Last Blog On Earth

Biggovernment.com has posted audio excerpts from last month’s meeting of the East County Democratic Club (ECDC), in which David Lagstein, ACORN’s San Diego County organizer, fielded questions about the scandal that has plagued the social-service agency and led to federal and state investigations into its practices.

The controversy began when video by fledgling conservative filmmakers surfaced in September on Biggoverment.com. Posing (rather poorly) as a pimp and prostitute, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, visited ACORN offices across the country, including one in National City. In a few instances, the videographers were able to obtain advice as legally dubious as their hidden camera tactics, resulting in the firing of an employee from ACORN’s National City office.

About two dozen people attended the ECDC meeting, held at a Coco’s restaurant Oct. 15.

“Because of ACORN’s close ties to the Democrat party, Mr. Lagstein clearly felt he was among friends,”  Biggovernment.com states.

Lagstein can be heard on two audio files discussing the statewide investigation by attorney general Jerry Brown and his belief that ACORN would be cleared of any negligence or wrongdoing, referring to Brown as “a political animal.” According to Biggovernment.com, Lagstein’s assertion was an indication that the investigation would be a “whitewash.”

“The Republican Party is trying to create a new scandal out of nothing,” Lagstein told CityBeat Wednesday. “I asserted my belief that the investigation will find fault with the videographers and not with ACORN because no one at California ACORN broke the law and the videographers did.”

ECDC President Raymond Lutz said he e-mailed the operators of Biggovernment.com, requesting that they remove the audio from their site.

“The audio recordings you have posted on your site … were made without authorization and after we told the attendees that such recordings were not allowed,” Lutz said. “There were no statements that Jerry Brown would whitewash the investigation.”

Lutz said there were only two “newcomers” at the meeting, a Santee couple whom he suspects secretly recorded the conversation and provided excerpts to Biggovernment.com.

“I investigated [voter data files] and found that the man is a Republican and the woman is registered as a Democrat but voted as a Republican in the presidential primary,” Lutz said. “Apparently, we have sleaze in Santee.”

Contacted at a phone number left on the ECDC’s sign-in sheet, the wife confirmed that her husband is a registered Republican but denied having voted Republican in the recent primary.

Her husband’s Facebook page lists him as following the groups “I love football season!,” “Barack Obama,” “No on Prop 8,” “Harvey Milk,” Courage Campaign” and “Border Angels,” a group that works to prevent the death of undocumented immigrants by leaving water at points in the desert where immigrants attempt to cross the Mexican border.

As to the audio, the Santee woman maintained, “We didn’t [do it]. It wasn’t us.”

Biggovernment.com was launched in September by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, a former Huffington Post researcher who referred to Sen. Edward Kennedy, just hours after his death, as a “duplicitous bastard” and “prick.”

In other ACORN news, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit Thursday challenging Congress’ vote to defund ACORN. The case charges Congress with violating the Bill of Attainder provision in the U.S. Constitution, violating the Fifth Amendment right to due process and infringing on the First Amendment right to freedom of association by targeting affiliated and allied organizations. Attorneys for the group claim members of Congress violated the Constitution by declaring ACORN guilty of a crime and punishing it and its members without benefit of a trial.