acorn

Just got this from a CNN breaking news email:

A person hired to collect names to get Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on the ballot for the Virginia primary turned in fraudulent signatures, Gingrich says.

“We hired somebody who turned in false signatures. We turned in 11,100 -- we needed 10,000 — 1,500 of them were by one guy who frankly committed fraud," Gingrich told a woman at a campaign stop in Algona, Iowa.

It's funny that when people who ACORN hired did the same thing that it was systematic fraud committed on the behalf of ACORN. So does this make Newt Gingrich himself guilty of wanting to commit voter fraud the same way it was with ACORN? I would say so.

The two top contenders for the 2012 GOP Presidential nod are facing increased hostility in the GOP electorate a new poll from PPP finds. Here’s some of the interesting numbers:

• 20% find that Romney’s Mormon religion is a problem.
• 30% Believe that Newt’s three divorces are a disqualifier.
• 61% won’t vote for Romney because of Romney-care.

The poll was conducted amongst likely GOP voters and the last number is very problematic for Romney. Romney-care was something instituted on the state level. Think about the main complaint of the mandate in Obama care when it comes to Republicans – that the mandate should be handled on the state level. With close to 2/3rds of GOP voters opposing Romney for instituting a mandate on the state level, it shows that Republicans are against the mandate all together and saying the federal government “over reached” was nothing more than a strawman.

And speaking of Strawmen, the poll has some other interesting information tucked away in it:

One other note from our Republican primary poll- GOP voters think that the ACORN threat has gone down significantly. In November of 2009 we found 52% of Republicans thought ACORN had stolen the election for Barack Obama in 2008. Now only 25% think the organization will steal the election for him again next year, while 43% think it will not and 32% aren't sure yet.

Now 25% may seem like a high percentage to think that an organization no longer in existence will manage to steal a Presidential election but it's less than half the number who thought that two years ago.

Among Republicans who think ACORN will steal the election their top choice for the nomination is Palin at 20%, followed by Gingrich at 19%, and Huckabee and Romney at 16%.

It’s amazing. The big media types all jumped on that ACORN video earlier this year, despite it being edited to be taken totally out of context. Now we this story of Shirley Sherrod, someone who has lost their job due to the journalistic malpractice of one Andrew Breitbart.

Over at the San Francisco Chronicle, a strong case is made to bring Breitbart to justice over this:

While he says he intended to harm the NAACP, he picked Shirley Sherrod to do it. She did not ask for this. Breitbart altered a video to twist her words.

Andrew Breitbart may be a target for the U.S. Department of Justice' Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section ("CCIPS") which is in the Criminal Division. The website, which was forwarded to this blogger by the DOJ on another issue, covers various types of crimes that involve a computer.

If Breitbart altered the video of Shirley Sherrod to make it look like she was making a statement he then called racist, he's certainly guilty of defamation of character against Shirley Sherrod.

Breitbart may also be guilty of Internet harassment. He certainly should be made a high-profile example to discourage others from these uses of the computer and The Internet to harass a person. Enough is enough.

There have been cases against internet commenters, let alone the publisher of an internet “news” site.

If in the “new media” age we want to be treated the same as traditional media, then all bloggers should get behind any legal action against Andrew Breitbart. He hurts the blogosphere as a whole by his intentional lies and smears published on his sites. Sure the left and right blogosphere disagree and they must to thrive, but to resort to such lying in order to advance an agenda and your own site; well that is unacceptable no matter if you are the most liberal or conservative of blogger.

This is just to priceless:

The FBI, alleging a plot to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in downtown New Orleans, arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility.

FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes alleges that O'Keefe aided and abetted two others, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who dressed up as employees of a telephone company and attempted to interfere with the office's telephone system.

A fourth person, Stan Dai, was accused of aiding and abetting Basel and Flanagan. All four were charged with entering fedral property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.

James O’Keefe is a blogger for Andrew Brietbart’s BigGovernment web site and was one of the filmmakers who “exposed” ACORN. Over night O’Keefe became a hero of the right. I wonder how they will treat him now?

A lot of us were totally expecting this, but not this fast:

Today, U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon granted a preliminary injunction against the United States for unconstitutionally withholding funds from ACORN. In its decision, the court found that there is a likelihood the plaintiffs will be able to show that Congress’ targeted defunding of ACORN violates the Constitution’s prohibition against Bills of Attainder, legislative acts which single out a specific person or group for punishment.

The Court’s ruling stated, “The plaintiffs have raised a fundamental issue of separation of powers.  They have been singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or administrative, process adjudicating guilt... The public will not suffer harm by allowing the plaintiffs to continue work on contracts duly awarded by federal agencies...”

This whole issue came to fruition because the weak-kneed Democrats once again caved to the very small minority of the right. Hopefully this case will go all the way up to SCOTUS and they will uphold the ruling.

The news that a judge has allowed the case of Jamie Leigh Jones against Halliburton/KBR to move forward has come at a very interesting time.

Jones has accused co-workers at Halliburton/KBR of kidnapping and rape. Normally you would think this kind of case would immediately become a prosecutorial matter, yet Halliburton was able to stop Jones from doing anything saying she had to go through “arbitration”.

So what makes the timing so interesting? Well Halliburton/KBR receives billions in taxpayer dollars, a far cry more than ACORN ever has. Not once did we hear any Republicans demand that taxpayer money be cut off from the company. Not once!

This is a case of a company that has apparently tried to cover up a brutal gang raping of one of their female employees. That is a lot worse than anything ACORN is being accused of, yet the Republicans find this totally disgusting action acceptable.

And again – the right is trying to make President Obama out like he is the founder and CEO of ACORN. No he isn’t, but remember who the CEO of Halliburton was? Dick Cheney, right before he became vice-president. And as vice-president he made millions off of his stock options from Halliburton – stock that went up because of the Iraq War.

Sen. Richard Shelby was just on Morning Joe and he was, in an oh-so serious voice, expressing concern about ACORN and the possibility of “millions of tax payer dollars wasted”.

Where was Sen. Shelby when we were hearing about all the waste, fraud and abuse of Halliburton and KBR?

Where was his serious face when whistle blowers were talking about KBR feeding our troops spoiled food, so that the higher ups in the corporation could dine in better style?

Where was he when we started learning about our troops being electrocuted because of crappy work being done by U.S. contractors in Iraq?

And this doesn’t go for Shelby alone, but the entire Republican Party and right wing media. They all defended Halliburton and other contractors, and when in power refused to allow hearings.

But the most interesting thing is how the right is acting like President Obama is the CEO of ACORN or something. No he isn’t, but you know who WAS the CEO of Halliburton…Dick Cheney.

I guess for Republicans, playing politics is even more important than the well being of our troops fighting for this country.

It's great to see ACORN firing back at the GOP over their bogus allegations.

ACORN isn't laying down either, filing two lawsuits today. This entire faux-outrage by the rabid right has really shown their hatred. Who in their right mind would think that a national group like ACORN would collude to go out and illegally register people? It's about as absurd as saying the RNC is holding meetings on how to keep blacks from voting.