Then candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at an event hosted by ACORN on July 2, 2007.
We reported in this space today on ACORN's receipt of firefighting funds. That story, however, had changed radically since it broke, and since we missed it, that just goes to show how easy it can be to miss things in today's fast-paced news cycle. In any case, it is worth reading an update on the story from our partner site, TheNewAmerican.com:
More than one member of Congress wants to know how ACORN, the leftist scam that former board members call a criminal conspiracy, nearly collected close to $1 million in federal funding for fire prevention and safety.
The Washington Times reported that ACORN was slated to receive 80 percent of the Homeland Security grants intended for fire prevention and safety programs in Louisiana. The paper initially reported that ACORN had received the money, but the Obama administration then announced that the grant was killed before the money went out.
Still, Rep. Dale Issa (R-Calif.) ranking minority member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Maine’s Susan Collins, ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, wonder why ACORN was slated to receive the grant to begin with. “We are perplexed as to how this organization would even be considered for a first-responder grant,” they wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
In July, Issa’s committee staff released a report alleging that ACORN is a essentially a criminal conspiracy trespassing the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, which has traditionally been used to prosecute the Mob.
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wasn’t happy about the grant either. On September 22, he wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “I request that you rescind this grant based on a history of abuse of federal dollars by ACORN and their clear lack of expertise in this area,” Vitter wrote. A week before Vitter wrote to Napolitano, two other legislators also inquired about the money. Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) members of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote to Napolitano with a request to rescind the money.
The cabinet agency froze the money, the Times reports, after Congress passed a spending bill on September 30.
Continue Reading at TheNewAmerican.com
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