See more proof of Voter Fraud 

Some may ask why ACORN is so important. WE as taxpayers, pay these people to be non partisan. They are supposed to help people register, that don't normaly vote.

BUT they have become a group that are geared for Democrats to win. Not just registering to vote, but for a specific political group. This is FRAUD.  Not only have they endanger the political voting process,  they are also heavily involved with the Community Reinvestments Act. 

They had pressured Congress, gave kickbacks to top level Democrats INCLUDING Obama to get the poor into houses. This caused sub-prime mortgages thus in turn caused this bailout. We are in economic crisis because of not only this group, but greed of top Democratic leaders embezzeling from US, YOU, THE TAXPAYERS!

And now, Obama has told this group that has committed wholesale fraud, that they will have a say in shaping the Agenda of his administration?

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be paying for this group of people who are nothing more than welfare participants.

When ACORN was caught stacking voter rolls with fake names leading up to the 2008 election, we stood up and took notice. Maybe an aberration, maybe part of a plan to undermine our system of elections. On Election Day, Black Panthers were inside a Pennsylvania polling station intimidating voters. They ultimately got off and the prosecutor who went after them was “reassigned”. Still, maybe it is simply coincidence. What if a high-profile state Attorney General argued that voters have no right to vote in secret?

I’m not talking about Card Check, I’m talking about the voting all of us do in every election. Consider the following words argued in Champaign County Court in Illinois by the Illinois Attorney General’s office headed by Lisa Madigan:

While plaintiff attempts to suggest to the Court that there is a fundamental right to a secret ballot, no such right exists. (bottom of Page 11 of pleading)

The Attorney General’s office argues that the United States Constitution, nor any fundamental right, protect a voter from being able to vote in secret. In effect, this means that it is only out of mere courtesy that the government doesn’t simply sit in the voting booth with you making sure you are making “fully informed decisions”.

The words need no parsing, read them for yourself. Lisa Madigan is no outsider. She is the daughter of the immensely politically powerful House Speaker, Michael Madigan. Michael Madigan is also chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois. When Blagojevich became a liability (after he was arrested), Michael Madigan saw him run out of town on a rail. The Madigans are the political power family of Illinois.

If they’re pushing for something, you take it seriously. And they’re pushing to take away your right to a secret ballot in Illinois. The matter at hand was created by a seemingly innocuous piece of legislation passed in 2007. The bill, SB 662, clocked in at almost 200 pages. A few clauses require error checking of a ballot. If you didn’t vote in certain races on a ballot, the voting machine will reject your ballot. There are many legitimate reasons to undervote (decline to vote in a particular race), first and foremost, because it’s your ballot and you should be able to vote however you darn well please.

The law requires the machine to reject the ballot and an election judge to come down and talk to you. At first, they’ll ask you to vote in all the races or to destroy the ballot and go home. At the election judge’s ultimate discretion, they can “override” the machine and process the vote anyway. But if you don’t vote in a way the establishment likes, you have an election judge standing over you (and your ballot) talking to you about it.

Seems minor, but the Attorney General isn’t saying this interaction violates the secret ballot. The Attorney General argues you have no right to a secret ballot in the first place. This issue came to light because a reform-minded Republican candidate for Governor in Illinois stood up to the Chicago-machine Democrats. Senator “Dede Scozzafava” Dillard voted to pass the bill. Another was too busy to vote, Senator Brady. Yet another was working for a city government last year who put armed guards in a polling station themselves.

Technically, the regulations (not the law) require the election judge to not look at a voter’s ballot. Of course, there are no real penalties if they do. With Chicago’s storied history of voter fraud, that regulation is a bit like asking a teenage boy to go to a strip club but not look at any of the girls.

The one things separating the United States from the many banana republics of the world that does have “voting rights” is that our elections have secret ballots free of voter intimidation. This statement by the Illinois Attorney General taken to its conclusion would allow ACORN workers to “help” voters inside the voting booth to make sure they didn’t make mistakes. Or worse, Black Panthers could handle poll security.

Last week, when undercover journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles released video of staffers at the Baltimore office of ACORN offering advice on how to evade taxes and hide a child-prostitution ring, the City State’s Attorney responded by threatening to prosecute … O’Keefe and Giles. Before Patricia Jessamy attacks the messengers, she might want to review ACORN’s records. Big Government reports that ACORN forfeited their registrations in 2006 and 2008, and have no legal basis for operating in the state of Maryland:

Last week, we saw some pretty disturbing activities revealed in the undercover footage from ACORN Housing’s Baltimore office. By any measure of conduct, the actions of ACORN’s employees should never have happened. It turns out the actions shouldn’t have happened for another, very simple, reason: ACORN can’t legally operate in the state of Maryland.

According to the following documents, ACORN, Inc.–the parent organization of all things ACORN–forfeited its corporate charter in Maryland in 2006. ACORN Housing forfeited its corporate charter in 2008. Any ACORN office in the state of Maryland is potentially operating illegally.

Here are the certifications from Maryland showing that the state does not consider them to be incorporated in good standing: ACORN Illegally Operating in Maryland

In my previous work as a call center manager, I can attest from personal experience that Maryland usually enforces its licensing and registration requirements very, very strictly. Compliance failures resulted in stinging fines, and on occasion with threats to block business in the state. I can’t think of a state with tougher compliance laws, with the possible exception of Virginia. We practically built our compliance group just for those two states.

With that in mind, ACORN’s ability to maintain its operations without valid registration — if indeed that’s what happened here — should get considerable scrutiny. Were their operations merely overlooked, or was there something more deliberate in keeping compliance enforcement off of their backs? Could it be because partisan hacks like Jessamy are more interested in protecting their political allies than actually enforcing the law?

Update: I tweaked the language to be more accurate; we’re talking about registrations and not licenses in this case.

Lawmaker sees 'stark symbolism' in White House's Christmas cookies shaped like nut sharing name with controversial community group

PHILADELPHIA—On a shabby block in North Philadelphia, the front window of an Acorn Housing office bears a poster urging distressed mortgage borrowers to "seek help before it's too late."

That advice also could apply to Acorn Housing.

The nonprofit group—an offshoot the political-advocacy group Acorn, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—is slashing costs in a struggle to survive a scandal that has trashed its reputation and cut it off from federal money. In September, Web sites and television news outlets released secretly recorded videos in which Acorn Housing employees, egged on by undercover filmmakers, offered advice on how to set up brothels and evade taxes.

In response, Congress has at least temporarily cut off federal funding for Acorn Housing, one of the largest U.S. nonprofit groups that offer free counseling to mortgage borrowers. Federal money this year provided about three-quarters of the group's annual budget of $24 million. The rest comes from banks, foundations and state and local agencies. Ordinarily, federal grants provide less than half of the budget, Acorn Housing says, but that percentage was pumped up by special programs created by Congress to help more people avert foreclosure.

"We will do what it takes to restore confidence," says Michael Shea, executive director of Acorn Housing, which is based in Chicago. A spokeswoman said the group is laying off some of its 240 employees and will close some of its 29 offices but declined to provide details.

Acorn Housing may change its tarnished name as part of a "transformative" process, the spokeswoman says. Acorn Housing also might try charging fees to people it counsels or to their lenders if it can't get enough funding elsewhere. Some for-profit companies charge such fees to help borrowers negotiate with banks.

Mr. Shea declines to say how much cash Acorn Housing holds but says he believes it can cut expenses enough to survive on a smaller scale until it can regain federal funding or find other sources of income. He says he is confident that an investigation being conducted by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, will show that Acorn Housing hasn't misused federal funds.

But Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, has urged the Senate Banking Committee to hold its own "comprehensive investigation" of Acorn and Acorn Housing. "Until that happens, I can't see any scenario where Acorn should have access to taxpayer money," Sen. Shelby says. Democrats, who have benefited from Acorn voter-registration drives, are angry, too. "I'm not ready to give them another chance," says Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. "They've just been too sloppy."

Acorn Housing's woes come as nonprofit counseling groups and financial institutions work through mounds of paper work from hundreds of thousands of homeowners seeking loan modifications to lower their monthly payments and avoid foreclosure. Banks have long relied on groups like Acorn Housing to represent borrowers who mightn't trust direct approaches by financial institutions. Hundreds of other nonprofit groups provide similar services, but Acorn Housing is one of the most experienced in this area.

"If they're knocked out of this arena, it's a big loss," says Bruce Marks, chief executive of Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, a Boston-based nonprofit that provides similar counseling nationwide.

But Rep. Frank argues that other nonprofits could take up the slack.

Some people praise Acorn Housing for its counseling work. "Without them, I would have lost my house" to foreclosure, says Moshe Hoffman, a security guard in Lauderdale Lakes, Fla., whose loan terms were eased. But Lynne Kelly, who has been trying to keep her home in Minneapolis since losing her job as a judicial clerk in December 2007, says she found an Acorn Housing office there unhelpful and eventually moved her case to another nonprofit. "Maybe [Acorn Housing] had too much work," Ms. Kelly says.

An Acorn Housing spokeswoman said the group did as much as it could for Ms. Kelly and then referred her to another agency that could give her financial aid.

The vast majority of Acorn Housing employees wouldn't have offered help to anyone seeking advice on how to break the law, Mr. Shea says. "We didn't anticipate having to train people for that type of situation, and perhaps we should have," Mr. Shea says. Acorn Housing hires many of its workers from poor neighborhoods, he adds, "and sometimes there's an eagerness to appear street smart."

After the videos appeared, Acorn Housing arranged a seminar for employees on ethical behavior. Miriam Kim, a counselor in Philadelphia, says that was helpful but that "a lot of the stuff, to me, it was, 'Isn't this common sense?' "

Acorn Housing and other recipients of federal money for counseling are subject to monitoring by HUD, which says it has granted about $37 million to Acorn Housing since 2000. It isn't clear how well HUD has monitored counseling agencies. A 2006 federal audit said HUD's effort in that area "was not adequate" to ensure that the counseling agencies were meeting HUD requirements. HUD disputed some of the audit's findings and says it has since carried out most of the auditors' recommendations.

Representatives for ACORN sued the federal government Thursday morning in an attempt to regain the millions of dollars in funding the community organizing group lost after filmmakers videotaped its workers offering advice on how to commit tax fraud and various other felonies.

The suit charges Congress with violating the Constitution when it passed legislation in September that specifically targeted ACORN to lose federal housing, education and transportation funds. That qualifies the legislation as bills of attainder, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the suit on behalf of ACORN. A bill of attainder punishes a person or group without the benefit of a trial, and is illegal under Article 1 of the Constitution.

Bills of attainder have traditionally been understood to have more serious legal consequences -- including the seizure of private property and even capital punishment -- than Congress' decision to withhold funds that are at its discretion to disseminate. Though members of Congress have accused ACORN of corruption, it is not clear how the exercise of its own prerogative is outside the bounds of legislative power.

Critics of the group in Congress blasted the lawsuit as a last-ditch effort to save the foundering organization's bottom line. "ACORN's baseless lawsuit is the first public acknowledgement we've seen from ACORN of just how desperate they are to use any mechanism available to subsidize an organization that is teetering on bankruptcy and financial insolvency," said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Congress began cracking down on its funding to ACORN after its employees were secretly videotaped in a number of cities offering to help a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute to lie to the IRS and acquire illegal home loans.

Footage showed staffers advising the "pimp" and "prostitute" on how to falsify tax forms and seek illegal benefits for 13 "very young" girls from El Salvador that the pair said they wanted to bring to the country to work as child prostitutes. The videos set off a firestorm in Congress.

ACORN pledged an internal inquiry and fired the staffers who were caught on tape, but it was only the latest of many legal troubles for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. State investigators raided ACORN offices in Louisiana last week, seizing computer hard drives and documents in a probe of alleged embezzlement and tax fraud. Staffers in multiple states have been accused of committing voter registration fraud.

Congress took the "prostitute" videos as clear evidence of systematic problems within ACORN and voted with bipartisan support in the House and Senate to freeze funding for the group in appropriations bills in September. Thursday's lawsuit claims that Congress violated the right to due process enshrined in the Fifth Amendment -- declaring the group guilty of a crime and punishing its members without completing an investigation within the Department of Justice or the IRS.

"It's not the job of Congress to be the judge, jury, and executioner," said Jules Lobel, an attorney representing the Center for Constitutional Rights. "We have due process in this country, and our Constitution forbids lawmakers from singling out a person or group for punishment without a fair investigation and trial." The lawsuit itself singles out three defendants -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; Director of the Office of Management and the Budget Peter Orszag, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

The three were responsible for facilitating the defunding of ACORN by Congress, according to attorneys for the Center for Constitutional Rights. ACORN claims it has been badly hurt by the congressional actions, and has had to fire workers and close some of its 1,200 branches around the country. Though it remains unclear precisely how much money the national organization was receiving from federal sources and aid programs, a lawyer pressing the suit said ACORN has already lost an amount "in the millions" since the freeze took effect.

On Monday, the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to strip Acorn, the premier community organizing group on the left, of more than $1.6 million in federal housing money meant to assist low-income people obtain loans and prepare tax forms. This dramatic step followed last Friday's decision by the U.S. Census Bureau to sever its ties with the organization, one of several community groups it was partnering with to conduct the nation's head count.

Both of these actions came after secretly recorded videos involving employees in Acorn's Brooklyn, N.Y., Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Md. and San Bernardino, Calif. offices were televised on Fox News. The videos were recorded by two independent filmmakers who posed as a prostitute and a pimp and said they were planning to import underage women from El Salvador for the sex trade. They asked for and received advice on getting a housing loan and evading federal taxes.

In response, Acorn has so far fired four of the employees seen on the videos. But it claimed the videos were "doctored" and accused critics of a smear campaign and "racist coverage" of the incidents.

Such rhetoric in the past has deflected scrutiny of Acorn tactics, such as street demonstrations and boycotts against banks to force lower credit standards for home loans, which a congressional report found contributed to the subprime loan mess. But now Acorn may be finally running off the rails.

Last week, 11 of its workers were accused by Florida prosecutors of falsifying information on 888 voter registration forms. Last month, Acorn's former Las Vegas, Nev., field director, Christopher Edwards, agreed to testify against the group in a case in which Las Vegas election officials say 48% of the voter registration forms the group turned in were "clearly fraudulent." Acorn itself is charged with 13 counts of illegally using a quota system to compensate workers in an effort to boost the number of registrations. (Acorn has denied wrongdoing in all of these cases.)

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.

In 1995, Acorn unsuccessfully sued California to be exempt from the minimum wage, claiming that "the more that Acorn must pay each individual outreach worker . . . the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire." The decision to file that lawsuit was made by Wade Rathke, who founded Acorn in 1970 and was its long-time leader. He was forced by the group's board to resign last year after it found that he'd engaged in a cover-up of a nearly $1 million embezzlement of Acorn funds by his brother Dale, then the group's chief financial officer.

An investigator enters the ACORN office in Las Vegas.

Mr. Rathke now the chief organizer of a New Orleans-based local of the SEIU, a key Acorn ally is out with a new book, "Citizen Wealth," in which he touts a vision of "maximum eligible participation" by Americans in welfare programs as a way to force radical social change.

