A state court in Baltimore has dismissed ACORN’s lawsuit against James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart.com LLC after the plaintiffs failed to serve the complaint on the defendants within Maryland’s 120-day limit.

28218713-ACORN-v-O-Keefe-Docket

It was with great fanfare that ACORN, along with two recently-fired employees of its Baltimore office, sued last September over thesurreptitious taping of the employees advising O’Keefe and Giles on running a prostitution business out of a house. ACORN’s general counsel, Arthur Schwartz, told the Washington Post at the time that the defendants, young filmmakers O’Keefe and Giles, plus Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.com LLC, which disseminated the videos, had committed “clear violations of Maryland law” against audio recording without consent from all parties. But ACORN appears to have lost interest in the case since filing it, confirming my suspicion that it was little more than a press release on pleading paper.

Under Maryland Rule 2-507(b), “An action against any defendant who has not been served or over whom the court has not otherwise acquired jurisdiction is subject to dismissal as to that defendant at the expiration of 120 days from the issuance of original process directed to that defendant.” That’s exactly what the court did March 4, with no apparent notice from the media that covered the filing of the lawsuit. The court’s dismissal was without prejudice, meaning that the plaintiffs could theoretically re-file. But, as I argued shortly after it was filed, the lawsuit has substantive flaws that go well beyond the plaintiffs’ apparent lack of interest in pursuing it.

In addition, Eden took a swipe at Lila Rose, Planned Parenthood’s main pain in the butt, for being deceptive in her undercover vids which exposed Planned Parenthood’s illegal activity. Oh, and I almost forgot: Dawn also busted on Hannah for being un-Christlike for wearing a miniskirt and dressing like a hooker.  Sounds a little catty to me—and a wee bit like Dana Carvey’s Church Lady—but I digress.

First off, Ms. Eden, if you ever drum up the nerve to expose a scandalous multimillion dollar Obama-backed, taxpayer-funded organization for doing illegal crap and then undergo death threats (versus sitting on the sidelines and simply critiquing those who have the cojones to do so) you will find that the lawbreakers are rather reticent in telling journalists, who are intent on exposing and destroying their world, exactly how they’re breaking the law.  Yeah, I know.  It’s weird, eh?

You’d think that nefarious organizations would just spill their guts, throw up their hands, give up their hard drives, refrain from dumping tens of thousands of documents in a dumpster, and just cooperate to the fullest extent with the FBI and the DOJ, but alas, they don’t because they’re criminals, and criminals, generally speaking, aren’t known for truthfulness, contrition and full disclosure with cops.

Therefore, most of the time when journalists, Christian or not, want to get the 411 on a reprehensible group, they usually have to fly under the radar, you know, by being misleading, going stealth, acting like serpents, slithering in and getting the apple in front of the culprit and seeing if they’ll take the bait. Deception is a given in the truth seeker’s toolbox when it comes to dealing with slippery critters who won’t easily spill the beans. It’s called hunting.  Haven’t you ever watched a Jason Bourne movie, seen Barney Fife in action, or read Joshua or Judges?  Geez, Dawn.  Come to speed, why don’t cha?

For frail Dawn, the deceptive tactics Giles, O’Keefe and Rose employed in exposing crappy cabals like ACORN and Planned Parenthood present a pious conundrum because she sees deceit, in all forms, as evil; according to her read of the Bible, sweet Jesus would never give the thumbs-up to a believer to participate in that kind of devilish activity.

No, for Dawn, we must pray, be more “mature,” take the high road, wait a million years, come through the front door with a press pass around our neck, and tell the twisted that the USA and Jesus would really appreciate it if ACORN and Planned Parenthood would confess their sins, close down their operations, and become a Ben & Jerry’s.

Here’s my take on whether or not Jesus and the Bible are cool with deceit for righteous purposes.  First off, when I’m talking about Jesus, I’m talking about the one in the Bible who methodically made a whip and beat the religious hucksters out of the temple (that’s not very Christlike, eh Dawn?), purposely picked fights with sanctimonious toads and political pukes, and instructed his disciples to be “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Mt. 10:16).  Or, as my King Doug Contra Mundus Translation interprets the original Greek text, “be as clever as the Devil.”  Yep, good old Jesus said it’s okay to imitate the serpent in regard to cleverness; just be righteous in spirit and desired goals.

