While I haven't spent as much time as I perhaps should on the subject of ACORN, last week's Detroit Free Press article about the group's connection with local voter fraud was hard to ignore.

Now (from Bob Owens, who is not surprised) I see that the group is up to the same thing in North Carolina.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who posed a subconscious question:

Shouldn't they be investigated by the Justice Department? Or am I dreaming here?

the Criminal Section has been given the green light to use these same criminal statutes to harass and prosecute political activists (particularly Republicans) who are engaging in protected political activity, not violence or the threat of violence. No candidate for federal, state, or local office should take this unprecedented threat lightly. The entire apparatus of federal election law enforcement was assembled for this conference including every FBI agent and Assistant United States Attorney responsible for election-related matters.

The Criminal Section is headed by a former ACLU attorney, Mark Kappelhoff, who was actually hired by this Administration. So much for the claim that the Bush Administration only hired "conservatives" in the Civil Rights Division. In apparent violation of a memorandum from Attorney General Mukasey that directed employees to be "particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department's reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship," Kappelhoff has contributed $2,000 to Obama -- not exactly the hallmark of "neutrality and nonpartisanship." But even worse was the presentation by one of his career lawyers, James Walsh, obviously made with Kappelhoff's approval.

Walsh is a former Voting Section lawyer who transferred to the Criminal Section after working for Senator Ted Kennedy on a detail. Not surprisingly, Walsh is also a contributor to Obama, which is certainly on par with the almost $150,000 that DOJ lawyers and staff who live in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia have contributed to the Obama campaign, including John Bert Russ, the lawyer in the Voting Section who is responsible for the observer program that will send out hundreds of federal observers on election day.

Walsh made it clear that the Criminal Section intends to use the civil rights statutes to criminally prosecute anyone they consider to be engaging in voter "intimidation" or "oppression." Now, that might sound like a reasonable idea until you realize that Walsh and Kappelhoff's definition of "intimidation" and "oppression" goes far beyond what you and I would imagine. Walsh stated that because we have an African-American presidential candidate, there would be voter suppression -- a baseless assumption that plays on left-wing stereotypes of America as a racist nation. Every single example of wrongdoing that Walsh and other presenters used in their presentations talked about Republicans: there was not a single example of any wrongdoing committed by any Democrats in the entire two-day conference.

When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn't mean we have to believe it.

Over my lifetime I've seen wave after wave of what might be called "urban flight." People who stay in large cities learn to put up with a lot. They accept the broken urban infrastructure and the dysfunctional schools as facts of life, as things which simply cannot be changed. Try to change them, you'll go nuts. (A good friend simply quit teaching because of it..)

This is nothing new, of course. Nor is my cynicism. The term "You can't fight City Hall" goes back to the mid 1800s. Those who don't put up with it simply leave to the relative comfort, safety, and convenience of the suburbs or small towns, where they can live in ever-vigilant fear of "City Hall" -- which idiomatically is a large enough term to encompass the now-dysfunctional United States Justice Department and government in general. It probably includes the taxpayer-funded "charity" in question.

ACORN.

A little ACORN here, a little ACORN there, and pretty soon you're talking about real power. Most people would throw up their hands and say "There's nothing you can do about it!"

I disagree, and I say this as one of the more cynical people in the blogosphere. If I can notice ACORN's fraud in the local paper, and I can take time to write a post about it, and if Bob Owens notices it in his local paper and writes a post about it, then others can. The more noise that is made, the more likely something can be done about it -- if for no other reason than the "squeaky wheel" principle.

I realize that the organization's deep ties to Barack Obama might tend to intimidate those charged with investigating these things, for after all, they don't want to appear "partisan."

But this is an election, right? We still live in a democracy, right? There are still laws, right?

I'm cynical, but I'm not too cynical to make a little noise. Not that I'm expecting the Justice Department attorneys to start acting like pit bulls (lipsticked or not).

But ACORN's conduct is so blatant, so repetitive, and so egregious that it doesn't take a pit bull.

Even a squirrel would know what to do.

(I might not work for the Justice Department, but I can squeak, can't I?)