While Barack Obama’s connection with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has not gone entirely unreported, it has not been fully explained. Most media background pieces simply note Obama’s involvement in a 1995 lawsuit on behalf of ACORN. Obama’s own website, as well as most major media, fail to reveal the full depth and extent of his relationship with the organization.

Attempts to hide evidence of Obama’s involvement with ACORN have included wiping the web clean of potentially damaging articles that had appeared, and were previously publicly accessible. Unfortunately, those behind the attempted cover-up failed to realize that in today’s day and age, nothing disappears forever. There also exists another layer of the web, the hidden web, which is full of information included in proprietary scholarly databases where these very same “missing” articles can be easily uncovered. Obama’s campaign website states:

From Palestra.net

HotAir: ACORN commits fraud in Michigan

The pattern of ACORN’s voter-registration fraud continues in Michigan. The Detroit Free Press reports that the Secretary of State has supplied evidence to the US Attorney’s office for potential prosecution after getting complaints from registrars about duplicate registrations and obviously made-up names on others, almost all from ACORN’s paid staff:

World Net Daily: Obama disguising ties to radical leftist group?

By Aaron Klein

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

JAFFA, Israel – Did Sen. Barack Obama's campaign attempt to hide a paid working relationship with a radical leftist organization that has admitted to major financial improprieties and has been convicted in numerous major voter fraud scandals?

That question is being openly asked by the Republican National Committee after it was disclosed Obama's campaign paid more than $800,000 in services to Citizen Services Inc. (CSI), a nonprofit organization that is an offshoot of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Daily Musings: ACORN and OBAMA Partners in Crime?

Sam Graham-Felson, Obama's official website blogger, noted when Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Project Vote was connected to ACORN. "I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work," Obama told ACORN members in November.

...

Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Stephen Hobbs said in the case the workers had admitted filling out registration forms with names they found in phone books. The ACORN canvassers filled out the forms while sitting around a table at the downtown Seattle Public Library, Hobbs said.

Doug Ross Journal: ACORN, the Soros-funded Vote-Fraud Consortium, is at it again.

Milwaukee’s election chief on Wednesday turned 32 more voter registration workers in to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution, saying they tried to submit falsified registration cards... [bringing] to 39 the number of registration workers under scrutiny, and the number could grow... [after the Commission was notified about] questionable cards in the latest batch collected by its workers...

No Quarter: ACORN - CSI - OBAMA, Someone else noticed

For a candidate who claims to be practicing ‘new’ politics, his FEC reports look an awful lot like the ‘old-style’ Chicago politics of yesterday. – RNC statement, 8/21/08.

It appears that Internet based information sites are not the only venues who have been tracking the goings on between Obama, CSI and ACORN. Recently the New York Times reported a mild suggestion of conspiracy between ACORN staff, employees of CCI (Citizens Consulting, Inc. – yet another 1024 resident) and Tides Foundation, to not talk about the Rathke ACORN embezzlement affair. It was spotted in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review Wednesday in an Op-Ed titled: “Tides of ‘transparency’”, and subtitled appropriately: “keep your yaps shut.” Quotes the editorial:

Parker's ramblings: The Audacity of Honesty

It seems some eviedence of our Denocratic presidential candidate has turned up of his connections (and service) with a radical leftist organization [ACORN] that promotes socialism ...

And true to form, once Obama was criticized for his past dealings, he did not explain or apologize for his actions, but pointed the finger.

Obama's camp fired back, accusing the RNC of "outlandish conspiracy theories" and pointing out Sen. John McCain was forced to return $50,000 "raised by a foreign national through a number of contributors who weren't even supporting McCain." Watch out Obama... you should take the logs [sic] out of your own eye before taking out others' specks.

HotAir

Another ACORN fraud in Ohio?

Cuyahoga County officials have accused ACORN, the GOTV organization employed by Barack Obama’s campaign, of voter registration fraud — again. The Board of Elections has begun a criminal investigation into the submission of fraudulent registration cards, with an eye to prosecuting ACORN officials (via Bizzyblog)