Leftist Lawmaker Nadler Aligned With ACORN Still Defending ACORN

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties continues to refuse growing calls to investigate ACORN, a group that has endorsed him and that he has given money to.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), is so close to ACORN he even provided advice to ACORN’s lawyer on how undermine congressional efforts to defund the group.

At a subcommittee hearing yesterday, Nadler seemed upset that another member of the subcommittee, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), dared to ask him to do his job.

“Congress has done everything it could do against a private organization,” said Nadler. “We have defunded ACORN,” he said without noting that the temporary ban on federal funding of ACORN expires Dec. 18. “There’s no further thing that Congress could do.”

In spring Nadler performed a political kabuki dance with House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), promising during a congressional hearing to probe ACORN if “credible evidence” of wrongdoing arose.

“It’s not our business to say ACORN is terrible or ACORN is wonderful. That’s not a congressional job,” Nadler said. “The evidence — I’ve listened to it — I think most of it is nonsense. If it’s true, it’s a law enforcement matter.”

Weeks later Conyers mysteriously backed away from his promise to investigate ACORN, saying “the powers that be” had decided against it. He’s refused to identify “the powers that be.”

Like Nadler, Judiciary Committee chairman Conyers is also a huge fan of ACORN. Conyers received a 100% rating from ACORN in its 2006 legislative scorecard. He showed how truly in sync he was with ACORN when he spoke at the group’s national convention in June 2008. “I’m through with deregulation,” said Conyers. “It doesn’t work because the capitalist predators who are waiting unregulated are going to take advantage of it.”

ACORN claims in a federal lawsuit that it in effect has a constitutional right to defraud the people of the United States.

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, which argues in the document that it has a right to taxpayer dollars, is in the fraud business.

The lawsuit argues that the funding ban is a “bill of attainder” and therefore unconstitutional. This is the same argument Rep. Nadler urged ACORN to make.