Some ACORN Nuggets

Today, Politico's Ben Smith reports on "Seeds of Change," a new book by John Atlas that takes an endearing and sympathetic look into ACORN's history and downfall. (Click here for Amazon's listing of the book.) A few notable pieces of information from Smith's review:

• The group "aims to reconstitute itself under a new name after the midterm elections."
• The book blames James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles undercover videos for bringing the organization down.
• The book discusses how state and local organizations worked quickly to rebrand themselves following ACORN-national's demise.
• "ACORN'S current president, Bertha Lewis, said the group will officially go out of business soon — she describes herself as 'its last employee' — but confirmed in an interview the possibility of creating a new national organization."
• The book delves into the history of the organization, including the founding of the organization by Wade Rathke, who dropped out of Williams College in 1970 and soon after organized ACORN.

While Atlas gives lip service to some of ACORN's problems, including its admitted bad management and accounting standards, Smith writes that the book "is fundamentally a defense of the group's mission and its effectiveness from a committed ally."

A note on the author Atlas: A simple Google search on him allows you to find that he writes for the not-so-objective Huffington Post and is allied with other left-leaning organizations and progressive causes. So, while the book may contain lots of interesting information on ACORN, don't expect it to be an evenhanded and critical analysis of the organization.

In addition, in today's Daily Caller, Matthew Vadum writes on how former ACORN employees in Missouri testified to ACORN's deliberate attempts at election and election registration fraud. Vadum's piece is a result of documents obtained by Judicial Watch that chronicles the FBI's investigation into the group in Missouri. In March, Judicial Watch obtained documents chronicling the FBI's investigation into ACORN for their activities in Connecticut during the 2008 election cycle.