Michael Gaynor
Key to thwarting radical Obama agenda: Anita Moncrief's inside ACORN story, not Andrew Breitbart's Alinskysite ACORN video strategy
By Michael Gaynor
Just as a bell cannot be unrung, Obama cannot be unelected, but at least the implementation of his radical agenda can be stopped and eventually reversed and people who will provide the kind of check and balance that the Founders intended can be elected to Congress, IF the truth about Obama and his relationship to ACORN, SEIU and La Raza becomes generally known.
There were limits to which surreptitious taping (legal in most, but not all, states of the United States and illegal at most, but not all, of the ACORN offices at which there was surreptitious videotaping) and B roll of a scantily clad Hannah Giles and an outlandishly attired James O'Keefe could accomplish, even before O'Keefe's foolish "Louisiana caper," the Brooklyn District Attorney's conclusion that the surreptitiously recorded Giles-O'Keefe visit to the ACORN office in Brooklyn did not involve crimes (the taping was legal, New York being a one party consent state) and California Attorney General Jerry Brown's unfortunately dated April 1, 2010 report showing that there were no ACORN crimes to prosecute based on the surreptitiously recorded Giles-O'Keefe visits to ACORN offices in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego but the two surreptitious recorders would have been prosecuted for multiple crimes if their lawyers had not negotiated immunity for them in return for providing the unedited tapes (which showed that the videotapes broadcast had been heavily and even deceptively edited).
The sensational Pimp and Pro ACORN sting battered ACORN to the point that it closed its offices across the country and is in transformation mode and boosted O'Keefe, Ms. Giles, Andrew Breitbart (mastermind of the Pimp and Pro ACORN videos release strategy), Breitbart's Big Government (which debuted with the sting story) and Fox News (the network that trumpeted the sting story and offered interviews of the principals), but it did not expose President Obama's damning relationship with ACORN, or thwart the implementation of his radical agenda of fundamentally transforming America by government takeover of automobile manufacturers, reformation of America's health system, wealth and income redistribution, and installation of liberal activist judges. Worse, it allowed Obama to appear to distance himself from ACORN, by signing the bill to de-fund it and dropping it as a partner in the census. Despite the will of the people and Scott Brown's election to fill the United States Senate seat previously filled by the late Ted Kennedy, Breitbart, O'Keefe and Ms. Giles and the rest of the world discovered that those videos could not stop the enactment of Obamacare.
Alger Hiss was exposed as a Communist by Whittaker Chambers, a former fellow Communist who had proof, saw the light and bravely did what was right, not by surreptitious videotaping of a few intake employees at Communist Party offices.
John McCain would have been elected President in 2008 if the truth about Obama and his relationship to ACORN, SEIU and La Raza had been generally known. That was a truth the liberal media establishment did not report, because it was backing Obama instead of scrutinizing him. Just as a bell cannot be unrung, Obama cannot be unelected, but at least the implementation of his radical agenda can be stopped and eventually reversed and people who will provide the kind of check and balance that the Founders intended can be elected to Congress, IF the truth about Obama and his relationship to ACORN, SEIU and La Raza becomes generally known.
The key is ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
On April 8, 2010, Kevin Mooney, in "ACORN's Partisan Activities on Behalf of President Obama Should be Re-Examined" (http://timescheck.com/2010/04/08/acorns-partisan-activities-on-behalf-of-president-obama-should-be-re-examined/), pointed out what needs to be done: "ACORN's questionable financial transactions and political activity were explored by the New York Times in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election. But this reporting was abruptly cut off. Now would be a good time to reactivate the investigation since the organization is supposedly disbanding..."
Mooney noted:
"In the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election, former ACORN insider Anita MonCrief served as a confidential source to Stephanie Strom, a Times reporter."
"But the exposure of ACORN came to an abrupt halt when MonCrief provided hard proof of the close connection between the controversial, self-described community group and the Obama campaign."
"It is evident from MonCrief's remarks that ACORN and Project Vote may have violated federal laws, according to legal experts familiar with her testimony."
ACORN is Obama's Achilles' heel because there is ugly truth to reveal.
Heather Heidelbaugh, for whom Ms. MonCrief served as a witness in the Pennsylvania ACORN case in the fall of 2008, testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee more than a year ago:
"The New York Times articles [on ACORN] stopped when Ms. Moncrief, who is a Democrat and a supporter of the President, revealed that the Obama Presidential Campaign had sent its maxed out donor list to Karen Gillette of the Washington, DC ACORN office and asked Gillette and Ms. Moncrief to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN."
"Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama Campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at the New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, 'it was a game changer.' That's when Ms. Moncrief telephoned me on October 21, 2008. Ms. Strom never wrote another article about ACORN for the New York Times for the remainder of the period before Election Day, i.e. November 4, 2008."
Breitbart recognized the significance of the story that Ms. MonCrief, as an ex-insider, could tell. In an email to me last November, he called it "the story of a lifetime" and blamed me because it did not "get out."
Breitbart:
"...you couldn't figure out how to get it out.
"Plus, you tried to horde the information and the potential glory when it would take a group effort, a group blog effort, if you will. Yet you wanted to be a singular knight in shining armor and get the glory all by yourself. Your limited skill set to manage media plus an over-inflated sense of self limited your ability to make the story hit its natural water mark."
Breitbart was right about the importance of the story, but he was wrong about whose story it was, what was doable then, what my intentions were, what I did and what I tried to do.
It was Ms. MonCrief's story, not mine, and she then was an ardent Obama supporter who would not only vote for Obama, but write about it on her blog, www.anitamoncrief.blogspot.com.
The entry on November 5, 2008 is titled "America: The Phoenix Rises Again" and reads:
"...Last night, despite the best efforts of the GOP on one side, and ACORN on the other, no one was able to stop the true movement of people. America spoke in shades of brown, tan, white, and other. They spoke from comfortable homes, dingy apartments, and military posts. What ACORN and the GOP failed to realize is that there is a true need for people to organize to be heard; but when groups try to divide those people for monetary purposes, our voices are diluted.
"My daughter and I walked through the rain yesterday to vote, and though I knew that there are some who didn't want my vote, who said that I was the enemy; I have never wavered in my support of Obama and wanted to give my vote to him. My connections to this campaign started in 1963 when my mother was born on the Southside of Chicago, and like some of Michelle Obama's extended family, we to chose to migrate south, but maintained strong Chicago roots. To me, yesterday was more than making history as the first African-American president, it was a reaffirmation that like Obama has said, 'it doesn't matter where you come from'. The American dream is alive and well in its people who never stopped believing that anyone can start a new life and become something great.
"As a student of history, I look at the Ford's, the Rockefeller's and the Kennedy's. Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger who did what he had to do to pull his family out of poverty, and though this was not an ideal situation; that is exactly where America is now. America has realized that we were in a period of darkness, but we are clawing our way towards that light of a new day. President-elect Obama was right when he asked for our help. We have to be prepared to get our hands dirty and move forward when it looks like we are headed towards the edge of a precipice. America has always been about taking nothing and making something great. I saw this greatness last night, not onstage, but in the crowds with their barely constrained emotion."
Ms. MonCrief closed the entry: "I hope that the new administration will help remove the albatross from around the poor's neck and let us join the rest of America in advocating for true change."
I would take Obama to disullusion Ms. MonCrief, and he had to be President before he could do that, because she had great hopes for him bringing "good" change.
Ms. MonCrief had contacted me on October 7, 2008, but our communications were "off the record." I was her backup plan ("Plan B") and obligated not to identify her. That changed on October 21, 2008, when The New York Times killed an Obama/ACORN expose. Ms. MonCrief called to tell me about that. I urged her to testify for Ms. Heidelbaugh and asked for and obtained permission to publicly identify her.
I then wrote "ACORN WHISTLEBLOWER: OBAMA'S THIRD STRIKE?" (October 22, 2008) (http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=081022), in which I reported:
"[Anita's] resume shows that Anita simultaneously joined ACORN and Project Vote in Washington, D.C. in October 2005. With ACORN, she was a strategic writing, research and design consultant. With Project Vote, she was a development associate. She designed ACORN's 2005, 2006 and 2007 political operations year end PowerPoint presentations.
"Anita...provided many documents.
"It had to be very hard for a 'progressive' who supported Obama to come forward.
"...she had been working with New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom, but what ended up published as Ms. Strom's ACORN articles were so 'watered down' that Anita decided to turn elsewhere.
"Wisely so.
"Yesterday, Anita advised me, Ms. Strom apologetically canceled a meeting for today and explained that New York Times policy was not to publish what might be a game changing article this close to the election.
