Thank you Andrew Breitbart! ACORN folds

Ben Smith at Politico reports that ACORN is closing shop:

The national group ACORN is folding, an official there, Kevin Whelan, said in an emailed statement:

The ACORN Association Board met on Sunday March 21 and approved a set of steps to responsibly manage the process of bringing its operations to a close over the coming months. These include:

* Closing ACORN’s remaining state affiliates and field offices by April 1st; and

* Developing a plan to resolve all outstanding debts, obligations and other issues.

ACORN’s members have a great deal to be proud of--from promoting to homeownership to helping rebuild New Orleans, from raising wages to winning safer streets, from training community leaders to promoting voter participation—ACORN members have worked hard to create stronger to communities, a more inclusive democracy, and a more just nation.

ACORN was always a very decentralized group, with a great deal of its activity and power concentrated in local chapters from New York to Arkansas -- the strongest of which will survive. The collapse of the national group, though, reflects the impact of a conservative assault that never prompted any prosecutions.

Good riddance. November will make the "conservative assault" on ACORN seem like a pillow fight.

An abundance of Berthas?

Before Christmas, the White House released another list of visitors to the White House to the journalistic delight of Andrew Breitbart:

This afternoon, on arguably one of the slower news day of the year, the Obama White House released another document dump of “visitor records.” According to the White House, today’s batch total more than 25,000 records, covering meetings between September 16-September 30th.



You can scroll through the list of records on the White House site OR you can download the raw data. Interestingly, the full download uncovers almost 30,000 records, including many from outside the mid-September time-frame detailed on the White House site. In other words, only the records from the specific two week time period are viewable on the White House site. Many other visitor records were released today…they are just much harder to find.


Like, for example, the visitor records for Bertha Lewis.


According to the visitor logs, on September 2nd Bertha E. Lewis made an appointment on to visit the White House on September 5th at 12:30. (We usually need to plan further ahead to get our hair cut.) On the evening of the 4th, that appointment was cancelled so Bertha could move her appointment earlier, to 10am.


And it doesn’t seem to have actually been a work visit, as her appointment indicates she was visiting the Residence within the White House. Also, September 5th was a Saturday. Nice.


In addition, the record notes that she was to receive a STAFF TOUR, which are different-and more special-than the regular Group Tours available to others.


Ms. Lewis doesn’t seem to have returned to the White House after this visit. Of course, just 5 days after this visit, James O’Keefe would release the first video of his undercover journalism on the systemic corruption within ACORN.

Politico's Ben Smith immediately went to the defense of the White House revealing that the Bertha Lewis that got VIP treatment at the White House was not ACORN's Bertha Lewis:

An administration official tells me that, indeed, this is a different Bertha Lewis, an ordinary visitor who came in through the White House visitor's office.



One clue: The ACORN official's middle initial, according to her New York voter registration record on Nexis, is "M." An ACORN spokesman says her middle name is "Mae."

Breitbart issued this update today at Big Government:

I contacted Smith to tell him that Big Government would offer a correction if the “administration official” who offered the information went on record and told us who the “other” Bertha Lewis is and got the unnamed administration source to come out from behind the veil of anonymity and use his/her name. So far, according to unnamed White House sources, “different” people with the familiar names of Malik Shabazz, Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers were discovered on White House visitors logs. As I skeptically asked on my Twitter account, “What are the odds?”



First thing Monday morning, Smith contacted the White House and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki came from behind her anonymous veil and confirmed for Smith, “it was a different Bertha Lewis, though she declined to share details about that visitor, citing privacy reasons.” (snip)

Since we have no information on how to hunt down the “other” Bertha Lewis — Ms. Psaki wouldn’t reveal who she is, citing “privacy concerns” — Big Government will err on the side of prudence and grant the White House its side of the story. I did ask Smith to find out biographical details on the other Wright, Ayers and Shabazz, but apparently privacy concerns apply to them, as well.

I end with this question: What is the point of the White House issuing visitor logs if those named can’t be identified and verified? “Transparency” would seem to call for nothing less, especially when those innocent people could easily be confused with the head of an organization recently defunded by Congress, a controversial preacher who shouted “God Damn America,” and an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

Good question.

House ban on ACORN grants is ruled unconstitutional

More Friday night news the left is hoping you won't see.  U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon issued a temporary injunction blocking the enforcement of a funding ban on ACORN.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Congress cut off funding for Acorn -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- in September after Web sites and TV news outlets played secretly recorded videos in which employees of an affiliated organization offered advice on how to set up brothels and avoid paying taxes.


Acorn sued the federal government in November, arguing Congress had violated the Constitution by singling out the group. It says it has fired employees suspected of wrongdoing.


