In their recent Politico article, “Constitution is inherently progressive,” John Podesta (former chief of staff to President Clinton and current president of the Center for American Progress) and John Halpin argue that the “values” of the Constitution are progressive, not conservative, and that conservatives should stop claiming that progressivism is at odds with the Constitution. “Since our nation’s founding,” the authors claim, “progressives have drawn on the Declaration of Independence’s inspirational values of human liberty and equality in their own search for social justice and freedom.”  The progressive “framework” of public-private cooperation, they continue, is “the essence of the constitutional promise of a never-ending search for ‘a more perfect union.’”  In short, the progressive “vision” of the Constitution best represents the American tradition. This argument, which is part of recent progressive efforts to rehabilitate their constitutional bona fides, might come as a surprise to the real founders of progressivism, for while some contemporary progressives might preach a Declaration-based faith and try to get right with the Constitution, early progressives had little use for either document.

According to Woodrow Wilson, what he called the “preface” of the Declaration of Independence—the part about “self-evident truths,” “unalienable rights” given to human beings by the Creator, and the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”—was not the “real Declaration of Independence.”  If you want to understand that, Wilson said, “do not repeat the preface.”  For Wilson, the point of the Declaration—and the Constitution, too—was not the permanence of any principles.  “No doubt,” he wrote, “we are meant to have liberty, but each generation must form its own conception of what liberty is.”  The Founders, early progressives held, wrote for their own time in our first documents, but not for future generations. For Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Croly, Frank Goodnow and other founding fathers of progressivism, the Constitution of the American Founding was an obstacle to be overcome.  Insisting that the Constitution must be interpreted in view of the new but increasingly dominant Darwinian model of constant change, progressives pronounced our Constitution a “living” document.  The Constitution, they believed, is as malleable as human nature itself.  The Founders’ old ideas about separation of powers could be discarded in favor of new and improved notions of “enlightened administration.”

Podesta and Halpin allege that conservatives “often mask social Darwinism . . . in a cloak of liberty,” but in fact it is progressivism whose roots run deepest in the political ideology of Darwinism.  The fittest among us, it turns out, are the bureaucrats, empowered by a Constitution whose original restraints, like federalism and the limitations imposed by enumerated powers, have been stripped by progressives in favor of a more “dynamic” model.

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From Politico:

John Podesta will step down as president of the Center for American Progress, an official at the organization said today.

Podesta, who served as Bill Clinton’s last chief of staff from 1998 to 2001, founded the center in 2003 with a core of wealthy liberal supporters and transformed it into the Democratic Party’s key policy and politics shop.

Podesta, 62, will remain the center’s chairman, and will also serve Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a day-a-week volunteer, the CAP official said, but is not immediately expected to take on any other public role.

“He will continue to provide long-term strategic advice,” said his successor, former Clinton and Obama policy aide Neera Tanden. (more…)

I give all but one of the GOP candidates an “F” for last night’s performance.

The very premise of the Republican presidential debate, hosted by NBC/Politico and broadcast by corporate welfare queen MSNBC proves that conservatives don’t understand the power the media is trying to exert over the next election.

It is an insult to the house of Reagan that MSNBC would try to pass itself off as a fair news organization with the eight Republican candidates giving the sneering, snobby and snide enemy a certain imprimatur of legitimacy.

The only reason the GOP is in a fighting stance in the 2012 presidential election is the Tea Party. The alternative narrative-drivers at MSNBC have spent much of the last two-plus years trying to frame millions and millions of patriotic and concerned Americans as violent, racist knuckle-draggers.

To dignify those habitual and unaccountable slanderers by appearing on that stage shows that apparently these Republicans and daily MSNBC punching bags don’t comprehend the scope of the media problem.

Barack Obama was elected due to the work of the media in 2008. Barack Obama will not cross the finish line in 2012 without the help of that same media–with MSNBC leaning forward as it pushes their wildly unpopular President from behind. (more…)

(continued from Part 1)

Amazingly, ACORN’s 40 years of lawlessness have been heavily subsidized by taxpayers. From the federal government alone, the ACORN network has received at least $79 million in federal taxpayer funding. No one knows how many millions of dollars ACORN has taken in from states and localities. Yet as of November 2009, ACORN was a tax deadbeat, owing more than $2.3 million in back taxes to all levels of government.

