Earlier today BigGovernment.com, BigJournalism.com, and Breitbart.TV published a shocking video investigation from Lila Rose’s pro-life organization, Live Action, showing a Planned Parenthood employee advising a “pimp” on underage sex trafficking and secret abortions for minors  The post had only been live for a few hours when NPR began to run interference for Planned Parenthood, the government-supported clinics widely known for counseling women on abortions.  There are factual errors in the piece that NPR ought to address.

First, note the original headline of the NPR article:

The article by Eyder Peralta was originally given the title “Group Behind ACORN Undercover Videos, Sets Up Planned Parenthood ‘Sting.’”  The ACORN investigation was conducted by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles for O’Keefe’s Veritas Visuals organization, while the Planned Parenthood investigation released today was conducted by Lila Rose and her team at Live Action.  Ms. Rose was not involved in the ACORN videos.  NPR has since corrected the headline, which is especially convenient because we also take issue with their comma usage as well as their decision to use scare quotes around the word “sting.”  The URL slug of the updated version of the post still contains the original headline:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/01/133403770/group-behind-acorn-undercover-videos-sets-up-planned-parenthood-sting

The folks at Live Action discreetly let NPR know they had mischaracterized the organization, and NPR obliged with a correction, but the fact that this error was made at all is extremely revealing.  Live Action’s investigation clearly demonstrates a manager of a government-funded organization, trusted to abide by the law, advising young people to perform illegal (and immoral) activities, even offering tips to not get caught, yet NPR ran the story with the aforementioned headline.  Their editorial staff used a false fact as an attempt to diminish Live Action’s findings, portraying the investigation in a controversial light instead of letting their audience simply see and hear the facts for themselves.  While we appreciate the correction, this was a mistake that diligent and honest journalists never would have made.

But wait, there’s more.

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Jersey City pimp Allen E. Brown was recently sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for trafficking underaged prostitutes. Perhaps he would have gotten off had he simply claimed in court that he wasn’t dressed as a pimp when operating his prostitution ring.

For the past nine months, Media Matters for America has obsessively defended ACORN’s video-verified role in helping James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles set up a brothel for pubsescent sex slaves on the basis that James was not dressed as a pimp and that Hannah was not dressed as a prostitute — as she was in my creative b-roll portion of the videos — when entering the offices.

Despite the audio-recorded conversations in which Hannah was indisputably introduced as a prostitute requesting ACORN’s assistance in establishing a brothel, in which almost all ACORN workers approached offered their assistance — in Media Matters’ eyes, the wardrobe factor automatically rendered the damning investigation a “practical joke” and a “hoax.”

But while they laughed at the apparently trivial reality of a taxpayer-funded organization enabling underaged sex slavery, when O’Keefe set up in New Orleans what was actually intended as a practical joke to be taped and put up on YouTube as a minor radar-blip project to punctuate his more serious investigations — the left was not laughing. (more…)

The ACORN story is not difficult to understand.  It is about a simple sting operation designed to reveal that a prominent organization routinely aids illegal activity.  When James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles walked into ACORN offices posing as a pimp and prostitute seeking to set up a brothel stocked by underage girls from central America, ACORN employees were only too happy to help – and no doubt, they had been only too happy to help real pimps and prostitutes in the past.

Did those employees commit a crime in offering to help O’Keefe and Giles themselves?  Of course not, because O’Keefe and Giles weren’t actually a pimp and prostitute.  All conspiracy crimes (which this would have been) require that there be an underlying criminal act – if no such criminal act exists, then conspiracy cannot be prosecuted.  This makes sense.  If you and I have a conspiracy to go to Baskin-Robbins, it is not a criminal conspiracy because no criminal act was ever in the offing.  If a guy solicits an undercover police officer posing as a 12-year-old girl online, that’s not a crime unless the state legislature has specifically carved out such a situation.  Similarly, in this case, no criminal act was in the offing because O’Keefe and Giles were never going to set up a whorehouse.

Duh.

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Rachel Maddow had a story to tell.  The story was that Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe’s ACORN videos were “severely edited” to make an innocent man who did the right thing look as though he was doing something nefarious, immoral and illegal.  She had almost an hour of unedited video footage to work with.  Her segment was approximately twelve minutes long so some editing had to be done.  What she chose to use and what she chose to leave out shows that she is guilty of exactly what she is accusing O’Keefe of doing.

