Obama's ties to ACORN - then and now

Why do I keep harping on this connection? Because it is at the heart of what Barack Obama was doing in the time between when he graduated from law school and the time he started his Illinois Senatorial career. (Graduated Harvard law 1991, directed Project Vote (ACORN front) in 1992, joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland (they specialize in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development (think sub-prime loans)) and then involved with the Woods fund and the Joyce Foundation and then the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (over $100 Million down the rathole with nothing to show for it)). There is a wonderful editorial at Investors Business Daily that explores his connection with ACORN and looks at what ACORN is doing now:

Is ACORN Stealing The Election?
A radical group Barack Obama used to work for is committing voter-registration fraud in several states, ahead of the election. What does Obama know about this scam?

It's a legitimate question to raise now that the FBI has raided the offices of the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in Nevada and North Carolina, two states where Obama and John McCain are running neck-and-neck. ACORN has registered bogus voters in both states.

The group's voter-registration fraud is rampant, and authorities plan a nationwide sweep of ACORN offices to collect records.

In Nevada, state officials say the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, including quarterback Tony Romo.

"Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada," Secretary of State Ross Miller said, "and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4."

And a bit more:

What does all this have to do with Obama, besides the fact that he'd be the beneficiary of most, if not all, of these new votes?

For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for "advance work.")

What's more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN's voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago's South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.

The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal "Motor Voter" law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.

The Obama campaign would dearly love to sweep this under the rug but it is too big a chunk of this mans life -- 1992 through 2004 -- twelve years is a lot of time...