Senate Bashes ACORN

Until now the cowering in fear to the radical right was mainly a province of the White House. Never one to be left out, Senate Democrats got into the act yesterday by blocking HUD grants to ACORN.

The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in voter-registration fraud cases.

If the House agrees with the Senate, ACORN could not win HUD grants for programs such as counseling low-income people on how to get mortgages.

Last week, the Census Bureau severed ties with ACORN, saying it does not want the group's help with the 2010 count. The group, which advocates for poor people, conducted a voter registration effort last year and became a target of conservatives when some workers were accused of submitting false registration forms with names including Mickey Mouse.

And of course, Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 thanks to 50 million big-eared human-sized mice coming to the polls and voting, right?

I thought we would want low-income Americans to have counseling on housing, but I guess if we take the community organizations out of it and let them get ripped off by predatory lenders, all the better.

More than that, this is just a pander to Glenn Beck and Fox News' whipping up of unfounded hysteria against ACORN, which they blame for everything from socialism in America to the death of Patrick Swayze. ACORN gets their own independent funding in large part, so this won't really impact them, but it's disappointing to see Democrats, in large numbers (final vote was 83-7) crapping on organizations that radical rightist forces unilaterally determine to be evil.

Meanwhile, ACORN may sure Fox News over the doctored videos they keep airing. Tell me where to send the amicus brief.

...It does go without saying that bipartisan elites in Washington fall all over themselves to distance from ACORN, but a company like Blackwater can murder dozens of civilians in Iraq and still get lucrative government contracts.