The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, popularly known as ACORN, has not violated the terms under which it has received federal funding in the last five years, according to a government report released on Tuesday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.).
The report, which was requested by Conyers and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The 82-page report details the research organization’s survey of 46 federal, state, and local investigations concerning ACORN — 11 of which are still pending — and of several congressional probes.
Conyers pointed out that CRS found “no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees and who were reported “attempting to vote at the polls. And, the report says that ACORN has received federal funds, mostly from the departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development, 48 times in the last five years. In none of those cases did Acorn violate the terms of the funding.
The CRS report does not include findings from a just-announced Government Accountability Office investigation of ACORN’s use of federal funds. House GOP Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said they were informed of the investigation in a Dec. 7 letter from GAO. Smith and Issa were not immediately available for comment on the CRS report.
ACORN, a controversial community organizing group that focuses largely on voter registration and housing, received unfavorable publicity when documentary filmmakers earlier this year released undercover videos that they described as showing ACORN workers giving them advice on how to buy property to use as a brothel. ACORN was already under attack from conservatives and many Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The videos spurred Congress to action. The House passed legislation in September known as the Defund ACORN Act of 2009, and several appropriations bills contained a prohibition on any funds in the bill going to ACORN.
Those actions, in turn, prompted some members of Congress to question whether the legislation respresented unconstitutional bills of attainder. The CRS report raises those questions as well, noting that “courts ‘may have a sufficient basis’ to conclude that the legislation ‘violates the prohibition against bills of attainder.’” However, according to the report, the limited term of the defunding mandated in the appropriations bills “could arguably be justified as an expedience necessary to address an issue of immediate congressional concern, while allowing Congress sufficient time to consider a longer term solution.”
The entire Democratic Party has fallen for the Far-Right’s Acorn agenda, and I’m totally shocked at how they have taken this bait. This entire Democratic Party includes the Democratic Caucus of both the House of Representatives, and the Senate. And, it includes the Obama Administration, too, since Mr. Obama signed the legislation to defund ACORN. It is shocking on its face.
Below is a link to a thoughtful piece about ACORN by Eric Alterman. It should be required reading for every elected Democrat in Washington. Here’s the link:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/09/ta092409.html
The Democrats have shot themselves in the foot when they got taken in by the likes of likes of Darrell Issa, the right-wing Rethuglican who was instrumental in recalling a good Democratic California governor, Grey Davis, who struggled with the mess left by his incompetent Republican predecessor, the just-awful Pete Wilson. Mr. Issa expected to become governor, but we got a governator instead.