Posted on 12/10/2009 6:53:14 AM PST by opentalk
Congress -- and possibly Citigroup -- may be gearing up to start funding the organized crime syndicate ACORN again. The current federal funding ban expires Dec. 18.
On Tuesday evening the House Appropriations Committee rejected on a party line vote of 9 to 5 an amendment offered by Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa) that would have blocked federal funding of the radical advocacy group.
The amendment was needed because the Obama administration thumbed its nose at a provision in spending legislation that banned ACORN funding until the end of next week.
In a ruling revealed late last month by the Justice Department the Obama administration invented a loophole allowing the government to continue funding the president's friends at ACORN. Through the magic of legal interpretation, the language forbidding funding the group was transformed by Acting Assistant Attorney General David J. Barron into a requirement not "to refuse payment on binding contractual obligations that predate" the original funding ban.
Latham's amendment would have closed the loophole by banning funding for ACORN, including any funding covering "a contract or other agreement entered into before the date of the enactment of this or any such other Act."
The bottom line is that the ACORN funding prohibition language remains in the massive fiscal 2010 spending measure taken up by appropriators this week but ACORN ally Eric Holder's Justice Department has rendered that language virtually meaningless.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Thanks opentalk.
BTTT
bump for later read
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