ACORN's No Good, Very Bad, News Day

The conservative obsession with ACORN has occasionally seemed excessive, but this video and this video are genuinely shocking. Just because Bill O'Reilly targets someone - it doesn't mean they don't deserve it. Conor Friedersdorf gives Andrew Breitbart his due for the scoop at Breitbart's new blog, Big Government:

I’ll phrase this in what I take to be the way that would maximize Mr. Breitbart’s satisfaction. Imagine if he’d appeared on the Sean Hannity show and said the following:

ACORN isn’t just unfit for taxpayer funds it is an organization so lax in its oversight that what goes on at some of its field offices would shock the conscience of any moral American. If a pimp and a prostitute walked into the Baltimore ACORN office, the employees wouldn’t just overlook their illegal profession. They’d openly help them to commit tax fraud, to conceal the smuggling of underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador to work as teen prostitutes, and to launder the money from that kiddie brothel into a political campaign.

I’d have mocked Mr. Breitbart if he’d made those claims. Others would’ve too. In this case, however, we'd have been wrong! 

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