She led with the tiresome and irrelevant argument about O’Keefe’s wardrobe during the opening credits versus what he actually wore in the ACORN offices.  Patterico rips this apart better than I can, instead, I want to expose Maddow’s first lie of her report as it relates to this “Pimp Costume” diversion.

In her blockbuster “exclusive” she breathlessly says:  “Check out the UNEDITED tape.  This is the very end of that visit to the office in San Diego.”  She then plays a clip that shows O’Keefe’s arm opening the door to the ACORN office and the video shows he is wearing a pin-stripe dress shirt.

Her narrative here is meant to suggest that by accessing the footage that O’Keefe purposely left out of his videos she is exposing the fraud of the pimp costume which O’Keefe desperately tried to conceal with his severe editing.  Only problem is the footage she shows is actually in the edited video!  That’s right, the blockbuster unedited video revelation she leads her story with has been released and available for all to see since September.

But that is only the beginning of Maddow’s attempt to re-write history. (more…)

It seems the lovely and talented Rachel Maddow – whose chief claim to fame, besides her sneer, is …what, exactly? – has got her Rhodes Scholar knickers in a twist over the famous O’Keefe/Giles ACORN tapes. She’s seized upon a statement in Jerry Brown’s partisan whitewash of the now-defunct organization that claims the undercover videos that brought the hydra to its current low estate were subject to “highly selective editing.”  That was enough to set Ms. Maddow and her trademark curled lip off on a long end-zone victory dance, which you can see here.

Leaving aside for now the apparent contradiction inherent in the former Gov. Moonbeam’s report — which basically stated that no crimes were committed by ACORN employees, except for the “likely violations” of state law, including dumping confidential records, failure to file tax returns and four instances of possible voter registration fraud – let’s take a quick look at a little word that has become, all of a sudden, dirty:

“Edited.”  Or, with its modifier, “severely edited.” (more…)

Apparently Rachel Maddow has jumped on the pimp hoax bandwagon. Here is the beginning of Raw Story’s wildly misleading summary of Maddow’s wildly pointless diatribe:

When conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles released tapes last fall purporting to show ACORN employees advising them on how to set up a child prostitution ring, it resulted in widespread praise for their intrepid journalism and a Congressional defunding of the anti-poverty group. But it is now becoming clear to all but their most fervent supporters that the O’Keefe “expose” was deliberately misleading.

“If you were a member of Congress and you voted to defund ACORN because of the outrage portrayed in these tapes,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow proclaimed on Tuesday, “you were had.”

Last week, California Attorney Gerneral Jerry Brown released some of O’Keefe’s raw footage, which he obtained as part of an agreement not to prosecute O’Keefe for violating state privacy laws. Maddow reviewed several of the most severe distortions revealed by the footage, starting with O’Keefe’s claim that he was wearing his outrageous pimp outfit when he visited the ACORN offices.

I am unaware of any such claim. I know O’Keefe has been faulted, with some justice, for failing to contradict a Fox News yakker who made that claim in his presence. I’m inclined to go easy on him for that, because I think it’s easy to criticize people for on-the-fly decisions (especially decisions not to act) made while facing a nationwide audience on TV. In any event, a failure to contradict is not a “claim.” (more…)

If all goes as planned, on April 1, America will wave farewell to a very large and overtly corrupt organization. News came out yesterday that ACORN – the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – is shutting down on April Fool’s Day.  Irony? Maybe.

ACORN has been so tainted by its inexcusable behavior over the years that it has no other choice but to close up shop.  They were essentially a legalized, and government supported, mafia; bullying their way to power, crippling the very people they claim to work for.

Let me tell you something: If you know what is right, if you know what is pure, and if you can but for a second imagine attaining and sharing those things, then you must will all your power seek it out. If you do not, then the memory of that moment you imagined will forever itch inside your head and ache inside your heart until you are ruled by fear and tormented by regret.

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For once, the liars aren’t winning. For months now, Brad Friedman has engaged in a fundamentally dishonest campaign to save ACORN, by claiming that an inconsequential detail about James O’Keefe’s costume somehow erased the fact that ACORN employees sought to aid what they believed was a child prostitution ring.

