Wow: John Conyers (D-rugs?) Weighing Probe of ACORN....

Wow: John Conyers (D-rugs?) Weighing Probe of ACORN....



No, not an April fool's joke.....

Opponents of the liberal activist group ACORN have found an unlikely champion in House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., who is clashing with his own party to pursue hearings on accusations that the group has committed crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style "protection" racket.

"I still want to do it and I probably will," Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat, told The Washington Times on Tuesday.

He dismissed the argument made by fellow Democrats that accusations of voter fraud and other crimes should be explored by prosecutors and decided in court, not by lawmakers in Congress.

"That's our jurisdiction, the Department of Justice," Mr. Conyers said. "That's what we handle - voter fraud. Unless that's been taken out of my jurisdiction and I didn't know it."

Mr. Conyers' continued commitment to hearings bristles Capitol Hill Democrats because it threatens to rekindle criticism of the financial ties and close cooperation between President Obama's campaign and ACORN and its sister organizations Citizens Services Inc. and Project Vote.

for the first time in his career

he sounds normal

Conyers may seek hearings on ACORN


He would be the most unlikely ally I could possibly think of but if House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers gets his way, he will likely hold hearings on the many crimes committed by ACORN:

Mr. Conyers' continued commitment to hearings bristles Capitol Hill Democrats because it threatens to rekindle criticism of the financial ties and close cooperation between President Obama's campaign and ACORN and its sister organizations Citizens Services Inc. and Project Vote.

The groups came under fire during the campaign after probes into suspected voter fraud in a series of presidential battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico and Nevada.

*Rep. Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee with the jurisdiction to conduct the hearing, said he does not think Congress is the place to hear criminal charges.

"It's not our business to say ACORN is terrible or ACORN is wonderful. That's not a congressional job," Mr. Nadler said. "The evidence - I've listened to it - I think most of it is nonsense. If it's true, it's a law enforcement matter."

However, he said he would bow to Mr. Conyers' request for a hearing. Mr. Conyers said he hasn't "pushed him yet."

ACORN officials, who have consistently denied any wrongdoing, said they welcomed a congressional probe.

"We are confident that in any setting where the facts are laid bare that the right-wing campaign to smear ACORN's good work will be exposed," ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring said.

Methinks the ACORN spokesman is whistling past the graveyard. Even a sham hearing by Conyers will get some of their crimes on the record. And while it highly unlikely that anything like a thorough job will be done by Conyers in looking into the illegal cooperation between the Obama campaign and ACORN, it will at least publicize the connections.

AT's Clarice Feldman has a piece up today at Pajamas Media on ACORN's illegal activities as well as the latest scandal that has a primary source for a New York Times reporter testifying that after detailing ACORN connections to the Obama campaign, the Times killed the story because it would be a "game changer."

Nope. No bias there.

FINALLY, the main stream media is starting to investigate and publish the claims, as well.

How the New York Times can admit to this and still have a single reader is hard to believe:



'New York Times' Spiked Obama Donor Story

Congressional Testimony: ‘Game-Changer’ Article Would Have Connected Campaign With ACORN

By Michael P. Tremoglie, The Bulletin
Monday, March 30, 2009

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”*

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.

During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel:

“Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer.”’

Ms. Moncrief made her first overture to Ms. Heidelbaugh after The New York Times allegedly spiked the story — on Oct. 21, 2008. Last fall, she testified under oath about what she had learned about ACORN from her years in its Washington, D.C. office. Although she was present at the congressional hearing, she did not testify.

U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., the ranking Republican on the committee, said the interactions between the Obama campaign and ACORN, as described by Ms. Moncrief, and attested to before the committee by Ms. Heidelbaugh, could possibly violate federal election law, and “ACORN has a pattern of getting in trouble for violating federal election laws.”**

He also voiced criticism of The New York Times.

“If true, The New York Times is showing once again that it is a not an impartial observer of the political scene,” he said. “If they want to be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, they should put Barack Obama approves of this in their newspaper.”

Academicians and journalism experts expressed similar criticism of the Times.

“The New York Times keeps going over the line in every single campaign and last year was the worst, easily,” said Mal Kline of the American Journalism Center. “They would ignore real questions worth examining about Obama, the questions about Bill Ayers or about how he got his house. Then on the other side they would try to manufacture scandals.”

Mr. Kline mentioned Gov. Sarah Palin was cleared by investigators of improperly firing an Alaska State Trooper, but went unnoticed by The Times.

“How many stories about this were in The New York Times,” he asked.

“If this is true, it would not surprise me at all. The New York Times is a liberal newspaper. It is dedicated to furthering the Democratic Party,” said Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of Political Science at Grove City College. “People think The New York Times is an objective news source and it is not. It would not surprise me that if they had a news story that would have swayed the election into McCain’s favor they would not have used it.”

