Obama and Acorn
Is there a case for a special prosecutor?
Is there a case for a special prosecutor?
By JAMES TARANTO
The Acorn scandal continues to mushroom. Yesterday BigGovernment.com published videos from a fourth Acorn office visit by freelance investigators James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. As Johnny Carson used to say, it's weird, wild stuff. The woman manning the Acorn office in San Bernardino, Calif., Tresa Kaelke, responds to the pair's requests for help setting up a child-prostitution ring by claiming to be an ex-prostitute herself. "Heidi Fleiss is my hero!" she exclaims.
When Giles claims her former pimp abused her, Kaelke tells of having been abused by an ex-husband--then confesses to his premeditated murder. San Bernardino's finest are looking into the claim: "Investigators have been in contact with the involved party's known former husbands, who are alive and well." Thus her claims "do not appear to be factual." Politico's Ben Smith interprets this as meaning that the confession was "a joke" and writes that according to Acorn, this "demonstrates that the employee there was playing along with the outlandish visitors, not actually indulging them."
Smith is writing rather sloppily here, since indulging and playing along are more or less the same thing. In any case, another Acornite gave a somewhat different, but highly entertaining, explanation to the San Bernardino Sun:
At ACORN's office Tuesday, office supervisor Christina Spach told reporters she was not authorized to comment and that an official spokesperson would comment later in the day.
"Just to be clear, ACORN in not in the prostitution business," Spach said.
Spach said she did not wish to be quoted, but did confirm that Kaelke is an ACORN employee. She would not permit reporters to speak to Kaelke and said ACORN employees do not typically make statements to the media, instead relying on their members to articulate the group's positions and activities.
In a subsequent telephone conversation on Tuesday, Spach said Kaelke pretended to cooperate with O'Keefe and Giles because she feared for her safety.
"She was in an office all by herself," Spach said. "She felt unsafe in their company."
Spach, who identified herself as Kaelke's supervisor, said Kaelke lied to the undercover bloggers because she was afraid and wanted to "come across as a strong individual."
"It was a defense mechanism," Spach said.
Think about it: When you feel threatened, isn't "Heidi Fleiss is my hero" the first thing you blurt out?
Government officials continue responding to the Acorn revelations. The New York Post reports that Andrew Cuomo, New York's state attorney general, "yesterday launched an investigation into pork-barrel grants given to ACORN by state lawmakers, as City Council Speaker Christine Quinn froze all city funding earmarked for the scandal-scared [sic] community-activism organization"--this in response to the third released set of videos, from Acorn's Brooklyn office.
The Wall Street Journal urges the U.S. Justice Department to undertake a criminal investigation of Acorn. This column echoes that call, although we wonder if the Obama administration is compromised here. The president, who as a candidate touted his background as a "community organizer," has extensive ties to Acorn. In February 2008, the Acorn Political Action Committee endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton, and Obama's campaign Web site, Organizing for America, boasted of the candidate's support for the group:
When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, "I come out of a grassroots organizing background.
That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care
about my entire career.
Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
And in August 2008, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Obama campaign paid more than $800,000 to an Acorn "offshoot" for "get out the vote" projects.
Obama worked for Acorn and Acorn worked for Obama. That doesn't mean the president is implicated in any wrongdoing, but it suggests at least that the worse things get for Acorn, the more embarrassing it is for him. If the Justice Department fails to prosecute, it invariably would raise suspicions of political favoritism. This column does not care for special prosecutors, but the case for appointing one would seem to be stronger here than usual.
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