ACORN sure is a tough nut of a story. And it’s not going away. Not with days like today.

With their pimp, ho, and underage slave enabling business in shambles, their Get Out The Fictional Character Vote process under the microscope, and their Game the Census for Dems and Dollars program severed, they must have really been upset to learn that one of their most beautiful scams — Get the IRS to pay you to show people how to screw the IRS — is also being shut out.

The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it would no longer include ACORN in its volunteer tax assistance program. The program offered free tax advice to about 3 million low- and moderate-income tax filers this spring.

I wonder if there are going to be some eyes on the 25,000 returns they helped file?

Of course most of the attention has been brought about because of the tapes made by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, released with the help of Andrew Breitbart on his new site – BigGovernment.com and aired, almost exclusively until TOM had no other choice but to pay attention to the story, on FOX News. Well if they wanted this story to go away there was probably a lot better way than suing the messenger.

Bertha Lewis, head of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, told reporters in a conference call that ACORN does not support criminal activity and that it thinks the filmmakers should have obeyed Maryland laws. In the state, where one video that embarrassed ACORN was made, the act constituted illegal wiretapping, the suit says.

The videos airing in the past two weeks show ACORN housing counselors advising two young conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to conceal their criminal business.

If I wasn’t so sure that they are, at worst, a criminal enterprise and, at best, election fraud purveyors, I could almost feel sorry for them. But they are, and I’m not.

The blogosphere has been lit up by the reaction to the suit announcement.

One seemingly good analysis come from a reader at NRO’s The Corner. Here is just a taste:

ACORN’s legal theory is very, very thin. Their only cause of action is for a violation of the Maryland wiretapping statute. I’m certainly no expert on that statute, and I have no opinion as to whether Giles and O’Keffe violated it. But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume they did. The violation of a criminal statute does not automatically give rise to civil liability in the absence of an express statutory provision that creates a private cause of action.

[...]

Fourth, even if the defendants don’t plead any counterclaims, the scope of discovery against ACORN will be incredibly broad, as it almost always is in civil litigation. ACORN has far, far more to lose from what could come out during discovery than what they are asking for in this suit.

My favorite comment, so far, at AoSHQ (which led me to the NRO post) is this one:

Sounds like ACORN’s legal advice is as sound as their tax advice.

True.

More, I am sure, to come.

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles made some video tapes.

They went to Baltimore and showed ACORN workers who were totally at ease and very helpful to who they thought were pimps and prostitutes looking for some community help setting up an illegal business and tax fraud.

We were assured that

the employees “did not meet ACORN’s standards of professionalism.”

These were the only two bad apples in the whole ACORN universe.

Uh, no.

In an amazing coincidence there were two more ACORN employees, in D.C. this time, who also were willing to help set up a local “Underage Salvadorian Ho’s R Us” franchise.

In spite of the undoubtedly rare circumstance of finding this second set of employees who did not meet ACORN’s amazingly high standards of professionalism, the reactionary Census Bureau severed their ties with the group.

Shocked by the activity of the poor misunderstood ACORN enablers workers, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy is looking into prosecuting — O’Keefe and Giles.

Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s Chief Organizer, issued a statement that explained it all.

We are their Willy Horton for 2009. We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers. If ACORN did not exist, the right-wing would have needed to create us in order to achieve their agenda, their missions, their ideal, retrograde America. This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen. I am appalled and angry; I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated. But it is clear that the videos are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist “filmmaker” O’Keefe and his partner in crime.

O’Keefe has demanded an apology.

They obviously found the only four people in ACORN who would do such undefensable things. As Ms. Lewis explained to all of us, they tried this in a number of other cities and were rebuffed. Cities like New York. This would never happen in a city like New York.

Not so fast, Sparky.

ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in New York, NY

It is well past the time that this group should be investigated and held to account. They are frauds and should never receive another dime from the U.S. Treasury. If the Community Organizer in Chief doesn’t denounce them, now, we need to know why.

I just wonder if there is a strike four, five, or six out there.