Regardless of the wisdom of that vision, it's time to follow the lead of the Census Bureau and cut the government's ties to the highly dubious characters surrounding Acorn. (The group has taken in more than $53 million in direct funding from the federal government since 1994, and substantially more indirectly through states and cities that receive federal block grants.)

Acorn's allies in Congress have long stopped every move to rein it in. Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), for example, has tried six times to get House floor votes restricting Acorn's access to federal funds but has been blocked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hand-picked Rules Committee members. Some Democrats have grumbled. Michigan's John Conyers, chair of the Judiciary Committee, urged a hearing be held on Acorn abuses in March, but later told the Washington Times "the powers that be decided against it."

There is a chance the latest scandals will convince Democrats that Acorn is too toxic a political partner. And President Barack Obama, who once ran a voter-registration program for an Acorn partner (Project Vote) and then worked for Acorn as a lawyer on key cases, has every incentive to distance himself further from the organization.

Former Acorn board members tell me the group has always been confident it will be protected. After the Nevada voter-registration fraud indictment last May, Bonnie Greathouse, Acorn's chief organizer in the state, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that "we've had bad publicity before" and survived. "People always come forward to our defense. We're just community organizers, just like the president used to be."

Last week, we saw some pretty disturbing activities revealed in the undercover footage from ACORN Housing’s Baltimore office. By any measure of conduct, the actions of ACORN’s employees should never have happened. It turns out the actions shouldn’t have happened for another, very simple, reason: ACORN can’t legally operate in the state of Maryland. According to the following documents, ACORN, Inc.–the parent organization of all things ACORN–forfeited its corporate charter in Maryland in 2006. ACORN Housing forfeited its corporate charter in 2008. Any ACORN office in the state of Maryland is potentially operating illegally. The Maryland Attorney General has made noise about prosecuting the intrepid journalists who undercovered the misdeeds of ACORN employees. Perhaps he should focus instead on how ACORN was able to operate without a license in his state.

An ACORN affiliate has just submitted applications for over $6 million in government funding, despite the controversial videos of the organization’s workers aiding a child prostitution “promoter.”

A growing number of Republican lawmakers are calling for congressional hearings and IRS audits of ACORN following the release of three videotapes showing employees at the community organization assisting a purported "pimp" and "prostitute" in obtaining housing.

growing number of Republican lawmakers are calling for congressional hearings and IRS audits of ACORN following the release of three videotapes that show the group's employees offering advice to a "pimp" and a "prostitute" on how to skirt the law.

Rep. Steve King, R-IA, said a video released Monday that shows filmmaker James O'Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, getting advice from ACORN employees in Brooklyn, N.Y., on how to launder their earnings and avoid detection while running a prostitution business is "another reason to turn it up" on ACORN.

Four ACORN employees -- two in Baltimore and two in Washington -- were fired late last week after videos showed the "pimp" and "prostitute" getting similar advice in those cities. In those videos, O'Keefe and Giles told the ACORN workers that they intended to bring underage girls into the country to work as prostitutes.

"If you see that it's endemic, that it's at least three cities will help support and organize and provide for lending to homes of prostitution for underage girls that come from foreign countries that are likely illegal, how many drugs are being dealt out of houses facilitated by ACORN?" King told FOX News on Monday. 

"What would they not do?" he asked of the ACORN workers. "Where would they reach a moral revulsion?"

King called on Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to hold investigations into ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, which also has been accused of widespread voter fraud during the 2008 presidential election. King also asked for a full "financial forensic analysis" into the group on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service.

"We saw into the offices of ACORN, we saw the faces of ACORN in Baltimore, in Washington, D.C., and in Brooklyn, and you have to imagine that's going on in every inner city across America where ACORN is set up," King said. "We've got to shut off every federal dollar to ACORN and we've got to investigate them thoroughly."

Calls to Conyers' office in Washington were not immediately returned on Monday. Officials at the IRS and the Department of Justice declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Jerry Schmetterer, director of public information for the Kings County District Attorney's Office, told FOXNews.com that officials will be "taking a look" into Brooklyn's ACORN office.

"We are going to be taking a look at the situation," Schmetterer said Monday.

A spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said ACORN'S tax status as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization should also be probed.

"We've already seen the Census Bureau severe its tie with ACORN," the spokesman, Kurt Bardella, told FOXNews.com. "Certainly, as an organization being subsidized by taxpayer dollars, their relationship with other government entities should be called into question, and whether or not it's appropriate for them to receive taxpayer dollars."

In a statement to FOXNews.com, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., said the videos in Washington and Baltimore show "clearly a pattern of improper partisan or fraudulent activities." He pointed to an amendment offered by Sens. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and David Vitter, R-La., that would ban ACORN from receiving direct or indirect federal funds under the FY 2010 Transportation-Department of Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill.

"It's up to the Democratic majority to determine whether or not Congress will investigate ACORN or hold oversight hearings to justify any future taxpayer funding of ACORN," Bartlett's statement read.

Johanns' amendment, to be introduced today, will prohibit funds to the group from several different accounts, including monies it receives through mortgage counseling, Community Development Block Grants, and the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

"ACORN has been in legal trouble in several states with raid after raid on their offices by officials looking into voter fraud. More than 30 ACORN officials have been convicted of fraud and new allegations of fraud are surfacing by the day," Johanns said in a statement released Monday. "It's wrong to give tax dollars to a group with multiple convictions of undermining our democratic process and our laws. So, I'm introducing measures to stop the federal funding of ACORN."

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., said last week that the videos suggest multiple incidents of tax fraud, and called for a hearing to investigate ACORN's tax filing assistance programs.

"In light of the apparent flagrant and willful attempts to suborn tax fraud, I ... (am seeking) a hearing of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee as soon as practicable to investigate ACORN's activities," he said Friday.

The Census Bureau notified ACORN on Friday in a letter that it was severing all ties with the group for all work related to the 2010 census.

"Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN's affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts," read a letter from Census Director Robert Groves to the president of ACORN.

"Unfortunately, we no longer have confidence that our national partnership agreement is being effectively managed through your many local offices," the letter continued. "For the reasons stated, we therefore have decided to terminate the partnership."

In response, ACORN officials blamed FOX News and conservatives for fueling the controversy.

"By its actions, Fox is not a news outlet but rather an advocacy organization for rightwing interests that seek to defeat healthcare reform and stymie solutions to the foreclosure crisis," the group said in a statement to FOXNews.com. "That said, with regard to the Census, ACORN has always said it would encourage full participation in the decennial count, and we will continue to do so."

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis said the videos capturing her former workers were "doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist 'filmmaker' O'Keefe and his partner in crime."

Lewis said ACORN will take legal action against FOX News and those involved in the making of the videos. She said ACORN offices were also targeted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Philadelphia, among other places.

"I am appalled and angry," Lewis said. "I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated."

These are the five simple words that every conservative candidate and officeholder should be repeating often and loudly. It’s about the fraud. It’s about the coordinated corruption. It’s about the effect on housing, the economy, and the entire electoral landscape.

ACORN prompts Kobach to run: Kris Kobach's desire to be Kansas Secretary of State can be summed up in one word:

"ACORN," he told a modest audience that gathered Thursday for lunch at Salina's Western Sizzlin restaurant. Salina is one of eight cities Kobach, who until recently was chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, is visiting to announce his desire to be secretary of state. ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- is an aggressive get-out-the-vote organization that represents low- and moderate-income people nationally. "Since 1970, ACORN has been building community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice," its Web site says.

Kobach describes it differently.

