When Andrew Breitbart commandeered Anthony Weiner’s admission-of-digital-lecherousness press conference earlier this month, just seven minutes elapsed before he began to recount the tale of how America was first introduced to his strange media empire. In 2009, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles approached Breitbart with footage of low-level ACORN employees apparently offering to abet the proprietors of an illegal immigrant child prostitution ring. “To those who say your journalism here is suspect,” a reporter asked, “what do you tell those folks?” Breitbart snickered.

“'You're going to be held to a different standard,'" Breitbart said he told O’Keefe and Giles at the time. “But I said, what we're going [...]

ACORN is dead! Thank God! Now the right will have to go after some other group that helps the disgusting poor and works to raise the minimum wage and registers BROWN PEOPLE to vote.

"This is the Abu Ghraib of journalism! Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, everywhere you go. I heard that two million times, from when they reported in 2004 to right now. This is the Abu Ghraib of Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraibs for everyone! NEA Abu Ghraib! White House Abu Ghraib! ACORN Abu Ghraib! Journalism Abu Ghraib!" -Conservative gadfly Andrew Breitbart puts the Acorn mess in perspective.

"In November of 2009 we found 52% of Republicans thought ACORN had stolen the election for Barack Obama in 2008. Now only 25% think the organization will steal the election for him again next year." —What are you even supposed to make of this? Quick, everyone find your long-form birth certificates!

"EVEN the Democrats in Minnesota now realize their new US Sen. Al Franken was elected with the help of ACORN chicanery," says the New York Post, repeating the latest right-wing smear and showing the tenacity with which conservatives will relentlessly keep pushing an issue that works for them for as long as they think it still has legs (and, often, long after). It's a pretty good tactic, I guess, even allowing for the fact that is demonstrably untrue.

Do you know how much federal funding ACORN gets? On average, $3.1 million a year. Over 15 years, that's like the kind of pork money our fine government spent on that stupid volcano monitoring program! It's also half as much as the money ACORN helped poor Americans save in 2006 by helping them do their taxes correctly, according to their 2006 annual report. So really they are taking from the government. That's something conservatives can get behind right? Paying less in taxes? No? Confused? Yes? Anyone?

Expect this to get exactly the same amount of attention that the original story did:

Jason Linkins notes a happy byproduct of the "Defund Acorn" act: "In its zeal to quickly and unthinkingly get on the side of hammering ACORN for its recent transgressions, Congress passed the Defund ACORN Act, a measure written so broadly that it could apply to just about anyone! In other words, Congress made a decision to apply robust oversight to all manner of government contractors by mistake."

Fox News is going all-out in the war on Acorn, an organization operating in 100 U.S. cities that assists with low-income housing, voter registration and other community issues-and this business is crazy! There are now at least four undercover videos of that show Acorn staffers advising on illegal activities, giving the kind of salient advice I give friends all the time. (Hell yes, bury that money in your backyard! Obviously.) The Acorn staffers respond by saying that the undercover folks "weren't even good actors." In other news, Acorn will never get a dime of federal funding again. And meanwhile, they will be suing the shit out of Fox [...]