The little ACORN that could

I'd read before that Obama was connected to ACORN. But for whatever reason, I blew it off.

For those of you who don't know who ACORN is... they are an activist group that shows up at pretty much every rally. When they show up at anti-war rallies, they claim that the US is involved in "racist" wars.
But their random claims of racism are not the main reason why I find them to be threatening. I hate anyone... and I mean anyone, who resorts to violence to silence their critics.
ACORN uses brownshirt type tactics to silence their critics.

So let me start by telling you what their stated goal is: ACORN is a group that tries to get out the vote of low-income housing people.
(Here's a surprising fact: people who don't have jobs aren't always motivated to vote. Huh.)

Sometimes, when they do this, they tend to break the law. Just a little. As stated in this news report:

Investigators said questionable registration forms for new voters were collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to improve minority and low-income communities.The four indicted -- Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner -- were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.

Basically those guys were turning in false registrations of voters. Its a fancy way of saying that they were inventing voters who didn't exist.

Now here's something interesting that the same report noted:

ACORN and Project Vote recruit and assign workers to low-income and minority neighborhoods to register people to vote.

If you don't recognize the name "Project Vote", that's the group that Obama was working for... a long time ago, in a land called Chicago. Its not as radical as ACORN, but they can sometimes get pretty out there. Both groups insist that there are people trying to suppress their vote. (See my comment, above, in parenthesis.)

Back to ACORN:

• They've been accused / indicted in Florida for similiar vote fraud.
• Its a group that is anti-capitalist, and promotes 'welfare rights'.
• Quite naturally, ACORN supports Obama in the election.

So what does Obama have to do with ACORN?
National Review has a great overview that summerizes the connection.

At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama’s role in training Acorn’s leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000 (Foulkes confuses the dates of these two campaigns.) With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were “old friends,” says Foulkes.

If you're from Chicago, you know what this means. That's how Obama ends up going through the ranks of popularity. He starts out with the more radical organizations, and then works his way into the state senate, and eventually the US senate.

You can also read a great article by Michelle Malkin that explains ACORN better then I can.

You can also read the SunTimes article which brings up his ACORN connection.

In 1995, former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal "Motor Voter" law, which Republicans argued could invite fraud and which some Republicans feared could swell the ranks of Democratic voters.

The law mandated people be allowed to register to vote in government offices such as driver's license renewal centers.

Obama sued on behalf of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The League of Women Voters and other public-interest groups joined in.

For those of you who aren't from Chicago, Motor Voter was a drive to get more democratic votes. The professionally unemployed may not want to leave the house... but they have to in order to get their driver's license.

He also fought against 'red-lining'.

Obama represented Calvin Roberson in a 1994 lawsuit against Citibank, charging the bank systematically denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority neighborhoods.

That's when banks denied home loans based on where people lived.

Let me reword that, for those of you who don't understand economics: banks were denying people home loans based on the 'radical' idea that some areas were too high of a risk to expect people to repay a loan.

-And just in case you still don't understand that concept: Look at the lending crisis in America right now. It was caused because banks were encouraged to give loans to people who might not be able to afford to pay them off.

But I'm getting waaaaay off track.
Back to ACORN. Obviously, this group has been connected with voter fraud more often then, say, Mayor Daley. So as Atlas Shrugs points out... why are they still allowed to do voter registration drives?

More importantly, why hasn't the national media followed the connections of Obama to this organization, and tried to find out more?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not seeing a conspiracy. I'm noticing the disinterest in finding out anything that might make him look.... messy.