The Acorn controversy

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an editorial on the ACORN controversy. Along with Stanley Kurtz's exposé on the group in National Review, the two articles can serve as a primer on why this matters. But whether Obama had a past association with the group seems to me to be a secondary issue. The primary issue is whether he is being honest about it. There is an inauspicious history of presidents who had a tendency to cover things up.

Here is (to me) the key paragraph in the Journal's editorial:

The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from Acorn, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yet it's disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you're shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he's on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.