Bertha Lewis

You don’t have to take my word that ACORN will soon arise from the ashes. Nathan Henderson-James, longtime director of the group’s online campaigns, confirmed in a leaked February 2010 e-mail that ACORN plans to come back. America’s most notorious nonprofit felt it needed to perform this trick because its employees were caught red-handed repeatedly counseling a fake pimp and prostitute on the finer points of establishing a brothel for pedophiles. ACORN calculated that people would forget the transgressions of the taxpayer-subsidized nonprofit best known for its voter fraud efforts.

In the e-mail that came five months after conservative activist-journalists James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles punked ACORN with their “pimp and pro” routine, Henderson-James explained the group’s ongoing hoax that consists of its state chapters separately incorporating under new, innocuous-sounding names. “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,” he wrote. “These are not just simple name changes, but reimaginings of how best to organize” low and moderate income constituencies “without any of the legal problems and funding issues dogging ACORN, not to mention the brand damage.” Stepping out of the spotlight for a while is a “tactically smart … reaction to the global situation that helps the work of building power for poor people to continue,” he wrote.

The secret operation was already underway when Henderson-James bragged about the effort to his radical and liberal friends on Townhouse, an invitation only left-wingers’ online discussion forum run by Matt Stoller, who was senior policy adviser to colorful former Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla. In late 2009 and early 2010, ACORN staffers across America created a plethora of separate organizations aimed at carrying on ACORN’s corrupt affairs.

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Last night was a transcendent moment for Americans. News that Osama bin Laden had been killed–by U.S. forces, no less–triggered spontaneous joy that spilled over into the streets of our nation. All of us–almost all of us–were united in congratulating President Obama, the armed forces, and each other.

There were a few, on both sides, who indulged the urge to turn America’s victory into an occasion for smug partisanship.

And I’ll admit that I enjoyed the opportunity to mock the extremists at MoveOn.org for smearing the military that brought America this great achievement.

Yet like most Americans, I gave standalone credit to President Obama–and in my exuberance, I even had to be reminded that President Bush deserved credit, too.

But victory against Al Qaeda wasn’t good enough for some on the left and in the mainstream media, who decided to declare Obama the pre-emptive winner of the 2012 election.

In fact, they have been politicizing Osama bin Laden’s death for years.

In September 2004, Bob Woodward told Larry King that Bush might produce “the apprehension or the death of bin Laden” as a “September or October surprise” to win the election.

In 2006 and 2008, the left revived the same conspiracy theory–with Media Matters, among others, claiming that Al Qaeda had supported Bush.

Today, the propaganda factory of the left is once again politicizing bin Laden’s death, using it to smear conservatives. John Podesta’s ThinkProgress.org has led the charge, touting a supposed “deather” conspiracy theory that refuses to believe bin Laden is dead: “Andrew Breitbart, a prominent right-wing commentator with close ties to the Republican Party and the Tea Party, is pushing the theory on his website Big Peace.”

That is pure projection by the institutional left, which can neither celebrate American victories in the war on terror, nor mourn American tragedies like Tuscon, without politicizing them.

So I am challenging the left to prove what it is alleging.

If anyone can prove that I believe American special forces did not kill Osama bin Laden, I will donate one million dollars to ThinkProgress.

Put up or shut up, John Podesta. And let Americans celebrate as one.

**UPDATED

President Barack Obama has won praise from the media — and from himself — for putting the White House visitor logs online. Yet the visitor logs may hide more than they reveal.

The White House is still holding back “tens of thousands” of visitor logs, according to congressional testimony last week by Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, who also added that “the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration.”

We also know that some of the most important presidential visitors don’t even walk into the White House. The administration meets K Street lobbyists at Caribou Coffee, and holds secret meetings in Jackson Place townhouses where there are no visitor logs.

The visitor logs that have been released are problematic, because they are simply lists of names, with no way to verify whether a specific name belongs to a particular person.

When the first names were released on Oct. 30, 2009, late on a Friday afternoon, then-White House “ethics czar” Norm Eisen noted the lists included “false positives” — “names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else.” According to Eisen, these included ordinary visitors named “Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly (“R. Kelly”), and Malik Shabazz.” (more…)

The woman known as the “Queen of Labor” is living up to her promise to focus on “building a sustaining progressive infrastructure.”  Anna Burger, former SEIU Secretary-Treasurer, has just joined the board of directors at the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAP Action).

