Free Republic

Where was the blueprint for healthcare written you ask?? Join us and find out.......STAND UP AMERICA, GET OUT OF THE FETAL POSITION AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD. Welcome to the GLENN BECK television thread...Shake the cobwebs out of your brain...We are another day closer to the REVOLUTION that will change the 2010 elections. All comrades, infidels, sick twisted freaks and lurkers are welcome and are encouraged to participate in the thread!

An outside review of the beleaguered community group ACORN has found “serious management challenges,” but no pattern of illegal activity. The review, commissioned by ACORN in the wake of a hidden video expose that showed a few of its employees appearing to offer tips on how to break the law, also largely absolved the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s current management, laying much of the blame on founder Wade Rathke for lax oversight and dangerously rapid growth. Scott Harshbarger, the former Massachusetts attorney who led the inquiry for the Proskauer Rose law firm, found that ACORN is not...

The "independent" investigation of ACORN promised by Bertha Lewis and ACORN management(and paid for by ACORN)was released today, and it was a complete whitewash. Scott Harshbrger former Massachusetts Attorney General who wrote the report concentrated on the governance and management practices of the Democratic Party's favorite community organizing group. The report concludes that systemic shortcomings – including lax oversight and governance, lost focus on its core mission and growth beyond its means - set the stage for the video controversy that erupted this year and threatened to envelop the progressive grassroots organizing and advocacy group.

WHEN LAWYERS LEAVE ONE AFTER THE OTHER, THERE HAS TO BE A LEGAL PROBLEM The Department of Justice announced yesterday that Deputy U.S. Attorney General, David Ogden, the second highest ranking official under Eric Holder, would resign on February 10th and return to private practice. Nia-Malika Henderson, writing for Politico.com, a markedly liberal leaning site, could not deny the facts: The second-in-command at the Justice Department is leaving his post, officials announced Thursday — making him the third top Obama legal official to announce his departure in recent weeks. Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden will return to private practice...

Here is video of Iowa Rep. Steve King speaking at a forum on ACORN, where he said he is convinced that any investigation of ACORN will reflect poorly on the Obama administration. "These roads will lead to the White House." King said "Obama has worked for ACORN," and he has been part and parcel of that - Project VOTE in particular." That entire network is something the Chicago Organization that now sits in the White House knows a lot about." King also pointed out that the new White House Counsel - Robert Bauer - sent a letter to the Attorney...

Glenn hosts a job summit - get real solutions from those who were not invited to obama's photo op summit yesterday! STAND UP AMERICA, GET OUT OF THE FETAL POSITION AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD. Welcome to the GLENN BECK television thread...Shake the cobwebs out of your brain...We are another day closer to the REVOLUTION that will change the 2010 elections. All comrades, infidels, sick twisted freaks and lurkers are welcome and are encouraged to participate in the thread. Join us won't you!

As President Obama concludes his first jobs summit, almost a year into his presidency, the nature of the guest list hints at a deliberate initiative that’s been underway for over 15 years – and it’s not one of the obvious presumptions that most would make. Notice that of the list of leaders invited, the majority are labor union leaders, leaders of businesses with government contracts, or leaders of businesses that operate on partial public funding. There is a common element across most of the businesses represented: in one capacity or another, even if they are private sector businesses, most on...

Safe Schools Czar Reading List Unveiled Bethany Stotts, December 4, 2009 Accuracy in Academia has long reported on the types of smut promoted in America’s public schools. Now, according to Scott Baker of Breitbart-TV.com and ‘The B-Cast,’ a “team of independent researchers” has prepared a report on the Gay Straight and Lesbian Education Network (GLSEN) reading list for students K-12. (The researchers focus on 11 of the books GLSEN suggested for 7th through 12th graders). Gateway Pundit has the whole story. (Warning: extremely explicit material.) I’m not sure what parents would want their kids reading these books: We were unprepared...

Wade Rathke, founder of the much besieged and scandal-plagued activist group ACORN, will be speaking at a Blue Wave NJ event this Saturday (12/5) in Montclair. From Blue Wave's website: Learn about the history of the organization and its massive voter registration drives and why the organization became the target of Fox News and other right-wing commentators. Participate in a frank discussion on the organization's recent scandals and possible lessons for other community organizations and concerned citizens that want to build a strong progressive movement. The event will be moderated by longtime ACORN chronicler John Atlas, who has a book...

