Christian Hartsock
Big Journalism
March 6, 2010

On March 5, in a kicking-and-screaming, last-ditch effort to save her organization, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis wrote in BeyondChron.org of the “right-wing attacks” on ACORN by “undercover right-wing racist James O’Keefe,” repeating a Greatest Hits compilation of factually-defunct angles left has desperately drummed into the mainstream for the past five months, from the race angle to the doctored-videos angle.
On March 4, Stephen Colbert staked these angles to the pop culture turf in light of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s recent report that the undercover tapes were “heavily edited,” producing a satirically-edited interview with Sean Hannity to deride James’ allged “deceptive editing.”  No mention that Charles Hynes, the Brooklyn DA, was endorsed by the ACORN-related Working Families Party during his recent bid for re-election. (Find the unedited audio and full transcripts here.)
And my recent bar brawl with Tommy Christopher — a Mediaite blogger who has been promoting the notion that James O’Keefe’s ACORN investigation was racially motivated — in Washington D.C. during CPAC, confirms my assessment of the utter desperation of O’Keefe’s critics.
The left tried to play off the first few ACORN tapes as mere evidence of “just few bad apples.” But as more tapes were released, they soon realized the next defense would have to be that it was just one bad apple tree.
When it was inarguable that the tree itself was completely infected, liberals ran like hell from ACORN, Rep. Nancy Pelosi calling their behavior “despicable” and President Barack Obama saying it was “inappropriate and deserved to be investigated.”
And on February 22, it was announced that ACORN was to dissolve as a national structure (a move nevertheless recognized as more of a mere name-change). So, for the record, not only have Democrats been running from ACORN – now even ACORN is running from ACORN.
But despite all the distance they managed to put between themselves an ACORN, the left still dubbed the investigation an “attack” – and even more curiously, an attack they took personally. And now they want revenge.
Very few – if any – conservatives you meet will tell you they see Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate investigation as an “attack” on the right. But liberals continuously refer to the ACORN investigation as an “attack.” The rest of us refer to it as an investigation. Nevertheless, to them, “exposing” and “attacking” are synonymous terms, and most of them refuse to even recognize the exposers as anything but attackers.
There is but one reason that not only Bertha Lewis, but the mainstream establishment itself refuses to recognize James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles as investigative journalists, or bitterly add “scare quotes” to the term; it must be because they felt ACORN’s downfall was a team loss, and that they themselves were the ones under investigation. As the former Communist-turned-conservative, Whittaker Chambers, once wrote: “Innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt does.”
They first attacked O’Keefe for allegedly “attending a white supremacist forum.” But then Larry O’Connor revealed that the organizer of “white supremacist event” was half-Jewish and half-Korean. Yeah, see, that didn’t work out so well, now, did it?
Their next angle has been echoing the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office contention that the videos were a “heavily edited splice job.”  No they weren’t. And we still await a shred of evidence to the contrary. However, the left doesn’t depend on evidence to support their accusations – they depend on the loudness and repetition of the accusation itself.
But let’s not get distracted by the irrelevent issue of whether O’Keefe wore his “pimp costume” inside the ACORN offices; the point is, he said he was a pimp, and the recorded conversations are clearly understood in that context. Let’s look instead at the larger picture: why are they digging their own graves with their ceaseless and baseless attacks? They know they have no ammunition for a full-frontal assault, so their current tactic is to whisper innuendos about “racial motives” into the parrot cage, wait for the parrots to pick up on them and begin squawking loudly, and then ask the target: So how do you respond to what the parrots are squawking? Hey, don’t look at me! I didn’t make the accusation – the parrots did.
Imagine if such tactics were employed by conservative reporters: “So, Secretary Gibbs, how would you respond to allegations that Jeremiah Wright has been a secret monthly guest in the Lincoln bedroom? I’m not making the allegation, I’m just asking how you would respond to it.” Of course, no one on the left would take issue with such a question – because it’s only a question, right?
Tommy Christopher apparently thinks we’re that stupid. When I asked him why he has invested so much energy into dignifying a preposterous question with repetition, he distanced himself from the question itself, screaming: “I didn’t make it up!”
Well I didn’t make up the idea that the moon landing was staged – but you don’t see me chasing down NASA scientists and asking them how they would respond to the allegation.
So perhaps Tommy Christopher did not “make up” the accusations about James’ alleged racial motives, but at least Christopher and I both apparently agree that they were, in fact, made up.

