# "ACORN did absolutely nothing wrong" no longer true **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 6, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467 "2011-04-06T23:23:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/121 "2011-04-07T02:38:08Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Do you acknowledge that doing so is illegal in Nevada? Don’t know. Don’t care. Not relevant. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/122 "2011-04-07T02:39:08Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Why? Why is it, in the middle of a debate, I’m stymied by the idiotic demand for a cite when I say that ACORN engaged in wrongdoing? Why didn’t you step up then, **jayjay** , and say, “Look, let’s be honest here and admit that ACORN did some shady things.” Why didn’t you do that then? At the time, they hadn’t been found guilty. If I had stepped in (I don’t think I participated in any of these discussions, but would have been somewhere in the liberal camp on this issue) and said what you think people should have said, **Dio** would have just asked me for a cite as well. What could I have provided him? Sure, I figured that ACORN was probably less pure than driven snow, but seriously, he was a lot closer to the mark than O’Keefe, and there wasn’t any good evidence to the contrary. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/123 "2011-04-07T02:39:18Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > The law was broken. In what way does that violation differ from DeLay’s shuttling of money from federal to state campaign funds? Was DeLay’s violation also not wrong? Well, I don’t know much about Delay’s conviction, but I do know that he was intentionally trying to benefit himself and ACORN was not. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/124 "2011-04-07T02:40:50Z")
> [@waterj2](#): > > At the time, they hadn’t been found guilty. If I had stepped in (I don’t think I participated in any of these discussions, but would have been somewhere in the liberal camp on this issue) and said what you think people should have said, **Dio** would have just asked me for a cite as well. What could I have provided him? Sure, I figured that ACORN was probably less pure than driven snow, but seriously, he was a lot closer to the mark than O’Keefe, and there wasn’t any good evidence to the contrary. And now that there is good evidence to the contrary? ---
**Author:** ![DirkGntly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d9b06d/32.png) [@DirkGntly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DirkGntly)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/125 "2011-04-07T02:41:59Z")
I may be incorrect, and far be it from me to put words in anyone’s mouth, but to me, Dio is saying, “ACORN may have admitted guilt in breaking a law, but even if ACORN broke the law, it wasnt _wrong_ to do so.” Or something like that. Oops - Dio beat me to it already, and I suppose more succinctly ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/126 "2011-04-07T02:42:19Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Don’t know. Don’t care. Not relevant. You’ve claimed that this conviction was the result of a dishonest, partisan prosecutor. How can the simple question of whether they actually did something that violated the law not be relevant? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/127 "2011-04-07T02:43:13Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > You’re not a liberal, then? > > 🙂 Well, somebody once said I had a little liberal heart of hearts but it was for reasons I found unconvincing. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/128 "2011-04-07T02:43:46Z")
The fun part of this thread, aside from revealing how utterly partisan and without dignity Bricker truly is, is that… Well I guess that is the only fun part of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/129 "2011-04-07T02:44:31Z")
> [@DirkGntly](#): > > I may be incorrect, and far be it from me to put words in anyone’s mouth, but to me, Dio is saying, “ACORN may have admitted guilt in breaking a law, but even if ACORN broke the law, it wasnt _wrong_ to do so.” Or something like that. If he is, **Dirk** , how does that square with his claim that the prosecutor was extorting a plea for a contrived offense? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/130 "2011-04-07T02:45:32Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, somebody once said I had a little liberal heart of hearts but it was for reasons I found unconvincing. Yeah, that guy sounds like he was an idiot, all right. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/131 "2011-04-07T02:49:11Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Well, I don’t know much about Delay’s conviction, but I do know that he was intentionally trying to benefit himself and ACORN was not. No, he was not. No matter how the redistricting fell out in Texas after the 2000 census, Delay had a safe seat. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/132 "2011-04-07T02:49:24Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > You’ve claimed that this conviction was the result of a dishonest, partisan prosecutor. How can the simple question of whether they actually did something that violated the law not be relevant? Because it has no bearing on whether they did something wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/133 "2011-04-07T02:54:09Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Because it has no bearing on whether they did something wrong. You said the offense was contrived. Was this one of your redefinitions of the English language? “Contrived” means having a false quality or nature. A contrived conviction is usually understood to mean a conviction for an act that did not actually violate the law, or a conviction for an act that did not actually happen. But let me guess. In Dio-tongue, “contrived” means that the law is just wrong, somehow? ---