After a brief time out, the president is back out campaigning for the job he already has. Obama is tormenting residents of Allentown, Pennsylvania with outlandish fabrications about the economy. His warped analysis of the housing crisis is especially duplicitous. Obama dilligently avoids mention of the roles played by ACORN, Fannie and Freddie under the splendid oversight of the United States government in demolishing vast quantities of personal wealth. ACORN was the primary driver behind the sub-prime loan mess, engaging in Jesse Jackson style shakedowns to force lenders to make loans to borrowers with full knowledge there was never a...

"I was just wondering .. we've been studying some criminology. I was wondering if maybe if you checked out some of the statistics about legalizing prostitution, gambling, drugs and non-violent crime in order to stimulate some of the economy."

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Joseph Stalin It was reminiscent of one of those Halloween or Freddie Kruger Movies. Just when a victim thinks are safe behind a closed door the find out they they have locked themselves in a room with the monster. And that's just what happened to Norm Coleman and the GOP in Minnesota this past election. The "Monster" is Minneapolis Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. Like most Secretary of States, one of Richie's responsibilities is counting a confirming the votes. Richie a former Community Organizer,...

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties continues to refuse growing calls to investigate ACORN, a group that has endorsed him and that he has given money to. The panel’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), is so close to ACORN he even provided advice to ACORN’s lawyer on how undermine congressional efforts to defund the group. At a subcommittee hearing yesterday, Nadler seemed upset that another member of the subcommittee, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), dared to ask him to do his job. “Congress has done everything it could do against a...

Join us for Ron Paul's view on Ben Bernanke's second term......STAND UP AMERICA, GET OUT OF THE FETAL POSITION AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD. Welcome to the GLENN BECK television thread...Shake the cobwebs out of your brain...We are another day closer to the REVOLUTION that will change the 2010 elections. All comrades, infidels, sick twisted freaks and lurkers are welcome and are encouraged to participate in the thread!

This past March, Heather Heidelbaugh, a Pennsylvania Attorney, testified before Congressman Jerrold Nadler's Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties subcommittee about the fraud perpetuated by ACORN. Her testimony alleged violations of the election code, fraud and misrepresentation, and violations of equal protection and due process. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) was shocked at the testimony and called for a probe of the Democrat's favorite tax fraud group but Nadler's response was to stonewall. Actually what he said is that he would investigate ACORN once he saw some evidence show that a probe was warranted....This morning in Nadler's committee, Rep. Steve King...

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, is in the process of changing its name and has already transferred many of its resources to several other left-wing advocacy and political groups, according to a report released Tuesday by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. While the Justice Department has said that federal housing funds should continue to flow to ACORN, several congressmen, in a joint hearing of the House Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee, said they want a special prosecutor to investigate the group's use of taxpayer dollars.

The Eric Holder Justice Department has not failed to error on the side of the enemies of the United States of America whether those enemies are either foreign or domestic. Khalid Sheik Mohammed mastermind of 9/11 was set to be sentenced in a Congressional approved military tribunal. President Barry Hussein Soetoro stopped that preceding to have his Justice department weigh in to this most critical trial for America. AG Eric Holder set the trial’s venue in New York City near the site of the 9/11 act of war, giving enemy combatants full rights of the citizens whose country they intended...

Successfully demonizing Washington insiders on the campaign trail, President Obama needed to find a way to meet with lobbyists without appearing hypocritical. The administration’s advice to lobbyists? De-register. For an administration that promised to renounce interest groups, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) certainly has the president’s ear and is sure to be a major player in the December jobs summit. In 2008, SEIU donated nearly $28 million to the Obama campaign setting the stage for SEIU President Andy Stern to become the White House’s most frequent visitor in 2009, according to White House visitor logs. Anna Burger, Treasure of...