CAP Action is a sister organization to the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress.  While the Center for American Progress focuses on developing new policy ideas and on “critiquing the policy that stems from conservative values,”  CAP Action focuses on how to put those policies into action – by organizing liberal grassroots groups, labor unions and other progressive partners as advocates.

John Podesta, Chairman of the Board of Directors for CAP Action, offered the following statement in the organization’s December 9th press release:

“The Center for American Progress Action Fund is pleased to welcome Anna Burger to our Board of Directors. She has been a longtime friend of the Center for American Progress and CAP Action and we’re very happy that she has agreed to help us advance our mission by serving in this new capacity.

Anna Burger has been fighting hard for progressive ideas and policies for nearly 40 years, including the visionary leadership she has provided for the progressive movement over the past decade. We face numerous opportunities and many challenges over the next two years and look forward to Anna’s help in charting our course. As we continue to push for an economy built on a strong middle class that works for all Americans, Anna’s continued leadership and experience could not come at a more important time.”

In addition to her previous post at SEIU, Burger has held many prominent positions that have played significant roles in advancing the progressive movement, including:

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In response to the announcement that I would provide my analysis on ABC News from Arizona on election night, like-clockwork, from the George Soros-funded Media Matters to Keith Olbermann to Huffington Post to Daily Kos to Talking Points Memo to Twitter (#boycottABCNEWS), the institutional left began on Friday to inundate ABC News with a wave of partisan objections and unfounded allegations against me.

Make no mistake: this is a calculated “astroturf“ intimidation campaign by the well-funded and frightened-for-their-political-lives institutional left to quash dissenting voices. It’s what they do.

What was ABC News’ response?  Not standing up for free speech and the 1^st Amendment.  Not sticking by their original invitation.  Not standing up for diversity of opinion.

Instead, on Saturday, ABC News issued an official statement that was immediately heralded as a victory by the anti-free speech forces on the left:

Since conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart announced on his website that he was going to be a participant in ABC’s Town Hall meeting at Arizona State University, there has been considerable consternation and misinformation regarding my decision to ask him to participate in an election night Town Hall event for ABC News Digital. I want to explain what Mr. Breitbart’s role has always been as one of our guests at our digital town hall event:

Mr. Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst.

He is not an ABC News consultant.

He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News.

He is not being paid by ABC News.

He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election for ABC News.

Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. For the broadcast coverage, David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg will contribute reaction and response gathered from the students and faculty of Arizona State University at an ABC News/Facebook town hall.

He has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of different political persuasions, to engage with a live, studio audience that will be closely following the election results and participating in an online-only discussion and debate to be moderated by David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg on ABCNews.com and Facebook. We will have other guests, as well as a live studio audience and a large audience on ABCNews.com and Facebook, who can question the guests and the audience’s   opinions.

George Stephanoplous quickly tweeted, “Breitbart NOT on ABC network broadcast http://bit.ly/bgkseJ.” (more…)

If you haven’t read by now all the headlines on this story, you’ll want to start at the beginning and read the first post, SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of America Exec.  Because as each day passes, new facts are popping up.  The story seemed so outrageous at first.  After all, the thought of over 500 screaming and chanting protesters surrounding a Bank of America lawyer’s private residence while the man’s teenage son, home alone, hid frightened inside a bathroom – it’s just so extreme, even by SEIU’s standards.

I knew something was up when the following day, Fortune magazine editor Nina Easton, a neighbor of the targeted residence, published an account of the incident and was almost immediately attacked by what seemed like practically a coordinated dogpile of writers from several specific sources.

In almost mirror fashion to the Town Hall events last August, when both the Huffington Post and Media Matters seemingly tried to cover up and dismiss the violent acts that SEIU committed against Kenneth Gladney, the same players were again out in full force.  As our Larry O’Connor wrote, both outlets behaved less like journalists and more like arms of the SEIU press office, dismissing SEIU’s bad behavior and attacking an innocent party with fabricated conflicts of interest as a method of distraction and intimidation.

