When Congress voted to defund ACORN, their swift action was based on the claim that no ACORN worker reported the 'crime' Giles and O'Keefe claimed to be involved in. Investigations were called for with Fox 'news' leading the way.
Pretty harsh response especially since those allegations have since been proven to be false. Two of ACORN's offices have now offered proof that they did report these two GOP jokers to the police.
But another serious question has arisen from all of this, especially since at the center of the allegations was the accusation that failure to report a 'crime' was an egregious failure on the part of ACORN.
So what then was the responsibility of Giles and O'Keefe when ACORN worker, Tresa Kaelke, 'confessed' to killing her husband as they taped her (without her knowledge}?
Did they rush to report this 'confession' to the police as they claim is the right thing to do?
Apparently not as can be seen in the transcript of Hannity's Show when he asked Giles and O'Keefe if they had checked out her story. Scroll down to see Hannity questioning Giles on whether or not they had checked out this story of a possible murderer working for ACORN. And watch how these righteous crime-stoppers dismiss the notion that murder might be a crime that should have been instantly reported:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200909160023Fox News reports fake murder story from ACORN video as factHANNITY: Not only does she admit to, if I heard her correctly, running a prostitution ring, "Heidi Fleiss is my idol" -- is that the right phrase?
GILES: Yeah, her hero.
HANNITY: Her hero. OK. Specifically, now she goes into this scenario about her husband and the killing of him.
GILES: Yeah.
HANNITY: Why don't you explain exactly 'cause I want to make sure people understand it.
GILES: So this is exactly what happened. She said she was abused by her husband and that she killed him. Now, if a woman's getting abused, she has a right to defend herself. And I went ahead and I asked her, "Oh, was he abusing you when you killed him?" And she goes, "No, not right that instant," which is huge.
HANNITY: All right. So she's saying she killed her husband --
GILES: Yeah.
HANNITY: -- or created the plot that killed her husband. Is that --
GILES: Right. And then after we asked -- she goes, well, that she tried to cover up for saying she didn't kill him in self-defense and said she went around to the community and let different groups know that she was being abused. And so, it's basically like she set up the murder of her husband.
HANNITY: Have you ever checked to see if in fact she had a husband that was killed?,
GILES: We've -- we're working on that.
HANNITY: You haven't gotten to the details on that.
BREITBART: There's -- well, look, there's so much stuff coming in. We have -- there are more than four cities.
Breitbart jumping in to cover up the fact that they failed to do exactly what they accused (falsely, we now know) ACORN of doing.
'We're working on that' ~ :rofl:
This was September 15th! When was this video taped? How long does it take a Republican operative to report a possible crime?
But crime was not what they were interested in. Apparently not what Hannity, Karl Rove, Greta Van Susteren or anyone at Fox 'News' was interested in. The Witch-hunt was in full swing, and nothing, not murder or facts or truth of any kind was going to get in their way!
Just for fun, let's see what Karl Rove, the mentor of the two, now thoroughly discredited, pranksters had to say about this 'confession' of murder:
Rove: ACORN must have "terrific ... human resources department to hire people like that." Karl Rove stated that Kaelke "admitted to -- or claimed to have killed her husband because she thought he was going to abuse her at some point. So, she's claimed that she shot him in the head. I mean, this is an organization that really must have a terrific human relations -- human resources department to hire people like that."
But not one of them suggested that this crime needed to be reported immediately. The hypocrisy of the GOP fully on display, once again.
What actually happened was that Tresa Kaelke knew these two were lying from the start. She decided to play along, as she said 'like Steven Colbert would', and match their outrageous story with stories of her own. She was 'having fun with them' she said. The San Bernadino Police have investigated what they saw in the videos and have backed up Kailke's statements that she was just fooling with them. Her ex-husband is alive and well.
ACORN: Kaelke said she decided to tell actors "outrageous things with a straightface." According to an ACORN press release, Kaelke stated of the actors who filmed her, "They were not believable. ... Somewhat entertaining, but they weren't even good actors. I didn't know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me. Like Stephen Colbert does -- saying the most outrageous things with a straightface." The press release also stated: "When the actors approached Ms. Kaelke with their provocative costuming and outlandish scenario, she could not take them seriously. So she met their outrageousness with her own personal style of outrageousness. She matched their false scenario with her own false scenarios."
Fox was punked by Giles & O'Keefe, so was Karl Rove, Greta, Hannity and apparently even Breitbart who called O'Keefe 'one the best journalists' he has ever met.
Where are they hiding?I searched Breitbart's blog for some indication, retraction maybe, that he realizes the material he has on his website has now been pretty well debunked. While they are not shouting from the roof-tops anymore about this story, there is no retraction, no correction of the false information they are responsible for spreading around.
Fox too appears to be silent on the issue. There is no explanation as to why they did zero checking on the stories they 'reported' on, and no headlines correcting the falsehoods they are responsible for disseminating.
Giles and O'Keefe are nowhere to be found, and O'Keefe's blog has been scrubbed. But the tapes remain online and there is no doubt they will be used in the future as the mission was accomplished.
Btw, with the success of this 'operation', Breitbart et al have moved on to their next 'liberal' target which is The National Endowment of the Arts. They want Congressional Hearings to ferret out 'corruption' in the NEA!
The Daily Mail is one of the few MSM outlets to have commented on this story:
The ACORN witch hunt: Voter-registration success spurs unfair attackRead more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/09/20/2009-09-20_the_acorn_witch_hunt.html#ixzz0Rrzom4flThat is all it took. A full-scale witch hunt is underway against ACORN - and that means normal standards of proof, evidence and rationality get tossed out the window.
Biased and/or naive news producers and editors rushed one-minute excerpts of O'Keefe and Giles' heavily edited videos onto national television without a thought, even when the pair refused to release the full tapes or answer questions on the air about how they were created.
In at least one case, O'Keefe simply lied about his stunt, claiming on Fox News Channel that every ACORN office he visited played along with his purported illegal schemes.
Not so. ACORN's Philadelphia office filed a police report about the bizarre questions posed by O'Keefe and Giles (a copy of the complaint is online).
In another instance, a California ACORN worker named Tresa Kaelke filled O'Keefe's hidden camera with a wild, dramatic tale about killing her husband and getting away with it, which O'Keefe and Giles claimed as yet another example of ACORN perfidy.
In reality, Kaelke invented the story because the fake hooker and her pal "were clearly playing with me." San Bernardino police investigated the claim and concluded that Ms. Kaelke's "known former husbands" appear to be "alive and well," although perhaps unamused.
And now, on to the next. The National Endowments of the Arts. I expect their witch-hunt of this organization, already begun, to be equally successful as there will be no consequences for this egregious assault by them on everything that should matter in a democracy, truth in reporting being one of the most important.
The double stantards that are tolerated by Democrats and the media, are not only outrageous, but extremely harmful to this country. A demand needs to be made for a thorough investigation of these people. Most importantly 'who is funding them'? Because if Morton Blackwell, as alledged, did fund this political witch-hunt, he needs to have his tax-exempt status removed, as fast as ACORN's funding was removed.