The ex-president of ACORN could probably bring a successful libel suit against O'Keefe in the US.

good, but needed more details on the editing in the acorn vid

LOL.

Mr. O'Keefe, you can't screw a US Senator the way you can ACORN. If the conservative repubs endorsed your act, they would open themselves up to left-leaning stunts.

I hope they tap your ass in prison they way you tried to tap those phone lines.

Acorn (registering voters) is a direct threat to the conservatives. nuff said.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:
I'm waiting for QuantumMushroom to weigh in on this one.
Communist conspiracy? Faked? What would Glen Beck say?


Something about ACORN as well. Since these people are black.

Also, I'm sure WP will be Very Serious in his claim that this is somehow how the free market works.

It will probably go something like this: "Most of these people just don't want to spend their own money on health care! (their money? they're already feeding off the nanny state, so it's actually OUR money) Besides, If you notice, most of them had cellphones and shoes without holes in them, so they obviously have money for that, so why not for their own health? People need to practice self-reliance instead of stealing from my pocket. Neolibs, also."

>> ^quantumushroom:
2010 can't get here fast enough.

Keep wishing on that star, sunshine!

No ACORN thugs to fudge the records this time around. And so many unemployed they'll have nothing to do BUT vote, SUCKA!

Bring it on, burros!

- A trial is not needed to cut funding for a federally funded program run by a private entity

Precisely. ACORN & Mr. Doofus' attempts to paint this as a BoA are utterly specious - as is all the liberal reasoning in the thread above agreeing with such foolishness.

This is such a joke. Making FOX look it had something to do with this. Kill the messager not the message.

ACORN is corrupt and needs to stop getting government funding. No one put words in their mouth they stepped in their own shit and were proud of until they realized it was taped and aired.

Shame on the left for standing up for such a "good/ moral/ helping " institution.

Yeah, of course that's the real reason, but the overt pretext is a ridiculous exaggeration of #1 and #2.

McCain made up a few more lies to slander ACORN. He blamed ACORN for the subprime mortgage crisis. That couldn't be further from the truth, considering ACORN counseled poor people on how to avoid predatory lending and obtain cheap housing (and THAT operation of ACORN in particular is the one that got federal funding).

The movement against Acorn has more to do with the fact that they are very successful at helping the working poor to organize and register to vote than any of the trivial charges you've listed above. Netrunner posted and excellent video on the subject that you can find here --> http://www.videosift.com/video/FOX-News-Isn-t-News-It-s-a-Political-Operation

Thanks for the quality award, Jigga!

If weed becomes decriminalized, then the weed that comes from Mexico (a lot of which finances the cartels down there) won't be worth as much to the US market, as domestically grown weed will essentially flood the markets. Yet another excuse to buy local. The cartels would have a hard time making solid profits.


>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
I signed a petition for a ballot initiative for legal weed yesterday. Fingers are crossed that it makes it on the ballot.


Let's hope that's what you actually signed on to. A few years ago, a false petition was being circulated by hard-line right-wingers. Those who signed the fake petition had their voter registrations changed without their consent. (And the right bitches about ACORN...) Of course, I don't think someone would be stupid enough to try that again (not that there were any repercussions for those who committed that act of voter registration fraud).

>> ^davidraine:
What a completely worthless video. We know how the Right Wing Echo Chamber works. It has been completely overt for at least eight years now. We hate it, we hate its effects, we hate its results. We don't know how to stop it.

Actually we do. We make sure everyone actually understands how these sorts of things are done to manipulate them. For example, people should be at least a little queasy about how manipulative this video is itself. I agree with its intent, but the music was a bit much.

Beyond the tactics that they employ, people also need to understand their goals -- they're not looking to make your life better, they're trying to take power away from the people, and concentrate it into the hands of a very few, wealthy people.

That's why ACORN and SEIU are targets -- they're both institutions dedicated to empowering the poor and working class, both in terms of money, and political influence. That's a scary thing to our corporate overlords, and they'll tell any lie to convince people that community organizers and unions are somehow scary, evil things.

This Acorn bill stops funding in retaliation for past actions, no matter what changes they may make. That's the very definition of a bill of attainder.


Not even close -- according to Cummings v. Missouri (the controlling decision) a bill of attainder is defined as, "...a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial and includes any legislative act which takes away the life, liberty or property of a particular named or easily ascertainable person or group of persons because the legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment."

So some things need to be established here:

- A trial is not needed to cut funding for a federally funded program run by a private entity, the federal government simply needs to follow existing procedures (usually legislation) to discontinue the funding.

- ACORN does not have a right or claim to these federal dollars by any other means. It's not as if you or I could walk into Congress and say, "I'm starting a public service to do 'X', I demand federal dollars to fund it."

- The government isn't taking away life, liberty or property. ACORN maintains all of its existing assets, they're simply not being given any further taxpayer dollars. There is no entitlement there if Congress decides to cut funding, that is purely their decision.

I'm still a little cloudy on the subject, but I guess that's because I'm not informed enough about politics, but I think I get your drift. Thanks NetRunner

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Glenn Greewald wrote a great article on this topic that really digs into this, including Supreme Court decisions.

Re: the Franken amendment, it's completely nonspecific. The KBR case was certainly the catalyst, but the law is aimed at the behavior, not the individual.

With the push to defund ACORN, the reverse is true.

Glenn Greewald wrote a great article on this topic that really digs into this, including Supreme Court decisions.

Re: the Franken amendment, it's completely nonspecific. The KBR case was certainly the catalyst, but the law is aimed at the behavior, not the individual.

With the push to defund ACORN, the reverse is true.