ACORN has issued statements claiming that Ms. Moncrief is merely a disgruntled former worker.

“None of this wild and varied list of charges has any credibility and we’re not going to spend our time on it,” said Kevin Whelan, ACORN deputy political director in a statement issued last week.

Stephanie Strom was contacted for a comment, and The New York Times’ Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications Catherine Mathis replied with an e-mail in her place.

Ms. Mathis wrote, “In response to your questions to our reporter, Stephanie Strom, we do not discuss our newsgathering and won’t comment except to say that political considerations played no role in our decisions about how to cover this story or any other story about President Obama.”

ACORN Linked to Illegal Aid for Obama Campaign
Clarice Feldman

And the Democratic Congress has handed them millions in taxpayer money to continue their antics.

“A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.”
Bertrand de Jouvenel


Watching the increasingly rapacious conduct of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations) over the past few years and the considerable power and funds being gifted to it by this administration — while the press and Congress largely remain silent — I fear we are most surely heading into a government run by wolves.

ACORN’s role in the past two presidential elections has hardly received the kind of coverage a press concerned about protecting the right to free elections would have accorded it. Aside from some articles often lightheartedly making fun of the registrations of obviously non-existent voters, the press has largely averted its eyes from the widespread, multi-state efforts by ACORN to overwhelm the electoral officials through massive registration drives conducted by dubious characters paid piece work rates, operating with *no supervision and making no real effort at doing an honest job of it.

In Pennsylvania, one retired justice questioned whether a fair election would be possible last November, showing stacks of phony registrations and photos of vacant lots used as “voters” addresses. The local district attorney said:




In St Louis in 2006, over 1,000 addresses listed on ACORN registrations were non-existent and eight of its local workers were indicted. The Wall Street Journal reported: “In Seattle, local officials invalidated 1,762 Acorn registrations. Felony charges were filed against seven of its workers, some of whom have criminal records. Prosecutors say Acorn’s oversight of its workers was virtually nonexistent. To avoid prosecution, Acorn agreed to pay $25,000 in restitution.”

ACORN violated state law in Minneapolis by registering convicted felons — some of them still incarcerated at the time.

So widespread has this effort been — despite the organization’s suggestions that these violations of law are just the work of rogue employees — that I’ve been surprised at the federal government’s failure to institute a RICO prosecution of the organization.

I noted in the past that the Buckeye Institute of Ohio, relying on a similar state statute, instituted a suit against ACORN last year:

Among its factual assertions are these developed in Congressional hearings:
http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/acorn.pdf
The lawsuit details numerous illegal activities committed by ACORN in Nevada, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Virginia, Washington, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Mexico, Texas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Carolina.

Maurice Thompson, the director of the Buckeye Institute’s 1851 Center, reports that ACORN removed the case to federal court and then moved to dismiss it. The institute has moved to remand the matter back to the state court (Warren County, Ohio) and has responded to the motion to dismiss. The case is pending, awaiting further action by Judge Weber of the Southern District of Ohio. Mr. Thompson remains confident that the Buckeye Institute will ultimately prevail.

In the meantime, new information about ACORN’s potential wrongdoing during the election has come to light.

On March 19, a lawyer who represents the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee that a former ACORN worker, Anita Moncrief, told her that she’d been a confidential informant to* New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom. Moncrief told Strom that the Obama presidential campaign committee had communicated to ACORN a list of those of their donors who had contributed the maximum amount allowed by law with the suggestion that ACORN* get additional funds from these people for their Get Out the Vote campaign, an act suggesting the kind of coordination between the campaign and nonprofit *committees which would violate federal law.

The New York Times killed the story once Strom reported this to her superiors at the paper, purportedly because “it was a game changer.”

The Times has declined to comment, but I’d be inclined to credit Moncrief’s report given the Times‘ long and shameful history of biased reporting in favor of Obama and the Democratic Party.

Since the election, ACORN has grown ever more emboldened. The organization has been increasingly engaging in the sort of transgressive conduct that even those not given to such hyperbole must compare to *the actions of storm troopers. Thus, the organization they co-founded,”Connecticut Working Families Party,” set off on a bus tour of the homes of the AIG employees to intimidate them into rejecting the bonuses Congress had expressly legislated for them. This intimidation was not only fomenting rage against innocent private citizens, but against people whose only offense appears to have been trying to responsibly wind down AIG’s operations to protect, among other things, the substantial *taxpayer funds invested in that very action.

Those who’ve paid attention to the mortgage meltdown know that ACORN was a prime mover in government programs and policies which forced banks to ignore longstanding and sound lending principles to give mortgages to people that they were not likely to be able to afford. And in demanding the jiggering of the rules of economic gravity, ACORN’s for-profit housing arm also got a cut of the funds for steering these lambs to their economic slaughter.