"I think that should be in a footnote to The Times' 'All the news that's fit to print' motto."
I definitely did not "horde information." I was urging Ms. MonCrief to tell all and provide the proof, and that only she could do it the way it should be done.
I encouraged Ms. MonCrief to tell her story and share her evidence with others, not just me. In addition to urging Ms. MonCrief to testify for Ms. Heidelbaugh, I put her in contact with (1)ABC News (Ms. MonCrief wanted a "liberal" organization to tell her story, if possible), (2) Laura Ingraham (radio star and Fox contributor), (3) John Fund (Fox contributor who writes for The Wall Street Journal) and (4) Peter Johnson (Fox News senior legal analyst who invited Ms. MonCrief to appear on "Fox & Friends" on the Friday before the election and on Fox News over the weekend before the election.
Ms. MonCrief gave her first interview to Laura Ingraham and was very pleasantly surprised that Ms. Ingraham was fair-minded instead of the terrible person radicals claim she is. Ms. Ingraham made the interview a freebie on her website, www.lauraingrham.com, to make it as available as possible.
ABC did not choose to report the story, which was not shocking.
Fox News very much wanted Ms. MonCrief (which also was not shocking), but Ms. MonCrief then declined to appear on Fox News. (Ironically, ACORN 8 leader and Obamaton Marcel Reid urged Ms. MonCrief NOT to do "evil" Fox News, yet the next year Ms Reid became Glenn Beck's "Rosa Parks' and appeared with a halo (figuratively speaking) in the Fox News "Truth About ACORN" special broadcast on October 2, 2009.)
America still needs to hear Ms. MonCrief tell the inside story, now a show presented by Breitbart.
Full disclosure: I reject the notion that Breitbart embraces — that the right response to radical Saul Alinsky is for conservatives to use his tactics against him. I approved of the boldness of the sting and its lawful and accurately reported aspects, but not its illegal and less than candid aspects.
Yes, Breitbart emailed me that I had missed a wonderful opportunity.
Breitbart: "I would have happily included you in the strategizing of this entire rollout, to figure out how best to implement the Anita aspects of this large and complicated mess. You likely could have been an immense help with your knowledge of ACORN and the law. You would have possibly been a general by day and a pundit on TV at night fighting the good fight."
Breitbart did (and does) need "immense help," especially with "the law" and morals. It's a "large and complicated mess" and "the good fight" has to be fought, but it has to be fought lawfully and honorably, so that in fighting "the good fight" we do not make a larger and more complicated "mess" and lose our souls in the process.
In "Breitbart World," a competent (and heeded) legal advisor could have avoided the embarrassment of a Kerryesque flip-flop: the word now is that those videos don't show ACORN crimes but were spurs to the prosecuting authirities to find ACORN crimes to prosecute.
On the very day the first ACORN video was released, an article(http://biggovernment.com/kenandken/2009/09/10/shocking-audio-could-incriminate-acorn-affiliates/#more-706) posted at Big Government declared that "those on the video tape [of the visit to ACORN's Baltimore office] could possibly be indicted and charged with numerous crimes, including prostitution, tax fraud, housing fraud, conspiracy to commit each of the above, and even charges related to underage prostitution."
Five days later, the same authors (ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski) posted a follow up piece calling for a RICO investigation and declaring: "The reality is, there are at least a half-dozen state and federal laws that could have been broken here. Even though the undercover girl is not a prostitute and there are no El Salvadoran girls either, this could still meet the legal standard for conspiracy to commit these various crimes. At a bare minimum, depending on the state, it likely fulfills the elements for the crime of attempted conspiracy, which usually carries the exact same penalty as the underlying crimes themselves (prostitution, tax fraud, etc.)."
