New York Times completely ignores ACORN controversy

Every knows how the New York Times didn't cover the Van Jones controversy until the Monday after he resigned and even then the coverage was at best incomplete. As a rough first look, I did a Google News search to check about coverage. Now after five days of ACORN being caught in Baltimore advising people pretending to be engaged in child prostitution/slavery on how to break the law, there is still no coverage. This morning the NY Post even has a piece on ACORN doing this now in NYC. The ACORN problems in DC were revealed on 9/11.

Since these particular stories broke, the NY Times website has a very short AP story about the Census dropping ACORN, but there is NO MENTION about the videos and the advice that ACORN was giving out on breaking the law. What is even worse is that the NY TIMES CUT OUT THE PART OF THE AP ARTICLE THAT DISCUSSED THE ACTUAL BEHAVIOR OF ACORN.

Up to now, the Census Bureau had defended ACORN's involvement, explaining it was one of 80,000 unpaid volunteer groups that the bureau hoped would be able to raise local awareness. But in his letter, Groves said it no longer had confidence that ACORN was effectively managing the partnership.
ACORN fired two employees who were seen on hidden-camera video giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman who pretended to be a prostitute. Fox News Channel broadcast excerpts from the video on Thursday. On the video, a man and woman visiting ACORN's Baltimore office asked about buying a house and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. An ACORN employee advised the woman to list her occupation as "performance artist."
In a statement, ACORN Maryland board member Margaret Williams said the video was an attempt to smear ACORN, and that undercover teams attempted similar setups in at least three other ACORN offices. Williams said no tax returns were filed and no assistance was provided.

While his numbers are over a longer time period, Glenn Beck has a useful breakdown of coverage here.



See the newest Pew Poll on media bias here.

White House Director of Political Affairs Close to ACORN

Of course, President Obama claims that he has no idea what is going on with ACORN. Well, even if Obama doesn't think about his ties with ACORN, it is harder to believe that some of his top political advisers can forget.

With the revelation that White House Director of Political Affairs, Patrick Gaspard, has close ties to Bertha Lewis and to ACORN, Matthew Vadum and Erick Erickson appear to be onto something significant. While the Gaspard matter needs further investigation before we form any hard conclusions, it certainly seems to confirm that President Obama’s ties to a whole series of ACORN-controlled organizations are neither minor nor by any means long-past. In fact, making use of what Erickson and Vadum have discovered about Gaspard, we can trace these links still further.

. . . . During the 2008 election, Obama’s close links to the far-left New Party were revealed and explored (although not by the mainstream press). Yet many seem to have forgotten that the New Party, particularly in Chicago, was dominated by ACORN (and by an ACORN-controlled SEIU union local). During the campaign, I detailed Obama’s New Party ties in two pieces, "Something New Here," and "Life of the New Party." Important evidence of Obama’s pursuit of the New Party endorsement can also be found in the September-October 1995 issue of "New Ground," newsletter of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama’s New Party ties matter because they show that his links to ACORN went far beyond shared on-the-ground organizing, legal representation, training, or even funding (although all of those ties existed and were important). By running for office with the New Party, Obama was effectively indicating that he shared ACORN’s radical political goals.

So it’s of interest that in late 1995, just as Obama was seeking New Party endorsement in Chicago, Patrick Gaspard was working as a New Party organizer in New Jersey. (This was reported in "Jersey Man Hopes to Create Third Political Party," NPR, "Morning Edition, " September 28, 1995). Then, in the July 2, 2001 issue of "The Nation," Gaspard and Bertha Lewis jointly published a reply to a June 4 Nation article by Doug Ireland which had been critical of the New York’s Working Families Party (a successor to the New Party, led by New Party co-founder Dan Cantor, and largely controlled by ACORN and the SEIU). In the course of their letter, Gaspard and Lewis describe their extensive joint involvement in Working Families Party activities. The letter is signed: "Bertha Lewis, ACORN, WFP; Patrick Gaspard, SEIU State Council, WFP." This does seem to confirm and extend the new evidence of a close political tie between Patrick Gaspard and ACORN’s Bertha Lewis. . . .

Obama's complicity in two financial crises?