Bob Borosage, Erica Payne, and John Podesta

And now we learn this:  Erica Payne, the guest who was invited to appear Friday on Megyn Kelley’s Fox News show and proceeded to blame the Tea Parties for the behavior of SEIU?  She was co-founder of Democracy Alliance, the very organization that spawned and is a donor to Media Matters.  SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger is also the Vice-Chair of its Board.

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“Where were you when George Bush was President?”   You know that question well.  It’s been asked of each of us more times than any of us would care to count.  Do you know how I usually answer it?

I was home, enjoying my life.  I went to work every day and focused on doing the best job that I could do.  When I wasn’t working, I hung out with family and friends.  I went to baseball games, and barbecues, and obscure little hole-in-the-wall joints to hear some of my favorite live music over a couple of Guinnesses.  Yum.

Why?  Because while George Bush was president, we had a media establishment that was challenging our government, not our citizens.

I wasn’t necessarily happy with the direction of the country in those days.  But I could sleep at night, knowing that we had media that pressed George Bush and our Congress on every single issue.  I could know at any given moment what the “death count” was in Iraq because just about every channel splashed a persistent counter in the bottom corner of the television screen.  When bills like the Patriot Act were first introduced in Congress, I never lacked for any detail on the dangers of the legislation.  There was barely a single detail that went uncovered in the daily political grind.  When there was a scandal to research and report, I certainly never had to do that myself.  There were reporters who did all that.

Yep, I’m actually missing the Bush days now.  I had so much more free time.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always done my homework and researched issues on my own anyway.  I recognize that all media is biased to some degree (and has been for quite some time).  But I could always count on the media to challenge the government in the days of George Bush.  I wrote my fair share of letters, I called and complained about the spending, even attended a few protests, but I can’t say that I ever felt there just wasn’t anyone challenging the president in the mainstream media.  Quite the contrary, there was never any lack of DC pushback from the collective press in those days.

But we live in extraordinary times today.  There now exists this giant, open cavity where that healthy pushback against government used to be.  And when the mainstream media stepped away from that opening in 2008, two things happened:

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The left-wing architects of the subprime mortgage collapse have yet to be called to account.

Much has already been written about the possibly criminal conduct of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who relentlessly gamed the political system to clear the way for their friends at government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make billions at the expense of taxpayers, but very little has been written about the role that their liberal friends and allies in the private and nonprofit sectors played in bringing the U.S. economy to its knees.

Funded by huckster John Paulson and predatory lending kingpins Herb & Marion Sandler (who also gave generously to ACORN through the years), the inappropriately named Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) laid the foundation for the current financial crisis.

The media seems barely to have noticed that CRL’s puppet, Eric Stein, is now leading the Obama administration’s push to Sovietize the American banking system. Stein, who is now the U.S. Treasury’s deputy secretary for consumer protection, was previously a vice president at CRL.

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In this ObamaEconomy, you, like most Americans, may be struggling to find work. Well, you’re in luck. We’ve created a convenient checklist so that you can see if you quality to work at John Podesta’s left-wing “think” tank, the Center for American Progress.

1. Did you ever sign a petition that stated “high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur”?
2. Do you support the convicted cop-killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal?
3. Are you a street agitator committed to Marxist revolution?

If you answered yes to all of the above questions, then you and Van Jones are kindred spirits. But, more importantly, what it really means is that your next paycheck could be cut and signed by Podesta himself. After all, it was Podesta who scooped up Van Jones after he was forced out of the White House from his perch as the “green jobs” czar, once the eco-princess’s sordid past and radical worldview were uncovered by intrepid bloggers.

Just exactly how delirious does one need to be in order to work at the Center for American Progress? I was curious.

Smile, John, you’re on camera:

If you want the revealed strategy of how John Podesta’s cronies at the Center for American Progress use voters under 30 as shills and sheep to support Barack’s socialist agenda, be sure to check out my new book Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation. It’s all there.

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UPDATE: The bounty is now $100,000 for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled at Congressmen John Lewis and Andre Carson.

***

After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.

