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.

On Thursday, between 20,000 and 45,000 Americans descended upon Capitol Hill (along with talk radio host Dr. Mark Levin and conservative actor Jon Voight) to protest the nationalization of America’s healthcare system, answering a call put out by Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) just a week before.  Bachmann and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) joined Sean Hannity to reflect on the defiant spirit of the American people, as well as ObamaCare’s political prospects.

David Forsmark and Ben Johnson have already demolished the hypocritical attempts to mischaracterize the crowds as fanatics, and on “Hannity,” Bachmann highlighted one of the real reasons the protestors would have gotten under the skin of more than a couple Democrats:

People didn’t just come to hear speakers; they then pivoted, fanned out, went into the Capitol, went into the office buildings, were very polite, went from door to door to door, knocked on the doors.  We handed out, actually pages, actual pages from the bill.  People would take one page, and then they’d carry that page and ask members of Congress, “Can you read this to me and explain it to me so that it makes sense?”

Of course, we already know that, not only does Congress rarely bother to read the laws they pass, but lawmakers often scoff at the very idea that they should know exactly what new regulations they’re imposing on the country. Progressive ideology dictates that the democratic process should only decide which general ideas and broad goals the government is to adopt. The details of how to enact them, on the other hand, are best left to unelected administrative bodies. That’s why the Left insists this overhaul of one-sixth of the economy needs to be done quickly, or why they’re not all that interested in talking about whether or not ObamaCare will cover abortions or illegal immigrants.  Heaven forbid we involve the people in such a complex matter; only our enlightened experts will suffice.  This debacle is but one of many case studies in how progressive governance, as Michelle Malkin recently wrote, means “the death of deliberative democracy.”

It’s too soon to throw up the “Mission Accomplished” banner, but enough just might be enough.  The Republican victories this week have reignited Blue Dog Democrats’ fears over force-feeding liberalism to the American people, who are increasingly wary of ObamaCare.  So fear not the demagoguery, America; they smear you because they fear you.  Keep the heat on our elected officials, and keep on partying like it’s 1773.

UPDATE: It turns out that the videos Fox played during this segment included footage from the September 12 Tea Party, presented as if it was from Bachmann’s rally instead.  Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart first called attention to it, and last night Hannity apologized, calling it an inadvertent mistake.  Leftists, of course, will insist it was deliberate, all the while ignoring deceptive video use from other networks.  But intentional or not, misleading video is misleading video, and Sean Hannity and Fox News deserved to be called out on it.

_____

Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College.  He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.

The report (PDF available here) – called “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?” — was released by Republican staffers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The ranking member on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), told Beck that with ACORN, “it’s always the mice that are getting prosecuted; it never rises to the top.”

But what investigators found “was a pattern of loose financial accounting and no firewalls,” Issa said. “It’s very clear that that’s for a reason…you cannot be giving government money…to ACORN and its affiliates without knowingly delivering it to partisan operatives who in fact engage in campaigning.”

Beck noted that President Obama was a community organizer. “He is organizing our government in the same way,” Beck said. “We can’t track anything. You’ve seen that healthcare bill. It is so complex. Money’s everywhere. It’s a shell game. And everybody’s getting rich, and the people who helped him devise this is the SEIU…a union that is tied directly into ACORN. We are building a new exoskeleton and it’s feasting on our republic.” said Beck.

Issa said he “absolutely” agreed. “Our study was specifically done so that the facts speak for themselves so that very clearly we could make the case that ACORN cannot be receiving government money and should lose its tax-free status,” he said.

Congressional Democrats have shown little interest in probing ACORN. After initially expressing interest in an investigation, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan), a longtime ACORN ally, backed off, saying “the powers that be decided against it.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) tried yet again to block ACORN from receiving taxpayer funds. On Thursday he offered an amendment to a spending bill that would have prohibited any taxpayer money in the bill from going to ACORN.

According to a King press release, “Liberals on the House Rules Committee ruled King’s amendment out of order.” This is the seventh amendment that lawmakers sympathetic to ACORN have blocked King from offering.

“John Conyers is right: the ‘powers that be’ in this Congress will do all they can to protect ACORN,” King said.