Brad Thor
Big Journalism
March 2, 2010

Andrew Breitbart’s recent smackdown of Max Blumenthal at CPAC (for his vicious smears against James O’Keefe) serves as a reminder to us all that when Liberal “journalists” attack, they have one goal – and it isn’t reporting the truth.  It is to win at any cost no matter what the damage is to the victim.  It is called the politics of personal destruction and it reflects the utter nihilism of Liberalism.
The tactic has been used repeatedly by the left (see Sarah Palin), but is particularly disturbing when used as a cudgel to destroy decent, hard-working Americans.  One such decent, hardworking (and extremely patriotic) American is Barrett Moore, founder of Triple Canopy.



I met Barrett a couple of years ago in Chicago at a luncheon for Navy SEAL, Marcus Luttrell author of the bestselling novel, Lone Survivor and boy do the Liberals hate him.
As I mentioned, Moore was the founder of Triple Canopy, one of America’s first private military companies (or PMC) and under his stewardship, he assembled one of this nation’s most impressive fighting forces – most of whom were retired members of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D) (Delta Force) – and sent them overseas to help carry our burden in Iraq.  What’s more, he did it at a fraction of the cost and much more efficiently than the American government ever could.  That’s private enterprise for you, but because his private enterprise involved guns, the Liberals focused on him like a laser beam.
Their attacks would come not only while he was at Triple Canopy, but even more devastatingly once he had been forced out.
While at Triple Canopy, detractors from the left weren’t the only problem Barrett had to deal with.  He also had a handful of business partners eager to carve out bigger and juicier government contracts.  For that to happen, Triple Canopy would have to move from their fifty-yard-line seats up into a skybox.  In the world of Department of Defense contracts, the big players are those who did $1 billion or more with DOD annually.  At the time, Triple Canopy was in the hundreds of millions of dollars range.  This was a very respectable number to be sure, but it wouldn’t put them in the Defense Department’s inner circle.  To get to the $1 billion level, they needed to find a way to bring in even more contracts.   It was at this moment that Triple Canopy was made an offer that only Barrett Moore could have refused.
The Central Intelligence Agency introduced Barrett and Triple Canopy to a wealthy organization that provides the CIA with much of its innovative technology and technical services.  It was a match made in heaven, or so everyone thought; everyone that is, except for Barrett.

After retiring from careers of distinguished service, the nation’s best soldiers, sailors, and Marines were beating a path to Triple Canopy’s door.  This couldn’t have made the CIA very happy; after all they draw from this talent pool as well. But given the choice between working at a private sector corporation with a reputation like Triple Canopy’s or going to work for a bureaucratic monstrosity like the CIA, the choice wasn’t hard for our country’s elite operators.  Time and again they chose Triple Canopy.
Ironically, when Triple Canopy had first arrived on the scene in Iraq, it had taken up residence in one of Saddam’s former palaces with the CIA literally in the palace to the left of it and the Army’s elite Delta Force Squadrons in a palace to the right.  It was an uncanny metaphor for what Barrett believed was driving the CIA’s suggested merger/buyout of his company.
His reluctance to go along with the plan stemmed from several concerns, not the least of which being his devotion to the operators that formed the backbone of his company.  In short, he had no interest in becoming the paramilitary arm of a technology organization that took its marching orders from the Central Intelligence Agency.  You see, Barrett had created Triple Canopy to be a place where operators could still honorably serve their country alongside the same caliber of soldiers they had worked with in the Special Operations community.  He’d be damned before he would sell those men out.
Barrett’s partners, though, saw things differently.  They didn’t mind if the CIA wanted access to Triple Canopy’s talent, as long as the merger would result in big payouts.  This put the partners and Barrett at loggerheads and their eventual uncoupling was an unpleasant and ugly affair.
After a protracted legal battle, Barrett was forced out as the founding CEO and largest shareholder, but with a sizable settlement from Triple Canopy (whose remaining partners ironically never did succeed in selling the company despite repeated attempts).
With Barrett Moore retired from the PMC world, the Liberals no longer had him to demonize anymore – at least not until he came roaring back with a new concept and a brand new company.  His idea was so offensive and so horrific to Liberals that the George Soros/SEIU funded Center for Independent Media (now re-branded as The American Independent News Network) not only went after the concept, but after Barrett as well.  After all, if you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger.

