ACORN

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department gave a group called the New York Agency for Community Affairs a grant of $135,130 in fiscal year 2005 to “provide youth leadership training to students at select New York City schools, form ‘ACORN Youth Union’ chapters, and coordinate student campaigns to address issues such as school funding, neighborhood safety, and school governance,” according to a Government Accountability Office report released this week.

The GAO report says that in fiscal years 2005 through 2009 the federal government gave ACORN and what the GAO calls “potentially related organizations” more than $40 million in federal funds.  read more »

A Republican lawmaker released a report Thursday that he says proves the controversial community activist organization ACORN is alive and well, contrary to its announcement that it is disbanding.

The report from California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, includes details of a recent business transaction between ACORN and a California affiliate that broke away this year and changed its name in a bid to start anew.

The transaction details how membership lists, computer equipment, employees and other assets will be transferred from ACORN to the new organization...

A former Justice Department attorney says it was "ludicrous" for a New York judge to declare Congress could not independently decide it wasn't going to fund the liberal activist group ACORN.

A federal judge has ordered government agencies to make it clear that funding is not blocked to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Brooklyn Judge Nina Gershon wrote in her opinion that it was "unmistakable that Congress determined ACORN's guilt before defunding it."

She also said Congress is entitled to investigate ACORN but cannot "rely on the negative results of a congressional or executive report to impose a broad, punitive funding ban on a specific, named organization."...

A legal scholar says the Senate healthcare bill is not only stuffed full of racial quotas and preferences, but it also gives the disgraced liberal activist group ACORN opportunities to receive funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Harry Reid's (D-Nevada) "manager's amendment" in the Senate healthcare bill requires that six federal agencies each establish an "Office of Minority Health." Under that requirement, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is supposed to award grants and contracts to organizations that are "indigenous human resource providers in communities of color" and engage in "community outreach activities" -- the type of work ACORN says it has been doing for years.

Hans von SpakovskyHans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, says scandal-plagued ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now -- is exactly the kind of organization that will be applying for and receiving these federal funds...

Two congressmen called on the Justice Department Monday to appeal a recent decision in federal district court that found the government's move to cut off funding to ACORN was unconstitutional.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., described the Dec. 11 decision by Judge Nina Gershon as "preposterous."

"The district court's decision is troubling in many respects, but most significantly, if allowed to stand, it would effectively excise from the Constitution Congress' express Spending Clause power to refuse to appropriate federal funds to an organization that has shown itself likely to misuse those funds in the future," the letter reads. "Such a conclusion is nothing short of preposterous"...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An internal investigation of the community-organizing group ACORN found no pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staffers on undercover videos shot by conservative critics of the group.

In a 47-page assessment that former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger was commissioned by the organization to do, he criticized ACORN's management as not moving fast enough to institute reforms after an alleged eight-year coverup by ACORN founder Wade Rathke of an embezzlement by his brother.

ACORN's leaders are "now reaping what Rathke sowed," wrote Harshbarger, who was brought in to investigate...

(CNSNews.com) – ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, is in the process of changing its name and has already transferred many of its resources to several other left-wing advocacy and political groups, according to a report released Tuesday by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

While the Justice Department has said that federal housing funds should continue to flow to ACORN, several congressmen, in a joint hearing of the House Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee, said they want a special prosecutor to investigate the group's use of taxpayer dollars.

Several weeks back, Congress included in the Continuing Appropriations Resolution for 2010 a provision that bars federal funds to ACORN and its “affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations”...

An Iowa congressman is questioning the timing of the sudden resignation of a controversial Obama administration official, whose husband has had close ties to ACORN and has recently been named President Obama's White House counsel.

In serving as White House communications director, Anita Dunn had created a stir when she told school children earlier this year that Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse Tung was one of the people she admired the most. She also launched a public attack against the Fox News Channel for its reporting on the ACORN prostitution scandal.

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) thinks it is curious that Dunn abruptly resigned from her White House post, just four days after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN's national office, seizing paper records and computer hard drives...

An organization affiliated with ACORN is still eligible for charitable donations through a federal program for government employees, despite complaints that the program violates recent legislation targeting the now-scandalized community group.

The affiliate organization, the ACORN Institute, will not be barred from participating in the Combined Federal Campaign, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said. The program encourages federal employees to give to local charities.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, raised concerns earlier this month over the government's refusal to omit the ACORN Institute from the campaign. But Personnel Management Director John Berry said in a letter delivered to Grassley that the institute is legally eligible to receive donations through the program...

Las Vegas (AP) - Lawyers for the political advocacy group ACORN and a former supervisor say they'll plead not guilty to charges that they illegally paid canvassers to register Nevada voters during last year's presidential campaign.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and former regional supervisor Amy Busefink are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Las Vegas...