**Author:** ![cuauhtemoc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecb155/32.png) [@cuauhtemoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cuauhtemoc)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/134 "2011-04-07T02:55:22Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > No, oddly enough Obama gets to remain President. > > What’s your position on the actual question, though? I notice you didn’t really address that. > > Afraid they’ll take your HiveMind Liberal Card away if you admit it, eh? Who, me? I was making fun of this thread, I didn’t take a position. If I were going to take a position, I would take the position that this discussion is doing nothing at all for you, no matter how right you are in the strictest legal sense. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/135 "2011-04-07T02:58:09Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > The law was broken. Well, I can see how there’d be any number of touchy laws about voter registration and I can see the good intent behind them, i.e. you can’t register a name you know to be fake, and you can’t hire people to accumulate registrations with a wink-wink attitude where as long as you don’t _know for a fact_ that the name is fake, it’s okay, and even if there’s no wink-wink, paying them by the number of registrations encourages them to include fakes… I figure it’s along the lines of zero-tolerance policies, which _may_ catch some bad people but will probably snag a lot of false positives along the way. I don’t know of any evidence that ACORN’s intent was malicious, and false registration by itself (as opposed to voter fraud where totals are altered) doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me. So what if Mickey Mouse gets registered? If nobody actually shows up at the polls claiming to be Mickey Mouse, what’s the harm? Compared to _not_ registering a few thousand perfectly legal voters because ACORN got shut down (and no other governmental or private agency steps in), the harm vanishes to nothing. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/136 "2011-04-07T03:00:42Z")
**Bricker** , I don’t even remember specifics of how we argued this when it first came up. It was umpteen months ago. But I’m fairly certain that if we were talking about O’Keefe and his idiotic novelty films, that anything said about ACORN having done nothing wrong was in that context. If it’s illegal to pay for registrations in Nevada and ACORN did so (which pleading guilty does not really prove from an objective truth standpoint), then ACORN did wrong. But it’s such a goddamn minor petty wrong that it really seems like it should be beneath you to go off on such a tantrum about it. If CPAC was found to have violated liquor laws at their conference, I wouldn’t be neenering about it on RedState. Or on here, for that matter. It’s a stupid minor violation. And it’s NOT VOTE FRAUD. This is such a 5-year-old’s temper-tantrum thread. Seriously…I did think you were better than this. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/137 "2011-04-07T03:03:33Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Sorry, but you’re wrong as a matter of fact and law. ACORN, the organization itself, entered a plea of guilty to a criminal charge. They admitted guilt. They are guilty. Period. Meanwhile that torturing, lying, job destroying, anti-civil rights traitor you rooted for 8 years as president goes free. Nice priorities ass wipe. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/138 "2011-04-07T03:10:14Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > This is such a 5-year-old’s temper-tantrum thread. Seriously…I did think you were better than this. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and call it posting-while-drunk. Brandy, judging by the attitude. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/139 "2011-04-07T03:11:58Z")
What’s lost is a glimmer of proportionality. First, intent. What was the intent of the crime? Were there fraudulent registrations gathered as a result of this crime, was the harvesting of fraudulent registrations the intent? Is that what gives this substance, is that what raises this to an actual crime? No, if i read this discussion right so far, there is no such insinuation. It is simply a matter of procedure. People may be paid to gather registrations, but that pay may not be directly connected to quantified performance. Rather like if Gorilla Scouts were paid to sell their cookies door to door, but it is somehow illegal to offer incentives for the Gorilla Scouts that sell more cookies. The rationale seems a might skewed. There appears to be an implication that the registrations garnered by such entreprenuerial means are inherently suspect, if not tainted by their very origin. Is that what this is about? Are there suspicions that these tainted registrations might be used to _further_ fraudulent ends? I’ve seen no such statement, but the implicatioin seems to hang over the room iike a dog fart. Is the law in place to protect voter registration integrity, so that no false registrations can be placed and then utilized by political scoundrels? Is that why? Because if the registrations obtained are no better and no worse than any others, then this is merely a procedural impropriety, since the “no hurt, no foul, no crime” dicta applies, and is dispositive. And by the by, I don’t seem to have run into the actual incentive here? What was offered? PS: TIL that “Javert” is French for “ **Bricker** ”. That’s a true fact, you could look it up. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467/140 "2011-04-07T03:15:58Z")
ACORN rips the tags off mattresses in the store. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acorn-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-no-longer-true/577467.md?page=8)