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A controversial Muslim congressman whose U.S. House swearing-in photo featured the Quran replacing the traditional Bible is trying to keep federal funds flowing to ACORN, the radical left-wing group that used to employ President Obama.
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., has defended ACORN and its Minnesota chapter, which has renamed itself Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change. A report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last year identified Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change as an ACORN front group.
“Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change are people who are known to me,” Ellison said. “They work hard every day. They work on foreclosure. They work on trying to get people to vote. They work with poor people in particular.”
Ellison said the group “is a good, decent civic service organization, Mr. Chair, and I resent them being slandered.”
ACORN is the organization whose employees were caught on videotape in 2009 repeatedly advising undercover conservative activists how to set up brothels for pedophiles. The employee also counseled the activists on defrauding the government and banks.
According to a stunning new book, “Subversion Inc.,” by award-winning investigative journalist Matthew Vadum, ACORN may be guilty of pension fraud, extortion, racketeering and a host of other federal crimes.
Vadum, senior editor at Capital Research Center, a think tank that studies left-wing advocacy groups and their funders, has assembled the information from nearly three years of research and hundreds of interviews.
Significantly, the book reports, the push for a racketeering probe got a boost in April when ACORN was convicted in a massive voter fraud conspiracy in Nevada.
The book contends that ACORN’s “anti-democratic, un-American activities are not legitimate political advocacy protected by the First Amendment. They cry out for prosecution under federal racketeering laws.”
The national ACORN organization filed for bankruptcy on Election Day 2010 but ACORN leaders quietly are restructuring the ACORN network. They acknowledge that their goal is to have a “new” ACORN network in place to help re-elect President Obama next year. Many of ACORN’s state chapters, including the Minnesota branch, have already incorporated themselves separately under new names.
Ellison’s comments came last week during debate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. The House considered the $42.3 billion Homeland Security spending bill (H.R. 2017) for 2012 which it ultimately passed 231-188.
Ellison spoke against a legislative amendment offered by U.S. Rep. Steve King , R-Iowa, that blocked funding for remaining ACORN groups and ACORN’s rebranded successor organizations. The amendment was adopted on a vote of 251 to 168.
Only three Republican lawmakers voted to keep ACORN eligible for funding by voting against King’s amendment. They were Robert Aderholt, R-Ala.; Mike Simpson, R-Idaho; and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.
During his floor speech, Ellison complained that it was “ridiculous” to “beat up on ACORN and ACORN-affiliated organizations.”
Ellison also apparently misled the House by creating the false impression that 2009 legislation defunding ACORN was unconstitutional.
“The House, in 2009, voted to defund ACORN,” Ellison said.
“I voted against that defunding amendment because it was unconstitutional and based on politics of fear and guilt by association. It was a good vote, and I’m proud I voted that way, because a federal court, Mr. Chair, in December 2009, found the House ban on ACORN grants unconstitutional, and I’m proud I was not on the side of that unconstitutional vote.”
Although initially the funding ban was found unconstitutional by a federal judge in New York, the trial court’s ruling was quashed by a higher court. The funding ban was ultimately held to be constitutional and reinstated by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2010.
Meanwhile, Rep. King has demanded “an all-out, full-court press federal investigation” in order “to bring ACORN to heel.”
The lawmaker has urged the IRS and the Justice Department to jointly investigate ACORN and carry out a complete forensic analysis of its convoluted finances. A special prosecutor should be appointed to probe the group that has long depended on government grants to fund its operations, he said.
“People need to go to jail for criminal activities,” King said.
According to King, the scandals surrounding the violent, in-your-face activist group are “thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys.”
“By the time we pull ACORN out by its roots America’s going to understand just how big this is,” said King, according to Vadum’s book, “Subversion Inc.”
Because of the potentially criminal activity documented in this explosive book, copies of “Subversion Inc.,” by Matthew Vadum have been sent by the publisher, WND Books, to all 535 members of the House and Senate in hopes of prompting further investigation of ACORN and its tentacles.
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WND Staff