The ACORN Doesn't Fall Far . . .

You have to give the right credit. They know how to create a scandal that wasn't there before.

The Republican tirades against the liberal activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) took an unexpected turn when a conservative activist from New Jersey committed a series of Abscam-style sting operations against ACORN offices. He and a woman, respectively disguised as pimp and as a prostitute, visited these offices and asked for - and got - advice on setting up a brothel.

And he got it all on video.

With the release of these tapes, ACORN - known for helping and organizing the less fortunate to stand up for their rights and a better quality of life - is suddenly a pariah in Washington. Congressional Republicans have demanded that ACORN be denied federal funding. even as ACORN's leaders have promised to investigate the matter and fire anyone who did anything improper. Meanwhile, some ACORN leaders have suggested the conservative activists that produced this scandal have even made the charge - a plausible one - that the audio may have been overdubbed later and the ACORN staffers may have duped into being put in a compromising position. As anyone who remembers the great HBO eighties comedy series "Not Necessarily the News" can tell you, it's a plausible charge that should be considered.

So where are the Democrats? Wimping out, as usual, joining Republicans in Congress to deny funding to ACORN and the White House severing its ties with the organization and canceling a deal to work with them to get an accurate count of poor people in the census next year. So much for giving ACORN the benefit of doubt, eh, guys? Not only have you abdicated that principle, you've surrendered your responsibility to help the little guy.

Even when the Democrats do get soft at the appropriate time, they can't win. Nancy Pelosi - the one Italian-American woman not named Madonna who lacks warmth - was uncharacteristically emotional and upset when she suggested that the heated, bigoted rhetoric against President Obama could lead to the kind of violence that rocked her hometown of San Francisco in 1978 when Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. And she had good reason to be upset. House Republican leader John Boehner shrugged it off in interviews, insisting instead that his constituents are justifiably afraid of America becoming a different country than it is now (i.e., one with fewer white people), while Fox News have suggested that Pelosi's comments could - get this - incite violence and give people ideas for assassination.

I don't need to tell you how Orwellian that is.