Obama + ACORN = Voter Fraud

The ties between Sen. Barack Obama and ACORN, a far-left advocacy group that is under investigation for voter fraud in a dozen states, keep growing.

Barack Obama wasn't just the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political contributions, says Investor's Business Daily. He was also the senator from ACORN, the activist leader for risky "affirmative action" loans, the newspaper says.

From an editorial in today's edition of IBD:

Despite efforts to blame the rescue bill's failure on the GOP, it should be remembered that 95 Democrats — some 40% of the Democratic Caucus — withheld support. Obama himself also deserves blame — not only for the bill's failure, but also for the crisis it was designed to solve.

As the New York Times reports, "Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure." Is the reason the fact that the slush fund for ACORN in the original bill, siphoning off 20% of any future profits for such activist groups, was trimmed from the tree?

Obama, who once represented ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois, was hired by the group to train its community organizers and staff in the methods and tactics of the late Saul Alinsky. ACORN would stage in-your-face protests in bank lobbies, drive-through lanes and even at bank managers' homes to get them to issue risky loans in the inner city or face charges of racism.

In the early 1990s, reports Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Policy Center, Obama was personally recruited by Chicago's ACORN to run training sessions in "direct action." That's the euphemism for the techniques used under the cover of the federal Community Reinvestment Act to intimidate financial institutions into giving what have been called "Ninja" loans — no income, no job, no assets — to people who couldn't afford them.

Read the full editorial at the newspaper's Web site.

Also check out the editorial about ACORN in today's edition of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

And if need more proof that Obama is up to his neck in the bailout mess, read "ACORN, Obama, and the Mortgage Mess" by Mona Charen at RealClear Politics.