From what I know from my own serious Christian kid and O’Keefe (as well as Rose, via several interviews with her), their motivations were pure in that they wanted to sink these two sucky organizations—organizations, mind you, that are on tape aiding and abetting underage prostitution, home loans for multiple whorehouses, money laundering, tax fraud, millions of abortions, and not just any old abortions but abortions for underage girls (without their parents’ knowledge or consent) who have been the victims of statutory rape.

The reason I believe Jesus wouldn’t give a flip about these three heroes’ mad methods but would instead applaud their efforts is because the Scripture doesn’t condemn:

Rahab, a real whore, for her sleight of hand with the Canaanites
Gideon’s pretense with his small army
Abraham’s lie regarding his wife
King David’s feigned madness before King Achish.

Real life is war, sweetie pie, and I hate to burst your smug balloon, my dear Dawn, but sometimes playing dirty for noble reasons is the right thing to do.

With Eden’s edict banning deception, it follows that Christian cops couldn’t do their fabulous undercover work; Christian soldiers couldn’t wear deceptive camo or take on local dress in order to whack the Taliban; Christian CIA ops would have to wear dove and fish T-Shirts instead of their Simon Templar garb; and the amazing Christians who lied to the murderous Nazis would all be uniformly condemned for fibbing about the whereabouts of precious Jews they were hiding.

Lastly, Dawn, at the end of the day, I believe Hannah, James and Lila will get mad applause in heaven as they are here on earth for exposing ACORN and Planned Parenthood’s hellish practices.  I know, as a Christian, I prefer their ways of doing things to your way of not doing them.  Amen.

This week, Hynes announced that “no criminality has been found” after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.

(They got a choice of government loans: Phat Fannie Mae, Prince Freddie Mac or Barney Fresh Daddy Frank … aka “Sir Fix-A-Lot.”)

I’m just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough “investigation” first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I’m not a lawyer — oh, wait, yes, I am — but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

In a “Eureka” moment, ACORN Employee-of-the-Month Volda Albert identifies for O’Keefe and Giles the problem they had been having getting a mortgage:

Albert: Um, is it legalized? Is prostitution legalized in New York state?

O’Keefe: It’s not. It’s not, unfortunately.

Albert: Well see, that’s your problem.

As ACORN employee Milagros Rivera said, “You can’t say what you do for a living because of the law.” But displaying ACORN’s can-do attitude, she explained: “Honest is not going to get you a house.”

ACORN employees helped concoct a scheme to hide from the lender the source of O’Keefe and Giles’ down payment money. Albert suggested that O’Keefe “pay a down payment — or (Giles) can transfer to somebody else, who is not in that business … a close friend, then (Giles) can transfer that, and then he can give you, like, a gift to purchase.”

Under New York law, hiding the true source of down payment money from a lender constitutes mortgage fraud. Also, using the proceeds of criminal conduct in any banking transaction is money laundering.

Does anybody need a flow chart at this point, or should I continue?

To help Giles hide her income from turning tricks, ACORN employee Albert advised Giles to open two banking accounts, depositing no more than $500 per week in each one. (This would not only enable her to conceal her illegal earnings, it would also qualify her for free checking.)

But Albert’s most inspired idea was that Giles get a “house with a backyard. You get a tin can … and bury (your money) down in there, and you put the money right in, and you put grass over it, and you don’t tell a single soul but yourself where it is.”

Back when I was in Louisiana, we advised people to put their illegal money in the freezer, but that didn’t work out so well. And I guess putting your money in a mattress isn’t advisable if you live in a whorehouse.

Anyway, Albert was particularly detailed on the tin-can-in-the-backyard investment plan: “Keep thinking: ‘I have a yard. I have a house.’ You gotta start coming out with, like, plants and you start doing — so it won’t be suspicious. You start buying plants for the backyard in pots and what have you, and you mark a spot.”

She later told Giles: “You are not paying Social Security, so you’ll have society, all right? You are not getting a pension, so you need to save that money for in later years.” ACORN: Helping Plan Your Financial Future.

If only shady lawyers advised clients to bury money in cans in their backyards, instead of putting it in tax shelters, we wouldn’t have all those attorneys clogging up prison cells!

