The Senate should not have voted to deny funds to ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - on account of transgressions perpetrated by a handful of employees.
The group came under fire after two activist filmmakers, posing as a young prostitute and pimp, caught ACORN employees explaining how to run a brothel of underage "women of the night" while evading the federal government.
These actions are inexcusable. However, the answer is not to deprive the agency of federal funding.
The filmmakers visited ACORN branches in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia before finding employees who would react in a way that furthered their anti-ACORN agenda. If conservative activists consider this an appropriate formula for fact finding, they might as well pursue the disbanding of their own political party.
A more appropriate response from the Senate would be to sanction the employees involved in the scandal and to conduct an investigation into their branches.
We wonder why the Senate voted 83-7 to deny ACORN funding based on an amateur display of "gotcha" journalism by a 20-year-old college student.
We also wonder why they succumbed to Republicans who are so intent on vilifying the agency. ACORN gets most of its funding through state and local governments, but this vote is at least a symbolic surrender to the GOP's ongoing attacks.
In the age of YouTube, it's hard to avoid letting fringe groups make their videos viral. It's a sad day, though, when the Senate decides to stop funding a group dedicated to the needy working class due to a distorted video.