Stanley Kurtz has this interesting piece linking Obama to ACORN to the financial crisis. The article is available here.

As America teeters on the brink of a second financial crisis, I think back to 2008, and the irony of a suprime mortgage fiasco propelling to the presidency a man who’d spent a career abetting the folks who’d caused the crisis to begin with. Despite releasing an Internet ad on ACORN, Obama, and the subprime meltdown, the McCain campaign was unwilling or unable to pursue the issue. The Clinton administration’s gutting of credit standards in the name of fair housing, in close cooperation with ACORN and Fannie Mae, laid the foundations of the mortgage crisis of 2008. Yet in the second presidential debate, McCain did nothing to combat Obama’s claims that the crisis was strictly a product of under-regulation. In the third debate, Obama flat-out lied about his longstanding ties to ACORN. The media, of course, let him get away with it.

While many conservatives know the real story well, the country as a whole has still barely heard it. The important new book by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner has begun to break the fuller truth about the 2008 financial meltdown into public awareness, yet even there the focus is on Fannie Mae, while the ACORN connection is given short shrift. Fannie Mae would never have gone south if ACORN hadn’t pulled it into the subprime business in the first place. ACORN’s national banking campaign was coordinated by Obama’s close political allies at the group’s Chicago office, which Obama was heavily funding through two foundations at the time. . . .

I think of Bell Federal’s naive and noble–but doomed–resistance to ACORN, and Fannie Mae’s equally bitter battle to hold ACORN at bay–well before the horror story recounted by Morgenson and Rosner played out. It took a lot of heavy lifting by ACORN and its supporters to break down years of prudent business practice, embodied in the credit standards all sane bankers once rightly insisted on. Only after those standards were compromised did we reap the whirlwind. . . .

Obama was intimately familiar with the battle to undermine America’s credit standards, and in full philosophical sympathy with it. It took a one-two punch of Alinskyite intimidation and federal regulatory pressure to create the preconditions for the subprime crisis of 2008, and Obama was on board for all of it. . . .

Now we are flirting with a second crisis, brought on by overspending, debt, and excessive regulation. Dodd-Frank, a banking bill named for Barney Frank, another abettor of the Fannie Mae fiasco, depresses business. . . . .

Kurtz has this information here linking Obama to ACORN.

Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner's new book extensively discusses Jim Johnson's role in creating the mortgage crisis, but they also mention Obama's close ties with Johnson (e.g., see page 11, 54, 187). Many of Obama's important appointees had big roles in creating the financial crisis (e.g., Timothy Geithner, Tom Donilon).

Obama and ACORN

IBD has this very useful article:

In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.
A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff.
When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave Acorn grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
Acorn has been in the lead in opposing voter ID laws and other efforts to ensure ballot integrity. Acorn has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Ohio and at least 13 other states. Acorn staffers will presumably be out registering voters again this year.
Obama also opposes voter ID laws. He believes they disenfranchise voters. Last year, Obama put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. It seems von Spakovsky, as an official in the Justice Department, had supported a Georgia photo ID law. Acorn espouses the leftist view that voter ID laws are racist.
In addition to subverting American democracy to promote a leftist agenda, Acorn's radical agenda amounts to "undisguised authoritarian socialism." wrote Sol Stern in the 2003 City Journal article, "Acorn's Nutty Regime for Cities." . . .

Obama's "being squirrelly" on ACORN

Given my piece at Fox yesterday, I thought that I would follow it up with this. Jake Tapper writes:

As reports pile up of voter registration fraud connected to ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, a group that advocates for low-income voters – the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has sought to downplay his past ties with the group.

But in their efforts to do, Obama campaign officials found themselves forced last week to correct an erroneous assertion made on the campaign’s “Fight the Smears” webpage that “Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.”

That wasn’t true.

In fact, ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg told the New York Times that Obama conducted two unpaid leadership training sessions for ACORN’s Chicago affiliate in the late 1990s.

The “Fight the Smears” website now asserts, "Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.”

Key word: hired.

Goldberg told the Times that Obama’s work for ACORN was unpaid.

You can see the old version HERE and the new version HERE.