The ACORN employees also stressed that Giles should do nothing to attract attention to her prostitution money. Albert said: “You can buy a decent car for yourself, no big fancy thing to attract people, all right?”

In Albert’s defense, this could have been common etiquette advice. No one likes a showy hooker.

Even after Giles explained her plan to house a “slew” of 13-, 14- and 15-year-old girls from El Salvador for her prostitution business, Rivera simply responded: “So you guys ready to schedule that (mortgage application) for the summer?”

Rivera clearly missed her calling — she should be pushing vacation time shares in Boca Raton beach condos.

Under New York law, a person is guilty of advancing prostitution if he: “knowingly … aids a person to commit or engage in prostitution (or) … engages in any other conduct designed to institute, aid or facilitate an act or enterprise of prostitution.”

It is a class D felony (up to seven years in prison) if the prostitute is under 19 years old — as the ACORN employees knew Giles was — and a class C felony (up to 15 years in prison) if the prostitute is under 16 years old — as Giles stated the El Salvadoran girls were. (And if she’s under 15 years old, Eliot Spitzer may be involved.)

If none of the advice given by ACORN on those videotapes constitutes conspiracy or aiding or abetting a crime, see this column next week for my opus: “10 Detailed Plans to Kill George Soros and Why This Might Be Right for You.”

Over a week ago, Attorney General Jerry Brown got yet another reminder, this time coming from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The report “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies” focuses public attention on AG Brown’s failed investigation of ACORN. While some of Brown’s gubernatorial challengers talk of the need for a California Governor to have a spine of steel, AG Brown has instead crumpled like an aluminum can cowardly hiding behind state bureaucrats and a wall of state agencies.

On October 1, 2009, Jerry Brown publicly announced that an investigation had been opened concerning undercover videos that were obtained by citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles who videotaped ACORN employees at two California offices. ACORN employees were filmed providing advice regarding tax evasion, prostitution and human smuggling of underage girls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was informed by AG Brown in a letter that he had “opened an investigation of both ACORN and the circumstances under which ACORN employees were videotaped.” Since that announcement, AG Brown has found himself at the center of a controversy surrounding the mismanagement of the investigation as well as a potential scandal due to a double standard involving one of his own state employees secretly recording conversations with reporters.

Shortly after ACORN had been alerted to the immanent investigation as a result of AG Brown’s public announcement, ACORN employees at the San Diego, CA office were caught engaging in a massive document dump on October 9, 2009. Those records were retrieved from an unsecured shared public dumpster where they had been thrown revealing sensitive personal, financial and banking information for both clients and employees in addition to revelations about the political inner workings of ACORN’s relationship with major U.S. banks and labor unions.

Just a few days later, David Lagstein, ACORN’s head organizer in San Diego, was caught on an audio tape bragging how investigators from the Attorney General’s office had visited the local ACORN office that day and that communication from the Attorney General’s office indicates, “the fault WILL BE found with the people that did the video – not ACORN.” Mr. Lagstein appears to have been speaking with greater knowledge and authority than he has led people to believe since my investigation revealed that in addition to being ACORN’s head organizer, he is also married to Clare Crawford who is a National Political Director for ACORN and who has ties to ACORN’s head office in Chicago, IL.

First Clip: Attorney’s General Office Visits ACORN

Second Clip: Fault Will Be Found With Filmmakers

On November 22, 2009 while on KFI 640 radio with Andrew Breitbart, the story broke that I had over 20,000 documents ACORN unceremoniously threw into a dumpster in advance of Attorney General Jerry Brown’s visit to the local San Diego office. The following day, in a rambling statement on a Los Angeles radio show, AG Brown spoke about ACORN’s “right to privacy” of their trash. Californians quickly saw an Attorney General shift into political “duck and cover” mode rather than show the leadership that is expected from California’s top law enforcement official.

After being granted access to the documents, photographs and recordings that I obtained, investigators from the attorney general’s office stated in a written letter dated December 7, 2009, “California Teachers Association (CTA) paid California ACORN Special Projects nearly $140,000 in April-May, 2009 to conduct what CTA reported as “voter registration,” yet, according to documents found in the ACORN trash…it is apparent that ACORN workers solicited voter support for Proposition 1B.”

