Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 11, 2010

UPDATE, March 23, 2010: ACORN About to Bite the Dust… Will Close All Offices by April Fools Day

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A good day for the good guys.

Not surprisingly, liberal-corruption-machine ACORN royally dropped the ball (I think it was dropped on purpose, but that’s just my suspicious nature) and missed the Maryland deadline in its ridiculous lawsuit against journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles (and, inexplicably, ACORN also included Breitbart.com in the lawsuit as well, even though neither the website nor owner Andrew Breitbart had anything to do with the implementation of the child sex ring scandal exposé except to post the videos, audios, and text documentations).

Quick recap for those not familiar with the story: Independent filmmaker/journalist James O’Keefe, posing undercover as a pimp, filmed ACORN staffers in Baltimore advising him and Hannah Giles, posing undercover as a prostitute, on how to house underage prostitutes/sex slaves from El Salvador. They were helped by ACORN employees on information to fraudulently fill out government forms so as to receive taxpayer funding for their child prostitution ring business. The O’Keefe-Giles sting, with accompanying video, was posted on Breitbart’s brand-new website, BigGovernment.com, and the story exploded online as shocking video after shocking video, from seven major US cities, were posted in a staggered fashion, on the website. ACORN sued based on a vague Maryland law.

The only major news source to cover the story was FOX News — it was virtually ignored by left-wing media. And it was revealed today that Obama’s Justice Department has shut down the Federal ACORN investigation… no blatant nepotism there, huh?

ACORN neglected to to serve the complaint on the defendants, but did have a hoopla of a great time talking about it and attacking O’Keefe and Giles — how ACORN’s “good name” had been maligned and the employees were duped into advising them on prostitution and paperwork fraud — on the liberal news shows. With the growing fraud, scandals, corruption, and convictions, as well as ACORN being kicked out of the state of Ohio, I’d presume that O’Keefe and Giles are the least of ACORN’s legal worries, for now, anyway.

Seven ACORN offices were exposed for corruption and fraud: 20-year-old Hannah Giles, center, undercover as a prostitute in ACORN sting operation; Maryland has dismissed ACORN's lawsuit against Giles and O'Keefe.

One less worry for our intrepid duo… and now, HUD may have plenty to worry about from another O’Keefe exposé.

The author of this post on the Maryland lawsuit, Ben Sheffner, is a copyright/First Amendment/media/entertainment attorney and former journalist. First time I’ve seen his blog and read his writing… well done, Ben.

From Ben Sheffner, Copyrights & Campaigns, Court dismisses ACORN suit vs. ‘pimp,’ ‘hooker,’ Breitbart.com; plaintiffs missed service deadline:

A state court in Baltimore has dismissed ACORN’s lawsuit against James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart.com LLC after the plaintiffs failed to serve the complaint on the defendants within Maryland’s 120-day limit.

Clink link to see the ACORN v. O’Keefe Docket.

It was with great fanfare that ACORN, along with two recently-fired employees of its Baltimore office, sued last September over the surreptitious taping of the employees advising O’Keefe and Giles on running a prostitution business out of a house. ACORN’s general counsel, Arthur Schwartz, told the Washington Post at the time that the defendants, young filmmakers O’Keefe and Giles, plus Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.com LLC, which disseminated the videos, had committed “clear violations of Maryland law” against audio recording without consent from all parties. But ACORN appears to have lost interest in the case since filing it, confirming my suspicion that it was little more than a press release on pleading paper.

Under Maryland Rule 2-507(b), “An action against any defendant who has not been served or over whom the court has not otherwise acquired jurisdiction is subject to dismissal as to that defendant at the expiration of 120 days from the issuance of original process directed to that defendant.” That’s exactly what the court did March 4, with no apparent notice from the media that covered the filing of the lawsuit. The court’s dismissal was without prejudice, meaning that the plaintiffs could theoretically re-file. But, as I argued shortly after it was filed, the lawsuit has substantive flaws that go well beyond the plaintiffs’ apparent lack of interest in pursuing it.