Now, despite Friedman’s best (but still dishonest) efforts, ACORN is dead:

The once mighty community activist group ACORN announced Monday it is folding amid falling revenues — six months after video footage emerged showing some of its workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is issuing a correction on the trivial clothing matter, but is continuing to accurately insist that O’Keefe “posed” as a pimp at ACORN: (more…)

A post entitled “Can Alinsky’s Tactics Work on the Right?  Should They?” by Christian Hartsock in Big Journalism, along with local battles between ultra- conservatives and other conservatives over using Alinsky’s tactics to further the cause, brings to light that the matter of “factioning” (breaking apart into rival groups) has become a concern.

As an engaged Republican on the inside of politics for more than a decade now, I have seen pro-life activists faction and thus kill good bills for the sake of credit.  I have seen primary candidates lie about other candidates in order to win races they should not have won.  I have seen one person’s opinion smack down another conservative’s attempt to do right over side issues irrelevant to the goal.  This never produces real winners, and forces duplication of efforts for conservatives fighting the good fight.

The good news is that if conservatives are clashing, that means that the natural law of division is engaging, because there are enough conservatives to fight over how to defeat the left.  That is a convenience reserved only for groups that are strong, and winning. (more…)

It looks like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is on track to win another endorsement from ACORN!

This week, Hynes announced that “no criminality has been found” after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.

(They got a choice of government loans: Phat Fannie Mae, Prince Freddie Mac or Barney Fresh Daddy Frank … aka “Sir Fix-A-Lot.”)

I’m just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough “investigation” first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I’m not a lawyer — oh, wait, yes, I am — but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

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This post debunks several liberal myths about ACORN that have emerged in recent weeks — many from Eric Boehlert of Media Matters and Brad Friedman.

POSING AS A PIMP AT ACORN

Liberal Myth: James O’Keefe did not pretend to be a pimp inside ACORN. Instead, he merely presented himself as Hannah Giles’s boyfriend, trying to help her escape from an abusive pimp.

Examples of the spreading of the myth:

Eric Boehlert:

O’Keefe pretended to be an aspiring pol, not pimp, in first ACORN vid.

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:

The video implies that the advice about the 13-year-olds was given with the intent of helping a pimp control them. This doesn’t fit the circumstances. In fact, it appears that what happened was that employees were responding to requests on how to get young girls out of sex work, not keep them in.

Brad Friedman:

After not hearing from New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt for nearly a week — during which I’d sent him more and more indisputable evidence that Andrew Breitbart employee James O’Keefe never played his infamous “pimp” character in the offices of ACORN — he responded with a couple of blistering charges. (more…)

In their February 9 column on BustedHalo.com, “Tricks Are For Kids,”  conservative Catholic writers Dawn Eden and William Doino, Jr. joined the herd of pious finger-waggers who have taken to the high ledges to point at James O’Keefe, upon his recent arrest in New Orleans.

In an interview with Matt C. Abbott of RenewAmerica.com, Ms. Eden blasts the work of O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Lila Rose of Live Action Films (O’Keefe’s partner in the Planned Parenthood investigations):

We noted that Alinsky’s tactics ran directly counter to St. Paul’s dictum that we cannot do evil that good may come. Live Action’s work, like O’Keefe’s, uses the means of lying and deception in order to accomplish a good, which in their case is pointing out the lying and deception of Planned Parenthood.

About the ACORN investigation, she continues:

Was it really necessary to have an undergrad disguised as a scantily clad prostitute to expose the organization?

Well, it worked, didn’t it? With an enveloping sigh of disdain, Eden and Doino write: (more…)

With a whiff of nostalgia, I can imagine the old time journalist with the smell of coffee and cigarettes wafting through the click and clang of the typewriter.   Fifty years ago, a “journalist” had the ring of a dispassionate, creative, honest, fair, and trusted detective/storyteller.  Fifty years ago, if you graduated from an accredited journalism school, you were presumed “unbiased.”  Much as the physician takes an oath that she will “first, do no harm,” the “journalist” title meant that you were first, unbiased and balanced. Neutrality in the story was as necessary as it was assumed.

Sometime between half a century ago and today, something went very, very wrong.

We can speculate on what the “something” was, but we may never know for sure.  Much like the wind blows, there is no discernible source, but still we know it blows. Journalism became slanted to the left to the degree that the right had almost no voice by the mid-1980s.   Almost no voice, until Rush Limbaugh came on the scene.  Almost 30 years later, the tables have turned.  The problem for these journalists is that they have functioned robotically and cavalierly for so long, that they are not aware of the reality around them.  Things have changed. Drastically. (more…)

Max Blumenthal has an amazing thesis:  All conservatives and Republicans are beneath contempt.  He also has an amazing line of work.  He is underwritten by various media organs to prove his thesis.

