ACORN: Another undercover video

It's bad enough that ACORN is corrupt, said Beth Shaw in Right Pundits, as filmmaker James O'Keefe and conservative activist Hannah Giles demonstrated in a series of undercover videos. But now O'Keefe and Giles have released a new video, showing that ACORN's defenders lied when they said ACORN's Philadelphia office kicked out O'Keefe and Giles and called police about their story of prostitution and tax cheating. ACORN's actions are scary—what's scarier is that so many people don't care. (watch the new ACORN video)

This "heavily edited" video rebuttal proves nothing, said Media Matters for America. The new video by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles is supposed to refute the claim by Katherine Conway-Russell, the Philadelphia ACORN worker who spoke to O'Keefe and Giles, that ACORN kicked the filmmakers out and called police. But the police report ACORN filed after the meeting clearly shows that "the Philadelphia ACORN office had no intention of helping O'Keefe and Giles conduct any illegal activities."

It's hard to prove ACORN and its defenders lied with such a "heavily edited" video, said David Weigel in The Washington Independent. The video mutes everything Katherine Conway-Russell says (because of the community organizing group's pending lawsuit against James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles for recording ACORN workers without permission). But the strange clip "nonetheless cast serious doubt on ACORN’s version of what happened" during the July sting.

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What some ACORN employees did in the undercover viceos was wrong, said Peter Dreier in the Los Angeles Times, but that doesn't change the fact that ACORN and the vast majority of its workers do good work, and are an effective voice for low-income Americans. But "the attack on ACORN is not really about bogus names on voter forms or about staffers encouraging people to lie on their tax forms. Rather, it is part of a broader conservative effort to attack progressive organizations and discredit President Obama and his liberal agenda."