audiotaping

ACORN Challenges Cut-Off Of Federal Funds After Child Prostitution Scandal, Claiming It Is ‘Unconstitutional’

by Hans Bader on November 12, 2009

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

ACORN has just filed a lawsuit in New York challenging as “unconstitutional” its loss of federal funds after its role in a child prostitution scandal was exposed.  Earlier, it sued those who exposed its role in that scandal for $2 million, claiming that the exposure violated its privacy rights under state audiotaping laws.  ACORN claims that Congress’s vote to cut off federal funds to ACORN is an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

ACORN is a left-wing group that launched President Obama’s career as a community organizer (ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).  Obama has long-standing ties to ACORN, and an ACORN affiliate received received $800,000 from Obama’s campaign.  Earlier, a liberal prosecutor (and fervent Obama supporter) threatened to punish those who exposed ACORN’s scandalous actions, while turning a blind eye to ACORN’s wrongdoing.  Now, however, Obama is quite rationally distancing himself from ACORN, which has become an embarrassment to its one-time supporters.

Legal scholars like Hans Von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation have explained why Congress’s cut-off of funds to ACORN was perfectly constitutional.  It is easy to see why Congress would not want scarce federal funds to go to ACORN, which has a long history of terrible financial mismanagement, waste of funds, financial fraud, vote fraud, and tax evasion.  Congress had many legitimate,  non-punitive reasons for cutting off funds to ACORN.

ACORN’s lawsuit is brought by the radically left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).  CCR’s founder, William Kunstler, was very open about the fact that he believed in civil liberties only for left-wingers in capitalist societies, not for dissidents of any stripe in Communist countries.  A classic example was his attitude towards dissidents in South Vietnam.  Many of these dissidents were liberals who had once criticized the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government.  After communist North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam, the dissidents began politely criticizing the human-rights abuses of the new government.  They were promptly sent to re-education camps, where they were starved or tortured to death.  The new Communist government turned out to be far crueler than the old right-wing government, which had at least allowed dissidents to live.

When some liberals, like Joan Baez, criticized this oppression against dissidents they had once worked with, William Kunstler refused to do so, saying that once a communist regime took power, he was not in favor of criticizing it for any human-rights abuses it committed.  Kunstler said, “I don’t believe in criticizing socialist governments publicly, even if there are human-rights violations.”  To Kunstler, civil liberties were just a tool to be used to bring down capitalist governments and pave the way for a communist “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  Once such a dictatorship was in power, there was no more need for civil liberties or individual freedoms of any kind, since individual freedom could only prove an obstacle to the socialist transformation of society.

ACORN Sues Whistleblowers for Exposing Its Wrongdoing in Scandal

by Hans Bader on September 24, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Healthcare, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Privacy, Sanctimony

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 is, the lawsuit will cost the whistleblowers thousands of dollars in lawyers’ bills. The Baltimore City prosecutor has already expressed hostility to the whistleblowers who exposed ACORN’s wrongdoing, threatening to prosecute them under a state “privacy” law restricting audiotaping.

(Similar “privacy” laws in Massachusetts have been used to shield kidnappers calling in ransom demands, and police abusing motorists!).

I earlier discussed some of the First Amendment issues here. A commenter at National Review argued that the lawsuit is meritless even if you ignore the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court has held that privacy lawsuits, and lawsuits in general, can’t be based on protected speech, in cases like Bartnicki v. Vopper.  That principle was extended by today’s appeals court ruling in Snyder v. Phelps overturning a Maryland jury’s $5 million damage award for intrusion-upon-seclusion, and an earlier ruling limiting state audiotaping laws in Jean v. Massachusetts State Police (2007).

The IRS just ended its controversial relationship with ACORN, which earlier had its housing funds cut-off by Congress over a recent controversy, and is now embroiled in a tax evasion scandal.

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 the Community Reinvestment Act (The Community Reinvestment Act is extremely harmful to banks and prudent lending, pressuring banks to make risky, low-income loans).

ACORN affiliates would also likely profit from Obama’s health-care plan, which contains subsidies for community organizers. (Obama’s health care plan would raise taxes, break promises, increase the deficit, destroy many inexpensive health-care plans, and take away important freedoms.)