Exposing ACORN (Part 1)

Back in 1972, some burglars robbed the Watergate building in Washington DC, and the five men directly involved were arrested, tried, and convicted in January 1973. End of story, right? Well, as everyone knows, the story didn't end there. A couple of curious reporters from the Washington Post named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deep into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and even the White House. Their investigation eventually led to convictions of high-level members of the Nixon administration as well as the impeachment of the president himself.

Woodward and Bernstein were viewed as heroes. A lot of reporters were inspired by their story, and many entered the media with the belief that they were really the last line of defense for the American people against scandal and corruption. Sounds pretty noble, huh?

Well, fast forward to present day. Now we have ACORN, a shady, left-wing activist organization that has received millions in federal tax money and millions more in state and local grants. The group is tax-exempt. ACORN is supposedly set up to help poor people buy homes, and it also registers folks to vote (for Democrats). The group has been at the center of numerous cases of voter fraud, with ACORN employees registering people multiple times, as well as registering the names of dead people and fictional characters.

They also contributed to the subprime crisis by protesting, boycotting, and storming bank offices, trying to force lenders to make more home loans to poor people with bad credit. Heck, I work for a loan servicing company, and several months back ACORN went to the house of our CEO and protested on his lawn. Our office building now has security guards and employee-only access doors, since ACORN activists stormed our lobby a while back also. Classy.

ACORN employees have been charged with crimes in nine different states, and there have already been at least 30 convictions. But for some reason, ACORN has been largely ignored by the press and the federal government. President Bush didn't lift a finger to check them out during his tenure, and Obama used to work for them, so he's not likely to help either. So who is left to root out the corruption? Heroic investigative journalists like Woodward and Bernstein? Hmm...