Moreover, Obama also represented ACORN and other groups in the mid 1990s as an attorney suing the state of Illinois to uphold the federal Motor Voter law. The governor and other officials of the State of Illinois were refusing to comply with the law on the ground that it was unconstitutional. . . .

More on ACORN and Vote Fraud

I have been making multiple posts on ACORN and the fraudulent voter registrations that it has been turning in. Well, here is something that John Fund had in the WSJ on this group:

The Democratic oak has grown, in part, from Acorn, a feisty, union-backed activist group. The organization says on its Web site that it "registered over 540,000 low-income and minority voters" and deployed over 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers for yesterday's elections. But after years of scandal involving its election efforts and misuse of government grants, Acorn is finally coming under scrutiny, with four of its Kansas City, Mo., workers under indictment for submitting false voter registrations. (As of this writing, all are at large.) Other states--including Pennsylvania and Maryland--are also conducting probes. Notes the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City: "This national investigation is very much ongoing." . . .

Acorn boasts an annual budget of some $40 million . . .

St. Louis election officials were so inundated with bogus Acorn-generated voter registrants that they mailed a letter to 5,000 registrants, requesting the recipients to contact them. Fewer than 40 responded. Mr. Rathke attacked the officials as "slop buckets" and claimed they had "broken the law in trying to discourage new voters illegally."

City officials scoff at that. They say it's up to Acorn to explain why over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations don't exist. "We met twice with Acorn before their drive, but our requests completely fell by the wayside," says Democrat Matt Potter, the city's deputy elections director. His election clerks were already putting in 13-hour work days and "dumping this on them isn't fair." In the past, several Democrats, including Mayor Francis Slay, have complained about bloated voter rolls leading to stolen votes. . . .

ACORN on Trial

Fox News has this.

When ACORN took to Las Vegas and started playing "Blackjack" and "21," the activist group was making a far bigger gamble than it ever guessed, according to Nevada prosecutors.

There's nothing wrong with playing the tables in Vegas, but authorities say ACORN was using the names of those casino games as a cover to illegally pay workers to sign up voters as part of an illegal quota system.

A preliminary hearing Tuesday in the downtown Clark County courthouse has put ACORN on trial for the first time as a criminal defendant.

Until now, prosecutions for voter registration fraud have focused on ACORN workers, and authorities have secured guilty pleas from several who admitted to falsifying voter registration forms.

But when investigators from Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller's office raided the ACORN Las Vegas office, Ross says they found a paper trail that implicated the ACORN organization itself. . . . .

Left wing groups getting more money either directly or indirectly from government

Redstate has this:

The Senate Carves $90 Million Out of Stimulus For Liberal Activist Group
Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)
Monday, February 2nd at 8:00AM EST
2 Comments
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (”LCCR”) is a far left interest group.

The group opposed conservative judges. The group agitates for card check. The group is in favor of the Fairness Doctrine. It is chiefly an agitator for affirmative action programs and tries to pressure banks into giving high risk loans like those that caused the housing crisis. If you oppose them, they label you a racist.

LCCR operates like ACORN. And the Senate Democrats are about to give the $90 million of your money.

Under the cover of the digital television conversion delay, the Senate Democrats want to give the LCCR $90 million. . . . .

The Business and Media Institute has this:

ACORN Gets $2,000,000 from Bailed Out Bank of America
Will media pursue beleaguered financial institutions charitable contribution to controversial organization as they have with executive compensation?

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
2/3/2009 6:13:28 AM

Remember the outrage when it was discovered former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain – how he spent over a $1 million to redecorate his office, as meticulously itemized by CNBC correspondent Charlie Gasparino for The Daily Beast?

Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) in September 2008 and Thain was eventually let go, and the backlash for his extravagant redecorating ensued.

But, this latest indiscretion has gone unnoticed by the media – a donation in the amount of $2 million to the ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) Housing Corporation of Chicago, according to a document posted on Bank of America corporate philanthropy Web site – which shows the bank had given the total amount in grant money from October 2007 through June 2009.