So what was this Liberal bête noir?  Its bite hardly seems worth the Leftists’ bark.  You see, Barrett actually had the temerity to suggest that people be self-reliant.  He had the unmitigated gall to intimate that in times of disaster (natural or “man-made”) that the big government nanny state might not be there for you.
This audacious man wanted people to move beyond their ingrained experiences that stores are always open and their shelves are always full – what Barrett calls the “7-Eleven” effect. There is a genuine need to change this mentality and have people consider what they would do if our just-in-time delivery system was disrupted and grocery stores and pharmacies were unable to restock.
He wanted people to learn to become self-sufficient and not rely upon the government for help in an emergency.  He had even invested $20 million of his own money to master the private disaster response arena and become an expert in all aspects of preparedness.  How dare he! How dare this rapscallion throw up speed bumps along the road to Socialism!  Obviously, this man didn’t know how evil his message of self-empowerment was.  Something needed to be done.  Somehow, Moore needed to be taught a lesson once and for all.  Enter the progressive advocacy communication web site Michigan Messenger and their related radical blogs.
In a series of hit pieces, the Michigan Messenger went after Barrett Moore in every way it could.  It started by attacking the overall purpose of his business – helping people prepare for the unexpected.

Moore’s company, appropriately named Sovereign Deed, offers a wide range of products and services, all geared toward continuity of life; a mandate our government long ago abandoned, but which Liberals believe is still its sole purview.
Whether it’s helping you stock the appropriate type and amount of provisions for you and your family in case of a supply-chain disruption, assembling a high-end bug-out-bag, subscribing to updates from their global analysis center, or developing post-event contingency plans, Sovereign Deed is all about helping people survive situations all of us hope never happen.
But being self-reliant threatens the Liberals’ vision of dependence upon a glorious, utopia-promising big government, so they attacked Sovereign Deed as being nothing more than salvation for the rich.  In their twisted view of the world, private sector businesses should simply give their services away.  If the truth be told, Sovereign Deed has actually done just that.  After the earthquake in Haiti, Moore and his company donated over 200+ metric tons of relief supplies (310 pallets) including food, medicine, medical equipment, tools, shelter and children’s toys with no fanfare whatsoever.
When the Michigan Messenger’s ridiculous, anti-private sector message failed to gain traction, they moved to the next page in the Liberal playbook and attacked Moore personally.
At DePauw University, Moore nearly single-handedly revived the university’s Army ROTC program (which had been driven off the campus by liberals in the 1970s) and simultaneously joined the US Army Reserves; working with a military intelligence unit based at Eli Lilly’s Indianapolis laboratory facilities where it focused on the Soviet bioweapons program.  A highly intelligent, physically fit, patriotic young man, Moore was on the radar screens of many prominent government agencies.
After graduation, Moore disappeared for seven months of “additional training” before turning up in Australia – a covert hotspot for illicit weapons trafficking.  Within a short time, Moore had “amazingly” established an exotic car import business (bringing Porsches in from the United States and Europe), which allowed him to infiltrate a major organized crime ring affiliated with the Russians.  But a perfect James Bond plot this wasn’t.
Whether it was via the Russians from on high, or via members of the crime syndicate Moore was mapping, it became suspected that he wasn’t who they thought he was and they attempted to assassinate him and send a message to the US.  Moore,survived the attack and has the bullet wound to show for it.
When the plot to assassinate him failed, corrupt Australian law enforcement officers (tied to the organization Moore had been working to infiltrate), created a sophisticated plan to frame him.  By the time the High Court of Australia (their Supreme Court), had officially and fully exonerated him, Moore had spent forty-three days in a maximum-security Australian prison.