(http://www.wiseandfrugal.government.blogspot.com to see pictures) Because we said so. That's right. You just sit back and put your faith in us. Face it, we're smarter than you. We know what's good for you. We got it covered. We're smooth, cool, funny. Well groomed. Trust us. Don't worry about those pesky Founding Fathers. They were a morally superior, suspicious of power, self-righteous lot. They trusted in God because they didn't have Ivy League trained public sector bureaucrats like us to depend upon. Listen, there are simply times when government must expand. When we must throw that ole Constitution out the window and...

Just wanted to give a heads-up that my son (who put his resume on Monsterjobs.com awhile back) got a phone call yesterday from an ACORN rep asking if he was interested in becoming a 2010 census-taker - that training was to begin next week and pay would be $10/hour. He/we live in Pittsburgh, PA.<> So did ZERO REALLY remove ACORN from doing the census or is it more smoker and mirrors?

The seemingly creepy fixation some MSNBC on-air personalities have with Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann just continues to persist on the cable network. The latest installment involves MSNBC's "Ed Show" host Ed Schultz relying on a left-wing publication, The Minnesota Independent, which found a high rate of foreclosures relative in Bachmann's district relative to the rest of the state of Minnesota. Schultz, on his Dec. 2 program, contended Bachmann was spending too much time as a conservative activist and not enough time focusing on the problems of her district. But it turns out the data might not be at all...

Recently Jim Robinson posted two threads declaring Free Republic’s determination to see Conservatives elected and ousting Rino's from government. Jim and a great many Freepers believe that we need to take back control. But the RNC is not hearing us. Activism is called for NOW. 2010 is nearing and we need Conservative candidates to run. The time is ripe and people are ready for another 1994 type election. But we need to make the RNC hear us loud and clear. This is the Rino Free America Project. Get involved. Make them listen. Write a letter and MAIL it. Republican...

Does obama understand that we are in a fight to the death against radical islam? Hmmmm, does he have a clue? STAND UP AMERICA, GET OUT OF THE FETAL POSITION AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD. Welcome to the GLENN BECK television thread...Shake the cobwebs out of your brain...We are another day closer to the REVOLUTION that will change the 2010 elections. All comrades, infidels, sick twisted freaks and lurkers are welcome and are encouraged to participate in the thread

People shouldn't think that all ACORN does is help pimps and hookers buy houses, they serve the community in so many other ways, including embezzlement of donated funds, voter fraud, and using tax exempt dollars to help get liberal candidates elected. Yesterday the Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a forum to discuss ACORN and urge the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Democratic Party's favorite criminal enterprise. Congressmen Smith and Issa presented documentation indicating that ACORN already transferred many of its resources to several other left-wing advocacy and political groups...

A growing number of (New York) city schools aim to foster resentment and rage among the most uneducated students. Under the guise of "social justice," the fomenting of racial and socio-economic grievances has supplanted the teaching of basic skills. The result is an even wider gap in learning between the poorest minorities and other students.

House Republicans accused the Obama administration Tuesday of covering up criminal activities committed by the embattled community activist group ACORN, saying that the president has used the group as an illegal political tool to help himself and other Democrats get elected. "The current administration is fast becoming, in reality, the war room of ACORN's political machine," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican. "I am concerned that the era of corruption promulgated by ACORN and protected by the White House is just the beginning." The top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said ACORN has engaged in "illegal,...

A former education organizer at the scandal-scarred activist group ACORN fraudulently used Department of Education phone-bill accounts to cash in on more than $500,000 in lavish Verizon customer rewards, city investigators charged yesterday. Donnett Davis, 31, of Brooklyn, allegedly obtained spa retreats, Yankees and Mets tickets, $5,000 IBM gift certificates and gobs of other garish goodies from Verizon by registering 9,000 DOE telephone billing codes under an ACORN account in her name, probers said. Usage on those lines between February 2004 and August 2008 was then counted toward her Verizon small-business rewards program, through which Davis was able to redeem...

A handful of House Republicans did their best on Tuesday to shame Democrats and the Obama administration for its supposed connections to the controversial anti-poverty group ACORN. Republicans also voiced complaints that Democrats are not moving forward with investigations into the organization that is alleged to have committed widespread voter fraud to support Democratic candidates, in violation of the group's tax-exempt status. "ACORN is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said at Tuesday's two-hour long partisan forum attended by eight Republicans but no Democrats. Another source of frustration for Republicans is a legal decision from...