The document also details several regional grants to ACORN, which is said to be finalized through 2009, but currently included the following:

ACORN (Miami) - $50,000
ACORN Housing Corp. (Chicago) – $85,000
ACORN Housing Corporation (Las Vegas) - $20,000

Vote Fraud in Washington State

John Fund, in today's Political Diary, explains that at least someone is trying to clean up vote fraud issues in Washington State:

"Washington State became a poster child for the most mishandled election in the country in 2004, when its photo-finish governor's race required three recounts before Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared the winner over Republican Dino Rossi by 139 votes. The election was rife with irregularities, including felons illegally voting, absentee ballots mishandled and new ballots constantly being "discovered" during the process.

Since then, the Democratic legislature and Ms. Gregoire have only made matters worse by expanding the vote-by-mail balloting that was at the heart of many of the 2004 election problems. But yesterday voters in Washington State were reminded why it might be a better idea to tighten up their election laws. King County (Seattle) election officials were forced to remove 1,762 voter registrations from the rolls, finding they had been fraudulently submitted by employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN employees, it turned out, had gone to a local library and filled out bogus registration forms with names from the phonebook.

At the same, the King County prosecutor announced criminal charges against seven ACORN employees for vote fraud. He also announced that ACORN had signed a settlement agreeing to establish certain internal controls in exchange for the organization not being prosecuted. The move highlights the need for ACORN's dubious registration activities in other states to be scrutinized.

In a separate move, Washington State's Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 that a suit brought by several felons who were seeking to have their voting rights restored on equal protection grounds was invalid and that Washington's felon disenfranchisement laws were constitutional."

The Seattle Times has more details on Labor Unions (ACORN) finally get into trouble in Washington State for vote fraud:

Workers accused of concocting the biggest voter-registration-fraud scheme in state history said they were under pressure from the community-organizing group that hired them to sign up more voters, according to charging papers filed Thursday.

To boost their output, the defendants allegedly went to the downtown Seattle Public Library, where they filled out voter-registration forms using names they made up or found in phone books, newspapers and baby-naming books.

One defendant "said it was hard work making up all those cards," and another "said he would often sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out cards," according to a probable-cause statement written by King County sheriff's Detective Christopher Johnson.

Prosecutors in King and Pierce counties filed felony charges Thursday against seven employees of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claiming they turned in more than 1,800 phony voter-registration forms, including an estimated 55 in Pierce County. . . . .

At least for now, not all felons can vote in Washington State.

The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that felons who haven't paid their fines and court costs aren't entitled to vote. But for 16 months they could, and now the state has no way of knowing how many might be on the rolls or how to keep them from casting ballots.

As of now, the only felons the state can accurately track — and keep off the voter rolls — are those still in custody of the Department of Corrections, according to Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell.

"That's the only rock-solid list that we know we can implement now in the short term," he said. "We have no way of finding the felons that are voting today." . . . .

IBD: "Al Franken — Democrat From Acorn"

IBD has this:

Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman conceded defeat in the mother of all recounts in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race after the state's Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit.
Arguably, his seat may have been lost the day in 2006 when Democrat Mark Ritchie defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer to become Minnesota secretary of state.
It was Ritchie who orchestrated the recount that gave Democratic challenger Franken a lead some six weeks after Coleman appeared to win by 725 votes on Election Day. Ritchie has extensive ties to the Acorn organization now under federal investigation for vote fraud and was endorsed by the community activist group in 2006.
In 2006, the Minnesota Acorn Political Committee endorsed Ritchie and contributed to his campaign. Other contributors to his campaign included George Soros, along with the likes of Deborah Rappaport, a Saul Alinsky disciple who co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical Acorn clone.
"Mark Ritchie as we all know is a hard-core liberal who was endorsed by Acorn and funded by Acorn," Matthew Vadum, senior editor of CapitolResearch.org, a nonprofit think tank, recently told NewsMax. "It is not surprising that he has a permissive attitude toward the recount process."
Also contributing to Ritchie was James Rucker, the former director of grass-roots mobilization at MoveOn.org and reportedly a co-founder of the Secretary of State Project that played a critical role in this and other elections and will do so in the future.
Ritchie gave partial credit for his 2006 election to the liberal 527 political organization, the stated goal of which is to replace conservative secretaries of state with liberal Democrats.