All of this became fodder in the Soros-backed Michigan Messenger’s attempt to discredit Moore and prevent him from locating Sovereign Deed’s supply distribution nerve center in a small northern Michigan community suffering in tough economic times.  Such is the nihilism of Liberals that they’d rather attack Moore, than see his business provide much-needed jobs in a community all too happy to have him there.
In its final attempt to smear Moore, the Liberals (many of whom have probably never had a real job, much less created jobs for others) lumped him in with a host of other “evil” men like Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Henry Heinz (of Heinz Ketchup fame), Milton Hershey (of Hershey’s Chocolate fame), Henry Ford, Mickey Rooney, Johnny Unitas, Wayne Newton, Walt Disney, Larry King, and Donald Trump; all because at one point in his long and successful career as a businessman, Moore had filed for personal bankruptcy when a Taiwanese manufacturing company had falsified insurance documents on a factory in which millions of dollars of his inventory had been destroyed.  By falling on his sword, Moore not only saved his business and the jobs of his employees, but he was able to build the business back up and eventually sell it.  That business is still alive and well today.  But that’s not the story you’ll read in the Soros/SEIU funded Michigan Messenger.
With the power of the Internet, the Michigan Messenger screeds against Barrett Moore and his noble efforts at Sovereign Deed, pop up to the top of any search prospective clients conduct.  Those articles have tarnished a good man.
Barrett Moore’s reputation and good name have been besmirched and that’s wrong. It is important for me that the record be set straight and that the facts win out.  What’s more, it’s important that the dangers of Leftist advocacy journalism as practiced by the Michigan Messenger and other Liberal “news” outlets of its ilk, be brought to everyone’s attention.  Today, it’s Barrett Moore and Sovereign Deed, but we all need to ask ourselves: who will it be tomorrow?  Me?  You?
When the going gets tough, the Liberals all pull together on behalf of their team, but conservatives too often pull apart.  It’s time we took care of our own – especially when it comes to the life and business-destroying, “just-the-fiction-ma’am” assassinations the Left so revels in and so thinly veils as “journalism.”
So how do we do that?  How do we begin to take care of our own?  We begin by calling these people out and exposing their lies just as Andrew Breitbart did with Max Blumenthal at CPAC.  Simply put, we no longer roll over.  We set the record straight and we commit right now to back each other up every time a Liberal journalist attacks.  Believe me, Barrett Moore wasn’t the first and he definitely won’t be the last, but working together we will dull the impact of these attacks and eventually drown them out all together.

Mark Polege
Keyboard Militia

The Tea Party
The St.Louis Tea Party marked its one year anniversary where it all began, below the towering Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis. Like the first 1500 who first braved the cold of last February, this Tea Party rally along the shores of the Mississippi River was populated with 1500 concerned citizens taking a stand against the socialism & progressivism threatening to be integrated into the American government by the Obama Administration and current members of Congress.

Though clouds were forecast, the afternoon sun pierced through the air along with the voices of 1500 singing, cheering, and ready for the hard it will take to stay off the progressive takeover of the freedoms the U.S. Constitution protects. "Its time to put the work boots on," was one phrase uttered by the emcee. Some of the speakers were Bill Hennessy - St.Louis Tea Party co-founder, Dana Loesch - St. Louis Tea Party co-founder, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, Stephanie Rubach, and James Greyfalcon.

To say there was a tremendous amount of energy at this Tea Party event would not even scratch the surface. Through numerous drive-by honks of support, many of the speakers discussed how a year ago the goal was to wake up our friends and neighbors to the unconstitutional actions of our government. They followed that with the need to get involved, organized, and the need to dedicate several hours a week to the movement because "the real battle will be won at the ballot box."

Though the ralleries came equipped with their flags and signs (per park regulations), it was clear this crowd was here to celebrate the successes of the past year:

• Stopping the health care bill
• Stopping Cap and Trade
• Spreading the word on Van Jones and other czars
• The election successes of NY, NJ, and VA
• Educating their friends and neighbors of the unconstitutional actions of the Obama Administration and Congress
• and many more...