My investigation clearly showed that ACORN’s support of the ballot initiative was done with resources provided by the CTA and their explicit approval that specifically solicited partisan support from Democrat voters in California. Proposition 1B was a California ballot initiative during the May 19, 2009 special election that earmarked $9.3 billion for schools and was supported by CTA. The letter further states, “Because the issues raised by Mr. Roach’s claim seems most appropriately handled by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), we are referring this matter to you.” The FPPC is a state agency consisting of two republicans and three democrats that investigate violations of California’s Political Reform Act. On December 30, 2009, Roman Porter Executive Director for the FPPC responded to the referral by the Attorney General’s office stating in a written letter, “There is no evidence of a Political Reform Act violation.”

ACORN – FPPC Ltr 12-30-09 –

In the wake of Jerry Brown alerting ACORN to an investigation that was to be conducted by his office, ACORN’s actions of dumping records into a dumpster in what appeared to be possible obstruction of justice, statements from ACORN officials that some interpret as possible collusion between ACORN and the Attorney General’s office and a referral of an investigation to another state agency in what appears to be an abdication of responsibility and the equivalent of a political passing-of-the-buck now comes new allegations that ACORN did in fact violate multiple California state and federal laws.

On February 19, 2010 Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-49) stated on nationally syndicated The Roger Hedgecock Show that documents from the San Diego office of ACORN were vital in showing a pattern of fraud, waste and abuse. The documents also showed that ACORN and the California Teachers Association were directly involved in California elections without the proper firewalls that are legally required to distinguish non-profit from political activities.

Congressman Issa also referred to the recent report “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies” which was released by the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 18, 2009. The report finds, “There is no distinction between ACORN and any of its affiliates. Affiliates share staff, funds, office space, responsibilities, and common controls-there is no real separation between the parts, making it impossible to consider them as truly separate organizations.”

Documents obtained from the San Diego ACORN office included information about Citizens’ Consulting Inc which the report found is “an arm of ACORN that commingles funds from ACORN’s non-profit organizations and transfers this money to organizations to use for political purposes.” Documents that I provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also showed a relationship, not only with the California Teachers Association but with the local chapter of Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The findings in the congressional report found that, “SEIU and ACORN are not only financially but also politically codependent” and that “ACORN directly runs two of the most prominent SEIU locals.” ACORN and SEIU were also found to share offices in nine cities across the United States utilizing staff and resources to advance both organizing and political goals.

Documents obtained from the San Diego ACORN office included financial records for Whitney Bank located in New Orleans, Louisiana. The congressional report that was released found that ACORN maintained nearly 700 bank accounts at Whitney Bank alone not to mention numerous bank accounts at other banks including Bank of America. It was revealed that ACORN had ownership interest in Whitney Bank. The report findings shockingly revealed that Whitney Bank inexplicably wired several million dollars to an ACORN Bank of America account in San Francisco and that money has not been accounted for.

It is astoundingly amazing that with video evidence obtained by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, documents that show an undisputed pattern of political activism by a “non-profit” organization, millions of dollars that have been unaccounted for and a congressional investigation that has documented a pattern of criminal activity that has deprived the State of California from desperately needed tax revenues; that California Attorney General Jerry Brown has yet to show any real sign of leadership or fortitude necessary to protect the citizens of California or seriously investigate ACORN.

Instead he is hiding behind a state bureaucracy hoping that nobody will notice his lack of leadership until after the next election. It is no wonder that Democrat elite are quietly whispering in their inner circles that Attorney General Jerry Brown failed California as Governor and is once again failing to show any signs other than that of a washed up politician who is once again trying to become Governor before heading of to retirement to enjoy his family’s trust fund. Perhaps it is time to investigate those in Sacramento for their ties to this corrupt organization.

In these videos, a visibly angry Breitbart tears into Progressive writers Max Blumenthal, Mike Madden, and others, in response to their baseless charges and innuendos of racism surrounding Breitbart, Hannah Giles, and James O’Keefe.

Apparently, Salon.com doesn’t think that anger and outrage are normal reactions for a human being to have in response to being falsely smeared and branded a racist.

Salon.com sees the videos of an angry Andrew Breitbart as not much more than an opportunity to ridicule someone with whom they disagree.