ACORN and the census

I am not sure what the term "provide" means here. Presumably the individuals provided are not still working for the groups who provided them, but this article raises some interesting questions.

Criminal Charges Against ACORN Raise Concerns About Its Partnership With Census Bureau
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer


Seal of the U.S. Census Bureau
(CNSNews.com) – Criminal charges filed in Nevada against ACORN, a liberal activist group that is under investigation in several other states for alleged voter registration fraud in 2008, have sparked increased concerns about the organization’s partnership agreement with the U.S. Census Bureau to help recruit workers for the 2010 Census.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is among 281 non-profit groups and 111 corporations that have signed partnership agreements with the Census Bureau as of April 13. Those partners will help provide 1.4 million workers to conduct door-to-door operations. (See Partner List)

“The Bureau needs to reconsider ACORN’s involvement as a partner in light of these new charges in Nevada,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CNSNews.com.

“I previously spoke about ACORN’s involvement in the Census,” said McHenry. “But in light of these charges, I think it makes clear that they should not be part of the partnership program with the Census.” . . . .

New Op-ed in the Philly Inquirer: A wish list that shifts $$ around: Stimulus package lacks economic logic: How does it create jobs or spending?

I have an op-ed piece in the Philly Inquirer today.

Americans are getting dubious about the stimulus package.

A majority of Americans want Congress to either reject or make "major changes" to the economic stimulus package on Capitol Hill, a poll out Tuesday finds.

The Gallup poll, conducted from Friday through Sunday, found that 75 percent of Americans want Congress to pass some version of the plan, which is tagged at about $900 billion in the latest Senate package.

But the survey reflected deepening doubts about the effectiveness of the programs and spending items currently being considered by federal lawmakers. Only 38 percent of those polled favored the existing stimulus proposal, down from a slight majority holding that view in the Jan. 28 Gallup survey.

Thirty-seven percent want major changes and 17 percent reject the plan outright. . . . .

Very cute response in a letter published by the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Stimulus doesn't mention ACORN

In his commentary Tuesday ("A wish list that shifts $$ around"), John Lott rants against some minor items in the stimulus bill and then throws in the big lie - $4.2 billion for ACORN. Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, hasn't done his research. Any reading of publicly available resources would tell him there is no specific money for ACORN in the stimulus package.
There is $4.2 billion for buying, rehabbing and selling abandoned and foreclosed houses. More than $3 billion is restricted to state and local governments and some consortia of nonprofit organizations through competitive bidding processes. About $750 million is set aside specifically for competitive bidding by nonprofits for the tasks described. ACORN is not mentioned anywhere, though presumably it could join the bidding process.

This is the same hyperbolic stretch Rep. John Boehner and other Republicans have made.

Virginia Klipstein
Glenside

Here is the problem. ACORN isn't mentioned by name, but the requirements for who is eligible limits nonprofit groups based on their characteristics who can compete to ACORN.

"Acorn Helping Illegal Aliens Get Home Loans"

White House ties to ACORN. Of course, President Obama denied that he knew much at all about ACORN over the weekend.

"Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said.

Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group. . . .

ACORN workers charged with voter fraud

The AP has this story here:

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Authorities in western Pennsylvania have accused seven people who worked for the community group ACORN of falsifying voter-registration forms.
The seven have been charged with either forging, illegally soliciting or illegally filling out voter-registration cards in the lead-up to the 2008 election.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. announced the charges at a news conference Thursday.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has come under scrutiny for registration irregularities in other states.

Authorities in Nevada filed charges Monday against ACORN and two former employees on charges they illegally paid canvassers to sign up voters. ACORN denied those accusations.

Obama on ACORN and other Community Activist Groups: "calling all of you to help up shape the agenda"

This is from an address that Obama gave in 2007 to a group of community organizers.

With all the claims about fraudulent voter registration, Politico notes that "Obama’s campaign has also shelled out about $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary, Citizens Services Inc., to help with voter registration efforts. Although ACORN says it is nonpartisan, its registration efforts tend to be focused among groups friendly to Democratic candidates."

McCain has a new ad discussing Obama's connections with ACORN

One third of people registered by ACORN were rejected by election officials?