As Bill Hennessy said, "This is not the beginning of the end, the is the end of the beginning."


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
The Coffee Party
With the obvious growing popularity of the Tea Parties, a new progressive ideological group, known quaintly as the "Coffee Party," has begun to surface in a few cities in an attempt to harness that same frustration felt by many over the government. Though they timidly describe themselves as 'grassroots,' they are still Progressives by even their own description in the Washington Post as they wish to:

"..engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, push leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008"

Though they claim to be for limited government and other conservative sounding talking points, they are as misleading as they accuse corporate America of being. And if the company you keep is any sign of your character or ideologies, just ask Obama, than the "Coffee Party's" progressive tendencies are evident with their joining MoveOn.org in rallies.

Upon closer examination of the CoffePartyUSA.com website we find more ideological allegiances to Progressives despite their use of such words as "limited government" or "founding fathers." For example, on their 'Inform' page, many of their source links are from Media Matters, a well known George Soros &  Center For American Progress "progressive" media monitor.

Another example I found interesting was that under their ACORN header there is also ONLY one Media Matters link. Over the past year there have been many good "cutting through the noise" articles about ACORN and yet that is the only one they pick? For a movement that claims to have "no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots, " their sources sure seem to be. It is also interesting that they claim to be for limited government and term limits, but make no mention or position on the U.S. Constitution, the founding document of our "Republic."

It is true that the Tea Parties have reached a great milestone this month and have endured alot of misinformation & reticule from the Administration, the Media, and others but they have become stronger and more embolden because of it. The constantly growing numbers are a clear sign, in addition to their successes in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, that the battle is far from over.

Over the past year they have become a force to be reckoned with and despite the attempts to peg them as a FOX NEWS-Sarah Palin mouth piece, both Democrats AND Republicans should realize the days of voting "Present" are over. What the Left refuses to understand is that Obama may be the most aggressive, unconstitutional force of the problems in Washington, he is nowhere near the only one or in the only party.

In the days leading up to the elections in November, there may be more psudeo movements like the "Coffee Party" or poser politicians seeking only a blessing from the Tea Parties. It is up to all of us to do our homework on what exactly we believe, what our founding fathers believed, and work toward a revival in the very principles that helped build what Ronald Reagan called that, "shining city upon a hill."

Anita MonCrief
Big Government
February 26, 2010

As ACORN pretends to “dissolve” around the country, internally, there appears to be a mad dash to get out ahead of prosecution. Not surprisingly, ACORN has a history of shutting offices down when an investigation gets too close. For example, in 2004 ACORN’s affiliate Project Vote abruptly closed its national office in Ohio and shipped boxes stuffed with un-cashed checks and paperwork to Washington, DC.
ACORN appears to have honed these tricks and has now decided to re-brand on a national scale. However, given its history, many are skeptical:

“If you want to see whether ACORN is really changing its ways, check to see whether the signatories to those local ACORN bank accounts are changing. When it comes to ACORN, the money is the organization, and the name is just the name.”

In order to operate effectively, ACORN requires little public scrutiny and a lot of lore and misdirection (think registering Mickey Mouse to vote). For 40 years ACORN’s organizing model has survived social revolutions and political upheavals and to understand ACORN a review of the 1970’s “manifesto” of ACORN founder Wade Rathke is essential.
Keeping up with the little nuts that have fallen off Rathke’s tree has begun and one has to wonder how long before another mighty “oak” is formed.

Andrew Marcus
Founding Bloggers

Several videos of Andrew Breitbart attending CPAC 2010 are making the rounds on the interwebs. Salon.com has posted an article entitled “Breitbart’s breakdown: A video tour”, based on four of the clips floating around.

In these videos, a visibly angry Breitbart tears into Progressive writers Max Blumenthal, Mike Madden, and others, in response to their baseless charges and innuendos of racism surrounding Breitbart, Hannah Giles, and James O’Keefe.