When the Brooklyn District Attorney found no criminality, Big Government posted a scathing article by Ann Coulter ridiculing the investigators(http://bigjournalism.com/bshapiro/2010/04/10/california-dreamin-rachel-maddow-and-gov-moonbeam-cover-up-the-real-acorn-scandal/#more-47630): "I'm just glad to know that [DA] Hynes conducted a thorough 'investigation' first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?" and "If none of the advice given by ACORN on those videotapes constitutes conspiracy or aiding or abetting a crime, see this column next week for my opus: '10 Detailed Plans to Kill George Soros and Why This Might Be Right for You.'" (In "Did the Brooklyn DA's Office Refuse to Prosecute ACORN Crimes?" (March 5, 2010) (http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=100305), I reviewed the Coulter article and pointed out that (1) "Ms. Coulter has a key fact wrong (Ms. Giles' age) and mistakenly suggests that 'advancing prostitution' is a crime in New York" although [u]nder New York law, there is no crime known as "advancing prostitution" of which anyone can be "guilty" and (2) the only possible crime that could have been prosecuted was attempted promoting prostitution in the fourth degree and "[t]he Brooklyn District Attorney's Office apparently concluded that no one had the requisite criminal intent, or 'engaged in some affirmative act to carry out that intent' within the meaning of the statute as interpreted in accordance with the ejustum generis rule, or went 'far enough to cause a sufficient risk of harm.'")
Suddenly, after the California Attorney General also concluded that the videos did not show any prosecutable ACORN crimes, Team Breitbart changed strategy and suggested that the real problem was that prosecutors had not been inspired by the videos to find prosecutable crimes by ACORN or its employees, the rationale being that the behavior of ACORN employees on the video suggested that at least some ACORN employees must have committed similar crimes. Big Journalism posted an article by Ben Shapiro (http://bigjournalism.com/bshapiro/2010/04/10/california-dreamin-rachel-maddow-and-gov-moonbeam-cover-up-the-real-acorn-scandal/) suggesting that only a moron could have expected otherwise: "Did those employees commit a crime in offering to help O'Keefe and Giles themselves? Of course not, because O'Keefe and Giles weren't actually a pimp and prostitute. All conspiracy crimes (which this would have been) require that there be an underlying criminal act — if no such criminal act exists, then conspiracy cannot be prosecuted. This makes sense." and "Brown...found that in their interactions with O'Keefe and Giles, ACORN broke no laws. Again, duh. O'Keefe and Giles weren't a real pimp and prostitute, so of course no laws were broken." Shapiro's conclusion: "the real story here is Jerry Brown's failure to do his job and investigate past ACORN practices to uncover similar situations where actual criminal activity took place."
What we really need are witnesses to "actual criminal activity" to come forward so that prosecutors can investigate it, not calls to find something to prosecute because it is likely or possible that there is something to prosecute.
© Michael Gaynor
April 12, 2010
Just as a bell cannot be unrung, Obama cannot be unelected, but at least the implementation of his radical agenda can be stopped and eventually reversed and people who will provide the kind of check and balance that the Founders intended can be elected to Congress, IF the truth about Obama and his relationship to ACORN, SEIU and La Raza becomes generally known.
There were limits to which surreptitious taping (legal in most, but not all, states of the United States and illegal at most, but not all, of the ACORN offices at which there was surreptitious videotaping) and B roll of a scantily clad Hannah Giles and an outlandishly attired James O'Keefe could accomplish, even before O'Keefe's foolish "Louisiana caper," the Brooklyn District Attorney's conclusion that the surreptitiously recorded Giles-O'Keefe visit to the ACORN office in Brooklyn did not involve crimes (the taping was legal, New York being a one party consent state) and California Attorney General Jerry Brown's unfortunately dated April 1, 2010 report showing that there were no ACORN crimes to prosecute based on the surreptitiously recorded Giles-O'Keefe visits to ACORN offices in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego but the two surreptitious recorders would have been prosecuted for multiple crimes if their lawyers had not negotiated immunity for them in return for providing the unedited tapes (which showed that the videotapes broadcast had been heavily and even deceptively edited).
The sensational Pimp and Pro ACORN sting battered ACORN to the point that it closed its offices across the country and is in transformation mode and boosted O'Keefe, Ms. Giles, Andrew Breitbart (mastermind of the Pimp and Pro ACORN videos release strategy), Breitbart's Big Government (which debuted with the sting story) and Fox News (the network that trumpeted the sting story and offered interviews of the principals), but it did not expose President Obama's damning relationship with ACORN, or thwart the implementation of his radical agenda of fundamentally transforming America by government takeover of automobile manufacturers, reformation of America's health system, wealth and income redistribution, and installation of liberal activist judges. Worse, it allowed Obama to appear to distance himself from ACORN, by signing the bill to de-fund it and dropping it as a partner in the census. Despite the will of the people and Scott Brown's election to fill the United States Senate seat previously filled by the late Ted Kennedy, Breitbart, O'Keefe and Ms. Giles and the rest of the world discovered that those videos could not stop the enactment of Obamacare.
