ACORN and Yoo

So here I was, all ready to write a snarky post about the Dark Lord of Halliburton getting rushed to the hospital tonight so the doctors could set the Doomsday Clock in his chest back one minute. Then I see something on Twitter from GottaLaff at the Political Carnival.

Laffy linked to a story by Ben Smith at Politico that almost looked like something out of the Onion:

ACORN has been dissolved as a national entity.


And all because of this miserable little prick who fancied himself an up-and-coming Watergater. That would be Jimmy Olsen O'Keefe, Jr., who now has a criminal record for trying to tamper with the phones of a sitting United States Senator who just happens to sit on the Homeland Security Committee, the one who got punked when an ACORN worker, sniffing the trap, told him a whopper about her murdering her husband.

You know, the ACORN murder story that had breathlessly made the rounds on Fox "News", the murder story that turned out to be untrue.

The pimp story was enough grist for the rumor mill, however, and a few poorly-trained, low-level workers giving bad advice to O'Keefe and Co. about incorporating brothels was more than enough for the Swiftboating to begin anew, a Swiftboating that reached official levels when an alarmed Congress decided to cut ACORN of its federal funding, even though it amounted to only 10% of its total subsidization.

Even though the allegations never resulted in any criminal charges and hardly even merited an investigation. And even if the charges were substantiated, they would've shed no light whatsoever on the even more fallacious charges of "Democrat voter fraud."

Which in itself is such a rare phenomena especially in light of blatant Republican voter intimidation, racist legislation and electoral fraud that stole two presidential elections and cost at least one Democratic United States Senator his job.

Then consider, in an unrelated story, the DOJ's astoundingly stupid decision not to refer John Yoo and Jay Bybee for disbarment proceedings and that they'd merely shown "poor judgment" in saying the war on terra gave George W. Bush such sweeping powers that he could order a village to be "massacred", crush the genitals of small children to coerce their fathers and that, oh yeah, we could torture anyone we wanted as long as it didn't involve organ failure because the Geneva convention no longer applies because we say it don't.

Said Truthout’s Jason Leopold:

The judgment was softened by career prosecutor David Margolis, who was put in charge of the final recommendations and who said he was “unpersuaded” by OPR's “misconduct” conclusion, which faulted Yoo and Bybee for their approval of torture techniques that were used against terrorism suspects after the 9/11 attacks... But Margolis, who suggested Yoo and Bybee's flawed legal work was due to efforts to prevent another 9/11, dropped OPR's “misconduct” conclusions.

David Margolis. Remember that name because he's the lazy prick lifer who essentially opened the door through which war criminals Yoo and Bybee have escaped for greener pastures (Bybee's a federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco).

Apparently, there's no connection between Yoo and Bybee to the Abu Ghraib horrors that came to light in the spring of 2004 nor to the horrors at Bagram Air Base's equally infamous prison in Afghanistan nor to what had transpired all these years at Gitmo in Cuba. But at least we and countless thousands of brown people have the satisfaction of knowing that Margolis at least clucked his tongue as he held open the door so Yoo and Bybee could begin the next phase of their impunity-blessed lives.

Likewise, there was no connection with any wrongdoing at ACORN's branch offices and the executives who run the national organization yet compare who's failing upwards and who's taking the hits for trying help the nation's poorest communities.

The common denominator in these two unrelated stories, of course, is a shocking lack of concern for the rights of the poor and powerless whether you're an African American resident of NOLA's 9th ward or an innocent villager in Karachi or Baghdad.

Where in God's name are our priorities? Dick Cheney; one of history's greatest and most successful war criminals, is being pampered tonight at George Washington University hospital with his private room's television set, as always, to Fox "News" and his room guarded by Secret Service agents.

Jay Bybee is enjoying a scotch right now thinking of the important cases he'll hear tomorrow as a federal judge while John Yoo is probably grading college papers written by the minds that he's corrupting.

Meanwhile, in the 'hood people will suffer because ACORN's outreach program will be compromised. In some cases the compromised position will be statewide. California's state chapter, for instance, pulled out in reaction to the bad press and "damaged brand name" that ACORN suffered when they were supposedly railroaded by another criminal named James O'Keefe, a snot-nosed little butt boy of fourth-rate blogger and faux journalist Andrew Brietbart.