"ACORN is a criminal enterprise," he said Thursday. He said 12 ACORN workers in Missouri were convicted of violating voter laws in connection with 2006 elections. Voter fraud was the central theme of Kobach's campaign stop. He warned of the "rise of ACORN" and said it was only after the November election that he learned ACORN has three offices in Kansas. "We didn't find out until after the election how busy they have been in Kansas," he said. ACORN's Web site lists offices in Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita. None of the telephone numbers listed works, nor do the e-mail addresses. Kobach said he plans to push for a photo identification law, which would require voters to present an approved photo ID before they vote. He also wants to require that people prove they are citizens before they are allowed to register to vote. Kobach teaches constitutional, election and immigration law at the University of Missouri Kansas City law school. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1988 and received his law degree from Yale. From 2001 to 2003 he was chief adviser on immigration law and border security in the office of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

A large crowd of protesters disrupted several foreclosure auctions today on the Sacramento County Courthouse steps, winning temporary cancellation of one Sacramento foreclosure and sending an auctioneer to the hospital with chest pains. Bidders on the homes, all declining to provide their names, called the ACORN protest the first major disruption of an established auction schedule that plays out every weekday at the courthouse following 37,000 foreclosures in the capital region since Jan. 2007. About 75 statewide members of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, in the capital for a lobbying day on housing issues, delayed at least three auctioneers from selling foreclosed homes today.

"Many of the sales that are happening now are around houses that could be saved by the (loan modification and refinance) plans starting to be implemented," said Amy Schur, California director of ACORN. The group organized the protest with bullhorns, whistles and chants of "Save Our Homes," to make its case for a moratorium on foreclosures until plans unveiled in March by the Obama administration have a chance to work. Organizers called the Sacramento action the newest in a series of protests by its "Home Defenders" in the Bay Area and Southern California.

As the first auction was to begin at 9:30 a.m. on the Sacramento County Courthouse steps, Los Angeles ACORN member Kathleen Thompson-Boons asked an unidentified auctioneer with LPS Financial Services of Sacramento "to stop the auction." When the auctioneer resumed seeking bids from nine potential bidders, Thompson-Boons asked again, prompting the auctioneer to say, "If you're not going to bid, then go away." Seconds later, protesters surrounded the group, chanting, blowing whistles and creating a commotion that made it impossible to hear. The auctioneer, who had a pacemaker according to associates, began to collapse and was later taken to a local hospital. The protest continued for about 90 minutes. ACORN members left after cheering a concession by LPS Financial Services to cancel a specific requested foreclosure auction for one Sacramento family. Minutes later, as the group left, the auctions resumed as scheduled.

The group's ties to Obama are extensive

Acorn, the liberal "community organizing" group that claims it will deploy 15,000 get-out-the-vote workers on Election Day, can't stay out of the news.

The FBI is investigating its voter registration efforts in several states, amid allegations that almost a third of the 1.3 million cards it turned in are invalid. And yesterday, a former employee of Acorn testified in a Pennsylvania state court that the group's quality-control efforts were "minimal or nonexistent" and largely window dressing. Anita MonCrief also says that Acorn was given lists of potential donors by several Democratic presidential campaigns, including that of Barack Obama, to troll for contributions.

The Obama campaign denies it "has any ties" to Acorn, but Mr. Obama's ties are extensive. In 1992 he headed a registration effort for Project Vote, an Acorn partner at the time. He did so well that he was made a top trainer for Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he represented Acorn in a key case upholding the constitutionality of the new Motor Voter Act -- the first law passed by the Clinton administration -- which created the mandated, nationwide postcard voter registration system that Acorn workers are using to flood election offices with bogus registrations.

Ms. MonCrief testified that in November 2007 Project Vote development director Karyn Gillette told her she had direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists. Ms. MonCrief also testified she was given a spreadsheet to use in cultivating Obama donors who had maxed out on donations to the candidate, but who could contribute to voter registration efforts. Project Vote calls the allegation "absolutely false."

She says that when she had trouble with what appeared to be duplicate names on the list, Ms. Gillette told her she would talk with the Obama campaign and get a better version. Ms. MonCrief has given me copies of the donor lists she says were obtained from other Democratic campaigns, as well as the 2004 DNC donor lists.

In her testimony, Ms. MonCrief says she was upset by Acorn's "Muscle for Money" program, which she said intimidated businesses Acorn opposed into paying "protection" money in the form of grants. Acorn's Brian Kettering says the group only wants to change corporate behavior: "Acorn is proud of its corporate campaigns to stop abuses of working families."

Ms. MonCrief, 29, never expected to testify in a case brought by the state's Republican Party seeking the local Acorn affiliate's voter registration lists. An idealistic graduate of the University of Alabama, she joined Project Vote in 2005 because she thought it was empowering poor people. A strategic consultant for Acorn and a development associate with its Project Vote voter registration affiliate, Ms. MonCrief sat in on policy-making meetings with the national staff. She was fired early this year over personal expenses she had put on the group's credit card.

She says she became disillusioned because she saw that Acorn was run as the personal fiefdom of Wade Rathke, who founded the group in 1970 and ran it until he stepped down to take over its international operations this summer. Mr. Rathke's departure as head of Acorn came after revelations he'd employed his brother Dale for a decade while keeping from almost all of Acorn's board members the fact that Dale had embezzled over $1 million from the group a decade ago. (The embezzlement was confirmed to me by an Acorn official.)

"Anyone who questioned what was going on was viewed as the enemy," Ms. MonCrief told me. "Just like the mob, no one leaves Acorn happily." She believes the organization does some good but hopes its current leadership is replaced. She may not be alone.

Last August two of Acorn's eight dissident board members, Marcel Reed and Karen Inman, filed suit demanding access to financial records of Citizens Consulting Inc., the umbrella group through which most of Acorn's money flows. Ms. Inman told a news conference this month Mr. Rathke still exercises power over CCI and Acorn against the board's wishes. Bertha Lewis, the interim head of Acorn, told me Mr. Rathke has no ties to Acorn and that the dissident board members were "obsessed" and "confused."

According to public records, the IRS filed three tax liens totaling almost $1 million against Acorn this spring. Also this spring, CCI was paid $832,000 by the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote efforts in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.

"Acorn needs a full forensic audit," Ms. MonCrief says, though she doesn't think that's likely. "Everyone wants to paper things over until later," she says. "But it may be too late to reform Acorn then." She strongly supports Barack Obama and hopes his allies can be helpful in cleaning up the group "after the heat of the election is gone."

Acorn's Mr. Kettering says the GOP lawsuit "is designed to suppress legitimate voters," and he says Ms. MonCrief isn't credible, given that she was fired for cause. Ms. MonCrief admits that she left after she began paying back some $3,000 in personal expenses she charged on an Acorn credit card. "I was very sorry, and I was paying it back," she says, but "suddenly Acorn decided that . . . I had to go. Since then I have gotten warnings to 'back off' from people at Acorn." LINK

HARRISBURG -- A former staffer for an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now testified today that the organization was provided a "donor list" from the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in late 2007 for fundraising efforts.

Anita Moncrief, a former Washington, D.C. staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign. Moncrief said she has a copy of a "development plan" that outlines how Obama contributors who had "maxed out" under federal contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote, and that it was her job to identify such contributors.

Project Vote national spokesman Michael McDunnah denied that the list came from Obama's campaign, according to The Associated Press. Donor lists for candidates are public information and can be downloaded from the Federal Election Commission's Web site. The lists include how much individuals have given. ACORN officials have said Moncrief was fired from Project Vote and that she is not a credible witness. Moncrief testified that ACORN and Project Vote were virtually identical.

The Obama campaign said it wasn't involved in ACORN registration drives .

"Our campaign has not coordinated with ACORN whatsoever on any voter registration activities," said Obama spokesman Sean Smith.

A Republican lawyer submitted a computer disk of the Obama database to Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson.

