All right, I don’t always love Dick Durbin, butthis is a frakkin’ epic smackdown:
The amendment, which deservedly failed, would have prohibited ACORN from receiving any funding from the programs paid for by the stimulus bill. It was a zombie lie of the right-wing extremists that ACORN was receiving an earmark in this bill, on top of which, grant and other spending programs funded by the bill are all to be awarded on a competitive basis, anyway.
Vitter’s amendment was particularly petty, as Durbin points out, given that ACORN volunteers rehabilitated some 3500 homes in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Vitter thanks them for their service by trying to use them as a whipping boy.
I cannot believe some of these people are senators, I truly can’t. And I’m not even picking on Vitter so much, because believe it or not that WASN’T the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard a Republican senator say. Which in and of itself scares me witless.
A.