Consistency in outrage would be a really good thing

I'm sure everyone's seen the ridiculous ACORN videos of employees trying to give tax advice to a pimp & prostitute. Certainly their actions were deplorable - if you take at face value that they were actually being serious, which I don't, but that's another story entirely - and the president of the organization called for an immediate investigation, something many companies given government funding have refused to do. I'm looking in your general direction AIG...

Nevertheless, the House of Representatives voted Friday to strip all federal funding for the organization, so people who would have used its services to, among other things, keep their houses from being foreclosed upon will just have to do without, and probably lose their house. Two presidential hopefuls - Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal - cut off all funding towards ACORN. Of course, a two minute conversation with one of their staffers would have unearthed the fact that their states don't provide any funding to the organization, but that's an inconvenient fact - you have to prove your commitment to the wingnuts to get to the top in the party.

I could possibly take this seriously - a few bad apples don't represent an entire company, but you do want to find out how many bad apples you have - had they shown half this level of zeal in investigating Haliburton/KBR when employees were implicated in the rape of co-workers. Or when their negligence in wiring on U.S. bases caused the deaths of multiple soldiers and U.S. armed forces members. Or when the founder of Blackwater (now here's a logical concept, perhaps the creator of a company represents the values of the whole organization better than a few staffers) was implicated in multiple murders. Or when both firms were found to have overcharged the U.S. government by millions of dollars.

Or maybe I'd take it more seriously if they were in some way interested in the latest scandal involving Gale Norton, the former Secretary of the Interior - that's a cabinet level position. She awarded three prime drilling contracts to Shell, which will net them hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, and then - POOF! - she goes to work for Shell. Surprisingly, there's some question as to whether she was engaged in talks concerning future employment with Shell during the negotiation of the leases, and if she might have steered the leases to Shell because of these discussions. Shockingly, both of those are against the law.

All of these are far more egregious, shocking, and wasteful of taxpayer money than this whole ACORN mess. But the GOP doesn't really care much about any of these because...well I'm just not sure anymore. Maybe it's because these are associated with big business, and government corruption that benefits Bush-era employees, and that's a no-no in the modern republican party. And maybe it's because Obama had dealings with ACORN in the past. Or maybe it's because they find it easier to go after an organization that helps poor people, because it's politically more expedient.

Whatever the reason, call me when you guys are ready to get serious and be consistent with your outrage. As I've said many times before, I won't hold my breath.