New Orleans They’re back! The Republican Hater Patrol is roaming the streets of Congress again, and this time they are pulling white sheets of paper up to their heads. It appears the Republicans are working hard to re-brand themselves as vampire hunters modeled after last year’s movie about the young Abraham Lincoln as his pre-presidential avocation as a vampire scourge, but instead they are coming off as pathetic actors in their own private version of Groundhog Day and seemingly committed to going after ACORN on regular basis.
Bloggers with the Huffington Post and other sites did the thankless task of actually looking through the more than 200 pages of the Republican introduced continuing resolution on the federal budget. There on page 221 in section 205 was the following: “SEC. 510. None of the funds made available in this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries or successors.”
As Zach Carter pointed out on the Huffington Post website:
“Independent investigations by the California attorney general, the Massachusetts attorney general and the Brooklyn, N.Y. district attorney would later clear ACORN of criminal wrongdoing, and an investigation by the Government Accountability Office would clear ACORN of charges that it mishandled federal funds. But the damage to ACORN’s reputation had already been done. By November of 2009, Congress had defunded the organization, using broad language that applied to “any organization” that had been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. The funding ban also extended to any employees, contractors or others affiliated with any group charged with any of those things.”
No sense arguing again about the Constitutional protection against “bills of attainder” which hold that Congress has no power to declare anyone or any organization guilty without trial, the ACORN attack has become a signifier to the hooligans on Capitol Hill that it’s time for night riding and door-to-door searches to root out their enemies.
The old law is bad enough and survived court challenges. Now that Obama is pardoning some folks who actually committed crimes, we can think about a campaign to get a pardon for ACORN and its “subsidiaries and successors.”
We would need a blanket pardon, since anyone with progressive politics or who stands with the people and the poor is similarly banned, because in truth we are all ACORN’s successors. And, I might add, speaking personally, proud of it!