Last seen trying (unsuccessfully) to get me fired for calling him on his lies, Brad Friedman resurfaces today (no links for liars!) to mischaracterize yesterday’s decision on ACORN funding: The appellate court determined that Congress can target a specific group for punishment . . . Oh, really?! The appellate court approvingly quoted a past decision saying the precise opposite : We therefore hold that corporations must be considered individuals that may not be singled out for punishment under the Bill of Attainder Clause. What the court actually said was that defunding ACORN does not constitute punishment: [W]e doubt that the direct consequences of the appropriations laws temporarily precluding ACORN from federal funds are “so disproportionately severe” or “so inappropriate” as to constitute punishment per se. . . . In sum, the plaintiffs have failed to show that the appropriations laws constitute “punishment” under the functional test. . . . Nor is the legislative record sufficient to demonstrate “punishment” cumulatively with the historical and functional tests of punishment analyzed above. If one did not have Friedman’s history of deception as a guidepost , one might call Friedman’s mischaracterization a mistake, born of some combination of laziness and poor reading skills. But we do have that history. So there you go.
Continue reading here:
Brad Friedman’s Latest ACORN Falsehoods
