Federal affordable-housing mandates were a major factor in the mortgage crisis, fueling the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse of the housing and financial markets, which helped bring down the economy.  Even the liberal Village Voice has admitted that.  Who drafted those awful mandates?  ACORN, reports the Washington Examiner, in “How ACORN Destroyed the Housing Market.”

How did ACORN cause the “housing bubble” and “financial collapse”?  ACORN lobbyists drafted “affordable-housing” mandates to pressure the mortgage giants to buy up more risky loans and mortgages…

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In USA Today, liberal law professor Jonathan Turley is criticizing the Obama administration for endorsing a “blasphemy” exception to free speech: “Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law.…

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Earlier, ACORN was caught in a scandal, promoting child prostitution. Both Houses of Congress voted to cut off federal funds to ACORN.  Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and other ACORN supporters argued that this was an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Hans Von Spakovsky, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, explains why it is perfectly constitutional to cut off funds to ACORN, under controlling Supreme Court precedent.

ACORN receives taxpayer money despite a long history of financial fraud, vote fraud, and tax evasion.

Mickey Kaus, a Democrat,…

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While Obama ally ACORN attempts to gag whistleblowers who exposed its role in a recent scandal, the Obama administration is trying to gag critics of its health-care plan, which the Congressional Budget Office says could wipe out many Medicare Advantage programs relied on by the elderly.  (”The Obama Administration wants to seriously curtail or end Medicare Advantage.”)

It has issued a gag order to Humana, a health insurer that provides Medicare Advantage services, ordering it not to tell customers about how Obamacare could reduce the availability of…

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ACORN is now suing the whistleblowers who allegedly filmed it promoting illegal sexual activities for $2 million! And not just them, but also the conservative web site that made the video public! ACORN seeks an injunction to silence them — a classic example of an unconstitutional prior restraint.

That’s a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, but the lawsuit was filed in state court in Baltimore, where the judges are very liberal, so who knows if ACORN’s lawsuit will be dismissed. Even if it…

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ACORN, which had its housing funds cut-off by Congress over a recent scandal, is now embroiled in a tax-evasion scandal, reports the Washington Times.

ACORN has long received taxpayer money despite a history of financial fraud and voter registration fraud.  ACORN helped spawn the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans.”

ACORN is a left-wing group that launched Obama’s career as a community organizer.  He has long-standing ties to ACORN, and an ACORN affiliate received received $800,000 from Obama’s campaign.

ACORN stands to profit greatly from Obama’s financial-regulation proposals, which would strengthen…

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Congress recently voted to cut off federal housing funds to controversial group ACORN.  But since most federal money goes to ACORN-related entities and affiliates, not ACORN itself, Congress’s action is expected to have little practical effect. ACORN’s chief defender in Congress, House Banking Committee Barney Frank (D-Mass.), claims that the cut-off is unconstitutional. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) suggests that Congress’s action was purely symbolic, and not expected to have any effect on ACORN.

Indeed, ACORN’s empire is likely to expand thanks…

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Your host Richard Morrison welcomes returning guest co-host William Yeatman and special guest commenter Ryan Radia to the program for Episode 61 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with the FCC’s just-announced proposal for “net neutrality,” Treasury documents that reveal the true cost of cap-and-trade legislation and the plan for getting over California’s great depression. We then move on to the G20 Summit’s potential path to prosperity and the ever-expanding scandal that is ACORN.

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The multi-billion dollar Atlantic Yards development project in Brooklyn, New York–subsidized to the tune of $1.6 billion by New York taxpayers–is facing new scrutiny after politically-connected developer Bruce Ratner’s ties with embattled left-wing activist group ACORN were revealed. As it currently stands, the public-financed redevelopment plan relies on extensive use of eminent domain that would leave many long-time residents and business owners out in the cold. But ACORN, as one would expect, is framing the debate in racial terms:

ACORN’s New York director, Bertha…

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ACORN, the group that helped launch Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer was recently caught in undercover stings advising about how to set up a brothel that would bring “minor girls into the country for purposes of prostitution,” reports the Washington Post. (ACORN receives taxpayer money despite a long history of financial fraud and vote fraud).

