On February 17, Pamela Williams, former travel/procurement coordinator for Service Employees International Union Local 880, was charged in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois with one count of embezzling $6,080. The amount allegedly taken was modest, but the case has national significance. The Chicago-based SEIU Local 880, now known as SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, was founded some 30 years ago as a subsidiary of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, the scandal-plagued nationwide nonprofit network set to go out of existence on April 1. Pamela Williams may be little more than a small-time thief, but she's given critics of the leadership of ACORN, and the SEIU, another reason to believe that organized labor and street radicals shouldn't mix.
Whatever guises the discredited Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, assumes in the future, taxpayers now have less reason to worry about being conscripted into funding them. This past Friday, 
Supporters call it "financial services reform." Yet one has to wonder what the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 is reforming or stabilizing. The House on Wednesday by a 237-192 margin passed the 2,300-plus-page conference bill designed to protect American households from predatory practices by banks, subprime lenders, brokerage houses and other intermediaries. But evidence suggests that if it becomes law, the bill instead will lay the groundwork for another major federal bailout. During House-Senate conference sessions, affirmative action zealots inserted a host of mandates to promote credit allocation by race.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known by the acronym ACORN, exists only in shell form, having formally disbanded on April 1. Yet whatever name(s) the radical nonprofit organizing network and its countless affiliates currently go under, the issue of its right to receive federal funds is anything but a dead letter. A court ruling several days ago ensures as much. On Wednesday, April 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 
Barack Obama and organized labor have made no secret about promoting each other's interests. Indeed, his 2008 presidential victory would have been much more difficult in absence of union financial contributions and volunteer work. Thus, 
If character is destiny, then the demise of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, was almost inevitable. ACORN, or what's left of it, 
As far as operations in Maryland go, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is no more. On Monday the group's former state co-chairwoman, Sonja Merchant-Jones, 
It's hard to imagine the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, suddenly developing a case of contrition or modesty. So the raft of 
To many of its critics, the 
The scandal-ridden Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, needs money. And more than ever it's counting on the federal government to deliver it. A December 11 ruling by a federal judge in New York overturning a funding ban in the current budget may well reopen the floodgates. Ironically, it's the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that stands in the way. On December 16, 
