ACORN Chief Blames Everyone But ACORN

ACORN chief Bertha Lewis wasn’t in the mood to apologize at the National Press Club yesterday. For anything. Not for the internal ACORN review showing that $5 million had been embezzled from the group, rather than the previously alleged $1 million (“This is speculation, completely false”), not the voter registrations allegedly filled out for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (“an utter fabrication”), and certainly not for the “highly edited” pimp and prostitute tapes.

Instead, Lewis indulged in an “orgy of blame,” writes Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. She blamed her predecessor, the powerful, and, most of all, Republicans. “This form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop,” she declared. Obviously the attack on ACORN is political, and obviously the group does valuable work. “But none of ACORN’s foes could have landed their blows if the group hadn’t made itself vulnerable,” Milbank argues, something Lewis just couldn’t grasp. (More Acorn stories.)