The American Spectator

S.L. Toddard| 9.22.09 @ 6:49PM

'I thank Matthew for his hat tip, and for his longstanding, indefatigable work to expose ACORN"

Yes, such profoundly valuable work. Once ACORN is out of business we'll all be better off because... uh...

The federal government continues to expand exponentially, beyond the bounds of the Constitution and common sense. Our government continues to spend trillions more than it takes in. Two of the biggest government boondoggles in American history are even now costing us trillions of dollars and the lives of our soldiers. Our government has a massive KGB-esque domestic spying regime that monitors the communications of American citizens on American soil, and that KGB is now in the hands of Barack Obama. Our government has built and uses torture chambers, like some 3rd world banana republic, and in those torture chambers over a hundred people have died. Our government has captured people far from any battlefield, imprisoned and abused them, only to release them years later because they were innocent of any crime. Our Constitution is a dead letter, paid lip service to by whichever party is out of power and abandoned utterly once back in.

But hey at least ACORN - an organization no one here had ever heard of before it was determined it could be used to attack the credibility of Barack Obama - will no longer be able to get out the Democrat vote. That will solve everything. Thanks for your invaluable work, Matt.

Matthew Vadum| 9.22.09 @ 9:33PM

You're very welcome, SLT. Always happy to oblige.

Skip MacLure| 9.23.09 @ 12:34AM

Invaluable work indeed Matt. You'll forgive SLT....It's the neural synapses.
Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

Amdog| 9.23.09 @ 9:17AM

We know what they have done, will do and who did it and who will do it. America needs to inform elected officials who still love this country ,more than their careers, that we can supply them with facts. Their only role now is to enforce existing law and eradicate this blight. While, I seek no third party, some party must become the party of TRUTH and CONSEQUENCES.

Ken (Old Texican)| 9.23.09 @ 9:42AM

Amdog, you win the gold star. We must find and NOMINATE the right people to go to congress.
Let them form a "Repealer Caucus or "Constitutional Caucus"" and start rolling back the size of government and its intrusion.
In your congressional district...or one next door...is where you find those great candidates.

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 11:42AM

As the great American patriot, indefatigable champion of the American Constitution and tireless defender of our Civil Liberties Glenn Greenwald writes, the tireless efforts of Mr. Vadum and his fellow anti-ACORN crusaders may have unintended positive consequences (meaning beyond crippling a Democratic vote-getting machine): namely, de-funding Halliburton and a host of other defense contractors:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) -- my guest on Salon Radio today -- yesterday pointed out that the bill passed by both the Senate and House to de-fund ACORN is written so broadly that it literally compels the de-funding not only of that group, but also the de-funding of, and denial of all government contracts to, any corporation that "has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency." By definition, that includes virtually every large defense contractor, which -- unlike ACORN -- has actually been found guilty of fraud. As The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim put it: "the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops."

I spoke with Rep. Grayson this morning regarding the consequences of all of this. He is currently compiling a list of all defense contractors encompassed by this language in order to send to the administration officials (and has asked for help from the public in compiling that list, here). The President is required by Constitution to "faithfully execute" the law, which should mean that no more contracts can be awarded to any companies on that list, which happens to include the ten largest defense contractors in America. Before being elected to Congress, Grayson worked extensively on uncovering and combating defense contractor fraud in Iraq, and I asked him to put into context ACORN's impact on the American taxpayer versus these corrupt contractors. His reply: "The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Haillburton each day during the war in Iraq."

The irony of all of this is that the Congress is attempting to accomplish an unconstitutional act: singling out and punishing ACORN, which is clearly a "bill of attainder" that the Constitution explicitly prohibits -- i.e., an act aimed at punishing a single party without a trial. The only way to overcome that problem is by pretending that the de-funding of ACORN is really about a general policy judgment (that no corrupt organizations should receive federal funding). But the broader they make the law in order to avoid the Constitutional problems, the more it encompasses the large corrupt corporations that own the Congress. The narrower they make it in order to include only ACORN, the more blatantly unconstitutional it is. Now that they have embraced this general principle that no corrupt organizations should receive federal funding, how is anyone going to justify applying that only to ACORN while continuing to fund the corpoations whose fraud and corruption is vastly greater (not to mention established by actual courts of law)?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g.....index.html

I’m sure that Mr. Vadum and all those tireless defenders of Law and Order - who attack ACORN not as a disingenuous proxy attack on the Democrats but rather because of its corruption - will join me in cheering the de-funding of these corrupt defense contractors, who have defrauded the American people out of exponentially more money, and to far more disastrous consequences, than ACORN could ever dream of doing.

Hip! Hip!

…hello?

Tom| 9.23.09 @ 12:59PM

ACORN needs a little RICO