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, is in the process of changing its name and has already transferred many of its resources to several other left-wing advocacy and political groups, according to a report released Tuesday by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. While the Justice Department has said that federal housing funds should continue to flow to ACORN, several congressmen, in a joint hearing of the House Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee, said they want a special prosecutor to investigate the use of taxpayer dollars to the group. Several weeks back, Congress...

Embattled Athens County, Ohio Democratic Chairwoman Susan Gwinn was indicted Monday on two counts of election-related bribery, special prosecutors announced today. Gwinn, who last month was charged with six felonies for campaign finance crimes and money-laundering, became the subject of a voter fraud investigation after an email from College Democrats Vice President Kellie Galan surfaced in which students were promised a cash bounty for every voter brought to the polls. "Remember, if you bring a friend from 4th ward they are more then [sic] a friend, they're 5 bucks!" Galan wrote to fellow College Democrats in the email. Athens' 4th...

Current law prohibits the community organization ACORN and its associated groups from receiving any federal funds from any federal law currently on the books. However, the Eric Holder Justice Department has interpreted the law as allowing federal agencies to pay ACORN for "binding contractual obligations" made before the current prohibition was enacted. This questionable interpretation may go a long way toward neutralizing ACORN's funding prohibition. The actual ban reads as follows: "None of the funds made available from this joint resolution or any other prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or...

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, more commonly known as ACORN, has earned its notoriety. The New Orleans-based far-Left nonprofit network has been implicated in embezzlement, tax evasion, voter registration fraud and other criminal activity. In response, the Senate, House of Representatives, Census Bureau and IRS each have decided to cut off ACORN funding. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may or may not join them, but an audit issued this month by its Office of Inspector General isn't likely to help the group's case. The audit, conducted at congressional behest, examined the size and nature of DOJ funding to ACORN and/or affiliated...

Is ACORN engaged in a massive money laundering scheme? Although evidence abounds that the radical left-wing advocacy group-cum-organized crime syndicate is recycling funds mafia-style, government investigators and the media have paid scant attention to ACORN's money trail. Red flags that appear to signal unlawful activities by ACORN are everywhere yet ACORN's collaborators in the White House, Justice Department, and House Judiciary Committee, smugly ignore them. If senior executives at a troubled publicly traded corporation were to provide completely different accounts of their company's financial standing, how long would it be before federal investigators stormed their offices? If federal authorities failed...

ACORN, the troubled community service organization, recently considered changing its name in a bid to rehabilitate its image, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO. The document, which will be released Tuesday as part of a Republican congressional forum on ACORN, illustrates the internal deliberation the group has undergone after a year of embarrassing scandals. The document was found in Dumpster outside of an ACORN office in San Diego, a House Republican aide said. Derrick Roach, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for statehouse in California, took thousands of documents last week from the trash outside the office. An ACORN spokesman...

LISTEN TO THE REAL REVEREND JESSE ON THE INTERNET OR A RADIO STATION IN YOUR AREA......BOND Action, Inc...Educating, Motivating and Rallying Americans! The Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show Streamed live online from 6-9 a.m. PST / 9-12 a.m. EST. Call in the same times usually. For Live Questions or Comments Call 1-888-77-JESSE(5-3773) You can email comments and questions to radio@bondaction.org For more information on getting The Jesse Lee Peterson Show picked up on a station in your local area call Ermias Alemayehu at 1-877-WE ACT77 (932-2877) Go to HERE and order a truckful of these bumper stickers as Jesse says.....

Dubai and California, how alike are they? STAND UP AMERICA, GET OUT OF THE FETAL POSITION AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD. Welcome to the GLENN BECK television thread...Shake the cobwebs out of your brain...We are another day closer to the REVOLUTION that will change the 2010 elections. All comrades, infidels, sick twisted freaks and lurkers are welcome and are encouraged to participate in the thread. Join us for a head exploding hour of GLENN BECK!

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do. Below is a page from ACORN’s 2005 Annual...

Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN. Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that...