Alger Hiss was exposed as a Communist by Whittaker Chambers, a former fellow Communist who had proof, saw the light and bravely did what was right, not by surreptitious videotaping of a few intake employees at Communist Party offices.
John McCain would have been elected President in 2008 if the truth about Obama and his relationship to ACORN, SEIU and La Raza had been generally known. That was a truth the liberal media establishment did not report, because it was backing Obama instead of scrutinizing him. Just as a bell cannot be unrung, Obama cannot be unelected, but at least the implementation of his radical agenda can be stopped and eventually reversed and people who will provide the kind of check and balance that the Founders intended can be elected to Congress, IF the truth about Obama and his relationship to ACORN, SEIU and La Raza becomes generally known.
The key is ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
On April 8, 2010, Kevin Mooney, in "ACORN's Partisan Activities on Behalf of President Obama Should be Re-Examined" (http://timescheck.com/2010/04/08/acorns-partisan-activities-on-behalf-of-president-obama-should-be-re-examined/), pointed out what needs to be done: "ACORN's questionable financial transactions and political activity were explored by the New York Times in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election. But this reporting was abruptly cut off. Now would be a good time to reactivate the investigation since the organization is supposedly disbanding..."
Mooney noted:
"In the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election, former ACORN insider Anita MonCrief served as a confidential source to Stephanie Strom, a Times reporter."
"But the exposure of ACORN came to an abrupt halt when MonCrief provided hard proof of the close connection between the controversial, self-described community group and the Obama campaign."
"It is evident from MonCrief's remarks that ACORN and Project Vote may have violated federal laws, according to legal experts familiar with her testimony."
ACORN is Obama's Achilles' heel because there is ugly truth to reveal.
Heather Heidelbaugh, for whom Ms. MonCrief served as a witness in the Pennsylvania ACORN case in the fall of 2008, testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee more than a year ago:
"The New York Times articles [on ACORN] stopped when Ms. Moncrief, who is a Democrat and a supporter of the President, revealed that the Obama Presidential Campaign had sent its maxed out donor list to Karen Gillette of the Washington, DC ACORN office and asked Gillette and Ms. Moncrief to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN."
"Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama Campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at the New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, 'it was a game changer.' That's when Ms. Moncrief telephoned me on October 21, 2008. Ms. Strom never wrote another article about ACORN for the New York Times for the remainder of the period before Election Day, i.e. November 4, 2008."
Breitbart recognized the significance of the story that Ms. MonCrief, as an ex-insider, could tell. In an email to me last November, he called it "the story of a lifetime" and blamed me because it did not "get out."
Breitbart:
"...you couldn't figure out how to get it out.
"Plus, you tried to horde the information and the potential glory when it would take a group effort, a group blog effort, if you will. Yet you wanted to be a singular knight in shining armor and get the glory all by yourself. Your limited skill set to manage media plus an over-inflated sense of self limited your ability to make the story hit its natural water mark."
Breitbart was right about the importance of the story, but he was wrong about whose story it was, what was doable then, what my intentions were, what I did and what I tried to do.
It was Ms. MonCrief's story, not mine, and she then was an ardent Obama supporter who would not only vote for Obama, but write about it on her blog, www.anitamoncrief.blogspot.com.
The entry on November 5, 2008 is titled "America: The Phoenix Rises Again" and reads:
"...Last night, despite the best efforts of the GOP on one side, and ACORN on the other, no one was able to stop the true movement of people. America spoke in shades of brown, tan, white, and other. They spoke from comfortable homes, dingy apartments, and military posts. What ACORN and the GOP failed to realize is that there is a true need for people to organize to be heard; but when groups try to divide those people for monetary purposes, our voices are diluted.
"My daughter and I walked through the rain yesterday to vote, and though I knew that there are some who didn't want my vote, who said that I was the enemy; I have never wavered in my support of Obama and wanted to give my vote to him. My connections to this campaign started in 1963 when my mother was born on the Southside of Chicago, and like some of Michelle Obama's extended family, we to chose to migrate south, but maintained strong Chicago roots. To me, yesterday was more than making history as the first African-American president, it was a reaffirmation that like Obama has said, 'it doesn't matter where you come from'. The American dream is alive and well in its people who never stopped believing that anyone can start a new life and become something great.
