prostitution and tax evasion. It was, in effect, the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who have made no secret of their hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and appointees they view as leftist.”
One slight correction: It took amateur actors . . . to do the work the press should have done during the campaign.
And you have to love this: “Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, called the tactics used to go after Mr. Jones and Acorn ‘McCarthyite,’ and said the critics were harping on minor failings.”
Yeah, it’s exactly the same. Heck, compared to Joe McCarthy’s famous pimp disguise, this kid’s an amateur. And that Borosage thinks support for child-sex slavery is a “minor failing” says more about Borosage than anyone else . . . .
But kudos to the Times for a story that’s surprisingly complete and fair — though perhaps it deserved more prominent placement than page A14. Ya know?
UPDATE: Fox News posts full, unedited video of sting on ACORN San Bernardino. In response to claims that it was unfairly edited.
HENRY BLODGET: The Greatest Sucker’s Rally In History, Play By Play. It’s only a sucker’s rally if you don’t sell in time.
Plus: “No sophisticated campaign propagandist would say, ‘OK, let’s throw Jimmy Carter at them. They’ll be reeling!'” Well, he is history’s greatest monster.
POLITICO: All Your Politicos Belong To Us. Seems like they could resolve this without lawyers and threats, and I think they should. More here.
OOPS: Rangel: Health bill harder after Obama speech.
UPDATE: Related: The more he talks, the less we believe him.
JENNIFER RUBIN: Why Did Holder’s Justice Department Dismiss the Black Panther Case?
Another attorney familiar with the inner workings of the Civil Rights Division agrees with this take. He observes that Department staff “openly and proudly advocate for a different standard” depending on the race of the alleged civil rights violator. He contends that this view extends now up to the attorney general and to staff attorneys who “say it openly at the Justice Department when the topic of ‘reverse’ discrimination comes up.”
Just like taxes are for the little people, antidiscrimination laws are only for client groups.
UPDATE: Reader Harry Lewis writes:
It’s worse than Rubin says. I was at 1212 Fairmont, Philadelphia, PA (the site of the New Black Panther incident) on election day as a lawyer for the McCain election security team. That’s a black neighborhood, and the New Black Panthers were intimidating black voters. That means that Holder’s Justice Department is protecting black extremists, not Democrats, while failing to protect black voters. When you’re talking about black-on-black offenses of this type, I’d say even the most ardent of the “civil rights laws protect only blacks and minorities” advocates at Justice have no excuse for failing to protect black voters.
Ugh.
THE AUDI E-TRON LOOKS COOL: 4 motors, 1 battery and 3,319 lb-ft of torque!
WHERE MEN win glory.
MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: The End of Liberaltarianism. “So Obama loves huge government, is prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq pretty much along Bushian lines, hasn’t closed Gitmo, and hasn’t done anything about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” And now, my foolish ‘liberaltarian’ friends, comes the coup de grace. From the AP: ‘The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.'” So now we know who the rubes were. . . .
ACORN: GREAT MOMENTS in gatekeeping. “Let’s pose the question this way. If the Federalist Society, which got a heaping helping of demonization during the John Roberts and Samuel Alito confirmation hearings, started giving advice to prospective pimps and hookers on tax evasion and hiding child-prostitution rings, does anyone think that the Charlie Gibsons and the Papers of Record in the US would let that slide to the cable networks? Or would it headline their outlets, complete with a dissection of Federalist Society support for Republicans?”
UPDATE: Charlie Gibson: Dan Rather Wearing Mary Mapes’ Underwear.
And Steven Den Beste writes: “Think O’Keefe will get a Pulitzer Prize for this expose? heh heh heh… yeah, right.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: That ACORN name change can’t come fast enough . . . .
THE ACORN SCANDALS COME TO CALIFORNIA with yet another incredible video. Good grief.
UPDATE: Acorn.org seems to have been knocked offline, presumably by all the people checking it out.
ANOTHER UPDATE: “Can’t wait for that House vote on whether to keep funding this syndicate.”
MORE: Calling Barbara Boxer for comment. Her office wants you to know that she voted for the ACORN funding cutoff.
KEN NELSON: Why would I hire somebody? “When you make hiring expensive, I do less of it. See how that works?”
USAF 1, SKYNET 0: Air Force Shoots Down Runaway Drone Over Afghanistan.
HOWARD DEAN: Racist? Well, he was reaching out to people with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.
HORSE, BARN DOOR: IRS Improves Computer Security After Loss/Theft of 500 Laptops.
REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.
ROGER SIMON: How John Edwards Can Resurrect Himself.
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