The first sign that a plan was in place was the ham-fisted, high-camp posturing of the most controversial members of the Democratic caucus walking through the peaceful but animated “Tea Party” demonstrators on Capitol Hill. There is no reason for these elected officials to walk above ground through the media circus amid their ideological foes. The natural route is the tunnels between the House office buildings and the Capitol. By crafting a highly symbolic walk of the Congressional Black Caucus through the majority white crowd, the Democratic Party was looking to provoke a negative reaction. They didn’t get it. So they made it up.

The proof that the N-word wasn’t said once, let alone 15 times, as Rep. Andre Carson claimed, is that soon thereafter — even though the press dutifully reported it as truth — Nancy Pelosi followed the alleged hate fest, which allegedly included someone spitting, by walking through the crowd with a gavel in hand and a shit-eating grin on her face. Had the incidents reported by the Congressional Black Caucus actually occurred the Capitol Police would have been negligent to allow the least popular person to that crowd – the Speaker – to put herself in harm’s way.

That crowd was a sea of new-media equipment. Not only were tens of thousands people armed with handicams, BlackBerrys and iPods, so also was the mainstream media there, covering every inch of the event. Why did not one mainstream media outlet raise the specter that perhaps a video would exist to prove the events occurred? I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.) Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences.

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On the campaign trail, now President Obama regularly excoriated lobbyists. He said he’d make the government “open and transparent” and said he’d make it hard for lobbyists to “curry favor” with his administration “based on how much they can spend on a fancy dinner.” Once elected, John Podesta, a member of his transition team, said that Obama would be implementing the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to those scoundrel lobbyists. In his 2009 State of the Union address Obama puffed up his chest, proud of himself that he “excluded lobbyists” from important jobs in his administration.

With all that bombast and populist wind from Obama and his cohorts, then, one would expect to see a dearth of lobbyists in important positions in Obama’s Washington. One’s expectation, however, would easily be dashed by the truth.

Remember the rarefied air of Obama’s campaign for president? Wanna see some, shall we say, “broken promises”?

Transcript of Obama campaign appearance: (My bold for emphasis)

I’ll also institute an absolute gift ban so that no registered lobbyist can curry favor with members of my administration based on how much they can spend on a fancy dinner. I’ll make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people’s business. Justice Louis Brandeis once said “Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant,” and as president I am going to make it impossible for congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one’s looking because when I’m president meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public… no more secrecy, that’s a commitment I make to you as president. No more secrecy!

And, when there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look on-line and find out what’s in it before I sign it so that you know what your government’s doing. When there are meetings between lobbyists and a government agency we’ll put as many as pos… as many of those meetings as possible on-line for every American to watch. When there’s a tax bill being debated in Congress you will now the names of the corporations that would benefit and how much money they would get. And we will put every corporate tax break and every pork barrel project on-line for every American to see, you will know who asked for them and you can decide whether your representative is actually representing you!

Oh, the dreamy dream of hope-n-change. It’s what you voted for, America. So did we get it?

Not even close.

In fact, at least 50 some lobbyists have won the Obama lottery and found themselves landing plumb jobs in the Obama administration. All sorts of Obama’s favorite special interests have found their lobbyists suddenly riding the gravy train. From Big Agriculture, to Big Financial and Big Banking, to Trial Lawyers, to Military, Communications, and Big Bio, Obama’s buddies have lined up around the block to get his favor and found the honey pot well supplied.

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On Wednesday, we brought you the story of a little report from the Boston Fed and its role in creating the housing bubble. In that piece, we mentioned an organization you probably hadn’t heard of before, the Center for Responsible Lending. It is one of the more influential–in a bad way–organizations you don’t know. Over the coming weeks, we’ll lift the veil on this organization. Consider today’s installment a primer.

The Center for Responsible Lending is the most influential liberal advocacy group dealing with the financial services industry in the nation’s capital. It is the policy arm of credit unions based in North Carolina and California. Yes, its parent organization has a vested interest in the outcome of CRL’s advocacy.

The Center performs both public policy research and lobbying. (Lots of lobbying, but that is for another day.) Despite its well known left wing prejudices, the media uncritically accepts the Center’s published papers, giving the group extra heft on Capitol Hill.

The Center aggressively criticizes lending discrimination and pushes lenders to increase their underwriting to poor neighborhood where borrowers are less likely to be able to pay back mortgages. The Center is keenly interested in the redistribution of wealth and cares little about the financial safety and soundness of the banks it targets.