"As a student of history, I look at the Ford's, the Rockefeller's and the Kennedy's. Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger who did what he had to do to pull his family out of poverty, and though this was not an ideal situation; that is exactly where America is now. America has realized that we were in a period of darkness, but we are clawing our way towards that light of a new day. President-elect Obama was right when he asked for our help. We have to be prepared to get our hands dirty and move forward when it looks like we are headed towards the edge of a precipice. America has always been about taking nothing and making something great. I saw this greatness last night, not onstage, but in the crowds with their barely constrained emotion."
Ms. MonCrief closed the entry: "I hope that the new administration will help remove the albatross from around the poor's neck and let us join the rest of America in advocating for true change."
I would take Obama to disullusion Ms. MonCrief, and he had to be President before he could do that, because she had great hopes for him bringing "good" change.
Ms. MonCrief had contacted me on October 7, 2008, but our communications were "off the record." I was her backup plan ("Plan B") and obligated not to identify her. That changed on October 21, 2008, when The New York Times killed an Obama/ACORN expose. Ms. MonCrief called to tell me about that. I urged her to testify for Ms. Heidelbaugh and asked for and obtained permission to publicly identify her.
I then wrote "ACORN WHISTLEBLOWER: OBAMA'S THIRD STRIKE?" (October 22, 2008) (http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=081022), in which I reported:
"[Anita's] resume shows that Anita simultaneously joined ACORN and Project Vote in Washington, D.C. in October 2005. With ACORN, she was a strategic writing, research and design consultant. With Project Vote, she was a development associate. She designed ACORN's 2005, 2006 and 2007 political operations year end PowerPoint presentations.
"Anita...provided many documents.
"It had to be very hard for a 'progressive' who supported Obama to come forward.
"...she had been working with New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom, but what ended up published as Ms. Strom's ACORN articles were so 'watered down' that Anita decided to turn elsewhere.
"Wisely so.
"Yesterday, Anita advised me, Ms. Strom apologetically canceled a meeting for today and explained that New York Times policy was not to publish what might be a game changing article this close to the election.
"I think that should be in a footnote to The Times' 'All the news that's fit to print' motto."
I definitely did not "horde information." I was urging Ms. MonCrief to tell all and provide the proof, and that only she could do it the way it should be done.
I encouraged Ms. MonCrief to tell her story and share her evidence with others, not just me. In addition to urging Ms. MonCrief to testify for Ms. Heidelbaugh, I put her in contact with (1)ABC News (Ms. MonCrief wanted a "liberal" organization to tell her story, if possible), (2) Laura Ingraham (radio star and Fox contributor), (3) John Fund (Fox contributor who writes for The Wall Street Journal) and (4) Peter Johnson (Fox News senior legal analyst who invited Ms. MonCrief to appear on "Fox & Friends" on the Friday before the election and on Fox News over the weekend before the election.
Ms. MonCrief gave her first interview to Laura Ingraham and was very pleasantly surprised that Ms. Ingraham was fair-minded instead of the terrible person radicals claim she is. Ms. Ingraham made the interview a freebie on her website, www.lauraingrham.com, to make it as available as possible.
ABC did not choose to report the story, which was not shocking.
Fox News very much wanted Ms. MonCrief (which also was not shocking), but Ms. MonCrief then declined to appear on Fox News. (Ironically, ACORN 8 leader and Obamaton Marcel Reid urged Ms. MonCrief NOT to do "evil" Fox News, yet the next year Ms Reid became Glenn Beck's "Rosa Parks' and appeared with a halo (figuratively speaking) in the Fox News "Truth About ACORN" special broadcast on October 2, 2009.)
America still needs to hear Ms. MonCrief tell the inside story, now a show presented by Breitbart.
Full disclosure: I reject the notion that Breitbart embraces — that the right response to radical Saul Alinsky is for conservatives to use his tactics against him. I approved of the boldness of the sting and its lawful and accurately reported aspects, but not its illegal and less than candid aspects.
Yes, Breitbart emailed me that I had missed a wonderful opportunity.
Breitbart: "I would have happily included you in the strategizing of this entire rollout, to figure out how best to implement the Anita aspects of this large and complicated mess. You likely could have been an immense help with your knowledge of ACORN and the law. You would have possibly been a general by day and a pundit on TV at night fighting the good fight."
