The Acorn 75

Yesterday the House voted 345-75 to ban all federal funding for the scandal-plagued advocacy group Acorn. Coming on the heels of the Census Bureau's dissociation with Acorn last week and the Senate's Monday vote denying it housing funds, this is a welcome decision.

But the fact that there were 75 "no" votes is shocking, even for this Congress. All of the nays came from Democrats. Along with far-left backbenchers, they included Charles Rangel, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and Henry Waxman, who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee. Both are key leaders in the ObamaCare effort.

One of Acorn's leading Congressional enablers has been Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Last year Mr. Frank appeared in a promotional video for "Acorn's Grassroots Democracy Campaign," and this year he led the effort to repeal a year-old legal provision barring groups from receiving housing subsidies while under indictment for voter fraud. This he called "a violation of the basic principles of due process." Mr. Frank was absent yesterday when the House voted to defund Acorn, although he had been on the House floor for another vote just half an hour earlier.

The House vote came a day after the release of the latest video by freelance investigators James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, who crisscrossed the country posing as a pimp and prostitute. Employees in at least five different Acorn offices offered them help in setting up a child-prostitution business. If that isn't enough to persuade 75 Democrats to stop supporting Acorn with taxpayer money, one can only conclude that the only way they'd defund the outfit is if it endorsed the war in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A22