Apparently, Salon.com doesn’t think that anger and outrage are normal reactions for a human being to have in response to being falsely smeared and branded a racist.

Salon.com sees the videos of an angry Andrew Breitbart as not much more than an opportunity to ridicule someone with whom they disagree.

By using these videos in this particular way,  Salon reveals that it considers the righteous indignation of a man falsely accused to be funny.  A real knee-slapper.

That’s very revealing because the videos that the folks at Salon.com are promoting clearly demonstrate why Breitbart is so furious. He explains it to their cameras repeatedly. Perhaps the editors at Salon.com are too politically tone deaf to hear the message.

Just in case, we’ve produced a little video to help illustrate what we’re talking about.



Note to Salon: Responding to false charges of racism with anger and outrage is a completely rational reaction.

I forwarded a Sunshine request to Robin Carnahan's office on February 1st concerning the number of Missouri voters registered and rejected through the Department of Social Services from August 2008-August 2009.  I was trying to backtrack on data that I had from this Project Vote report.

Here is the data table that Project Vote has.

It's interesting, because Project Vote claims a success based on the number of registrations.  The data is pretty wacky.

Keep in mind 2008 was a recession year - more people were seeking assistance as unemployment steadily rose in the face of a fiscal catastrophe.  And second, the desire to register was at an all time high for African American voters, many of who were hit very hard by the gap in employment.

Is the Project Vote case study accurate?  That's what I'm trying to determine.  In addition to registrations, there is the question of double registering and rejected applications.

112,590 registrations, but how many were already registered, and how many were rejected (say if the person getting assistance was not a legal resident).

Voter registrations are required to be forwarded to the Secretary of State's office.  Failure to do so was one of the big complaints of the ACORN/ProVote lawsuit.

So I forwarded a request, asking for the same numbers as those provided in the Project Vote report.

Here is the response I received from the Secretary of State's office after 21 days of exploration. 

This is not acceptable.  Does the Secretary of State's office not have registration information?  If so, how did Project Vote get it? Are they playing word games?  I have a lot of documents showing a pretty cozy relationship between SoS staffers and Project Vote data hounds in 2007, including charts, breakdowns by county, and explanations in detail.  Project Vote didn't have to go through other departments to get these numbers.  Why exactly am I being told there is no information?  Are we to believe the Secretary of State doesn't know how many voters we had in 2008 and 2009?  That's strange, seeing as she was quite confident providing charts of voters that would be unable to vote because of Voter ID.  Here's her press release in 2008 claiming 240,000 voters could lose their franchise.   Here's the press release in 2009, claiming 230,000 voters could lose their franchise.  One - isn't it great news that up to 10,000 Missourians got around to getting their photo ID?  And second if the Secretary of State is confident enought to put out a press release listing those who can't vote, surely someone in that office has the information they are legally obligated to provide to the public.

I've been stalled by the Governor's office before, but this is the first time I sense that I've been stalled by the Secretary of State's office.  I've responded to the email, and anxiously await a response.  This post has been published because I want to make it clear that stalling is a story in its own right. Considering the level of intimacy Carnahan's staff has with lawyers outside the state of Missouri who sued us to enforce their version of the NVRA, you would think I could get at least the same level of courtesy in getting that data.

I'm not giving up, and the full story is coming out on these pages.

Update: Looking back through my notes, I see there is actually a second Sunshine request that was rejected because there were no documents.  I asked for the number of voter registration forms provided by the Secretary of State since the July 2008 order in ACORN V. Scott.  The request was based on a similar request by the ACORN lawyers for documents going back to 1995.  They were delivered in a short time span to make a trial date for the preliminary injunction, after in-person meetings and emails with Carnahan's staff.

It is not credible that document available in a rush for ACORN lawyers in 2008 don't exist in 2010.  I've requested a second explanation and will update this blog post with the results.

Allahpundit
Hot Air
February 22, 2010

When they’re making pimp jokes about you on South Park, I guess it’s time to regroup. Let the regrouping begin!