Breitbart did (and does) need "immense help," especially with "the law" and morals. It's a "large and complicated mess" and "the good fight" has to be fought, but it has to be fought lawfully and honorably, so that in fighting "the good fight" we do not make a larger and more complicated "mess" and lose our souls in the process.
In "Breitbart World," a competent (and heeded) legal advisor could have avoided the embarrassment of a Kerryesque flip-flop: the word now is that those videos don't show ACORN crimes but were spurs to the prosecuting authirities to find ACORN crimes to prosecute.
On the very day the first ACORN video was released, an article(http://biggovernment.com/kenandken/2009/09/10/shocking-audio-could-incriminate-acorn-affiliates/#more-706) posted at Big Government declared that "those on the video tape [of the visit to ACORN's Baltimore office] could possibly be indicted and charged with numerous crimes, including prostitution, tax fraud, housing fraud, conspiracy to commit each of the above, and even charges related to underage prostitution."
Five days later, the same authors (ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski) posted a follow up piece calling for a RICO investigation and declaring: "The reality is, there are at least a half-dozen state and federal laws that could have been broken here. Even though the undercover girl is not a prostitute and there are no El Salvadoran girls either, this could still meet the legal standard for conspiracy to commit these various crimes. At a bare minimum, depending on the state, it likely fulfills the elements for the crime of attempted conspiracy, which usually carries the exact same penalty as the underlying crimes themselves (prostitution, tax fraud, etc.)."
When the Brooklyn District Attorney found no criminality, Big Government posted a scathing article by Ann Coulter ridiculing the investigators(http://bigjournalism.com/bshapiro/2010/04/10/california-dreamin-rachel-maddow-and-gov-moonbeam-cover-up-the-real-acorn-scandal/#more-47630): "I'm just glad to know that [DA] Hynes conducted a thorough 'investigation' first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?" and "If none of the advice given by ACORN on those videotapes constitutes conspiracy or aiding or abetting a crime, see this column next week for my opus: '10 Detailed Plans to Kill George Soros and Why This Might Be Right for You.'" (In "Did the Brooklyn DA's Office Refuse to Prosecute ACORN Crimes?" (March 5, 2010) (http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=100305), I reviewed the Coulter article and pointed out that (1) "Ms. Coulter has a key fact wrong (Ms. Giles' age) and mistakenly suggests that 'advancing prostitution' is a crime in New York" although [u]nder New York law, there is no crime known as "advancing prostitution" of which anyone can be "guilty" and (2) the only possible crime that could have been prosecuted was attempted promoting prostitution in the fourth degree and "[t]he Brooklyn District Attorney's Office apparently concluded that no one had the requisite criminal intent, or 'engaged in some affirmative act to carry out that intent' within the meaning of the statute as interpreted in accordance with the ejustum generis rule, or went 'far enough to cause a sufficient risk of harm.'")
Suddenly, after the California Attorney General also concluded that the videos did not show any prosecutable ACORN crimes, Team Breitbart changed strategy and suggested that the real problem was that prosecutors had not been inspired by the videos to find prosecutable crimes by ACORN or its employees, the rationale being that the behavior of ACORN employees on the video suggested that at least some ACORN employees must have committed similar crimes. Big Journalism posted an article by Ben Shapiro (http://bigjournalism.com/bshapiro/2010/04/10/california-dreamin-rachel-maddow-and-gov-moonbeam-cover-up-the-real-acorn-scandal/) suggesting that only a moron could have expected otherwise: "Did those employees commit a crime in offering to help O'Keefe and Giles themselves? Of course not, because O'Keefe and Giles weren't actually a pimp and prostitute. All conspiracy crimes (which this would have been) require that there be an underlying criminal act — if no such criminal act exists, then conspiracy cannot be prosecuted. This makes sense." and "Brown...found that in their interactions with O'Keefe and Giles, ACORN broke no laws. Again, duh. O'Keefe and Giles weren't a real pimp and prostitute, so of course no laws were broken." Shapiro's conclusion: "the real story here is Jerry Brown's failure to do his job and investigate past ACORN practices to uncover similar situations where actual criminal activity took place."
What we really need are witnesses to "actual criminal activity" to come forward so that prosecutors can investigate it, not calls to find something to prosecute because it is likely or possible that there is something to prosecute.
© Michael Gaynor
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