Obama's relationship with ACORN

I'm hoping ACORN comes up in tomorrow's debate. If it does, it wlll be interesting to see if Obama continues denying working with them.

From Investor's Business Daily:

ACORN was so impressed with Obama's work with and for ACORN that, according to (ACORN leader Toni) Foulkes, "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."

Last November, Obama told the group, "I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran (the) Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."

Obama appreciates ACORN's work so much, and vice versa, that Obama last December promised to implement ACORN's agenda as president. On Dec. 1, 2007, Obama spoke at the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum organized by Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change. When asked if Obama would sit down with community organizers in the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama said, "Yes, but let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we'll be calling all of you (community organizers) in to help us shape the agenda."

Obama pledged before leaders of community organizing groups including Gamaliel and ACORN: "We're gonna be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America." 

Oh dear.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Which brings us to Mr. Obama, who got his start as a Chicago "community organizer" at ACORN's side. In 1992 he led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which included Acorn. This past November, he lauded ACORN's leaders for being "smack dab in the middle" of that effort. Mr. Obama also served as a lawyer for Acorn in 1995, in a case against Illinois to increase access to the polls.

During his tenure on the board of Chicago's Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an ACORN affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for "staging, sound, lighting." It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote.

The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from ACORN, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yet it's disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you're shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he's on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.

The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law -- on the taxpayer's dime.

What would an Obama Justice Department do about it?