In an article generally defending ACORN against the recent five films released on biggovernment.com, there was this interesting fact.

Last year, ACORN was forced to acknowledge that election officials rejected 400,000 of the 1.3 million people the group had tried to register. . . .

The article does have some other interesting facts about problems with the ACORN sting.

Obama nominates former ACORN fund raiser to be Federal judge

The story is here.

President Obama's first federal court nominee was Judge David Hamilton of Indiana. If you are drinking your morning coffee as you read what follows here, you might want to put down your cup before reading further:
Among Hamilton's "qualifications" is the fact that he is a former fund raiser for ACORN. That fact was conspicuously left out of the White House statement announcing Obama's nomination of the federal district judge for a position on the Seventh Circuit federal appeals court.
Even though it was only for a month, the fact Hamilton would work for any length of time for ACORN is disturbing. And there is no evidence that he has ever subsequently reputiadated his association with ACORN. . . .

Fortunately, it wasn't a close election in New Jersey

ACORN seems to be up to their old bad habits.

A New Jersey hospital is denying accusations that ACORN workers have been inside collecting absentee ballots for the state's gubernatorial race.

East Orange General Hospital CEO Kevin Slavin said Tuesday that "all proper protocols" were followed as part of its program to allow patients to vote via absentee ballot, and that no third-party groups were signing up patients.

"Other than the specifically designated and trained staff to hand out and collect these ballots, no advocacy groups were authorized nor allowed access to the hospital to hand out absentee ballots to patients as has been recently reported in unsubstantiated blogs and on political talk shows," he said in a written statement.

Slavin was referring to reports that claimed people wearing ACORN shirts were spotted distributing and collecting absentee ballots at a hospital in the area. The Wall Street Journal reported this Monday, as did BigGovernment.com -- the Web site that publicized recent undercover operations in which ACORN workers were filmed giving tax advice to two activists posing as a pimp and prostitute. . . . .

More ACORN workers to face vote fraud trials

Now in Pennsylvania:

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Four former ACORN workers in western Pennsylvania will face trial on charges that they forged, illegally solicited or illegally filled out voter registration cards before the November election.
That's after a court hearing in Pittsburgh on Friday.

Twenty-year-old Pittsburgh resident Eric Jones waved his preliminary hearing. Three others were held for trial: 23-year-old West Mifflin resident Alexis Givner and two Pittsburgh residents, 21-year-old Ashley Clarke and 28-year-old Mario Grisom.

Prosecutors charged seven ACORN workers in May. One had already been ordered to stand trial and two others had their preliminary hearings postponed.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has also come under scrutiny for registration irregularities in other states.

How politically isolated are the people at the New York Times

I think that this defense of the NY Times actually makes the paper look worse. In looking up things regarding their own beat, don't they look at the Fox News website? Don't they look at the Drudge Report just to see what is happening in the media? In addition, doesn't the NY Times work closely with Drudge because they like the links that he provides for them?

After being late on Van Jones and ACORN -- two stories pushed aggressively by Fox, talk radio and conservative blogs -- NY Times public editor Clark Hoyt describes the paper's "slow reflexes" when covering both stories in today's column: "Tuning In Too Late."

When I spoke with Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet nearly two weeks ago about these issues, he told me that there isn't a specific Times staffer watching the blogosphere, but that reporters should follow sites relating to their own beats.

But now the Times top editors, Hoyt writes, have decided to "assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies."

Conservatives may think the Times' slow response is by design -- that the paper is less willing to jump on stories that could potentially damage Democrats. And the Times helped that perception along in 2008 with its controversial, front-page story insinuating an affair between John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman, while sitting out the John Edwards infidelity story weeks after news broke.

But there's more at play than claims of liberal bias, as Mike Allen and I wrote earlier this month:

The dearth -- and tardiness -- of coverage by the traditional media is explained in part by the fact that most reporters for establishment news organizations do not follow the conservative media. They tend to consider many of the more outlandish charges from the right to be plain loony -- which they often are.

And ACORN has long been an obsession of the right, with some of past criticism taking on racial overtones. So reporters, being used to tuning out charges against ACORN, were slow to realize that this was a time when the group’s opponents had the goods.