Watch the Right Wing Flip Out on This One

[l33tminion]

Here's an interesting bit of news: A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction stopping the law defunding ACORN. The judge evidently believes that ACORN is reasonably likely to win the argument that the law in question is an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

(The proximate cause of the law's passage was a seeming scandal in which ACORN was videotaped allegedly giving tax advice to a pimp and prostitute. The pimp in question was right-wing agent provocateur James O'Keefe, it was later revealed that tape in question was heavily and misleadingly edited. Evidently, O'Keefe has a history of that sort of thing (HT to fantwurm for that link). O'Keefe later got himself arrested for being involved in a scheme to wiretap a congressional office.)

Comments

[fantwurm.livejournal.com]

yay! My first time providing a link to Sam!

[l33tminion]

There's no question that ACORN is still hurt by O'Keefe's actions. A lot of private funding was withdrawn when the scandal hit (and more when congress decided to defund them), the court decision won't have any effect on that. Plus, the whole thing was horrible for their PR. As always with such scandals, the initial story gets a lot more coverage than the later realization that the whole thing was a hoax.