Moncrief, whom Project Vote fired earlier this year, testified for more than two hours during a hearing on a Pennsylvania Republican Party lawsuit aimed at curbing voter fraud in Tuesday's general election.

An Obama campaign spokeswoman last week had said the campaign has "no ties" to ACORN.

Moncrief, 29, who now lives in Virginia, also said that she had taken a call from an Obama campaign worker inquiring whether it was the same organization Obama had worked with in the 1990's.

Moncrief said she had received repeated warnings to "back off" from testifying today by people she knows at ACORN.

"I thought it was powerful testimony. She took a great personal risk," said Heather Heidelbaugh, an attorney representing the state GOP.

On cross-examination, Moncrief admitted that she had no personal knowledge of how Pennsylvania ACORN registered voters.

Moncrief said she was fired because she put personal expenses on the organization's credit card. She said she repaid about half of the money. "I am really sorry," she said.

An ACORN spokeswoman said the group sets aside problematic voter registration forms and turns them over to authorities.

The spokeswoman, Carol Hemmingway of Philadelphia, called the lawsuit "an attempt to suppress voters."

Hemmingway said Moncrief was not part of "senior management" at ACORN and can't speak for them.

The lawsuit against ACORN and its affiliates, as well as Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes, asks the court for a preliminary injunction. GOP lawyers want the court to force ACORN to make its voter database available and require voter education efforts. The Republicans also want the Department of State to make its voter registration database more readily available to counties. A Department of State lawyer has said Pennsylvania is already doing so.

Moncrief said she does not have a vendetta against ACORN.

"I do not think it is a bad organization," she said. Moncrief said she came forward and contacted Heidelbaugh because she believes low-income vote canvassers were not trained and then were "thrown under the bus"-- facing criminal prosecution -- for frauduent registrations. She said there were quotas of voter registration forms for workers and that some were fired for not meeting them.

"The (voter) cards are tied to money. The more cards you get the more money you get," Moncrief said. LINK

Strong, silent type

OBAMA'S LEGAL CAREER | He was 'smart, innovative, relentless,' and he mostly let other lawyers do the talking

BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter/apallasch@suntimes.com

The oratorical skills White House hopeful Barack Obama has shown on the stump -- and in his "There's not a black America and white America ... there's the United States of America" speech -- would seem to make him a natural for wowing juries.

So why did Obama never make impassioned speeches in court when he returned to Chicago from Harvard Law School in the early '90s to, as his Web site says, "practice as a civil rights lawyer"?  LINK

Inside Obama’s Acorn
By their fruits ye shall know them.

By Stanley Kurtz

Spreading socialism on the taxpayer’s dime.

By Michelle Malkin

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in "get-out-the-vote" projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.  LINK

This piece of footage was taken from the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum on Dec 1, 2007.
A forum where ACORN was praising Obama. Just what kind of INPUT is Obama referring to...and what does he mean by "helping shape the agenda ?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A woman asks Obama if he is elected POTUS if within the first 100 days would he meet with the Delegation of Representitives from these various Community Organizations.

Obama replies: " But let me say BEFORE I even get inaugarated, during the transition we're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We're going to be having meetings all across the country with Community Organizations so that you will have input into the agenda of the next POTUS of America."

If  you have been watching ON THE RECORD at 10pm eastern, you know about Palestra.net — the college news network.   But here is the BIG NEWS: the student journalists Tiffany Wilson and Shelby Holliday (not professionals) are AGGRESSIVE in pursuing voter fraud in Ohio and have uncovered ACTUAL voter fraud.  They are also not afraid.

As a result of their journalism, votes already cast for President have had to be withdrawn.

So what is the students’ reward for exposing crime???  An intimidating letter from the Senator Obama campaign lawyer to one of the students?? See below and then you tell me…

From: Rosenberg, Thomas
Date: Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 2:32 PM
Subject: At least in today’s blog you spelled my last name right
To: tiffany

In other words, I am going to read what you write and watch what you say. Hopefully you will be fair and impartial as you told me you would be.

Thomas L. Rosenberg
Roetzel & Andress, LPA

Columbus, OH  43215
trosenberg@ralaw.com

and then there is this…a blogger on the Daily Kos I am told…investigating the student journalists???

and then there is this email below that was emailed to Palestra.net…WHO IS INVESTIGATING TIFFANY WILSON? and her “crime” is exposing crime???? huh??? WHO IS JOE KNAPP?  PLEASE RESEARCH AND POST!

Subject: Attn: Tiffany Wilson
To:

Hello,

I’ve been looking into temporary residents registering to vote in
Ohio, and came across a _______ in _____ where four
voters are registered, one of whom Tiffany Wilson, your reporter, who
has returned an absentee ballot in Columbus. Is she a permanent
resident of Columbus?

Joe Knapp
Columbus

LINK

With accusations of voter registration fraud swirling as early voting begins in many states, some Hillary Clinton supporters are saying: “I told you so.”

Already in Iowa, the Obama campaign was breaking the rules, busing in supporters from neighboring states to vote illegally in the first contest in the primaries and physically intimidating Hillary supporters, they say.

Obama’s surprisingly strong win in Iowa, which defied all the polls, propelled his upstart candidacy to front-runner status. But Lynette Long, a Hillary supporter from Bethesda, Md., who has a long and respected academic career, believes Obama’s victory in Iowa and in 12 other caucus states was no miracle. “It was fraud,” she told Newsmax.

Long has spent several months studying the caucus and primary results.

“After studying the procedures and results from all 14 caucus states, interviewing dozens of witnesses, and reviewing hundreds of personal stories, my conclusion is that the Obama campaign willfully and intentionally defrauded the American public by systematically undermining the caucus process,” she said.

In Hawaii, for example, the caucus organizers ran out of ballots, so Obama operatives created more from Post-its and scraps of paper and dumped them into ice cream buckets. “The caucuses ended up with more ballots than participants, a sure sign of voter fraud,” Long said.

In Nevada, Obama supporters upturned a wheelchair-bound woman who wanted to caucus for Hillary, flushed Clinton ballots down the toilets, and told union members they could vote only if their names were on the list of Obama supporters.

In Texas, more than 2,000 Clinton and Edwards supporters filed complaints with the state Democratic Party because of the massive fraud. The party acknowledged that the Obama campaign’s actions “amount to criminal violations” and ordered them to be reported to state and federal law enforcement, but nothing happened.

In caucus after caucus, Obama bused in supporters from out of state, intimidated elderly voters and women, and stole election packets so Hillary supporters couldn’t vote. Thanks to these and other strong-arm tactics, Obama won victories in all but one of the caucuses, even in states such as Maine where Hillary had been leading by double digits in the polls.

Obama’s win in the caucuses, which were smaller events than the primaries and were run by the party, not the states, gave him the margin of victory he needed to win a razor-thin majority in the delegate count going into the Democratic National Convention.

Without these caucus wins, which Long and others claim were based on fraud, Clinton would be the Democrats’ nominee running against John McCain.  LINK

One of Barack Obama's first big "community organizer" jobs involved ACORN in 1992. Obama also trained ACORN employees (but says he wasn't paid by ACORN?). He represented ACORN in court. Obama worked with and protested with ACORN. His campaign donated $800,000 to ACORN this year for voter registration efforts.
And, ACORN EVEN CANVASSED FOR OBAMA IN OHIO:

At least two different Ohio blogs including Ohio Daily Blog posted an email from ACORN on February 21, 2008, announcing that Ohio ACORN was holding a Get Out The Vote project with the OBAMA Campaign.