By using these videos in this particular way,  Salon reveals that it considers the righteous indignation of a man falsely accused to be funny.  A real knee-slapper.

That’s very revealing because the videos that the folks at Salon.com are promoting clearly demonstrate why Breitbart is so furious. He explains it to their cameras repeatedly. Perhaps the editors at Salon.com are too politically tone deaf to hear the message.

Just in case, we’ve produced a little video to help illustrate what we’re talking about.

Note to Salon: Responding to false charges of racism with anger and outrage is a completely rational reaction.

In a previous era, Blumenthal and said media organs (Salon, Independent Film Channel, Huffington Post, etc.) were able to get away with this pathetic arrangement.   But now, we are on to Max, the spawn of Sid “Vicious” Blumenthal – he who attempted to ruin Monica Lewinsky’s life by falsely portraying her as Bill Clinton’s “stalker.”

The Blumenthal operation is now under the extremely close scrutiny of a camelid named “Retracto.”

The movement formerly known as the “Tea-Baggers” (with their flip cameras and new media skills) and various conservatives who have had enough with the excessive Alinsky tactics used most egregiously by Max and Sid but representative of main stream media’s odious guilt-by-association, repeat-the-same-lie-until-it-sticks, smear-any-conservative-as-racist-sexist-homophobic skill set, are now fighting back.

If the last two weeks have not humiliated him enough — and this Huffington Post rage-fest from yesterday with its title “Feeling the Hate at CPAC 2010 With Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles and the Crazy Mob” suggests they have not – then perhaps this coup de booger will tell him that we say what we mean and we mean what we say.

Max gallivanted around CPAC looking for prey.  He was treated with respect as he sought to make good and decent people look foolish on camera.  He decided he would go after a 20-year-old girl, one Hannah Giles.  And perhaps due to sexism or ageism he underestimated her ability.  Max should have called Bertha Lewis before he went after this young heroine.  Instead, he went to a gunfight with a knife – and a dirty nose.

Ladies and gentlemen, the much awaited, “Max Blumenthal Picks a Booger Out of His Nose at CPAC” video:

Max Blumenthal, this is what you do for a living. I can do it too (**wink **wink** Independent Film Channel).

Salon has already corrected his initial attempt to paint James O’Keefe as a White Nationalist.  They corrected his baseless assertion that O’Keefe planned the “Race and Conservatism” forum held at Georgetown Law Center, but he continues to hold that James O’Keefe is a racist, and that he was in some way involved with the “execution” of the forum.  His source for this claim?  Daryle Jenkins, whose credibility was recently eviscerated by Kevin Martin from Project 21.

He was wrong about Kevin Martin being a last minute addition to the “Race and Conservatism” panel (which Blumenthal describes as a “white nationalist confab”), and he continues to conveniently exclude Mr. Martin’s own testimony that James O’Keefe agreed with his positions AGAINST White Nationalist, Jared Taylor.

He was also caught lying on a video seen by tens of thousands, and yet he chose to edit that part out of his CPAC highlight reel.

Max Blumenthal, you are being Booger-Boarded. Correct, retract, and apologize to James O’Keefe for your slanderous attempt to ruin his life.  And if you do so, we will take this video down.

Footage provided by Christian Hartsock

ACORN will probably run out of money and fold by year’s end but a dozen ACORN state chapters reincorporated to seem like new, independent organizations will spring up in the next week to carry on ACORN’s business, a leaked email from ACORN’s online director suggests.

“The truth is that it is hard for us to forsee [sic] any scenario where ACORN continues beyond the end of 2010 and some of us think it might not last that long,” writes Nathan Henderson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns, in an apparently authentic Feb. 22 email.

“Last one to leave turn out the lights and wipe the server,” he writes at the end of the message.

In the email Henderson-James explains the subterfuge ACORN will use to lead Americans to believe ACORN is breaking apart.

“It is definitely true that over the next week or so we should see a dozen or more organizations launched on the state level by staff who used to work for ACORN and leaders who developed their skills as ACORN members. These are not just simple name changes, but reimaginings of how best to organize low and moderate income constitiuencies [sic] without any of the legal problems and funding issues dogging ACORN, not to mention the brand damage.”

It is a “tactically smart…reaction to the global situation that helps the work of building power for poor people to continue,” writes Henderson-James, an ACORN employee since 1997.