“ACORN has dissolved as a national structure of state organizations,” said a senior official close to the group, who declined to be identified by name because of the fierce conservative attacks on the group that began when a conservative filmmaker caught some staffers of its tax advisory arms on tape appearing to offer advice on incorporating a prostitution business…
“Consistent with what the internal recommendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency,” said the official, citing ACORN’s “diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks.”…
“It’s not like this is some kind of hostile thing,” said the New York source. “This is what Fox has produced. National Acorn and Bertha Lewis are continuing doing their thing, but the New York flagship has been foreed into this new organization.”
“As far as the work in the communities and policy campaigns, no one will notice the difference,” the source said. “It’s people who still believe in their basic mission of fighting for poor people.”

Sounds like it’s mainly a PR move to let the local chapters get out from under the weight of the scandal — the name changes have already begun — and, as DrewM says, to give them greater deniability the next time some lurid scandal breaks at a local chapter. To listen to wingnut propaganda, you’d think that bad behavior in Brooklyn and Philly and Baltimore and D.C. and San Diego and San Bernardino and god knows where else represented some kind of systemic problem.

You know who’s going to miss them the most? A special guy, that’s who.


--
And here is a little bonus apart from the Hot Air article for Keyboard Militia readers:


Oh the blind faith...

Mike Flynn
Big Government
February 23, 2010

Yesterday came the news that ACORN was ‘dissolving’ its national structure, allowing many of its local chapters to go ‘independent’. ACORN’s destruction of its brand had threatened the existence of every ACORN office in the country. Shedding the ACORN brand will give them a chance restart the flow of public money and leftist donors.

Make no mistake, however, that while their names may change, the personnel groomed by ACORN and the tactics they employ will remain the same. To paraphrase a famous verse, “A Rose by any other name…has just as many thorns.”

Below is an invite to New York ACORN’s first ‘re-branding shindig.’ This Thursday, long-time political allies of ACORN and its Working Families Party will host a high-dollar fundraiser, in Manhattan, for “New York Communities for Change,” the presumptive heir to ACORN NY.


ACORN Relaunch -

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of liberty and freedom loving activists showed up on this. I mean, it doesn’t look that hard to get to:
View Larger Map
I bet it would be interesting. Definitely, keep me posted.
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At Keyboard Militia we will track "the many faces of ACORN" and collect them in the right column so you know where the tentacles of ACORN pop up next.

The best investigative journalism in Missouri is done at 24thstate.com. Recently, the editor and his document parties revealed a slimy relationship between Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and ACORN’s Project Vote, the discredited criminal enterprise so favored by Barack Obama.

It seems that Carnahan used state resources to help an ACORN front group win a law suit against Missouri.

Since that’s a remarkable revelation, I’ll repeat:  Secretary of State Robin Carnahan used your Missouri tax dollars to help a criminal enterprise sue YOU.

From 24thstate.com:

It is this familiarity which is the issue.  Starting with Mindy, and moving on to Ron and Betsy, we see a willingness to go above and beyond normal duties to provide Project Vote with what they needed to sue the state of Missouri.  The Secretary of State’s office, rather than working to protect the state, clearly sets up the other agencies, and then repeatedly provides the documentation requested by Project Vote.

Considering that 24thstate has provided all of the documents supporting these allegations, it’s time for the U.S. Attorney, Richard G. Callahan, to begin a federal criminal investigation of the Secretary of State’s office. It seems appropriate, too, for Carnahan to take a leave of absence until these allegation are either substantiated or disproven. Looking at the depth and breadth of the documentary evidence, though, it looks really bad for Carnahan.

Oh, an the Democrats might want to start vetting U.S. Senate candidates.  Just in case.

Tags: ACORN, Project Vote, Robin Carnahan

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Part II: April 2007

As discussed in a previous post, the staff for Secretary of State Carnahan, beginning with the Chief of Staff Mindy Mazur, did far more than perform standard duties in communicating with Project Vote prior to the lawsuit filed against the head of the Department of Social Services.

The first emails clearly detail a set of instructions from Michael Slater to Mindy Mazur on how to best help Project Vote achieve its goals.  Looking through the emails and memos, we see the Secretary of State's office laying down a chain of evidence that would be used in Acorn's lawsuit as proof the DSS was failing to comply with NVRA. 

