The Word For Accorn – Precedent.
Obama’s community organizers aren’t taking the end of their funding lying down – and now are the first to challenge the abuse of power:
Representatives for ACORN sued the federal government Thursday morning in an attempt to regain the millions of dollars in funding the community organizing group lost after filmmakers videotaped its workers offering advice on how to commit tax fraud and various other felonies.
That qualifies the legislation as bills of attainder, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the suit on behalf of ACORN. A bill of attainder punishes a person or group without the benefit of a trial, and is illegal under Article 1 of the Constitution.
Thursday’s lawsuit claims that Congress violated the right to due process enshrined in the Fifth Amendment — declaring the group guilty of a crime and punishing its members without completing an investigation within the Department of Justice or the IRS.
“It’s not the job of Congress to be the judge, jury, and executioner,” said Jules Lobel, an attorney representing the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“We have due process in this country, and our Constitution forbids lawmakers from singling out a person or group for punishment without a fair investigation and trial.”
The lawsuit itself singles out three defendants — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; Director of the Office of Management and the Budget Peter Orszag, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.
Due process hasn’t stopped hope and change up to this point. Although it’s interesting to see the people responsible for securing the Democrat victory turn on their masters…
Not that contract law has concerned Obama when it comes to his agenda:
Furor grows over partisan car dealer closings: who could forget the Democrats shuttering almost 800 Chrysler dealerships – virtually all Rebublican donors and profitable.
Then we have “How To Nationalize GM–Ripoff-Investors–Gift-It To The Unions“, where Obama and his Czars threatened institutional investors so they would not sue over secured creditor status. This was even extreme for Chavez.
We have also seen selective taxation of specific citizens (AIG bonuses), the threatening of banks over bonuses (do so and we’ll audit), and now the healthcare bill where they’ll make it mandatory and jail you if you refuse to have insurance.
Here’s some Texas wisdom, from the Governor:
Gov. Rick Perry had some pretty strong comments about the Obama administration on Wednesday in Midland, saying, “This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.”