Here are the details of the breaking story from Associated Press about ACORN being kicked out of Ohio…

ACORN gives up Ohio business license, won’t return
By JULIE CARR SMYTH (AP) | March 11, 2010

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The community organizing group ACORN has agreed to give up its Ohio business license and not return under another name, as it has in other states, under a settlement struck with a libertarian center that sued it.

U.S. District Judge Herman Weber, in Cincinnati, signed off on the deal, which settles claims brought by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law against ACORN’s voter registration practices. Other terms of the deal are confidential.

The center alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2008 that ACORN’s voter registration drives amounted to organized crime because the group turned in a pattern of fraudulent forms.

Center attorney Maurice Thompson said restricting ACORN’s ability to support or enable other groups to “do what they do” was crucial to the deal, especially in a state he characterized as “ground zero” to their voter advocacy efforts.

“It carries a great deal of significance because, in the absence of that term, ACORN could simply have shut down but reopened the next day as WALNUT or CHESTNUT or whatever and done the exact same thing,” Thompson said. “So our goal was to affect permanent change.”

In other states, including New York and California, ACORN chapters have disbanded and resumed operations under new names.

The California ACORN chapter split from the national organization in January, forming a new nonprofit called the Alliance of Californians for Community Employment, or ACCE.

In New York, where three ACORN employees were caught on video apparently advising a couple posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend to lie about her profession and launder her earnings, ACORN’s local offices disbanded and resumed operations as New York Communities for Change. Prosecutors said they found no criminal wrongdoing by the employees.

That video and a series of others filmed at ACORN offices around the country last year sparked a national scandal and helped drive the organization to near ruin.

ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said Thursday the group agreed to surrender its Ohio business license by June 1 and already has closed up shop in the state.

“For reasons unrelated to the lawsuit, ACORN was winding up its staff operations in Ohio anyway,” he said. “So there was no practical reason for us to spend time and money litigating this suit further, even though it was baseless and intended to harass us.”

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, describes itself as an advocate for low-income and minority home buyers and residents. It denied any wrongdoing in Ohio.

More worthwhile reading on what happened in Ohio provided by Nice Deb… ACORN Kicked Out Of Ohio.

Let’s count ‘em up: Baltimore, Washington DC, New York City, San Bernardino, San Diego, Philadelphia, Los Angeles. That’s SEVEN ACORN offices caught on tape in major US cities by O’Keefe and Giles, willing to misuse taxpayer dollars to fund an illegal child prostitution ring and commit fraud. SEVEN.

Here are links to all seven of O’Keefe and Giles’ ACORN child prostitution stings, in the same order they were released to the public at Big Government… the audacious story of corruption that the Obama-supporting mass/fringe media deliberately ignored:

Number 1: ACORN and Child Prostitution in Baltimore: New Andrew Breitbart Site, Big Government, Exposes All (video)

Number 7: Shocker: LA ACORN Says “People Do It All the Time” in California, Will Do Research for Child Sex Ring Operation, Has Had Meetings with Larry Flynt… Another O’Keefe-Giles Exposé (video)

Related reading:
Publius at Big Government: ACORN’s Maryland Chapter Shuttered.
Patterico’s Pontifications: Maddow: O’Keefe HID Important Facts About ACORN!!!! (Patterico Responds: Except That He Didn’t) and Brad Friedman Combines a Brand-New Lie with Some Old Familiar Lies
HillBuzz: Another head of the ACORN hydra folds — but don’t think for a minute it’s not reforming elsewhere

Categories: Government, Law & Constitution, Media & Communication, Social and Political Climate
Tags: ACORN, ACORN corruption, ACORN Ohio, ACORN scandal, Andrew Breitbart, Baltimore, Baltimore City State’s Attorney, child exploitation, child prostitution, conservative, El Salvador, El Salvador child prostitutes, fringe media, Hannah Giles, James O'Keefe, journalism bias, lawsuit, liberal, mainstream media, Maryland, media bias, Ohio, prostitute, prostitution, voter registration, voter registration fraud