You’d think there’d be more said in the press about this and that ACORN would stand ashamed of its role. You’d be wrong. They are only further empowered by the disaster that befell all the lending institutions who succumbed to their pressure and borrowers who were seduced by them into obligations they couldn’t possibly meet. *Now they are standing in the way of evictions of those who cannot pay their mortgages. If the banks can’t foreclose, it is difficult to imagine how the credit crisis will ever be resolved. Who would ever lend if they cannot upon default recoup the security for the loan with some ease and predictability? How can lending institutions obtain funds to lend if they cannot turn uncollectible debt into assets by reclaiming the foreclosed properties and reselling them?

In the stimulus package, money is made available for the renovation of housing. Some have charged that ACORN will, in Tony Soprano’s words, “get its beak in” for millions of dollars, though ACORN denies it has ever sought such funds or plans to do so.* Even if one were to take the word of an organization with such an unsavory history, however, that doesn’t mean the federal funds spigot to ACORN has been turned off.

Last Friday, the Senate killed an amendment to the National Service Act (H.R. 1388) that would exclude funding for ACORN. Thus, ACORN is eligible to receive some of the “$5.87 billion to aid 250,000 volunteers across the country in the areas of health care, energy, environment and education.” Senator Vitter, the author of the failed* amendment, wanted to exclude from consideration of such funds any group with a political action arm which he argued would “politicize charitable activity around the country.”

As Gateway Pundit notes upon the failure of this amendment, religious expression will preclude any group from receiving federal funding. But lying, cheating, forging documents, intimidating fellow citizens and harassing them, and repeatedly and openly interfering with free and honest elections throughout the land apparently gets ACORN a prime spot at the trough.

A Victory Against Voter Fraud

By JOHN FUND, Wall Street Journal


In ruling on the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID law – the toughest in the nation – the Supreme Court had to deal with the claim that such laws demanded the strictest of scrutiny by courts, because they could disenfranchise voters. All nine Justices rejected that argument.

Even Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the three dissenters who would have overturned the Indiana law, wrote approvingly of the less severe ID laws of Georgia and Florida. The result is that state voter ID laws are now highly likely to pass constitutional muster.

But this case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, also revealed a fundamental philosophical conflict between two perspectives rooted in the machine politics of Chicago. Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the decision, grew up in Hyde Park, the city neighborhood where Sen. Barack Obama – the most vociferous Congressional critic of such laws – lives now. Both men have seen how the Daley machine has governed the city for so many years, with a mix of patronage, contract favoritism and, where necessary, voter fraud.

That fraud became nationally famous in 1960, when the late Mayor Richard J. Daley's extraordinary efforts swung Illinois into John F. Kennedy's column. In 1982, inspectors estimated as many as one in 10 ballots cast in Chicago during that year's race for governor to be fraudulent for various reasons, including votes by the dead.

Mr. Stevens witnessed all of this as a lawyer, special counsel to a commission rooting out corruption in state government, and as a judge. On the Supreme Court, this experience has made him very mindful of these abuses. In 1987, the high court vacated the conviction of a Chicago judge who'd used the mails to extort money. He wrote a stinging dissent, taking the rare step of reading it from the bench. The majority opinion, he noted, could rule out prosecutions of elected officials and their workers for using the mails to commit voter fraud.

Three years later, Justice Stevens ordered Cook County officials to stop printing ballots that excluded a slate of black candidates who were challenging the Daley machine. The full court later ordered the black candidates back on the ballot.

Barack Obama has approached Chicago politics differently. He came to the city as a community organizer in the 1980s and quickly developed a name for himself as a litigator in voting cases.

In 1995, then GOP Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal "Motor Voter" law. Allowing voters to register using only a postcard and blocking the state from culling voter rolls, he argued, could invite fraud. Mr. Obama sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and won. Acorn later invited Mr. Obama to help train its staff; Mr. Obama would also sit on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago, which frequently gave this group grants.

Acorn's efforts to register voters have been scandal-prone. St. Louis, Mo., officials found that in 2006 over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations didn't exist. "We met twice with Acorn before their drive, but our requests completely fell by the wayside," said Democrat Matt Potter, the city's deputy elections director. Later, federal authorities indicted eight of the group's local workers. One of the eight pleaded guilty last month.

In Seattle, local officials invalidated 1,762 Acorn registrations. Felony charges were filed against seven of its workers, some of whom have criminal records. Prosecutors say Acorn's oversight of its workers was virtually nonexistent. To avoid prosecution, Acorn agreed to pay $25,000 in restitution.

Despite this record – and polls that show clear majorities of blacks and Hispanics back voter ID laws – Mr. Obama continues to back Acorn. They both joined briefs urging the Supreme Court to overturn Indiana's law.

Last year, he put on hold the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. Mr. von Spakovsky, as a Justice Department official, had supported a Georgia photo ID law.