Lenders who fail to cooperate with the Center are accused of “redlining,” i.e. illegally discriminating against borrowers in low-income neighborhoods.

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Below is the full length speech Andrew Breitbart delivered to CPAC 2010. We have also taken the liberty of breaking out some of the best soundbites from the speech.

1. Mr. Podesta, we are watching you!
2. What I learned from Kurt Cobain
3. E Pluribis Unum
4. The Frankfort School roots of multiculturalism and political correctness
5. Big Education
6. MSM – You are not on the American team!
7. CPAC cuts Breitbart short

Professor Peter Dreier, an ACORN apologist who portrays himself as an independent analyst, is really anything but.

As Andrew Breitbart articulated on BigGovernment November 25th, regarding a “study” Dreier produced critical of media coverage of ACORN:

At the end of the piece Professor Dreier offers the following biography: Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.

Why did Professor Dreier choose to leave out the critical information regarding his advisory relationship to ACORN? Isn’t sitting on an advisory committee of ACORN the definition of a conflict of interest in writing a fair and balanced piece on the organization? In fact, Dreier has been shilling for ACORN at least since 2003.

So when Dreier proclaimed ACORN “Not Guilty” in one of his recent columns on TalkingPointsMemo, I must admit I threw up a bit in my mouth.  Some of Dreier’s most pathetic conclusions:

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Pete Yost of the Associated Press asked for my comment regarding the findings of the ACORN “internal investigation.”  Here is what I emailed him:

ACORN is a corrupt and criminal organization, and anyone with open eyes can see this. Yet SEIU’s Andy Stern and left wing puppetmaster John Podesta, of the Soros-funded radical leftist think-tank, the Center for American Progress, chose to architect a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts, and have put immense efforts into launching a two-pronged propaganda  campaign and legal assault against the filmmakers of the ‘pimp and  prostitute’ exposé and the story’s publisher. BigGovernment.com  continues to expose ACORN’s illegal activity and has helped to  illuminate how corrupt organizations like ACORN, SEIU and HCAN are coordinating the efforts to shove radical health care reform down an unwilling  majority of Americans throats.

Here is the sole excerpt from the above statement chosen for the article:

The report is “a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts,” said conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who is being sued by ACORN along with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the prostitute and her boyfriend in the videos. Breitbart posted the videos on his Web site.

I wanted the BigGovernment.com readers to see that’s it’s not just the internal investigators who are whitewashing the magnitude of the ACORN scandal, it’s the mainstream media writ large.

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Well, ACORN retained a law firm to investigate its operations and, surprise, the law firm found that ACORN hadn’t done anything wrong in the undercover videos filmed by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. The review, overseen by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harschbarger, a long-time ally of ACORN, found that any problems within ACORN are, gosh darn it, simply because ACORN was too successful, i.e. grew too big and too fast. The problems are also mostly, conveniently, the result of people who are no longer employed by ACORN, i.e. Wade Rathke.

Full report below:

ACORN Report –

The entire report can be summed up: Wade Rathke really made a mess of things. The current management, i.e. Bertha Lewis, has been trying to reform the organization and she is really, really committed to it now. ACORN has a “roadmap” for reform that, while it may take a while to implement, will really fix everything you thought was wrong with ACORN. Just trust them.

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Media criticism of our ongoing and still unfolding ACORN story has been as bad as it has been funny and sad. The racket that is the mainstream media is coming to an end and exposed reporters and journalists, no longer feigning neutrality, have chosen to drive off the cliff, a la Thelma and Louise, in a customized ACORN convertible.

Professor and ACORN Adviser Peter Dreier

On Monday Christopher R. Martin and Peter Dreier wrote a commentary entitled “Have the Media ‘Falsely Framed’ ACORN?” for Editor & Publisher, “the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.“  E&P was once the bible of the newspaper and publishing business, but in recent years has moved hard left, hiding its ideological tilt under a patina of “scholarship.”

Martin and Dreier’s piece — while not framed as such — is an ideological defense of ACORN and an attack on those who have truthfully investigated and exposed the obviously troubled community organizing group. It’s basically, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put ACORN together again. But instead of attempting to rebuild the king, Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood.  For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.

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