The activities of the radical, corrupt to the core, left-wing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has tangled itself up in an infinitely complex web of deceit, thuggery, and questionable financial dealings, are long overdue for a RICO probe.

Recent well-publicized events that I need not recount here show ACORN’s criminal propensities. In a moment I’ll explain how ACORN’s financial affairs ought to raise a red flag for investigators at the U.S. Department of Justice, but first some background.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which was created to prosecute organized crime, allows the federal government to go after individuals who commit any two RICO-related crimes over a decade. The law allows courts to convict persons if it can be shown that they committed those crimes as part of an illegal enterprise and can order disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains from the enterprise.

RICO is the right tool for the job.

Perhaps it’s the only tool for the job because the ACORN network is deliberately structured to deter scrutiny. Its nebulous legal status and opaque corporate structure allow it to keep its activities largely hidden from public view.

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Now that a third ACORN video has surfaced, a pattern emerges of ACORN workers willing to help people engage in prostitution, tax fraud, housing fraud, and even human trafficking. Under federal law, a RICO investigation is now warranted. Three strikes and you’re out, ACORN.

Videos show ACORN employees offering to help two undercover reporters/filmmakers posing as a prostitute and pimp in falsifying tax returns and getting a federal loan to buy a house that they could use as a brothel for underage prostitutes smuggled in from El Salvador.

When the first video emerged from such a meeting in ACORN’s Baltimore office on Thursday, ACORN fired the two workers involved. When another video surfaced on Friday, this one from ACORN’s D.C. office, the two workers involved there were fired as well, and ACORN said that these two reporters had tried and failed to carry out this sting in other offices.

One such office where ACORN said these reporters tried and failed was New York City. Yet Monday, a third video surfaced from Brooklyn in New York City. Once again, the ACORN employees on the video advise the undercover duo on how to violate federal law by filing a false income tax return to qualify for a federal housing loan.

As one worker says on the video, “honesty is not going to get you the house.” Well, not if you’re engaged in a host of felonies. (more…)