ACORN is the new illegal immigrants

Just the way illegal immigrants were the new Muslim terrorists and Muslim terrorists were the new Scary Negroes™. ACORN's voter registration drive plays right into the Republican "voter fraud" meme that Republicans are already using to try to justify their mass vote caging schemes in as many states as they can get away with it and the fact that the voting machines in many states are still not counting votes, and in some cases, switching votes from that which the voter intended. Funny, too, how the states with the biggest potential problems are also potential toss-up states.

But in a move that smacks of the continuing partisanship of the Bush Justice Department, the FBI has been sent to investigate ACORN's voter registration drives, even though not one registrant named "Mickey Mouse" has dared show up at the polls. Of course it's not about preventing "Mickey Mouse" from showing up at the polls, it's about preventing "Tyrone Jackson" and "Goldie Berkowitz" and "Juan Hernandez" and others who might commit the crime of voting for a Black Democrat for president from exercising their right to vote.

David Iglesias, one of the U.S. Attorneys fired by this very same Bush Justice Department for refusing to falsely prosecute Democrats for voter fraud, has seen this before, and calls it "a disgrace":

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again. Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic."

Who's that speaking? And what's he talking about?

That's fired US Attorney David Iglesias talking about the news leaked today that the DOJ and FBI are opening a nationwide investigation into allegations that the community organization ACORN is somehow working to undermine the November election through fraud. For more from Iglesias and his fellow fired US Attorney Bud Cummins, don't miss TPMMuckraker's Zack Roth's interview post from earlier this evening.

Iglesias got fired not long after the 2006 midterm election because he wouldn't get off the dime and bring bogus vote fraud indictments against Democrats or time other indictments of Democrats to sway the 2006 election. In other words, he got canned for not doing what a number of his former colleagues at the DOJ are happily doing this very day.

Nor was Iglesias simpy a respected attorney with solid enough connections to swing a US Attorney appointment. He was a rising start in the New Mexico Republican party. Iglesias was the Republican nominee for Attorney General in 1998. (Not that it's immediately relevant to this question, but Iglesias was the Navy JAG lawyer on whom Tom Cruise's character in A Few Good Men was based.) This was that reassuring case where a political person's partisan attachments butted up against his integrity and the latter won the day hands down. This is someone who knows this scam from the inside and whose testimony -- literal and figurative -- comes not in line with partisan attachments but in spite of them. Everyone should listen.

This is not for one minute about sustaining the integrity of the voting system. These people who are registering under phony names are not going to show up at the polls. This is about selective prosecution of an organization that was once supported by John McCain when it was convenient and advantageous for him, because it is encouraging people to exercise their right to vote.

If the Republican Party does not feel Americans have the right to vote, then perhaps it ought to just say so -- and let the voters decide.