ACORN: A Darrell Issa Scalp?

Photo by flickr user <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicfirstcoalition/1257826861/">musicFIRSTcoalition</a> used under a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a> license.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Friday, the Census Bureau broke its ties to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) after several ACORN officials were caught on hidden cameras offering advice to conservative activists posing as a stereotypical prostitute and an outrageously stereotypical pimp. ACORN was originally one of 80,000 community groups that agreed to help promote the Census, but with the hidden-camera footage all over the internet and Fox News, the bureau decided it didn’t want the free help. (On Tuesday, the Senate joined the pile-on, overwhelmingly passing a law blocking ACORN from receiving any funding from a number of federal sources.) ACORN, long a target of the right, became a bête noire for conservatives during the 2008 election cycle when Republicans argued that some ACORN employees’ submission of fake voter registrations was evidence of massive, widespread voter fraud.

The sudden Census-ACORN divorce was an early scalp for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking GOP member of the House oversight committee, who has been hammering ACORN for months. Issa hasn’t minced words: In July, his office released a report asking whether ACORN was “intentionally structured as a criminal enterprise.”

Issa quickly took credit for the new developments, crowing to Fox News that “ACORN’s partisan election efforts and its involvement in criminal conduct rightly disqualified it from working on the non-partisan mission of the Census to accurately and honestly count the U.S. population.” He also tweeted: “Finally, the Obama Admin passes on the nuts, ending ACORN’s Census involvement. Excellent work by Team Oversight,” and promised to “stay on the case to make sure the Census Bureau stays nut-free, ACORN or otherwise.”

Issa’s ACORN win is part of his all-out effort to hold the Obama administration’s feet to the fire—even though Republicans are a minority in Congress. It’s a self-conscious effort to recreate the trouble that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) caused for the Bush administration when Waxman headed the Democrats on the oversight committee. And the ACORN affair is just the beginning. I profiled Rep. Issa, a car alarm magnate-turned-politician, in the September/October issue. Read it!

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate