A Curious Little Blog

ACORN has put itself in a position of public trust by acting as an intermediary between individuals and the government: helping people register to vote, helping them get government funding, helping the government count citizens. Whether it supported pimping or not, it is clearly suggesting ways for people to defraud the government by cheating on taxes. This is criminal, and it would seem to provide an obvious reason for the government to discontinue all public funds to ACORN immediately. I have read in several places (e.g., here ) that it may be unconstitutional for Congress to cut off funding specifically for ACORN because it could count as a "bill of attainder." `This seems more than a little stretch of the concept to me. A bill of attainder "is an act of the legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial." The laws in question would say nothing about whether ACORN was engaged in crimina...

ACORN's recent embarrassment seems like a redemption to me, as to other conservatives. Like them, I have been very dubious of ACORN's voter registration practices, and appalled at the thought that it was getting millions of dollars of federal funds, some of which was being used for partisan political purposes. The video sting seems like the kind of thing that is too good to be true; and, like anything that seems too good to be true, I am curious to know the downside. To that end, I read a few liberal defenses of ACORN. There is no shortage of arguments in ACORN's favour, but they seem to fall into two broad categories: (1) The videos don't tell the truth; and (2) The behaviour documented in the videos can be excused, or at least explained, at an organizational level. The most fundamental argument of the first category is that all Republicans are liars, therefore the evidence cannot be believed a priori . Obviously, this is not part of a serious argument, but it i...