ACORN Hires John Edwards Fundraiser to Investigate Itself

More hijinks from the criminal enterprise at ACORN. They've hired an allegedly "independent" investigator to look into all their shady activities, namely former Massachusetts Attorney general Scott Harshbarger.

Former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger has been hired by ACORN to conduct an inquiry into the organization on the heels of a video that appears to show employees advising a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp to lie about the source of their income to get housing assistance.

Harshbarger, an attorney at Proskauer Rose LLP, is also the former president and chief executive of Common Cause, the good government organization.

“I have been asked by the leadership of ACORN to conduct an independent and comprehensive inquiry and review of the management of its service delivery to communities,” Harshbarger said in a statement. “The CEO and board have also asked me to make a full report, including recommendations for restoring ACORN’s full capacities to carry out its mission on behalf of low- and moderate-income families.”

Sorry, but a guy who was a chief fundraiser for the slimy John Edwards and who donated money to ACORN's pal Barack Obama doesn't exactly strike me as someone who's independent.

Harshbarger currently is an attorney in Boston with the law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, where his specialties include corporate governance and corporate defense and investigations. He was a fundraiser for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign, and donated $2,800 to Obama's campaign after Edwards left the race.

Seems to me Common Cause isn't quite up to their mantle of being a good government organization either, since they're in the business of making excuses for ACORN's phony voter registrations.

Accusations of stolen votes have a long history in presidential elections. In the 2000 recount debacle that led to George W. Bush winning the presidency, Republicans claimed illegal ballots were cast. Democrats contended that legal ballots were thrown out. In 2004, when the presidential vote came down to Ohio in the state-by-state process of the U.S. presidential election, Democrats charged that long lines and malfunctioning machines in that state led to an inaccurate count.

But in this contest, involving the first African-American in American history with a real chance at becoming president, the vitriol is particularly pointed.

"This is all just one big head-fake," said Tova Wang of the government watchdog group Common Cause. "What silliness this is, at this point. It's all about creating this perception that there is a tremendous problem with voter fraud in this country, and it's not true."

Maybe Wang can explain the arrests earlier this month of 11 ACORN workers in Florida for falsifying hundreds of voter registration forms.

Funny, isn't it, that the man Harshbarger was a fundraiser for last year addressed ACORN's convention.

Former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards called it a "moral shame" that 37 million Americans live in poverty, but committed to lifting them out by working with ACORN to raise wages and supporting Sen. Barack Obama for president.

"We can walk together and end the great shame of poverty in the United States," Edwards told nearly 2,000 ACORN members Monday, June 23, the final day of the group's National Convention at the Cobo Center. Edwards serves as chair of the ACORN-affiliated "Half in Ten" campaign to cut poverty in half in the U.S. within 10 years.

Edwards called the upcoming presidential election one of the most important elections in American history, telling ACORN members that "everything we believe in is at stake this fall." To the organizers in the crowd, he said, "There's one person who's been an organizer and who needs you to organize for him now, and that person is Barack Obama."

Maybe when the independent Harshbarger is done "investigating" ACORN he can get around to independently investigating John Edwards funneling campaign money to Rielle Hunter and why Edwards is still spending campaign money.

Nothing short of a special prosecutor investigating ACORN is going to engender the public trust. ACORN appointing their own hand-picked man is a joke and should rightly be seen as such.