ACORN's demise

I just took a brief glance at my last 5 or 6 posts, which span back about 3 weeks. Not proud of that. My friend Jed Hutchison, who blogs on religion and not politics, is an every-single-day-I-post-something type of blogger. I never have been...but I aspire to that, and it just may happen someday soon. This week, though, is illustrative of how illusive such a goal is for me and probably will be for the next several weeks. My youngest daughter had a 5-in-1 surgical procedure on Tuesday morning and didn't get out of the hospital until last night. In the meantime, I was shuttling back and forth from Indianapolis to Kokomo, conducting standard university duties, studying material for my last Liberty class when I got the chance and paying attention to news and catching a day with the Hoosier Congressional Policy Leadership Series. Of the above list, the one element that will soon be changing is the scholarly obligation to Liberty; I will complete the final requirement for the Master of Arts in Religion when I close out my Systematic Theology II class on October 18, 4 weeks from tomorrow! I hope to kick the blog into higher gear after that.

In the midst of it all, I have failed to blog on what I am convinced may be one of the biggest, if not the most significant scoop of the year. I probably shouldn't feel too badly about it, because so did most of the mainstream media (fail to report on it, that is). I sat in on a conference call a couple of days ago with Fox News' and the "Weekly Standard's" Fred Barnes, whom I always enjoy when he turns up a couple of times a week on the Fox News All Stars. Barnes chuckled with genuine delight over what an unlikely pattern the story of ACORN's exposure has followed! Two twentysomething young activists with a video camera have, at the very least, brought about the proposal to defund ACORN by both houses of Congress, the complete break with ACORN by the US Census Bureau and a manifestly steep falloff in donations. It is, indeed, a beautiful thing to behold, and we can only hope that ACORN's ill fortunes continue to accelerate.

It has been an interesting September. What is it about this month anyway? Last year, we had the first TARP bailout and this year, we are treated to the health care debate and the 9/12 March on Washington, with its several thousand patrons (har, har). I think I prefer 2009, all things being equal.

On other matters ACORN-related: Charlie Gibson's admission on Don Wade and Roma's WLS radio show, replete with nervous giggling, that he had not even heard about ACORN and its difficulties...let's just say that the mind reels. I got to ask Fred Barnes about this on our HCPLS conference call and I admitted my incredulousness at Gibson's reply as I posed my question. As I suspected, Barnes knows Gibson and says he is a very nice man, but is just out of touch up in New York. Barnes also observed that it is a telling sign of the times when an evening news man on one of the ostensibly "Big 3 networks" is so insulated from reality that he is completely unaware of one of the major breaking stories of the day.

Bertha Lewis, the current head of ACORN, will be on Fox News Sunday tomorrow morning. I will be watching; I would anyway, but I will go out of my way to do it, even though if I have guests since President Obama has chosen to hit 5 other shows tomorrow, including Univision, but to snub Fox. Chris Wallace said on O'Reilly last night that "They [the Obama White House] are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington. They constantly are on the phone, or emailing me complaining, well, you had this guest. Or you did this thing. I mean, they are working the umps all the time. I think it works for the others. It doesn't work with me." Very frank admission from the most non-partisan Sunday host out there, the rightful heir to Tim Russert.