ACORN: Housing Assistance For Prostitutes

[DinoDoc]

ACORN is run by a bunch of idiots. This kind of idiocy cries out for punishment.

Discovery should be fun. Prolly make for more stories as well.

[rah]

Brilliant.
How can we make this go away and show all the good things we do?
Let's sue them.

[Darius871]

ACORN is run by a bunch of idiots. This kind of idiocy cries out for punishment.

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, 2009

ACORN, the community organizing group embarrassed recently in a video sting, said Wednesday that it needs to determine whether it has major internal problems, but it also struck back, filing a lawsuit against the people who conducted the secret investigation.

Bertha Lewis, head of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, told reporters in a conference call that ACORN does not support criminal activity and that it thinks the filmmakers should have obeyed Maryland laws. In the state, where one video that embarrassed ACORN was made, the act constituted illegal wiretapping, the suit says.

Without even knowing Maryland law I could explain why the complaint (text here) is laughably frivolous, but this guy does it well enough:

[ACORN's] problem, however, is that the statute specifically defines “oral communication” in section 10-401(2)(i) as: “any conversation or words spoken to or by any person in private conversation.”

What this means, as established by the clear text of the statute (and Maryland caselaw, including Fearnow v. Chesapeake & Potomac Tel. Co. of Maryland, 342 Md. 363 (Md. 1996)) is that at least one of the parties to the conversation must have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the conversation. In other words, if someone stands up in the town square and shouts out loud and someone else records it, that is not a violation of the act.

The problem for ACORN is that, as a matter of law, the employees at ACORN had no reasonable expectation of privacy in what they said to members of the public who entered their offices. As made clear by Katz v. United States and its progeny (made applicable specifically to the Maryland Wiretap Act by cases such as Malpas v. State, 695 A.2d 588, 595 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1997)), “What a person exposes knowingly to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”

The conversations in question were knowingly exposed in a place of business to two customers who walked in off the streets. There is and can be absolutely no expectation of privacy for the ACORN employees in question. As such, the conversations are not “private conversations” under the Maryland Wiretap Act as a matter of law. I found all this in a matter of 15 minutes on Lexis. I’m sure another 15 (which I don’t have) will find numerous directly applicable precedents under Katz that are completely factually indistinguishable from the present case. In other words, this case is so totally without legal merit the very filing of it is almost sanctionable. And putting “they had a reasonable expectation of privacy” in the complaint is not enough for this claim to survive summary dismissal; the court does not have to accept conclusory statements and legal conclusions.

Furthermore, to the extent that ACORN wants to go after Breitbart (and I hear they are wanting to go after Fox next!) for publishing this information of clear public concern, they might want to check the First Amendment jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court on that question before getting themselves in further trouble.

link

[DanS]

In other words, this won't even make it to discovery. At a minimum, the defendants probably will be granted summary judgment. I wonder what MD's laws are regarding frivolous lawsuits.

Why would ACORN file a suit they are sure to lose, while keeping the scandal in the spotlight for months?

Just plain idiotic. Biggovernment.com is loving it right now. Eventually, the Dems will muzzle ACORN and make it go away.

[Darius871]

Why would ACORN file a suit they are sure to lose, while keeping the scandal in the spotlight for months?

Either 1) the classic combination of panic with lazy attorneys or 2) a hail-mary hoping that these two won't be able to afford thousands in legal costs since their shoestring budget could barely even cover plane tickets, though that's highly unlikely since plenty of people out there would gladly fund their defense. Either way it's definitely not in their best interest.

I wonder what MD's laws are regarding frivolous lawsuits.

I don't know if Maryland has any strike-suit legislation etc., but like any state they have an analogue to FRCP 11 sanctions that would probably be warranted here. Any attorney with 30 minutes and Westlaw access could have pulled up analogous "open office" cases, but it's like they didn't even try, or just didn't care.

[Darius871]

Either 1) the classic combination of panic with lazy attorneys or 2) a hail-mary hoping that these two won't be able to afford thousands in legal costs since their shoestring budget could barely even cover plane tickets, though that's highly unlikely since plenty of people out there would gladly fund their defense. Either way it's definitely not in their best interest.

Scratch that, it's #3: ACORN's deputy director of national operations told the AP yesterday that the lawsuit is intended to "smoke out the true motives and conservative money behind these attacks." That's actually a far more understandable motive, but unfortunately for them, A) the merits are so poor that they might not even see discovery and B) even if there is discovery, who was behind the duo's efforts is arguably not even relevant to the legal issues.

[rah]

It's quickly gotten to the point that it really doesn't matter if aliens from another planet financed this. When the party you were in bed with throws you to the wolves, you know it's over.

[Drake Tungsten]

Hannah Giles defense fund is up.

http://www.2dialog.com/freemarket/main.php/micro_sites/actionpage/id/96

[Drake Tungsten]

In other news, Breitbart gets another scalp...

Embattled former National Endowment for the Arts communications director Yosi Sergant is out of a job. Late this afternoon, the NEA released a short statement saying, "This afternoon Yosi Sergant submitted his resignation from the National Endowment for the Arts. His resignation has been accepted and is effective immediately." The agency provided no further details.

Sergant had been under scrutiny after leading a controversial conference call on August 10, where he encouraged artists to create work to promote the Obama administration's agenda. Sergant was initially removed from his post as communications director, but continued to work at the NEA.