It appears the Obama Campaign and ACORN also share talking points.
Yesterday, they both blamed John McCain and Republicans for the 12 different states investigating the organization for fraud.
ACORN President Maude Hurd, via USNW:

"We call on the McCain campaign to directly answer whether they, the Republican Party or their operatives have been conspiring with the Bush Administration to misuse the Justice Department in order to suppress voter turnout in 2008," ACORN President Maude Hurd said in a statement.

Likewise, the Obama Campaign released the same argument in their press release today- blaming Republicans for the massive number of voter fraud allegations against ACORN, via Bloomberg:

Robert Bauer, general counsel to the Obama campaign, wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey a day after the Associated Press, citing unidentified law enforcement officials, reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating ACORN. The name is short for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Bauer said the news leaks are part of a coordinated effort by McCain's presidential campaign and Republicans. They are ``fomenting specious vote-fraud allegations and there are disturbing indications of official involvement or collusion,'' Bauer said.

"It is apparent," he wrote, that law enforcement officials are serving "improper political objectives" that could inhibit voter participation in the Nov. 4 election. The aim is to "suppress the vote and to unduly influence investigations and prosecutions," Bauer wrote.

John McCain campaign manager Rick Davis charged last week that Democrat Barack Obama is not being honest about his ties to the group.

The FBI opened an investigation into the far-left "community organizer" group's nationwide voter-registration campaign this week. LINK

SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) -- Clifton Mitchell helped register nearly 2,000 voters for the community group ACORN. But not one of them actually existed.

"I regret it. I paid the price for it," he said.

Mitchell was convicted last year and spent nearly three months in prison. He's one of the few ACORN workers convicted of voter registration fraud.

Today, he lives with his wife and two boys, ages 3 and 1, in a small apartment in suburban Seattle, Washington. Mitchell said he scammed the system because, "I needed money; I had to support my family and I was new to the area. It was the only job I had."

Mitchell said ACORN threatened to close the office if he and his team didn't meet their quota to register 13 to 20 voters a day. So, without consulting their supervisors, he said, they came up with a plan.

"We came up with the idea: Let's make fraudulent cards. I tell my crew, 'I don't care how you get 'em, just get 'em,' " Mitchell recalled. They took addresses from homeless shelters, used fake birthdays and Social Security numbers and took names from baby books to create voters out of thin air.

"Every day I'd go to the library and get a newspaper," Mitchell said. "I had one guy who'd go to the phone book. Everyone had different methods."

The secretary of state called it "the worst case of voter registration fraud in the history of the state of Washington." ACORN was fined $25,000 and ordered to improve its oversight.

The group is under investigation in 10 states for voter registration fraud, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign has accused ACORN of trying to rig the election for Democrats.  LINK

According to a December 25 report in the Boston Globe, the Democratic Party is joining forces with the activist group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to place initiatives on state ballots this fall to raise the minimum wage. The idea is to energize the poor to vote for Democratic candidates as well as the initiative.

ACORN's involvement in this campaign is amusing because a few years ago the group sued the state of California for exemption from its minimum wage requirement, which was higher than the federal government's. In its appellate brief, ACORN acknowledged that the more it had to pay each worker, the fewer such workers it would be able to hire. Of course, the same thing is true for. businesses as well, something minimum wage advocates refuse to admit. 

Furthermore, ACORN argued that paying its workers less than the minimum wage aided its organizing efforts. Said the brief, "A person paid limited sums of money will be in a better position to empathize with and relate to the low and moderate membership and constituency of ACORN." Somehow I doubt that a business catering to those with low incomes would get any sympathy from ACORN if it made the same argument.

Indeed, ACORN has a history of denying its workers the rights that it demands from corporations. For example, its "People's Platform" says that all workers have the right to organize. Yet, when its own workers tried to do so, ACORN strenuously fought them.  LINK

ACORN Celebrates Minimum Wage Increase

WASHINGTON, July 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Thursday, July 24, ACORN
members celebrate the second part of a three-stage federal minimum wage hike
takes effect as 27 states across the country will see an increase from $5.85
to $6.55 after ACORN's decades of work on campaigns to increase wages of
working people to a living wage.  Although the federal government still lags
behind 23 states and the District of Columbia, 2.1 million workers will be
receiving a boost in pay from this minimum wage hike.  Next year the minimum
wage will settle at $7.25 unless Congress acts again. 

"This wage increase we are celebrating does not go high enough, but the money
is nonetheless very real in the pockets of people in our communities who work
hard and struggle to work their way up," said Maude Hurd, ACORN National
President. "ACORN members and our allies across the country are ready to keep
fighting until our nation no longer bears the shame of poverty wages, and our
policies keep pace with our moral values." LINK 

STORY 

While Barack Obama's connection with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has not gone entirely unreported, it has not been fully explained. Most media background pieces simply note Obama's involvement in a 1995 lawsuit on behalf of ACORN. Obama's own website, as well as most major media, fail to reveal the full depth and extent of his relationship with the organization.

Attempts to hide evidence of Obama's involvement with ACORN have included wiping the web clean of potentially damaging articles that had appeared, and were previously publicly accessible. Unfortunately, those behind the attempted cover-up failed to realize that in today's day and age, nothing disappears forever. There also exists another layer of the web, the hidden web, which is full of information included in proprietary scholarly databases where these very same "missing" articles can be easily uncovered.

Obama's campaign website states:

Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.

Is that really a FACT, or just another lie? Let's take a look at a quote from a 2004 article - Case Study: Chicago- The Barack Obama Campaign - written by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN Leader, which was published in the journal Social Policy. Did we mention that Social Policy recently pulled this particular article from their website, while leaving links to all other articles up?

"Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).

Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for STate Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends."

Not only does Foulkes boast of Obama's ACORN leadership training, but also makes it clear that Obama's post-law school organizing of "Project VOTE" in 1992 was undertaken in direct partnership with ACORN. The tie between Project VOTE and ACORN is also something that Obama and others have attempted to disprove in recent weeks as ACORN has come under fire for allegations of voter registration fraud.

As recently as March 2008, the Los Angeles Times also made reference to Barack Obama's involvement with ACORN:

"At the time, Talbot worked at the social action group ACORN and initially considered Obama a competitor. But she became so impressed with his work that she invited him to help train her staff." (LA Times, March 2, 2008)

All this information was easily pulled up with minimal time investment. It took less than thirty minutes to find, despite attempts by some to bury the truth. If I could find this with little effort, imagine what could be dug up with a serious, in-depth investigation. Scary, isn't it?

Nevertheless, Barack Obama's campaign website continues to lie and deny the truth about his involvement and association with ACORN. No matter how many times you say it, it does not make it true. The facts do not lie, Senator Obama. It's time to come clean and tell the truth, and it's time for the American people to demand it.

STORY

On Thursday we revealed the connection between Barack Obama and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and uncovered a 2004 article that discussed his involvement with the organization which had recently been removed from the web. Today, the cover-ups continue and language on Obama's fightthesmears.com website has been altered in order to make it look like he has been telling the truth about his ACORN associations all along.

Fortunately, we and many others online know how to do a screen capture and how to use a little something called Google Cache.

As of yesterday, Fightthesmears.com stated:

Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.

Sometime on Friday, the website was altered, and the text was changed to state:

Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.

The mere fact that his campaign has now changed the language of the site shows that they have conceded the fact that their original remark was a bold-face lie. As a lawyer Sen. Obama should know the importance of language.

The original statement implied that he had no working connection with ACORN, whereas the new statement now insists that he has never been employed or hired by ACORN.

It is good to see the truth finally come out now, but why were they trying to hide his association with ACORN, and what else is Obama lying to us about? Perhaps the biggest question now is how and why they got the Social Policy article stricken from most of the world wide web in the first.place. What are they trying to hide?

