Acorn

“Am i missing something here?” reads a Twitter message from U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann questioning why ACORN got fire-prevention funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA’s answer: Yes, you are.

Can the Twins beat the New York Yankees? We’ll know the answer by the time Vice President Biden arrives for an Oct. 15 Democratic Party fundraiser at the Edina home of a member of the Pohlad family that owns the Twins. It’s Biden’s first time back since taking St. Cloud by storm last spring, and [...]

Twenty-one-year-old Lila Rose is a superstar of the anti-abortion right, rubbing shoulders with conservatives like Gov. Tim Pawlenty and speaking at national events like last week’s Values Voter Summit. But her tactics — secretly videotaping visits to Planned Parenthood offices and presenting edited footage without context online — raise serious questions about journalistic ethics.

Did ACORN win the U.S. Senate race for Al Franken? Bill O’Reilly raised the topic last night with rightwing pundit Laura Ingraham. ACORN reportedly registered some 43,000 voters here, and O’Reilly says he’ll ask Gov. Pawlenty to look at those registrations to “see if those people actually exist.”

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum is circulating a bill that would stop federal funding of corporations that commit felony crimes. The ACORN Act (pdf) would also stop such corporations from funding federal campaigns and limit their lobbying. The bill’s acronym stands for “Against Corporations Organizing to Rip-off the Nation” and comes on the heels of various arms [...]

This is some extremely shoddy journalism from Mickey Kaus. The Slate blogger asks if “ACORN chicanery” elected Sen. Al Franken, who won a razor-thin 2008 race for the U.S. Senate after eight months of legal challenges. Kaus links a “tactfully phrased Minneapolis Star Tribune story” to argue that fraudulent votes might have stolen the election [...]

The U.S. House voted to suspend all federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on Thursday afternoon by a vote of 345 to 75. Now the measure heads to the Senate, which passed a bill banning federal housing monies from going to the embattled nonprofit.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has perfected the political backpedal over the past few months, pressing forward then pulling back on one issue after another. He started on topics like whether he’d sign an election certificate for the Franken-Coleman winner or accept federal stimulus money, then moved on to death panels, states’ rights to opt out of [...]

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s letter cutting off (nonexistent) state funding to ACORN is “pretty clearly political opportunism on the governor’s part,” ACORN state political director Chris Stinson tells the Minnesota Independent. “Gov. Pawlenty is piling on.”

Gov. Tim Pawlenty jumped into the ACORN fray Wednesday by ordering a freeze on all state payments to the embattled community-organizer group.
But, as the Star Tribune reports, currently no state funds go to the group.