The Saul Alinsky-inspired public relations hocus-pocus described by Henderson-James is consistent with earlier reports that ACORN is trying to pass off various state chapters as “new” groups. ACORN’s ruse is designed to keep tax dollars and foundation grants flowing into its coffers. With the fallout from the hidden camera videos last fall, congressional funding of ACORN’s election fraud and racketeering business is no longer guaranteed, so ACORN developed a plan that would allow the operation to keep going, albeit on a smaller scale.

ACORN veteran Marcel Reid told me in an interview yesterday that she wasn’t buying into ACORN leadership’s spin. Reid is a whistleblower who was expelled from ACORN’s national board in 2008 for asking too many uncomfortable questions about a million-dollar embezzlement perpetrated in 2000 by the brother of ACORN’s founder and covered up by management for eight years.

“The folding of ACORN isn’t happening because it’s simply going to restructure,” she said. “In the meantime they’ll give all of these new community organizations in the states an opportunity to flourish without ACORN’s legal baggage.”

At least three of these dummy nonprofit corporations that Henderson-James describes have surfaced so far this year. They are Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New York Communities for Change, and New England United for Justice. All three groups operate out of ACORN offices. The president of New England United for Justice, Maude Hurd, just happens to be the 20-year national president of ACORN. (Massachusetts articles of incorporation available here)

The Henderson-James email to ACORN supporters also encourages recipients to help rewrite the history of the embattled group.

ACORN_NathanHendersonJamesEmail

“[T]here will be a fight over the narrative of ACORN’s demise,” he writes. The other side wants “a narrative about the corruption of popular organizations and how they are simply vehicles for the personal enrichment and power fantasies of their top staff members while pushing public policies that destroy middle America.”

This argument must be fought, Henderson-James argues, because it “gives people pushing a pro-corporate agenda a way to tar progressives and even non-progressive Democrats running for office with the ACORN brush.”

Then comes the whining from ACORN’s cyber-warfare chief.

Henderson-James acknowledges that ACORN made mistakes, but claims it was primarily a victim of dirty tricks perpetrated by the political right. “[W]e were all up against a 24-hour propoganda [sic] channel,” he writes, in an apparent reference to the Fox News Channel, one of the few media outlets to closely follow the ACORN saga.

Progressives didn’t fight back hard enough “in a moment of extreme duress, orchestrated by propogand [sic] videos,” he complains.

The movement “stood by as ACORN got gutted, while we also handed the forces of pro-corporate politics a handy club to kick the shit out of anything that vaugely [sic] sounds progressive. And that comes with a license to go after the next group or groups that embody the progressive agenda. This went beyond ACORN. We were just a convienent [sic] target to make into a bogeyman. This was about everything progressives stood for. And when it came time to stand up, most of us didn’t.”

Marcel Reid, who also heads a reform group called ACORN 8, told me ACORN’s setbacks are the fault of the left, not the right. Progressives should have come forward to help fix ACORN, but they didn’t.

“We stood up in the organization to straighten out its problems before they got to this point,” she said. “When they could have stood up to save it they sat down.”

“It’s the left’s fault because when it was time for them to police themselves they would not do it. The left didn’t stand up to purge itself when it could have. They can’t blame the right when they didn’t clean up their own house.”

In the email Henderson-James also complains that federal lawmakers and the mainstream media didn’t do enough to help ACORN, bemoaning “the breathtaking swiftness with which the Congress condemned us on the basis of what have been clearly shown by real journalists to be nothing but the purest propaganda [sic].”

Left-wingers, he writes, now have to promote a narrative “that says the attacks on ACORN were part of a concerted attempt to demobilize key progressive constituencies because they banded together to take power and threaten the status quo and that the legacy of ACORN deserves that regular people stand up for themselves and organize to take power, to pass public policies that create an America we all want to live in. One in which organizing is about average people making their lives and their communities and their workplaces better.”

This left-wing spin “will be contested for a bit and you can be sure that it will be marked by serious right-wing triumphalism,” he predicts. “Our side needs to make sure our narrative wins, using the kind of pushback that’s taken place recently around [undercover video maker James] O’Keefe.”

“That’s been beautiful,” Henderson-James coos.