FightTheSmears.com as it was on October 9, 2008 (click to enlarge):

FightTheSmears.com as it shows in Google's cache, last updated Oct. 6, 2008 (click to enlarge):

FightTheSmears.com as it now shows, effective Oct. 10, 2008 (click to enlarge):

Why is Barack Obama giving ACORN $832,000 when it is a tax dead beat? (Hat tip to an intrepid NoQuarter reader.) Before Obama and Biden cast any more stones at poor Joe the Plumber for a $1200 tax lien, they might want to insist that their buddies at ACORN pony up the HALF-MILLION DOLLARS they owe the Federal Government. That’s right boys and girls, according to Louisiana State financial records, ACORN is a mega deadbeat: LINK

Pushed to meet daily quotas and bullied by bosses if they didn't, Ohio ACORN workers faked voter registrations, signed up people more than once, and even paid off registrants to keep from being fired, its canvassers told The Post.

"Every day, there was pressure on us. Every single day," said Teshika Elder, a Cleveland single mom of three who worked for ACORN this summer.

"We had meetings every morning where they'd go over your quota; they'd yell at you if you were low," said Elder, 21. "They'd sit us down and say if you didn't do better, they'd suspend you. They'd say, 'Try harder next time,' [and] if you didn't get it, you'd be fired."  LINK

NUTS!

HOW ACORN GOT ME INTO VOTE SCAM

By JEANE MacINTOSH, Post Correspondent

CLEVELAND - Two Ohio voters, including Domino’s pizza worker Christopher Barkley , claimed yesterday that they were hounded by the community-activist group ACORN to register to vote several times, even though they made it clear they’d already signed up.

Barkley estimated he’d registered to vote “10 to 15″ times after canvassers for ACORN, whose political wing has endorsed Barack Obama, relentlessly pursued him and others.

Claims such as his have sparked election officials to probe ACORN.

“I kept getting approached by folks who asked me to register,” Barkley said. “They’d ask me if I was registered. I’d say yes, and they’d ask me to do it [register] again.

“Some of them were getting paid to collect names. That was their sob story, and I bought it,” he said.

Barkley is one of at least three people who have been subpoenaed by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections as part of a wider inquiry into possible voter fraud by ACORN. The group seeks to register low-income voters, who skew overwhelmingly Democratic.

“You can tell them you’re registered as many times as you want - they do not care,” said Lateala Goins, 21, who was subpoenaed.

“They will follow you to the buses, they will follow you home, it does not matter,” she told The Post.

She added that she never put down an address on any of the registration forms, just her name.

A third subpoenaed voter, Freddie Johnson, 19, filled out registration cards 72 times over 18 months, officials said.

“It feeds the public perception that there could be [fraud], and that makes the pillars fall down,” said local Board of Elections President Jeff Hastings.

Registering under a fake name is illegal. But officials usually catch multiple registrations and toss them.

The major risk of fraud growing out of mass canvassing involves the possibility of ineligible voters filing absentee ballots, and thus avoiding checks at polling places, said Republican National Committee chief counsel Sean Cairncross.

The subpoenas come as Republicans have ramped up criticism of ACORN. Officials in Nevada raided ACORN’s Las Vegas office Tuesday, accusing the group of signing people up multiple times - in some cases under phony names, like those of Dallas Cowboys.

ACORN’s Cleveland spokesman, Kris Harsh, said his group collected 100,000 voter-registration cards; only about 50 were questionable, he claimed.

As for workers, “We watch them like a hawk,” he said.  LINK

The ACORN scandal — the community organizers that Barry helped to train; the community organizers who are supporting, endorsing, and working for Obama — just keeps getting worse, and worse, and worse. This might be the most serious, most egregious, most deliberate, and most widespread case of voter fraud ever.

And it’s all being done by and for Democrats. Especially for Barack Obama. Their Messiah.

In Lake County, Indiana, ACORN turned in 5,000 new registrations. The authorities there started reviewing them, and quit after they found that the first 2,100 were all fraudulent. The mind boggles: ACORN turns in thousands of new registrations, and not a single one represents a legitimate voter. Here is CNN’s report:

Shocking, I tell you. Shocking.

ACORN should be shut down immediately, it’s leadership locked up in prison, and they should be forever banned from registering voters or participating in the democratic process.

And every single one of their submitted voter registrations from this year — EVERY FUCKING LAST ONE OF THEM — should be independently verified.

I’m sure Obama’s myopic supporters will claim that this is simply a smear job, and an effort to disenfranchise poor and minority voters.

Except for one thing — you can’t disenfranchise voters who are 1) fictitious, 2) dead, 3) incarcerated felons, 4) children, or 5) the Dallas Cowboys.

h/t to Glenn Reynolds for the video.

The Wall Street Journal has much, much more on the ACORN / Obama relationship (the one that Obama keeps lieing about and doesn’t want you to talk or know about).

Washington
July 26, 2007,Seattle Times
Felony charges filed against 7 in state's biggest case of voter-registration fraud. The defendants, who were paid employees and supervisors of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

Michigan
September 14, 2008, Detroit Free Press
Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ...

Florida
Oct. 13, 2007, PRNewswire
A Florida state attorney is investigating thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registrations associated with the leading organizer of Florida's Amendment 5 ballot initiative. But this is just the tip of an iceberg of illegalities, fraud and contradictions connected to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) ... Former ACORN Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart has declared an intent to sue ACORN and has made charges of rampant voter fraud operations. Stuart was employed and specifically tasked by ACORN to generate 103,000 new voter registrations from Dade County. He reports that ACORN threw out Republican registrations while paying for Democratic ones. Stuart also charges that ACORN targeted ex-cons and that he personally set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail.

New Mexico
Sept. 18, 2008, Judicial Watch Blog
This week officials in New Mexico's most populous county (Bernalillo) notified federal authorities that more than 1,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted to the clerk's office. ACORN, which pays workers for each registration, is the prime suspect since it has handled thousands of new voter registrations in New Mexico since January. County workers subsequently discovered that at least 1,100 new registrations list Social Security numbers for people already in the county's database of registered voters, names of registered voters with different birth dates and addresses that don't exist.

Wisconsin
Aug. 6, 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them. "One woman called us to complain because her husband has been dead for 10 years and a voter registration was submitted," Edman said. In about 12 cases, deputy registrars paid by ACORN were "making people up or registering people that were still in prison," said Carolyn Castore, ACORN's state political director. And in other cases, workers used the same address for numerous voters or used driver's license numbers that did not fit the voters' birth dates, Edman said. But most of the fraud involved submitting duplicate cards for voters who were already registered, and forging the voters' signatures, Castore said.

Ohio
August 27, 2008, The Plain Dealer
A national organization that conducts voter registration drives for low-income people has curtailed its push in Cuyahoga County after the Board of Elections accused its workers of submitting fraudulent registration cards. Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign of possible fraud showed a number of people living at an address that turned out to be a restaurant. ACORN has submitted about 75,000 voter registration cards to the Cuyahoga board this year.

Pennsylvania
Sept. 18, 2008, The Bulletin: Philadelphia's Family Newspaper
A community organization, with longstanding ties to Barack Obama, has, according to numerous reports, repeatedly run afoul of voter registration laws both locally and nationally. Philadelphia election officials recently accused ACORN, of filing multiple fraudulent voter registrations during the 2008 Pennsylvania primary. The case has been referred to the U.S. Attorney's office, according to Philadelphia Deputy Election Commissioner Fred Voight. Delaware County election officials have made similar allegations against the group, and criminal indictments are pending. This past July 24, Dauphin County detectives offered a $2,000 reward for information about the whereabouts of Luis R. Torres-Serrano, an ACORN worker, who was accused of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registrations.