U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon in New York issued a temporary injunction late Friday. Her ruling is expected to stand until the current restrictions on Acorn expire next Friday as part of a temporary spending bill. A permanent ban, the Defund Acorn Act, has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.


Acorn's lawyers argued in part that Congress had violated the Constitution's ban on bills of attainder, legislation that punishes a specific person or group without the rights that courts provide. In making its argument, the Acorn lawyers included quotes from several Republicans accusing Acorn of being a criminal organization that deserved to be punished.


In her decision, the judge wrote that those statements "underline the punitive nature of the government's purportedly non-punitive reason" for banning Acorn.


The Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision.

An opinion issued by the Obama Justice Department last month indicates that this will be a very short review.  From Jake Tapper:

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel this week posted a legal opinion saying that the Obama administration may continue paying the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for contracts signed before Congress in September passed -- and President Obama in October signed -- legislation banning federal funds from going to ACORN.


The opinion was written on Oct. 23 by Acting Assistant Attorney General David Barron in response to a request for clarification from the deputy general counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development as to the full meaning of the legislative language, which states, "None of the funds made available by this joint resolution or any prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations."


You can read the opinion HERE.

Two weeks after the Justice Department opinion was written, but before it was released to the public, ACORN filed its lawsuit.  It appears that opinion was a green light to ACORN to move forward with its lawsuit against the government.  It could also be argued that it sent a clear signal to Judge Gershon that it was okay to grant the injunction in favor of ACORN, effectively overturning the intent of the Congress.

Prior to Gershon's ruling, the Washington Examiner reported on a YouTube interview of Michelle Bachmann:

Rep. Michele Bachman, R-MN, calls Attorney General Eric Holder’s position that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to defund ACORN “laughable on its face.”


“If we create funding, we can certainly take away funding,” Bachman said in this YouTube interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPIFw53syqY

Perhaps the DOJ opinion was "laughable on its face."  But ACORN's CEO Bertha Lewis is the one laughing tonight.

Andrew Breitbart takes Columbia Journalism Review to school

In Breitbart throws down the gauntlet to Holder I showed you Andrew Breitbart's remarkable shout out to Attorney General Eric Holder regarding ACORN.  The left-leaning "friend of the press in all its forms, from newspapers to magazines to radio, television, and the Web", the Columbia Journalism Review, took issue with his appearance here.  Read it and see what passes for journalism in the elite netherworld of the old guard media.

The esteemed Andrew Breitbart strikes back and takes the Columbia Journalism Review to task and journalism school at Big Government:

In response to the Columbia Journalism Review’s accusing me of “blackmailing” the Attorney General of the United States, I must take notice that the mainstream media as a journalistic establishment IS paying attention to the ongoing ACORN scandal. Good. I thought so.

What the Columbia Journalism Review is doing is very similar to what Media Matters is doing: protecting the Democrat-Media Complex, the natural alliance of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media. This ACORN investigation has been going on for two months and Hannah, James, and I have proven to be truth-tellers every step of the way, while the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now has been proven time and again to be liars.

Yet instead of engaging the real, newsworthy issues of ACORN’s possible corruption, malfeasance and illegal behavior, the CJR, like its more overtly political online counterpart Media Matters, and indeed every other MSM outlet, has been sitting it out on the sidelines, waiting – rooting – for Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe and me to make a mistake. In fact, my appearance Thursday night is the only time in which the media has introduced itself into this ongoing narrative: proof that it’s paying attention and taking sides

He concludes by giving a them an embarassing vocabulary lesson that would insult a sixth grader, and then reissuing his challenge to AG Holder:

And now to address the fever-swamp’s notion that what I said on “Hannity” last night was “blackmail.” Blackmail occurs when one party threatens to reveal an unsavory piece of information about another party, and demands money in exchange for silence. For obvious reasons, it is most often conducted in private. I, on the other hand, went on national television with a challenge to the Attorney General to do his job; unlike this administration and its justice department, what I did was fully open and transparent.

There will be consequences if there isn’t an investigation into ACORN. The videos will be shown and at a particular moment. There is nothing illegal about my proposed response to the continued inaction from this justice department, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to have my day in court and let a jury hear why I have gone to such extraordinary measures to tell a major story that the dying, partisan, leftist media has worked so hard to suppress.

The days of the Democrat-Media Complex controlling the narrative are in their end times. And if the AG wants to turn his focus on me instead of ACORN, then that day will be closer than many of them think.

I hope and pray the Republicans in Congress will take note of what a fearless, principled leader looks like.  Godspeed, Andrew!

Michelle Bachmann exposes ACORN refunding

Have you heard this? H/T Seton Motley at Newsbusters.