Some of the leading scientists from the "Holy Church of Global Warming Moonbats" have proved they have learned a very important rule from the playbook of US President Barack Obama: when confronted with facts that can cause you trouble, defend yourself by attacking the person(s) delivering the facts, call the news a big lie, or say it was taken totally out of context. And NEVER, back up your attacks with facts. If attacking the reporter instead of the news doesn’t work, then they fall back on the ACORN playbook: toss out any incriminating evidence.

Have you heard the one about the pimp, prostitute, politician and the community organizer? Well, thanks to San Diego private investigator Derrick Roach, Californians are not laughing at what is turning into a political nightmare for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and ACORN. On Tuesday, November 24, Attorney General Brown appeared on KABC’s “Peter Tilden Show” after it was revealed that some 20,000 documents had been thrown into a National City dumpster by ACORN employees. The documents were thrown out in advance of state investigators arriving at the local ACORN office to conduct an investigation resulting from national media attention....

NOTE: On November 27, 2009 the L.A. Times published a piece by James Rainey that attacked the "guerrilla tactics" of the journalists who exposed ACORN via undercover video for all the world to see. The following is the first portion of the Rainey piece: Guerrilla stings of ACORN don't meet standards of journalismHannah Giles listens to a question at a meeting of the Young America's Foundation in Santa Barbara this month. (Anne Cusack, Los Angeles Times / November 13, 2009) Videos shot of workers at the liberal social service organization offer great political theater but don't shed insight into its...

A Housing and Urban Development Department lawyer asked the Justice Department whether the new law meant that pre-existing contracts with Acorn should be broken. And in a memorandum signed Oct. 23 and posted online this week, Mr. Barron said the government should continue to make payments to Acorn as required by such contracts. The new law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to Acorn or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability,” Mr. Barron wrote. The deputy director of...

A top House Republican today blasted a (ruling by the Justice Department) that allows the Obama administration to pay ACORN for services provided under contracts signed before Congress passed a law banning the community advocacy group from receiving taxpayers money. Republicans have been on the warpath against ACORN since its voter registration efforts came under scrutiny during the 2008 presidential campaign. After conservative activists, who posed as a prostitute and pimp, released videos appearing to show ACORN staffers advising them how to skirt the law, Democrats joined in the outrage, leading to the congressional funding ban that Obama signed on...

Have you heard the one about the pimp, prostitute, politician and the community organizer? Well, thanks to San Diego private investigator Derrick Roach, Californians are not laughing at what is turning into a political nightmare for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and ACORN. On Tuesday, November 24, Attorney General Brown appeared on KABC’s “Peter Tilden Show” after it was revealed that some 20,000 documents had been thrown into a National City dumpster by ACORN employees. The documents were thrown out in advance of state investigators arriving at the local ACORN office to conduct an investigation resulting from national media attention....

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group. The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it. Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about...

ACORN is the largest radical leftist group in America today. This radical group worked closely with the Obama camp during the election. But, the community organizing group was not open about this. The photo below was scrubbed from the ACORN website before the election: One of Barack Obama’s first big “community organizer” jobs involved ACORN in 1992. He has been working along side ACORN since before he became an elected official. Obama also trained ACORN employees. He represented ACORN in court. Obama worked with and protested with ACORN. His campaign donated $800,000 to ACORN in 2008 for voter registration efforts....

...As reported, in part, at the NY Times: “WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress enacted a law banning the government from providing funds to the group. “The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it. “Mr. Barron said he had based...

ACORN is now well-known across America, but what most Americans know about it is wrong. Most mainstream journalism organizations have been negligent by repeating, rather than fact-checking, spurious allegations. (November 25, 2009) -- (Commentary) A pimp and a prostitute walk into an office. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it wasn’t for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Until recently, ACORN, the largest community organizing group in the country, was well known primarily among liberal activists and the low-income people it has organized since it began in Little Rock in 1970. By mobilizing poor...

The Justice Department has ruled that the federal government can honor some existing contracts to fund ACORN, despite a law barring the flow of all federal money to the beleaguered community group. David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, concluded in a five-page ruling that the funding ban signed by President Barack Obama in October as part of the legislative branch appropriations bill does not direct the Department of Housing and Urban Development to breach pre-existing contracts to pay ACORN. Much of ACORN’s federal funds come in the form of housing subsidies. The ruling,...