Nevada
July 7,2008, Las Vegas Review Journal
ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claims to have collected 60,000 new voter registrations in Clark County since February ... Lomax said while he supports the goal of getting more people registered to vote, he sees rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election. A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday.

A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam. LINK

And you thought 2000 was bad.

This year’s election is shaping up to be one of the most controversial in history. Just this week, a federal judge ordered Ohio’s top elections official to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents. The very next day a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside the federal judge’s order on verifying registrations.

Further igniting the voter fraud/voter registration debate was the news that a national community organizing group is being investigated in at least 14 states and several swing states for massive irregularities. This news would make headlines anyway, but what made it worse was that Barack Obama was a key player in this organization, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, in the past. Obama trained its local leaders, represented the organization in court, and worked to funnel funds to the organization. The Obama campaign also donated $800,000 this year to an ACORN affiliate. LINK

More than 4,000 votes (4,755) were cast under the names of dead New Jerseyans in last November's election, and nearly 11,000 more people appear to have voted twice, according to state Republicans who say they fear election fraud when voters choose a new governor.

Saying they first raised these issues with state officials in May, Republican State Committee leaders blasted state Attorney General Peter C. Harvey Thursday for "ignoring warnings" and demanded he address their concerns within a week or face a lawsuit. LINK

CROWN POINT, Indiana (CNN) -- More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana's Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have turned out to be bogus, election officials said Thursday.

And in Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.

"All the signatures looked exactly the same," Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. "Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same."  LINK

Thousands on the rolls after death, creating potential for fraud

Woodwick Street was quiet — with a few residents working in their yards and adding to post-storm brush piles at the curb — when Texas Watchdog visited on a recent Saturday to try to find Harris County voter Linda K. Hill.

“I’m sorry, but she passed on two years ago,” said a mustached man wearing a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap and driving a motorized chair down the street. He was Linda Hill’s husband, Henderson Hill Jr. LINK

The stories are almost comical: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, registered to vote on Nov. 4. The entire lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, signed up to go the polls — in Nevada.

LINK

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families. LINK

I’ve been telling you to keep an eye on Ohio’s voter fraud-friendly Democrat Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner. Good news: A judge in the Buckeye State is keeping an eye on her, too. And keeping her in check. The GOP just won a very significant court round against her:
 

A unanimous Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday, Oct. 2, ordered Brunner to tell county boards of elections not to reject applications for absentee ballots because of an unmarked box next to next to a statement that the applicant is a qualified elector.

“No vital public purpose or public interest is served by rejecting electors’ applications for absentee ballots because of an unmarked check box next to a qualified-elector statement,” the Supreme Court decision said.

The absentee ballot applications in question were supplied by Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign. Other application forms for absentee ballots don’t include the boxes.

Now, it’s time to turn up the heat on the early voting shenanigans and Homeless Ohioans for Obama registration drive and denial of access to GOP poll observers.

Early voting is taking place in Ohio. Through the end of the week, people can register and vote on the same day. The Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner argues that they are merely “casting their ballot” rather than “voting” so the fact that Ohio statute requires 30 days between registering and voting would not interfere.

So here is what is happening today. People are showing up to register and vote. There is no affirmative evidence that these people have not registered or voted somewhere else. There is no control. Normally in an election, partisan election monitors are allowed into polling places so that they can police each other. But not in two counties, Franklin and Montgomery, in Ohio. Brunner also issued an advisory opinion to counties saying that they are not required to allow election monitors.

I’ve blogged Brunner’s shenanigans previously here.

She’s doing her thug thizzle.

Time to fight back.

The West Virginia Secretary of State has issued a “voter fraud advisory:”

West Virginia Secretary of State Betty Ireland recently issued a release to address concerns about voter fraud in the state.

“My office takes the matter of election fraud very seriously, and every precaution is being taken to make sure no voter is disenfranchised by this activity,” Ireland said.

It has been discovered that “several hundred” voter applications have been filed with forged signatures, wrong addresses or changed party affiliation. Ireland’s release stated some submitted registration forms contained names and addresses “that have simply been lifted from the phone book.”

Ireland said cases of voter registration fraud have cropped up in Kanawha County. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of Southern West Virginia, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service are investigating the issue statewide, along with other agencies. 

The board is investigating the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Results of the inquiry could be turned over to the county prosecutor.

Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign of possible fraud showed a number of people living at an address that turned out to be a restaurant.
LINK

One of Big Labor’s chief allies in promoting last November’s several state ballot initiatives to hike minimum wage rates was the far-left activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The group claims that it “helped more ... than 540,000 low-income and minority people register to vote in 2006.” The minimum-wage initiatives were part of an ACORN strategy to bring out the Democrats’ base by rallying support around the issue.

But some ACORN activists may have committed election fraud. In Missouri, ACORN and its union allies credit the minimum-wage issue with helping put Democrat Claire McCaskill over the top in her challenge to Republican incumbent Sen. Jim Talent. ACORN’s actions have raised eyebrows—and produced federal indictments. LINK

Friday, November 3, 2006 12:01 A.M. EST

So, less than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from Acorn, the liberal activist group that has registered millions of voters, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board. But hey, who needs voter ID laws?

We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. LINK

SEATTLE (AP) - King County prosecutors filed felony charges Thursday against seven people in what a top official described as the worst case of voter-registration fraud in state history, while the organization they worked for agreed to keep a better eye on its employees and pay $25,000 to defray costs of the investigation.

The seven submitted about 1,800 registration cards last fall on behalf of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which had hired them at $8 an hour to sign people up to vote, according to charging documents filed in Superior Court. LINK

New report shows ACORN has been linked to voter fraud in 12 states including Ohio

8/11/06, Washington, DC –ACORN’s recent run-in with the Franklin County elections board for allegedly turning in falsified voter registration cards is only the latest in a long-standing pattern of dubious elections practices. ACORN employees have been accused of submitting bogus voter registration cards and forging signatures on ballot initiatives in 12 states since 2004.

In addition to Ohio, ACORN employees have been accused of illegal elections practices in New Mexico, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia among others. Here are just a few examples of ACORN’s pattern and practice of fraud associated with their campaigns:  LINK

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.  LINK

Greta Van Susteren thinks there’s something afoot – something akin to The Weather Undergound STEALING THE ELECTION:

1. The Secretary of State of Ohio Jennifer Brunner filed a request in the Supreme Court relating to the underlying claim in her state that there has been voter registration fraud…with ties to the work of ACORN in registering voters.

2.  A group — the Service Employees International Union [SEIU] — filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court asking the Supreme Court to rule with the Secretary of State of Ohio (and essentially asking for a ruling that would be favorable to ACORN in that it would “call off the dogs.”)

3.  I thought it curious that SEIU would file an amicus brief for Brunner and did some quick research …and now I need more indepth research (which is where YOU come in.)  According to my quick research..the same person who started ACORN, started SIEU.  His name is Wade Rathke. So then I wondered, who is Wade Rathke?

4.  I did some really quick research and learned that Rathke was a member of the anti war group SDS. This is where YOU come in again.  If you know 60’s history, you know that the Weather Underground was an offshoot of SDS.  There was some disagreement in the late 60’s and members of the SDS - Bill Ayers and his wife - left and formed/ joined the Weather Underground.

Pardon me while I say Zoinks.

Just your normal everyday community organizers. Bombs, ballots… Whatever.

Oh, these next 19 days are gonna be a hoot.

And if that doesn’t make you angry enough, did you know that $31 million of OUR tax dollars have gone to ACORN to steal this election *possibly* for The Weather Undergound?

That’s $31 million on top of the $832,000 Bill Ayers’ Friend gave them to steal the election *possibly* for The Weather Underground.

This is officially now a two Sweet Fancy Moses! alert. LINK