In a letter to the Senate Rules Committee, Mr. Obama wrote that "Mr. von Spakovsky's role in supporting the Department of Justice's quixotic efforts to attack voter fraud raises significant questions about his ability to interpret and apply the law in a fair manner." Of course, now an even stricter law than the one in Georgia has been upheld by the Supreme Court, removing Mr. Obama's chief objection.

The hold on the von Spakovsky nomination has left the Federal Election Commission with less than a quorum. As a result, the FEC can't open new cases, hold public meetings, issue advisory opinions or approve John McCain's receipt of public funding for the general election. Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims that, even without the von Spakovsky hold, filling the FEC's vacancies will take "several months."

All of this may be smart politics, but it is far removed from Mr. Obama's call for transcending the partisan divide. Then again, Mr. Obama's relationship to reform has always been tenuous. Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, notes that, while Mr. Obama supported ethics reforms as a state senator, he has "been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state, including at this point, mostly Democratic."

So we have the irony of two liberal icons in sharp disagreement over yesterday's Supreme Court decision. Justice Stevens, the real reformer, believes voter ID laws are justified to prevent fraud. Barack Obama, the faux reformer, hauls out discredited rhetoric that they disenfranchise voters.

Acorn's national political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama. And its "nonpartisan" voter registration affiliate has announced plans to register hundreds of thousands of voters before the November election. An election in which Mr. Obama may be the Democratic candidate.

Be sure to bookmard this thread for the next time that UD claims that ACORN is the victim of smear tactics by Obama bashers.

He'll probably resort back to his "show me the proof" tactic and then completely ignore the facts when you lay them out for him....... again.

Referrence threads:


http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?p=30461303#post30461303

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=640751&page=2

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=618186&page=5

busybody said:

for the first time in his career

he sounds normal

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No kidding. I think someone needs to take a DNA sample to see if it's really him . . .

busybody said:

D-rugs?

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i lol'd

Are'nt all D(rugs) on em?

How else do you explain shuch lunacy?

An Acorn is a nut.

Fitting Acronym

Bat Shit is my second favorite poster

BatShitKrazy said:

An Acorn is a nut.

Fitting Acronym

Click to expand...

I think acorns are technically fruits, actually.

Not sure that changes your point, though.

Peregrinator said:

I think acorns are technically fruits, actually.

Not sure that changes your point, though.

Click to expand...

1. (Science: botany) The fruit of the oak, being an oval nut growing in a woody cup or cupule.

http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Acorn

Peregrinator said:

I think acorns are technically fruits, actually.

Click to expand...

Nope.

KingOrfeo said:

Nope.

Click to expand...

Peregrinator said:

1. (Science: botany) The fruit of the oak, being an oval nut growing in a woody cup or cupule.

http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Acorn

Click to expand...

There seems to be some ambiguity.

Botanically speaking, anything that bears or is a seed is considered a fruit.
There are different kinds of fruit, ie nuts are a kind of
fruit.

Click to expand...

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bot00/bot00134.htm

I don't know that plant biologists actually use the words. They probably have technical terms that aren't in common usage.

why is it when PERGY shows up

we all fall asleep

Now I'm getting interested.

fruit

fruit, matured ovary of the pistil of a flower, containing the seed. After the egg nucleus, or ovum, has been fertilized (see fertilization) and the embryo plantlet begins to form, the surrounding ovule (see pistil) develops into a seed and the ovary wall (pericarp) around the ovule becomes the fruit. The pericarp consists of three layers of tissue: the thin outer exocarp, which becomes the “skin”; the thicker mesocarp; and the inner endocarp, immediately surrounding the ovule. A flower may have one or more simple pistils or a compound pistil made up of two or more fused simple pistils (each called a carpel); different arrangements give rise to different types of fruit. A new variety of fruit is obtained as a hybrid in plant breeding or may develop spontaneously by mutation.

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0819792.html

nut

nut, in botany, a dry one-seeded fruit which is indehiscent (i.e., does not split open along a definite seam at maturity). Among the true nuts are the acorn, chestnut, and hazelnut. Commonly the word nut is used for any seed or fruit having an edible kernel surrounded by a hard or brittle covering. Thus the peanut pod is actually a legume, the Brazil nut is a seed enclosed with others in a capsule, and the almond is part of a drupe, a type of fruit that includes olives and peaches. Others that are not botanically true nuts are the cashew, coconut, litchi, pistachio, and walnut. Most nuts have a high content of oil; in addition they may contain substantial amounts of protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins. Although nuts were originally harvested from wild trees, this century has seen the increasing cultivation of nut orchards—especially in warmer climates—for commercial production both for food and for byproducts.

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0836207.html

vetteman said:

Ok I get it, ACORN is full of fruits.

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Apparently, both. Nuts ARE fruits.