More CYA mode? Who knows? But this comes on the heels of several other states investigating this criminal gang that supposedly will be conducting an "independent" investigation of itself. This investigation will focus on Baltimore, where O'Malley used to be Mayor.
H/T Christopher.
Governor Martin O’Malley announced today that he has granted the Office of the Attorney General the authority to investigate, and if appropriate, prosecute conduct involving the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).Obama, naturally, played dumb Sunday during his interviews on 87 different news programs that he wasn't really up to speed on the nationwide scandal plaguing this group he hardly knows anything about, yet did years of work for.
Earlier today, Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler requested the authority to investigate allegations of the events surrounding ACORN. The Governor granted the authority pursuant to Article V, §3 of the Constitution of Maryland.
The Office of the Attorney General is authorized to use all necessary subpoena powers, to present to an appropriate grand jury any evidence and testimony considered necessary to carry out this authorization and directive, and to act with the full powers, rights and privileges possessed by a State’s Attorney. If criminal conduct is uncovered by this probe, the Office of Attorney General is authorized to bring and to prosecute appropriate charges in any court of this State against any and all persons and entities involved in or associated with the crimes.
Oh, that ACORN?
Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.Yeah, but he's not following it closely.
"Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said.
Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.
Mr. Obama's success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.
In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list). In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. In 2007, in a speech to Acorn's leaders prior to their political arm's endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: "I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
But the Obama campaign didn't appear eager to discuss the candidate's ties to Acorn. Its press operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.
Neither, apparently, is absentee Attorney General Eric Holder. I'd be harsher in my criticism of Holder, but that would be raaaaacist.
The fact the US AG is absent on this is precisely why we need a special prosecutor. You know, to do the job the American people want done but Democrats want to pretend isn't a problem.
Despite his status as a Democrat, it seems O'Malley has a history with this thug group, and it isn't pretty.
*In 1999 angry ACORN demonstrators showed up at the campaign headquarters of Democratic Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who at that time was running for mayor of Baltimore. The group chanted "What's the difference between slum landlords and the Aryan brotherhood?" It was a reference to campaign money they mistakenly thought O'Malley had taken from a notorious slumlord, and their belief that a white supremacist group had backed the Democrat.Oh, but they're just in existence to provide tax advice and help the poor ... and threaten and intimidate people who stand in their way.
*O'Malley dismissed ACORN as "professional protestors" when they targeted him again three years later. The rabble-rousers dumped garbage on the steps of Baltimore's City Hall and then rallied on his front lawn at home. "They unloaded a busload of people shouting pretty ugly things and scared the daylights out of my wife and kids. I thought it was a pretty cruddy thing to do," O'Malley told the Baltimore Sun in 2002.
Get in people's faces, as a famed community organizer once urged supporters to do.
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