On March 29th, Betsy Byers forwarded a series of memos out to state agencies stating "it had come to their attention that registrations had dropped since 2004."  Byers then requests a time to meet with the agencies to provide training to any agency that needed it.  No mention is made that the information was provided by Project Vote, or that lawsuits had been filed against other states in an attempt to force compliance through the courts.  Carnahan's office, which assuredly knew about Project Vote's legal strategies (because Slater was sharing reports with them), blatantly sets up the agencies to take the fall.  The memos are designed with one purpose - to provide an authoritative statement of fact that can be used later, all at the behest of Project Vote.

It's such an urgent matter that Michael Slater, having been given contact information for Ron Berry and Betsy Byers by Mindy Mazur, writes to ask how the task is going.

Michael Slater email March302007

Slater asks: "what progress your office has made with respect to helping state agencies better comply with the public agency requirements of NVRA."  This is a strange email.  Just two weeks after first being contacted by Mindy Mazur, Slater is asking what impact there has been on registration rates.  Does he really expect there to be some major change in policy within two weeks?  And how does he know Betsy?  There are no other records of discussions as to what may have occurred.  Was it phone calls?  Emails not released by the Secretary of State's office?  We know this.  Slater is expecting something, and the only evidence we have is his request to Mindy Mazur to pursue allegations and render conclusions.

Slater requests a phone call, but that is the last communication we see about the issue.  The next piece of evidence is a highly detailed Sunshine Request that is presented April 12, 2007.  Somehow, Slater knew exactly what to ask for.  

Michael Slater SunshineRequests April122007

Note that Slater goes from knowing very little about Missouri voting law (confessed in an earlier email) to knowing exactly what to ask for to use in his litigation.  A series of earlier emails show a familiarity between Slater and Mazur growing, including the very odd request for Mindy Mazur and Ron Berry to provide him with state newspaper articles quoting Republicans on the Voter ID Law.  It's important to recognize that at the time, the Missouri Republicans had passed a Voter ID law that would later be ruled unconstitutional, and this law was a subject in which Slater had a keen interest.  Slater references a phone conference for national opponents of the bill, but we never find out to what extent the Carnahan office is involved.  We do know they respond to the Sunshine Request with amazing accuracy, providing exactly what was requested.  I have received several Sunshine Requests with state agencies, and my requests are always very targeted. I've never gotten the level of detail evident in these requests.  See, most requests are a bit of a fishing expedition.  You're looking for documents that may or may not exist, and so you cast a wide net to make sure you get the relevant documents, but not so wide that you get a lot of fluff.  An example of this is the ACORNCarnahan documents provided to the MO GOP.  The Secretary of State threw in a large number of Project Vote press releases sent to Ron Berry, and reports submitted by Project Vote to large groups.  You have to sift through those to find the personal emails.  Slater did not have those problems.

It is this familiarity which is the issue.  Starting with Mindy, and moving on to Ron and Betsy, we see a willingness to go above and beyond normal duties to provide Project Vote with what they needed to sue the state of Missouri.  The Secretary of State's office, rather than working to protect the state, clearly sets up the other agencies, and then repeatedly provides the documentation requested by Project Vote.

If Secretary of State Carnahan felt a need to bring agencies into compliance with her definition of the NVRA, she could have done so.  As an elected official, she could have worked with the governor and the legislature to bring agencies she felt were in violation into complaince.  There was no need for an outside political entity connected strongly with ACORN and funded by national progressive groups into the state to enforce their version of the NVRA through the courts.  Carnahan failed to protect us, and in doing so, brought in political allies that would work to get her re-elected, support her with donations, and ultimately connect her to the national progressives that would support her Senate campaign.

What we'll see next is how these two threads - the memos and the emails in March and April, are used to great effect in turning the state agencies, specifically the DSS, into an adversary.  Secretary Carnahan worked with Project Vote to push their interpretation of the NVRA onto Missouri at great legal expense to the state.

And there's more...