In a previous era, Blumenthal and said media organs (Salon, Independent Film Channel, Huffington Post, etc.) were able to get away with this pathetic arrangement.   But now, we are on to Max, the spawn of Sid “Vicious” Blumenthal – he who attempted to ruin Monica Lewinsky’s life by falsely portraying her as Bill Clinton’s “stalker.”

The Blumenthal operation is now under the extremely close scrutiny of a camelid named “Retracto.”

The movement formerly known as the “Tea-Baggers” (with their flip cameras and new media skills) and various conservatives who have had enough with the excessive Alinsky tactics used most egregiously by Max and Sid but representative of main stream media’s odious guilt-by-association, repeat-the-same-lie-until-it-sticks, smear-any-conservative-as-racist-sexist-homophobic skill set, are now fighting back.

If the last two weeks have not humiliated him enough — and this Huffington Post rage-fest from yesterday with its title “Feeling the Hate at CPAC 2010 With Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles and the Crazy Mob” suggests they have not – then perhaps this coup de booger will tell him that we say what we mean and we mean what we say.

Max gallivanted around CPAC looking for prey.  He was treated with respect as he sought to make good and decent people look foolish on camera.  He decided he would go after a 20-year-old girl, one Hannah Giles.  And perhaps due to sexism or ageism he underestimated her ability.  Max should have called Bertha Lewis before he went after this young heroine.  Instead, he went to a gunfight with a knife – and a dirty nose.

Ladies and gentlemen, the much awaited, “Max Blumenthal Picks a Booger Out of His Nose at CPAC” video:

Max Blumenthal, this is what you do for a living. I can do it too (**wink **wink** Independent Film Channel).

Salon has already corrected his initial attempt to paint James O’Keefe as a White Nationalist.  They corrected his baseless assertion that O’Keefe planned the “Race and Conservatism” forum held at Georgetown Law Center, but he continues to hold that James O’Keefe is a racist, and that he was in some way involved with the “execution” of the forum.  His source for this claim?  Daryle Jenkins, whose credibility was recently eviscerated by Kevin Martin from Project 21.

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**UPDATE: The New Republic issued the following correction:

This was corrected from an earlier version, which incorrectly stated that O’Keefe had to return to “prison.”

We thank them for their diligence.

In Lydia DePillis’s article “Bodacious? Xtremely!,” published February 21st in the The New Republic, Ms. DePillis falsely states that James O’Keefe had to return to prison after he left the CPAC conference this past weekend:

[Hannah] Giles was there to accept the first annual XPAC Award for Impact on behalf of her undercover partner, James O’Keefe, who made it to the conference but had to return to prison earlier that day.

O’Keefe was released from prison jail in January on a pretrial services “signature bond.”  He may travel within the state of New Jersey and out of state with permission from his pretrial services officer.  He did not “return to prison” after leaving CPAC, nor was he obliged to do so.

We kindly request the issuance of a formal correction.

It’s quite a stretch to call The Nation’s Max Blumenthal a journalist.

A real journalist is free to have an opinion and even to express it, but he doesn’t fabricate things to make his subject look bad. A real journalist tries to understand his subject and help his audience understand it instead of just subjecting it to abject ridicule.

Blumenthal, who leaped to conclusions in his since-corrected Salon.com article to slander Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, is an ethically challenged agitprop creator and self-indulgent performance artist. His slurring of O’Keefe, who helped to expose the criminal inclinations of ACORN, as a racist is the same thing that ACORN does when it’s attacked. If you disagree, you’re a racist. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!

This left-wing extremist, who wrote the book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, is so consumed by his hatred of the other side that he can’t think straight. His work is littered with factual errors, non sequiturs, selective use of evidence, glittering generalities, and hyperbole.

Blumenthal hates the Christian right, evangelicals, supporters of Israel, tea party activists, conservatives, and Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list. To him, conservatives are a “movement that’s filled with people who can’t handle individual freedom and the pressures of democracy.” Conservatives also are needy losers seeking redemption, according to Blumenthal: (more…)

President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was notable for many reasons.  First, it is not often that you hear such petulance from a sitting president of the United States – complaining about not receiving applause from your political opponents is simply ridiculous.  Second, it is not often that a president directly lectures the American people – it failed when Jimmy Carter tried it in his infamous “malaise” speech, and it failed last night when President Obama told us that we needed to man up and follow him to glory.  Comparing his agenda’s stall to Bull Run, Omaha Beach, Black Tuesday and Bloody Sunday, and calling on Americans to “again … answer history’s call” is foolish and self-aggrandizing.

