Taint so

ACORN was a scalp for Fox and the wingnuts. Did ACORN get stung? Sure. To a degree, they even deserved it, but their main sin in conservatopia is that they register po' folks to vote and to voice their concerns.

Congress, led by consistently pusillanimous Democrats, fell all over itself to condemn and punish ACORN with a bill of attainder. It's always a pleasant shock on those rare occasions when Washington Dems actually stand up for what they profess to believe in.

Can we - those with normal discernment - can we agree, however, that no matter how awful the sins of ACORN, they don't hold a candle to the murder and bribery of Blackwater (now Xe Services)?

Mighty oak

ACORN's selection of Scott Harshbarger to investigate the brothel sting indicates that they want a real investigation. Harshbarger would have been elected governor of Massachusetts in 1998 if he had been a go-along-to-get-ahead Democrat. Instead, he had angered the traditional wing of the party by prosecuting official misconduct, and many of them refused to support him.

Get behind Michele Bachmann

The wingiest of wingnuts, including Michele Bachmann and G. Gordon Liddy, are threatening to boycott the 2010 census because they received the long form or just because they believe in massive resistance to all government questions or maybe even because ACORN will apparently supply census workers. Never mind that this census will be the 22nd, dating back to 1790. Never mind that the detailed questions of the long form have several decades of precedent without any significant problems. Never mind that ACORN won't be canvassing wingnut neighborhoods.

Well, I'm all for the wingnut boycott. Best way I can see for Massachusetts to keep its delegation of ten at least reasonably liberal Representatives is for wingnuts everywhere to disappear themselves from the census rolls.

Full disclosure: A friend of mine has trained to be a census worker, though not through ACORN. [/snark]

No shame

The amazing thing to me about this story of bullshit Republican charges of voter fraud is not that the Republican special prosecutor could not find even a single instance of fraud beyond the one guy whose conscience made him confess.

“Ultimately,” Special Prosecutor Michael O’Neill wrote in a report, “the investigators discovered ‘get-out-the-vote’ practices, sponsored by community organizations, which took full advantage of this unique absentee-voting period, but no evidence these practices violated Ohio law.”

It's certainly not that Joe Deters, a Republican official who was also a McCain campaign apparatchik, touted charges he couldn't substantiate.

What's amazing to me as a human being with a normal level of conscience is that the blowhard Republican who started all this bullshit is so unashamed of his behavior that he can still say things like:

“There were allegations of massive voter fraud and within 48 hours – when Mr. Burke and other were screaming ‘witch hunt’ – we turned it over to a special prosecutor,” Deters said. “We don’t investigate by clairvoyance like Mr. Burke does.”

Deters is a man who is still using his own credulous acceptance of convenient bullshit as evidence of his own virtue. This man is a serious narcissist.

Will the wingnut simpletons now stop screeching "ACORN, ACORN, ACORN" like lucky blind pigs? Of course not.

(h/t Thers)

Wait and see

I've defended ACORN against the scurrilous Republican assaults, but this is something I'm going to have to wait and see about. If a million dollars is missing, the board you appoint to get to the bottom of it had better not be a whitewash.

Story arc of a smear

Some Republican, in this case Todd Rokita, Indiana Secretary of State, loudly calls for an investigation of a left-wing organization that finds new voters who generally are not Republicans. ACORN tried to register the Jimmy Johns sub shop, he cries, call the law!

CNN has investigative reporters. (Did you know that?) They print up and publish the Republican's Chicken Little bullshit. Oh, sure, they notice that ACORN has a response, but they defer investigating who's telling the truth until some later date.

The RNC just happens to notice this story - no coordination - and is outraged. They pimp the CNN story in their press operation. Other smaller pimps put the lies in bold.

The bottom-feeding wingnut media is a willing conduit for these lies.

Then, ACORN shows documentary proof (PDF, see p. 19) that they in fact flagged the Jimmy Johns voter registration as suspicious and that they in fact fired the employee who submitted it. This is what they have said since the very beginning. CNN writes about ACORN's response, but doesn't actually show the documents. You and I have to find them for ourselves.

No Republican who matters ever renounces the bullshit. They just move on to the next dishonest press manipulation, knowing that the media will never catch on as long as they are paid by organizations that prefer for them to be obtuse.

And I'm not even bringing up the Rove-influenced network of US Attorneys who are primed by the firings of their past colleagues on this very issue to jump on it with both feet.

Sleazy smear

Tara Wall writes a nasty piece of work about ACORN and the "soul of our electoral process." She can't even bring herself to admit there's disenfranchisement, putting it into quotes as if there's any doubt it goes on even now, prompted by Republicans, though I'd never expect her to admit that.

Like the sleaze merchant she has to be to write for the Washington Times, she doles out every bit of bullshit she can find or make up on her own. Here's the vilest:

Hey, what's a little cheating, the system isn't fair so black folks shouldn't be expected to play fair. Is ACORN suggesting that blacks have to cheat to get what they want or that Sen. Barack Obama (whom ACORN endorsed) can't win without cheating?

Uh, no, of course not. Did she hear that anywhere except at the water cooler with her wingnut employers? She certainly hasn't heard that from ACORN.

Tell me why CNN is publishing this tripe.

Want it done right?

The Republican Secretary of State in Indiana, Todd Rokita, has some nerve complaining about ACORN's voter registration drives. Registering voters is his job, and he's not doing it, at least not in Gary. Protecting the honesty of the vote is his job, too, and he's a day late and a dollar short on that, too.

He could try explaining what no one has yet been able to explain: how a fraudulent registration, bad though that is, could possibly result in a fraudulent vote, especially in Indiana, which is willing to bar long-time voters - nuns, even! - because they don't have driver's licenses.

Instead, Rokita is playing politics. Oh, right, that's redundant. I already said that he's a Republican.

Blind pigs

CNN follows up yesterday's Republican election felon story with a Democratic (or, more accurately, progressive) election felon story. Naturally, obeying the prime journalistic directive (find and report an equivalence even if it's a false one), CNN buries today's lead:

A report from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School supports his claim. Researchers reviewed voter fraud claims across the country and found that most were caused by technical glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters. One other finding: A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate another voter at the polls.

The report is here (PDF). See also truthaboutfraud.org.

So, even if the GOP can find something, anything wrong with Democrats voting once in a great while, the fact that they're not cowering inside on sunny days shows that they are not really interested in lowering the risk of voter fraud. After all, getting struck by lightning is quite a bit worse than an occasional fraudulent vote.

Again, the liberals are right: The GOP only wants to suppress votes that, statistically, it won't get.

Click image for full R.J. Matson/Roll Call cartoon.

Alleged

I'm all for punishing the guilty. But first you have to find them.

Every election cycle, the Republicans place a story about massive voter fraud. Up till now, it has always been the stories that are frauds. Instead of thousands of illegal votes, there have been a handful, maybe a dozen.

This story will probably turn out the same way. If not, full force of law.

Meanwhile, the media should be more skeptical.

Update: Ask and ye shall receive:

ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring said that in most cases the bogus registrations were flagged by ACORN supervisors during a review, brought to the attention of the local officials when they were submitted, and ACORN fired "probably a couple of dozen" employees who fabricated them. Under most state laws, the organization must submit every card an employee collects, he said.

(h/t Philosoraptor)