Now that’s not a direct quote, but its an accurate paraphrase.
The nerve of this guy.
Obama started working with ACORN in the early 90’s when he represented them in a lawsuit. Not long after he helped their front group, Project VOTE, with a voter registration project. ACORN’s own leadership acknowledges this fact in this article in Social Policy magazine:
Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).
Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.
Interestingly, the above article has since been scrubbed from the website of the magazine. Not too hard to figure out why. Here is a PDF of the article for your enjoyment tho.
So, he helped train ACORN members. He represented them in court. He helped run projects for them. ACORN, supposedly a non-partisan group, is helping Barack in Ohio and his campaign gave them 800 grand to “get out the vote.”
Lots of connections between ACORN and Obama.
And the guy has the nerve to actually pick his own special prosecutor to investigate the crimes of ACORN:
The Obama campaign announced Friday that it is asking Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over any investigations of voter fraud or voter suppression to Special Prosecutor Nora Dannehy.
Dannehy is also the special prosecutor recently appointed to investigate the U.S. attorney firing scandal.
Doh, did I say “to investigate the crimes of ACORN?” Actually, its to investigate the investigation into voter fraud as some kind of vote suppression. The CNN article above manages to ignore this fact, not surprisingly.
Robert Bauer, general counsel for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting that special prosecutor Nora Dannehy add recent allegations of partisan misconduct within the Justice Department to her investigation of criminal offenses stemming from the 2006 U.S. Attorney firings.
In his letter, Bauer, a partner in Perkins Coie’s Washington office, accuses Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican Party of making false claims of voting fraud as part of a Republican effort to influence the presidential election, Republican officeholders calling on the Justice Department to investigate allegations of fraud, and possible involvement by Justice Department officials in spurring what he called “baseless” investigations.
“False claims?”
But the McCain camp see’s right through it:
“After a week of shifting stories and clumsy corrections regarding Barack Obama’s connections to ACORN, the Obama campaign resorted to their now-customary heavy handed tactic of attempting to criminalize political discourse. Today’s outrageous letter to Attorney General Mukasey and Special Prosecutor Dannehy at the Justice Department asking for a special prosecutor to investigate Senator McCain and Governor Palin’s public statements about ACORN’s record of fraudulent voter registrations (including in this week’s Presidential debate) is absurd. It is a typical time-worn Washington attempt to criminalize political differences. For someone who promises ‘change,’ it is certainly only more of the same.
“The letter’s request that the Department of Justice investigate ‘recent partisan Republican activities throughout the country’ is almost a parody of the Obama campaign’s attempt to intimidate their political opponents. In case Sen. Obama’s lawyer did not notice, we are in the midst of a political campaign, not a coronation, and the alleged criminal activity he calls ‘recent partisan Republican activities’ are what the rest of us call campaign speeches and debates. All of this is unfortunately reminiscent of the Obama campaign’s recent creation of a ‘truth squad’ of Missouri prosecutors and sheriffs to ‘target’ people who criticize Sen. Obama. Rest assured that, despite these threats, the McCain-Palin campaign will continue to address the serious issue of voter registration fraud by ACORN and other partisan groups, and compliance by states with the Help America Vote Act’s requirement of matching new voter registrations with state data bases to prevent voter fraud.”
Typical Chicago politics from a typical Chicago politician.
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