ACORN Says It Has A Constitutional Right To Your Money

A Constitutional Right to Public Funds
By Matthew Vadum on 11.13.09 @ 6:08AM

Activist group and organized crime syndicate ACORN has a constitutional right to defraud the people of the United States it claims in a federal lawsuit.

Actually, the lawsuit, filed with the assistance of the allegedly terrorist-funded Center for Constitutional Rights, doesn't use the word fraud, but that's what it amounts to because ACORN argues in the document that it has a right to taxpayer dollars. I kid you not.

In the action filed in U.S. District Court ACORN plays the victim -- as always.

ACORN claims the congressionally approved cutoff of federal funding that expires Dec. 18 violates the Constitution's prohibition on bills of attainder, along with ACORN's free speech and due process rights.

Of course, due process is a rather specific legal concept that applies to judicial proceedings, rather than the lawmaking process. A bill of attainder singles out an individual or group for punishment without trial.


Is it punishment for ACORN to be denied public funds? That implies the group has the right to receive those funds.

Legal scholar Hans A. von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation flatly rejects the argument that the Constitution prevents Congress from doing the right thing. "The bill of attainder clause has never been read to prevent Congress from defunding an organization or a corporation whose employees engage in criminal conduct, and it has rarely been invoked by the modern Supreme Court," he writes.

According to ACORN the cutoff happened not because hidden-camera videos showed Americans the corruption-plagued group's predilection for crime but because a vast right-wing conspiracy hoodwinked lawmakers.

The legislation "was passed in large part due to a public relations campaign orchestrated by political forces that have persistently attacked and defamed the Plaintiff ACORN, its members, affiliates and allies (other Plaintiffs herein)," according to the legal complaint.

ACORN's villainous tormentors, it continues, are "motivated by their hostility toward the Plaintiffs' tireless commitment to registering voters, particularly those poor and working Americans who have been consistently disenfranchised and excluded from the American political system."

We've heard all this before from ACORN's veracity-challenged CEO Bertha Lewis and from outspoken ACORN defender Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).

Lewis deserved to receive an Academy Award nomination for her virtuoso performance last month. In a widely publicized speech, she not only depicted ACORN as an innocent victim but also as a whistleblower that tried to nip the subprime mortgage crisis -- that it had a role in creating -- in the bud.

With Congressman Nadler, conflicts abound. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights, and civil liberties, he may have to investigate ACORN in the not-too-distant future, yet he came up with the novel bill of attainder argument within days of the undercover prostitution sting videos surfacing in September.

After he tried to associate the funding suspension with a McCarthy-era witch hunt, Nadler said, "Whatever one may think of the subject matter or the organization, the Constitution and the ban on bills of attainder are there for the protection of all of our liberties."

Needless to say, Nadler never explained how failing to appropriate funds for a notorious group involved in racketeering violates American liberties. In recent weeks Nadler's spokesman, Ilan Kayatsky, has refused to respond to my requests for comment.