ACORN employees caught in those undercover videos advising a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to break the law acted unprofessionally and inappropriately, but did nothing illegal, an independent report has found.
The report, by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, recommends nine steps for ACORN to take in order to regain public trust in the wake of the scandal, including that it return to its "core competency - community organizing and citizen engagement empowerment, with related services."
On the key question of potential illegal conduct, it finds:So the ACORN guys are off the hook legally. But here's the big one:
While some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers.
Harshbarger also notes that the videos were sometimes less than perfect representations of the events they depict. He writes:Here's the real issue. The videos? Those have been altered. The whole ACORN prostitution scandal was a setup from the beginning.
The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.In the wake of the scandal, Congress voted to cut off all federal funds from ACORN. In response, the group is suing the US government, arguing that the measure is a bill of attainder, and therefore unconstitutional.
The "liberal media" executed ACORN in the court of public opinion. Why was this so easy? Maybe the fact that a majority of Republicans believe ACORN stole the election for Obama in 2008 has something to do with this. Andrew Breibart's little scoop was manufactured. Nobody questioned it. Nobody will apologize for it. The damage is done anyway.
And people wonder why I say the media is one of the largest problems we have in our republic.
I do not disagree w/ you at all that the "liberal media" executed ACORN in the court of public opinion. Knowing the media period is in deep need of money to operate they will always go w/ the easy "hot" story.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is they followed President Obama's lead. The President clearly said ACORN should be investigated. Nor did he stop the frenzy in Congress by not as a constitutional lawyer and scholar decry the against Congress has taken against ACORN as bills of attainder.
Presidnet Obama is personally reposnsible for many of the domestic debacles of policy and politics himself. He needs to learn when and what he says. Learning about what happened to the squirrels at the WH when Eisenhower had a green on the WH lawn.
Not arguing those points either. When it became politically expedient to throw ACORN under the bus, the Dems were first in line.
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