From Little ACORNs, New State-Level Organizations Grow

Here’s the top of my article in yesterday’s Daily Caller:

ACORN’s state chapter in Missouri is the latest to rebrand itself as part of ACORN’s national strategy to distance itself from its negative public image.

The creation of the St. Louis-based Missourians Organizing for Reform Empowerment Inc. (MORE) brings to five the number of ACORN’s state chapters that have shut down and incorporated themselves separately under new names.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is gearing up to begin funding ACORN again despite a congressional ban and an unresolved lawsuit. In a March 16 memo Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Peter Orszag quietly ordered federal agencies to resume funding the group whose employees were caught on hidden camera videos last year apparently encouraging illegal behavior. The memo came after federal judge Nina Gershon of the Eastern District of New York, a Bill Clinton appointee, made permanent her temporary injunction prohibiting Congress from cutting off funding for ACORN. Gershon found the denial of funding to ACORN to be an unconstitutional “bill of attainder.”

The memo also came despite the fact that the Department of Justice is planning to appeal Gershon’s ruling and seek a stay pending appeal. In other words, the administration is pressing ahead with restoring funding to a group that President Obama worked for and represented as a legal client even though the legal case has yet to fully work its way through the judicial system. […]