Now, Patricia Coats Jessamy, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney, is trying to silence those who have broadcast the video footage, relying on a Maryland law that violates the First Amendment.…

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The former director of the Las Vegas chapter of the far-left advocacy group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has agreed to testify against the organization, in exchange for a plea to reduced charges: two counts of conspiracy to illegally pay canvassers registering voters.

While any instance of ACORN being brought to account for breaking the law is welcome, this is only the tip of the iceberg. ACORN’s history of scandal goes back years. Jeremy Lott and Matthew Vadum…

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The massively-costly health-care reform bills backed by Obama are riddled with provisions mandating “preference” for organizations that exhibit “cultural competency,” a politically-correct code word for a focus on minorities. So racial preferences, not cutting costs or expanding coverage, may end up being the top priority in some cases.

That’s true even for the version of the health-care bill recently passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the least liberal of the 3 House committees responsible for fleshing out the details of…

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The Obama Administration’s mortgage bailout for irresponsible borrowers (including wealthy borrowers with modest mortgage payments) provides a bounty for reckless sub-prime mortgage lenders like Countrywide to rip off your retirement plan. Countrywide sold its junky mortgages on Wall Street, where they ended up being owned by mutual funds that probably are in your 401(K). But it continued to service the mortgages and make money doing so.

Now, the Obama Administration is offering Countrywide $1000 to cut each of those mortgages — which it…

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We’re beginning to see the talent exodus from TARP-funded financial institutions.  Yesterday in an op-ed Jake DeSantis of AIG-Financial Products wrote his “resignation letter” saying why he was leaving AIG.  One major reason was the raging mob calling for the heads of those who received retention payments, now called bonuses, and the tepid defense that AIG’s $1-per-year chairman gave before Rep. Barney Frank’s rabid committee.

Today we learned from the Wall Street Journal that several top managers at Banque AIG in France…

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Insurance giant AIG, bailed out by taxpayers for $170 billion, is using taxpayer money to pay executives in the division that brought it to the brink of collapse millions of dollars in bonuses! (AIG may have hoped its donations to liberal politicians, such as $103,100 to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) in 2008 alone, would shield it from scrutiny).

The Senate voted down an amendment by Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that would have kept federal stimulus money from hiring illegal aliens, resulting in up to 300,000 jobs being filled by…

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Federal bailouts and related spending proposed by the Obama Administration now total 8 trillion dollars, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.

To pay for exploding federal spending, Obama’s Congressional allies are mulling huge tax increases. Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Cal.) wants a 90 percent tax rate. Obama has spent more in his first 50 days, by far, than George Bush spent on the entire Iraq War. That includes a pork-filled $800 billion stimulus package that deceptively repealed welfare reform, and that the…

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The Minnesota Senate election was very close:  GOP incumbent Norm Coleman led liberal ex-comedian Al Franken by just 725 votes.  As a result, Franken demanded a recount.   The Minnesota Canvassing Board is mischievously changing the result of the election by treating clear votes for Coleman as non-votes, or even as votes for Franken.   Liberal blogs like Daily Kos are already celebrating the anticipated result of the shenanigans: a Franken win.  The Minnesota Secretary of State, who oversees voting, is backed by the left-wing groups MoveOn.Org and ACORN.  ACORN has a long…

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Law professor Glenn Reynolds writes about widespread voter fraud in the New York Post. Earlier, we wrote about voter fraud in Virginia, and voter fraud by the radical group ACORN.  ACORN has received taxpayer subsidies courtesy of liberal lawmakers, despite a history of financial and voting fraud.

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People openly boast about fraudulently registering to vote in Virginia, a swing state, even though they actually live, and are registered to vote, in other states.  The Norfolk, Virginia election board tried to do something about that, by making sure that people registering to vote in Virginia actually do live in the state.  One way it did that was to send questionnaires to students who came from out-of-state to attend Virginia colleges, and then registered in Virginia, to see if those students really qualify as…

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The upcoming election has given me new relatives, all of them imaginary.  The Obama campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation calls my house on an almost daily basis, trying to reach people who don’t live there, like Cyrus and Hassan Bader.  But I’ve never heard of either of them, even though I share their last name.  The Obama people have also tried repeatedly to reach my 18-month old daughter Sarah.

I live in a liberal bastion, Arlington, Virginia, where high voter turnout favors the Democratic Party.  The Party hopes to…

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