The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN, is currently under investigation for voter registration fraud in Nevada, and has been confronted with such cases across the United States in the last few years. What started as an organization with the mission to empower poor and minority Americans has been transformed into a corrupt and power-hungry outfit, doing whatever it takes to gain money and influence on the backs of the people it was meant to help, claim D.C. ACORN Chairwoman Marcel Reid and now terminated national board member Karen Inman. The two are members of “the ACORN 8,” a group which has now grown exponentially with current and former ACORN members who are seeking to look into the organization’s books, uncover the corruption, and get the organization back to its mission.

This segment of the Glenn Beck show is long, but well worth watching if you’re interested in learning about ACORN from two former national board members, one who is still inside the organization. At the end of the segment Reid makes a striking call to US legislators, “I would just like to say that ACORN does not need to be funded with any more taxpayer dollars until we find out what happened to the last tax Payer dollars that it was funded with.”

[Video - ACORN 8 Members with Glenn Beck]

Yesterday, Senator John Conyers killed a Senate probe into ACORN’s actions and Democrats remain divided on how to deal with the organization.

Find out more about the ACORN 8 and their mission at their website.

From The Washington Times:

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.

Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments – not direct federal dollars.

Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures. Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) – the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman – had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.

About the same time of the contract award, Mr. Blum’s private investment firm reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it and related affiliates had purchased more than 10 million new shares in CBRE. The shares were purchased for the going price of $3.77; CBRE’s stock closed Monday at $5.14. [Read More]

From Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard:

It is clear and simple; Unions spur unemployment. “High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy.” This is the clear conclusion of one of the country’s most admired economists. From 1970 to 1985, a state with average unionization had a rate of unemployment 1.2 percentage points higher than a state with no unions. This represented “about 60 percent of the increase in normal unemployment” in that period.   [Read More]

From The Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary:

Song of Roland

Senator Roland Burris cannily played the race card in bulldozing Democratic Senators into granting him the Senate seat he was appointed to by disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. But now that Mr. Burris misled all concerned about the range of his contacts with Blagojevich aides and fundraisers prior to his appointment, Democrats are quickly abandoning him.

His Senate colleague from Illinois, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, warns ominously: “The accuracy and completeness of his testimony and affidavits have been called into serious question. . . . His future in the Senate seat is in question.”

Even President Obama has weighed in, saying through spokesman Robert Gibbs that “the people of Illinois deserve to know the full extent of any involvement by Burris in raising money for Blagojevich.”

Mr. Burris is under relentless fire from the media too, with the Springfield Journal-Register reporting that he apparently did not disclose all of his lobbying work for horse racing interests to state lawmakers.

But the embattled Mr. Burris has two trump cards. Senators are notoriously reluctant to expel a member, especially the chamber’s only African-American. Such a move requires a two-thirds vote. In addition, Democrats need Mr. Burris’s vote, as demonstrated by their agonizing pursuit of the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority needed to pass last week’s stimulus bill.

Lastly, should Mr. Burris resign, there would be enormous pressure to hold a special election, which Democrats could well lose. Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a likely candidate for any vacancy, is calling on Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to require a special election to fill the seat should it become vacant. Governor Quinn is on record as supporting such a move, and would be embarrassed if he reneged on that commitment.

So, as untenable as Mr. Burris’s situation looks, he may yet survive to complete the two-year term he was appointed to, if only because of the lack of any easy way to pry such a stubborn man from the seat he fought so hard to get.

– John Fund

Sign up for WSJ’s Political Diary e-mail.

From The Quad-City Times:

Sweeping federal subpoenas of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration include requests for records involving David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisers to President Barack Obama. [Read More]

From Roll Call:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is scheduled to meet with Democratic Senate hopeful Al Franken late Wednesday afternoon, according to a Franken aide.

Reid is expected to update Franken on Senate business, including the forthcoming economic stimulus package and Democrats’ legislative agenda. In turn, the aide said Franken is expected to brief the Democratic leader on his ongoing fight to become the next Senator from Minnesota. [Read More]

Norm Coleman, whose term recently expired, remains optimistic that he will return to the Senate. Law suits challenging double counted votes and miscounted absentee ballots will continue until the disastrous recount is cleared up, the Coleman camp has assured GOP leaders.

From Politico:

Roland Burris will take his seat in the Senate Thursday – a day later than planned so that his family can be on hand for his swearing in, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday.

Democrats hope that Burris’ seating will allow them to move past a controversy that has served as a major distraction in the first days of the new Congress.

…

In a statement, Texas Sen. John Cornyn – the new chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee – said that the “entire situation has been a national embarrassment that could have been avoided had Sen. Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership simply done the right thing from day one.”

[Read More]

Menendez Should Recuse Himself on USA Pick. By Roger Stone:

According in the Newark Star Ledger, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez is working with Senator Frank Lautenberg to evaluate and interview candidates for US Attorney for New Jersey.

In view of the fact that the US Attorney’s office issued subpoenas for records of a real estate deal involving the junior senator from Hudson County, is investigating consulting contracts tied to the Jersey City Medical Center, and examining Menendez’s relationship with a former staffer who is now a lobbyist, Menendez should recuse himself from this sensitive process. [Read More]

From Amanda Carpenter at Townhall:

The U.S. Senate passed the bill Sunday by a vote of 66-12.

Roll-Call Vote.

It’s hard to pinpoint the worst part of the public lands legislation bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is calling up for an under-the-radar Sunday vote.

The 1200-page, pork-laden, $10 billion proposal locks up millions of acres of energy-rich property by designating it as environmentalist-friendly “federal wilderness” area where not even as much as a bicycle would be permitted to travel across the land. Many of these areas recently became available when the ban on domestic drilling in Western states expired last fall and the liberal left couldn’t muster the courage to keep it in place due to rising energy prices. Now Democratic leaders are using different legislative strategies to put a new kind of ban in place.

One Republican House staffer put it this way: “Reid is going to make it federal land so no one can touch it. He’s locking up the equivalent of ANWR.”

The bill, S.22 “Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009,” would cordon off more than 3 million acres from energy leasing by restricting various areas as “federal wilderness” or “wild and scenic” river ways.

Since the price of gasoline has dropped and attention has diverted to other matters, such as President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, Leader Reid has made the land grab a priority and is calling members of the Senate back to Washington on Sunday to rush it through. And the bill, which is basically an omnibus compilation of pet projects and land seizures sponsored by individual House members and senators, has wide-ranging, bipartisan support since it helps many of them secure support from stakeholders in their home states and districts.   [Read More]

From MSNBC:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, tapped in December by President-elect Barack Obama to serve as secretary of Commerce, has withdrawn his name for the position, citing a pending investigation into a company that has done business with his state.

“Let me say unequivocally that I and my Administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact,” he said Sunday in a report by NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell. “But I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process.”

…

A person familiar with the proceedings has told The Associated Press that the grand jury is looking into possible “pay-to-play” dealings between CDR Financial Products and someone in a position to push the contract through with the state of New Mexico. [Read More]

The culture of corruption that has infected the Democratic party is not contained to the mob-like politics of P.E. Obama’s Chicago. We have witnessed it in New York, in Louisiana with William Jefferson, and it is rife in New Jersey as well. That Bill Richardson might also be involved in a pay-to play scheme of his own should come as no surprise to those who support clean government. Socialist politics and bigger government are a natural breeding ground for corruption. Obama is not even in office yet and this is the second major corruption scandal closely linked to the in-coming administration and the P.E. continues to remain silent and aloof. America, all i can say is you get what you voted for.