What’s worse is telling us that he is the spiritual embodiment of our collective strength:

And what keeps me going – what keeps me fighting – is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism – that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people – lives on.”  I couldn’t help but shake my head in amusement when he told us that “It lives on in the struggling small business owner … it lives on in the woman … it lives on in the 8-year-old boy in Louisiana … it lives on in all the Americans … [it] lives on in you, its people.

Quoting the Broadway version of The Lion King is not profundity.  It is silliness: (more…)

James O’Keefe may have come to everyone’s attention when he and Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and a prostitute and videotaped the ACORN workers but his other venture into investigative journalism has been largely ignored by the MSM. His target was Planned Parenthood and we know that abortion and the reproduction rights of women are sacred cows to the majority of journalists. I wonder how many taxpayers know that their dollars are funding black genocide and supporting statutory rape.

That sounds awfully harsh, doesn’t it and yet how can one explain what goes on behind the closed doors of a PP clinic? I guess that’s what O’Keefe wanted to learn when he teamed up with Lila Rose, the editor of a UCLA pro-life publication The Advocate and videotaped undercover operatives at PP clinics pretending to be underage teens with adult boyfriends.

Ms. Rose also had an actor (some reports say it was O’Keefe) place a call pretending to be a potential donor who specifically only wanted his money to go for the abortion of black babies. Was the Planned Parenthood worker shocked? Not at all and said, “whatever.”  An excerpt from the transcript of the call:

Ohio donor: There’s definitely way too many Black people in Ohio, so I am just trying to do my part.

PP Rep: OK, whatever.

Ohio donor: Well, Blacks especially need abortions, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

PP Rep: For whatever reason, we’ll accept the money. (more…)

From the U.K. Telegraph:

2009 was the breakout year for the irrepressible Andrew Breitbart, 40, a conservative firebrand operating deep in enemy territory in Los Angeles, and the sky will be his limit in 2010. A regular presence on Fox News and a Washington Times columnist, Breitbart cut his teeth working for Matt Drudge’s eponymous website and also had a spell with the Left-wing Huffington Post. He took on Hollywood in his group blog site BigHollywood and broke the ACORN scandal when the young unknown filmmakers Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe approached him with undercover footage of employees of the Left-wing community organising group condoning under-age prostitution by illegal immigrants. The mainstream media were slow to pick the story up but eventually they could not ignore it.

The public editor of the New York Times eventually conceded that his newspaper needed “to be alert” to such stories “or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself”. Outspoken and fearless, Breitbart has extensive contacts throughout journalism and revels in partisan combat, venturing onto shows like Real Time with Bill Maher which most conservatives steer clear off because they view it – accurately – as a hostile, liberal forum. Has also founded BigGovernment and BigJournalism sites while his Breitbart.com is a major driver of web traffic. Deeply versed in the potential of the internet and an accomplished talk radio host, Breitbart has issued a clarion call for conservatives to seize back the media. ““I want to be the kingmaker,” he said recently. “I want to find the best voices so that ideas and truth that have been suppressed for too long can find their way to a mass audience.”

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If I’d known my fall and winter season would consist of zero 10-hour beach days, only two games of beach football and a single surf session, I would have for sure given those ACORN videos a little more thought.

Yep, September 10, 2009 hit me like a freight train; that day marked only my second trip to NYC. The first trip was a 6-hour visit a few weeks earlier that consisted of my dashing around the city in stilettos and trashy clothes gathering footage of ACORN workers acting shady.

Wake up, America

Needless to say, this go-around was a little different. Now, producers were interrogating me over at the Fox New Headquarters and I was having my hair and makeup done by professionals. All while watching myself in leather top and giant hoop earrings on multiple television screens, and begging God  that I could keep  my cool on national television with Glenn Beck.

That was the beginning of a raucous adventure, a whirlwind of a week between Sept 10-16 that’d make any type-A curl up in a ball and beg for mercy, and might’ve led to my insanity had I allowed myself to get caught up in the chaos it caused. But I was so absorbed in the moment and focused on getting the ACORN videos, and the truth of our story, out to the public that nothing fazed me. Plus, all the new experiences and people were extremely intriguing and I wanted to be sure and soak it all in. (more…)