Just two days ago, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman defended the conference call, saying it “was not a means to promote any legislative agenda and any suggestions to that end are simply false.”

Still, the White House thought the incident serious enough issue new guidelines to prevent another such call and to held meetings with the chiefs of staff of the executive branch agencies to discuss rules and best practices. Administration attorneys do not believe Sergant violated any laws.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/yosi-sergant-resigns.html

[Darius871]

Hannah Giles defense fund is up.

http://www.2dialog.com/freemarket/ma...tionpage/id/96

If only the shirt in that pic actually gave a nip slip like it deceptively seemed to at first, she'd be $10 richer right now.

[Drake Tungsten]

While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they've hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they've never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation's largest unions.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Service Employees International Union are as tight as Heidi Klum and a new pair of jeans.

You don't think about one without the other.

You also don't talk about either organization without mention of Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN and founder of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans. Rathke, who resigned from ACORN last year as "chief organizer" after it became known that his brother embezzled almost $1 million from the association, continues to run Local 100, as well as ACORN International, recently renamed Community Organizations International.

Rathke's social justice empire is so vast that he is more hydra than man. Nine heads are surely better than one when you're organizing communities in at least 12 countries. While Rathke and ACORN undoubtedly have done much good for impoverished people here and abroad, it appears likely that American taxpayers indirectly have been helping to underwrite unionizing activities and advance political goals through the commingling of Rathke's various interests.

As an ironic sidebar, America's health-care reform debate could become stalled -- not by Senate Republicans demanding a cost analysis (how mundane) but by dot-connecting prompted by the Halloweenish ACORN sting starring a faux pimp and prostitute.

Screenwriters, poise your pens. Just for fun, keep this name in mind: Rod Blagojevich.

Now picture a triangle. One point is ACORN; another point is the SEIU; the third point is the taxpayer. Now picture arrows flowing back and forth, representing the exchange of greenbacks and services.

While various government agencies funded ACORN to help poor people become voters and homeowners, ACORN under Rathke created SEIU Local 100 (Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas) and SEIU Local 880 (Illinois, Indiana and Kansas). In turn, the SEIU wrote checks to ACORN for political activities and union organizing, according to ACORN whistle-blower affidavits. In 2008, the SEIU and Change to Win, a coalition of labor unions, gave ACORN $1,729,462, according to union financial reports filed with the Labor Department.

To break it down, ACORN and the SEIU are hand and glove. Rathke himself referred to the SEIU as "one of the pillars of the ACORN family of organizations" in a June 9, 2007, blog posting. This coziness has been long known among conservative watchdog groups, but Washington has paid little attention until now.

Suddenly, ACORN is as popular as a sneeze on a crowded bus. President Obama, who once represented ACORN as a lawyer and helped train organizers, recently told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he doesn't really follow ACORN much. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a longtime ACORN champion, has been scurrying to clarify his disapproval of the organization -- after he and a staffer gave contradictory statements about where he stood on proposals to halt ACORN funding.

Most of that fund now has been cut by an act of Congress; the Census Bureau and the IRS have severed ties with the group; the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Treasury have opened investigations.

And in a coup of absurdity, the now-infamous pimp and prostitute who tempted ACORN workers to help them set up a teenage-prostitution operation are the subjects of a lawsuit accusing them of illegally taping the staffers without their permission.

Such concerns -- and charges of voter registration fraud against ACORN -- ultimately may pale in comparison with the organizers' betrayal of public trust through the apparent commingling of taxpayer money and union funding, not to mention possible coercion and intimidation.

Just last week, the Kansas City Star reported that two state agencies acting on an SEIU public records request sought to identify in-home health workers who care for the elderly and disabled. After complaints, the state acknowledged that it was under no legal obligation to provide the information and ceased helping the SEIU. Unionizing is not a state function, needless to say. And never mind the invasion of privacy.

One needn't be a mathematician to imagine what a national health-care option might mean to a union in search of new dues-paying recruits. The SEIU, which has promised "to fight tooth and nail" for a public option, is demonstrably persuasive. In Illinois, former governor Blagojevich (thank you for your patience) helped position the SEIU so that it could unionize health-care workers when he signed an executive order allowing collective bargaining. The SEIU showed its appreciation in advance by becoming Blagojevich's largest contributor, handing over $1.8 million for his two gubernatorial campaigns.

Now that's community organization.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/25/AR2009092502471.html

[Asher]

Are you guys being serious when you say a conversation between people in the privacy of a room at a place of business has no inherent right to privacy? And you guys are so serious you think any allegation to the contrary constitutes a "frivolous lawsuit"?

Please tell me your country is not that screwed up. If I had a conversation behind closed doors it's assumed to be private, no matter with who or where it is. That's fundamental, I would hope. The comparison to having a conversation in a town hall is preposterous and remarkably stupid. Please, please tell me none of you buy that.

I realize all of you are enjoying this ACORN show, but try not to go overboard. There may or may not be merit to the lawsuit, but it sure as hell isn't frivolous. There's a reason why when you call a phone number they warn you that it may be recorded, and it's not because of frivolous lawsuits...

[DaShi]

Some states allow recording of conversations so long as one participant is aware of the recording.

[Asher]

It's my understanding that Maryland is not one of those states.

[Drake Tungsten]

I look forward to the coming pimp-slap of Asher by people who actually know about the law.