Can we start calling you St. Bricker now? Or would you prefer Bricker Martyr?
Dear God,
If you could do something to ensure that Diebold sells its voting machine division to ACORN, I promise to start believing in you.
Your pal,
XXXXXXXXCrow
CMC fnord!
Are you suggesting they were TROLLING? :eek:
Not even close. Diebold was cheating to make the repub win. ACORN registered voters. they did not know for sure who they would vote for. I registered voters who said they would not vote for McClain of Obama. ACORN does not fix elections. Diebold had every intention of doing exactly that.
You’ve been here since last March? What is that, seven months? Okay, that’s more than one hour. You may make that insinuation.
I agree that this would fall outside of the spirit of RICO but are you sure it’s outside of the letter of the law? The law lists what qualifies as “racketeering activity” and one of the items is obstruction of justice.
Mother of God, is this the end of RICO?
Prosecution requires doing some illegal act. Please provide the act they actually did and we can go on. Pissing off repubs is not illegal. It should be encouraged.
When they were set up by the 2 repubs, no illegal act was done.
TWEEEET!!!
EVERYONE knock off the commernts about other posters.
[ /Moderating ]
I figured if this story was anywhere, it would be posted and linked on Free Republic. Sure enough, this thread links to this story. Unfortunately, the latter is on a RW blog, biggovernment.com, and simply assumes the truth of the document-dump story while commenting on its legal relevance; so we still don’t have any independent media confirmation.
If so, then they most assuredly should be.
Why?
Because it’s there.
Documents posted on BigGovernment.com include food stamp application, canvassing form, and an employee’s tax and identification information. In a November 23 post on BigGovernment.com, Roach noted that he retrieved “thousands upon thousands of sensitive documents” from a Dumpster and found that they include “information exposing not only the inner workings of ACORN in California, but also personal, sensitive information belonging to employees, members and clients of ACORN.” Roach posted documents containing an employee’s transmittal form, tax forms, and identification information, as well as a canvassing form, a neighborhood map, and an authorization form for the deduction of membership fees. Roach also wrote:
On November 24, BigGovernment.com blogger Publius posted “one family’s application for food stamp benefits that ACORN threw out with its trash, in advance of a visit from officers of the Attorney’s General office” and “a monthly credit card statement for ACORN employee David Lagstein’s corporate credit card” showing “payments to a fertility clinic.” He also posted other documents that appear to outline a “plan for a 2-year ACORN campaign to repeal California’s Prop 13,” and one that discusses re-branding ACORN under a different name.
ACORN employee: “[T]he majority of what was thrown out was junk – old leaflets, newsletters, etc.” NBC Los Angeles reported on November 23 that Amy Schur of ACORN’s California office stated of the discarded documents: “In early October, when our San Diego staff were doing an office clean-up in preparation for a major 10-station phone bank program being set up in our offices, it appears that included in the piles of garbage being thrown out may have been some documents containing private information.” Schur further stated: “Our files were not part of the scope of the visit by the Attorney General’s office, and the majority of what was thrown out was junk - old leaflets, newsletters, etc… It looks like our staff were careless and some documents with personal information were included in the piles of garbage.”
Breitbart’s only allegation of potential illegality is unrelated to investigation. A November 24 post on BigGovernment.com suggests that ACORN – by throwing away a copy of a credit report – may have violated the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLB), which “requires that financial institutions protect information collected about individuals,” according to the Federal Trade Commission. However, the credit report displayed with the blog post appears to be unrelated to the California attorney general’s investigation, and the post itself notes that it is unclear “whether or not ACORN falls under the letter of GLB.”
[/quote]
Yes, I’m sure, at least to the extent that I’m not aware of any credible allegations against ACORN that fit into the list of RICO predicate offenses. That is, if ACORN were engaged in loansharking and sports betting, then of course their members would be indictable under RICO… but they’re not.
So what are the RICO predicate offenses? 18 USC § 1961(1) lists them:
Not to writhe in my martyrdom, but I suppose we could just talk about our “sense” of RICO; our “personal experience” of what RICO is “supposed to be.” In that conversation, perhaps ACORN can be criminally liable under RICO. But under the letter of the law, not so much.
Hug squad to GD! Hug squad to GD, stat!
Wouldn’t we be better served by replacing the OP’s artless “RICO” with “The Patriot Act”?
At least that’s getting used in all sorts of wild and crazy ways, so it might plausibly be directed against ACORN.
Well… I don’t say it’s impossible; the Patriot Act has a number of financial provisions that I suppose might be something that ACORN could run afoul of. I regard it as unlikely, and in any event it’s certainly for the person claiming that a criminal law has been violated to identify specifically the law and the act said to violate it. The problem with simply speculating that there might be some act or omission by ACORN that might be violative of the law is … difficult to refute.
It’s gossip, in its destructive form.
Perhaps we need to bring back the stocks? 
That’s what I was talking about. That list includes “section 1503 (relating to obstruction of justice), section 1510 (relating to obstruction of criminal investigations), section 1511 (relating to the obstruction of State or local law enforcement)”. If the organization is under investigation by the California AG’s office and they’re destroying evidence doesn’t that qualify?