Artificial Sweetener: A Second Round of ACORN Covering Fire, a Defense From Our Childhood
Imagine this scene, one that we imagine is familiar to many readers: you’ve just done something of which your parents do not approve. Perhaps you’ve tracked mud into the house. Perhaps you were playing ball indoors and smashed a prize lamp. Your parents scold you, preparing to hand down their discipline sentence. “But,†you say, pointing at your siblings beside you, “They did it too!â€
How many of your parents thought that was a valid excuse? How many of your parents smiled and said “Oh, okay then, none of you have to be disciplined.†The answer probably lies between zero and none. Yet this was exactly the argument that Rachel Maddow used on her show Friday night in order to attack the “defund ACORN†act. Yes, it’s silly. Yes, it’s a logical fallacy. And yes, as mothers, fathers, teachers, and preachers have been saying since time immemorial, two wrongs still don’t make a right.
Maddow used this argument in one of her delightfully amusingly titled segments of “The TRUTH about the LIES about ACORN.†Tonight’s show didn’t talk much about ACORN. Instead, she mostly railed against other government contractors – mainly defense contractors and security firms – in the service of defending ACORN to the last.
We will ignore Maddow’s typical ad-hominem opening and jump right to her “point.†First, though Maddow chooses to focus on the possibility that the “Defund Acorn†is a bill of attainder. Maddow would have you believe that it’s a sure thing that bill is unconstitutional. That’s mainly because her heroes on the left are saying that very thing. The reality of the matter is more complex. Legal professor and blogger Eugene Volokh discusses the matter in greater detail on his post here.
He cites precedents and laws which may render defunding ACORN a bill of attainder, but also points out that, among other things,
At the same time, even legislation that singles out individuals is not a Bill of Attainder if “the law under challenge, viewed in terms of the type and severity of burdens imposed, reasonably can be said to further nonpunitive legislative purposes.” See Nixon v. Administrator of General Services (1977); SeaRiver Maritime Financial Holdings Inc. v. Mineta (9th Cir. 2002) (upholding the legislative exclusion of “any vessel that spilled more than one million gallons of oil into the marine environment after March 22, 1989″ — a class that includes only the Exxon Valdez — from Prince William Sound, because it has the legitimate nonpunitive purpose of “reduc[ing] the environmental risk to the Sound” by excluding “a vessel with a history of substantial spillage, and encourag[ing] SeaRiver and other tank vessel owners to take greater steps to avoid a similar spill in any marine environment”).
Since ACORN’s history of (both successful and unsuccessful voter and voter registration fraud could clearly be taken as a threat to the legitimacy of our elections and our very system of government, we could see someone very easily arguing that including language that the bill prohibits Federal funds for “any organization that has been indicted for a violation under any Federal or State law governing the financing of a campaign for election for public office or any law governing the administration of an election for public office“clearly serves the purpose of keeping our electoral process intact. Whether the Supreme Court would accept that argument or not is another question.
Maddow doesn’t dwell on that point for long though, because she has to gleefully point out that the bill as written would prevent large defense contractors–for example Lockheed Martin, Boeing, or General Dynamics—from receiving federal funds. If she’s stopped there, she might have had a decent point. After all, her point was to try and save ACORN from being defunded, but she may have stumbled onto a good point. Fraud is fraud, no matter who commits it, and that should be punished. But the actual reason for defunding ACORN goes beyond that, to aiding and abetting criminal activities and actively working to undermine our system of government. And there’s a huge gulf between voter and election fraud and overcharging for the F-16 fighter.
But Maddow doesn’t stop there. She goes on to accuse Blackwater of murder. Blackwater is one of the left’s favorite punching bags, but maybe they had best let the judicial system sort it out, since no one has been convicted and the whole affair is a messy, confused they-said-they-said about who shot first, when and where. ACORN employees have been convicted of crimes—as of now, those Blackwater employees have not. This is far from the only time during her show she either is unaware of (unlikely) or intentionally conflates (more likely) the difference between accusations and convictions.
In the middle of all of this, Maddow takes yet another opportunity to muddy the waters of the ACORN case with her particular brand of disinformation. She claims it’s all about prostitution—ignoring the tax evasion, sex slavery, human trafficking, and even murder issues the videos raised. She of course makes the already-thoroughly-debunked claim that these activists “went from ACORN office to ACORN office with a hidden camera until they got a reaction that would play well on Fox News.â€
No Maddow show would be complete without a guest brought on to noddingly agree with her. Tonight’s echo chamber guest du jour was Jeremy Scahill, whom Maddow introduced as an author but who is a also a contributor and correspondent on the radical hard-left news broadcast Democracy Now and writer for The Nation. Scahill repeated one of the lefts favorite misdirections about defunding ACORN—that it’s only a matter of $53 dollars over the last twenty or so years. He completely ignored the billions of dollars avaialble to ACORN from the President’s wasteful stimulus package which is naturally the greater target of this legislation.
