As if it needed it, the leftist Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is the subject of yet another video at BigGovernment.com. The latest installment is even worse in some ways than its predecessors, and not long after it appeared, the U.S. House of Representatives shut the lid on ACORN’s coffin and hammered in the third nail. It terminated all federal funding for ACORN.
The latest video depicts an ACORN worker in San Diego calmly giving advice to conservative documentarians James O’Keefe and Hanna Giles, who represented themselves as a pimp and his prostitute planning to smuggle underage prostitutes across the border.
The ACORN employee advised the pair on how to smuggle the girls through Tijuana. "I have a lot of contacts" in the city, he said, who can assist the illegal operation. O’Keefe patiently and repeatedly explained that the girls were underage and said the pair did not want to be harassed. The employee acted as if it were just another day at the ACORN office.
Aside from giving advice on getting the underage girls across the border, the ACORN employee, who billed himself as a lawyer, asked Giles how much she charges for a trick.
ACORN’s troubles began last week when the pair visited ACORN offices in Baltimore, Md., Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn, N.Y. The pair then tackled the ACORN office in San Bernardino, Calif., where an employee said she murdered her husband. That was a lie, the employee said. She said she simply played along with the pair. Possibly. But then came the video in San Diego. A day after that surfaced, ACORN fired the employee in San Diego and suspended the employee in San Bernardino.
While ACORN heatedly denied at first that any such thing could be true and threatened to sue O’Keefe, Giles, and Fox News, which scooped the rest of the media on the story, ACORN finally surrendered. CEO Bertha Lewis was forced to admit that something was wrong. So the organization has halted all "new intakes" and has ordered an internal investigation along with training for its employees.
After the first three videos surfaced, the leftist organization’s friends began running for cover. The Census Bureau ended its relationship with group, which was supposed to help with the 2010 population count. On Monday, the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to end funding for ACORN via the federal Housing and Urban Development Department. Then House Minority Leader John Boeher (R-Ohio) introduced a bill to defund ACORN.
After the last video surfaced, the House passed that bill, 346-75. Only Democrats voted against the bill. (The legislation still must clear Congress and then be signed by the President to become law.)
These stunning revelations only add more woes to ACORN’s problems of late. The organization is under investigation across the nation for perpetrating a massive voter registration fraud. The Obama Administration, which terms ACORN’s activities in the videos "completely unacceptable," gave the organization $832,000 in the last election campaign to get out the vote.
Photo: AP Images