What’s interesting is that Maddow is far from the only left-winger using this line of “defense†for ACORN. The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and the like were all saying the same thing (gee, almost like they get together somewhere to talk about what stories to run for the day)–you can’t defund ACORN, other people are bad too! This is in addition to the repetition of the “ACORN does good things too†red-herring defense we brought to light yesterday (and repeated by Maddow today whenever she could). Regardless of the failed logic of their reasoning, we’re pleasantly amused to see so many on the left take a sudden and intense interest in the minutia of the Constitution.
Or that is, we would be if we thought they would remain so interested in the actual Constitutional powers granted our government when the next gun-control bill comes up, or the next judge uses extra-constitutional “emanations from penumbras†reasoning or cites foreign law to interpret US law. But we don’t count on it. If past behavior has taught us anything, it’s that the left only has a use for the US Constitution when it can be used as a sledgehammer against the right. We see no underlying belief in the concepts of limited government, accountable government, and separated government that the Constitution details. More’s the pity.
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Stupak and Lessons Learned: Democrats Lie. Chronically
In Defense Of – Me
Just imagine, one day there will be no more ACORN, ahhh
I’ve never watched maddow but I do appreciate Tim & Alissa’s commentary. One question: What state governments(governor’s) are not investigating and/or prosecuting acorn’s voter fraud,mixing taxpayer monies with election agenda’s, This should be a major issue in every state where they operate.Is there a state scorecard available? I figure the far-left is hoping this acorn issue blows away before 2010.
Remember acorn has many tenacles or front organizations and we need very deep investigations to expose and prosecute. Daily sunlight is needed on this extremely important issue. Thanks
LOL. I suppose at times I can be a little dense, but I finally realized what your Schick really is. As “creative writers” you aim to portray Dr. Maddow as an ignorant childlike figure that makes outlandish claims to demonize conservatives. That simply isn’t the case. Dr. Maddow is extremely intelligent and is a force to be reckoned with and ‘creative writers’ such as yourselves will never win in the end. I must say, I do like the cartoons you guys pick, very funny.
Here is Dr. Maddow’s educational background From Wikipedia:
Maddow earned a degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1994. At graduation she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was also the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 2001, she completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree (styled a DPhil) in politics from the University of Oxford.
You might want to take Sunday afternoon and read the following piece:
.The Dr. Maddow Show
I can hardly wait until next creative ‘Artificial Sweetener’ concoction you guys write, it should be a doozy.
Isn’t Google such a great research tool?
I tuned in to the Friday Maddow show. I wanted to see if Peter Dreier was again opining. No Dreier AND his name was not mentioned. Peter Dreier, the altruistic defender of ACORN and those they unselfishly
serve. Do you think she was told the history of Peter Dreier? His whinning diatribe on the Huff Post Friday was tedious. After 10 seconds of scrolling, I did not care who “they” had come for and who the Democrats had failed to defend.
I loved your analogy of children saying “they did it too”. Simply put, Maddows’ show does border on childishness. For heavens’sake this woman is a Rhodes Scholar. I “HAD” always thought that was an honor to be admired, even though I do know several ivy league graduates who are idiots.
I think Maddows’ been short changed in common sense and charm, but almost all hosts on MSNBC suffer that affliction. It must be a requirement for employment at that network.
How can any reasonably intelligent, thoughtful, logical person watch the ACORN videos and conclude that the “prostitute,” the “pimp” and the conservative media are the most evil, vile, devious individuals on the planet?
I would agree with pbrauer…..Rachael Maddow probably has all the necessary credentials to prove that she is an extremely well educated intellectual having all the credentials necessary to place her on the looney left. It takes extremely convoluted reasoning, the more illogical the better, to completely confuse those of us struggling with the disability of our normal inteligence, to arrive at conclusions designed to stun and subdue us with their elusive intellectual nuances.
Then there are those of us who recognize it for what it is………B.S.
They did some bad but they did some good to? That’s a defence? This whole thing has spiritual implications. Satan for example is known as the Father of lies. He’s very good at it. What he does is take some truth and mix it with a lie, that way it doesn’t look bad, but if you disect it you will find that whatever truth is in it was compromised but a lie turning the whole thing into a lie Arrange a cow patty just the right way, paint it up a little, add some perfume or false smell and it might look good but one bite will tell you for sure it’s not what it appears to be, so is ACORN and acorn is not the only one.
The problem is that Maddow is in the tank for the Obama administration just like everyone at NBC because there parent company has a moneyed interest in his legislation that he wishs to pass Crap& Trade they stand to make a fortune off of it. Now that is what the FCC should be investigating.
This rude, ad hominem attack is the straw that has broken the camel’s back. It’s off topic and contributes nothing to the discussion — as is characteristic of almost all of Pbrauer’s posts. I’ve had enough.
Bill Clinton is a Rhodes Scholar. Our actions define our character, not a piece of paper. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, were not mental midgets either. How many proud individuals have awards and accolades bestowed by them? Are they regarded as intelligent therefore unquestionable? GW went to Yale. Did that stop the neo communists? They disregard logic when it is used against them and then selectively use it to against their critics.