ACORN founder Wade Rathke has been gloating on his blog about the recent arrest of James O’Keefe in Rathke’s hometown of New Orleans.

Andrew Breitbrat and his www.biggovernment.com site stopped pretending that James O’Keefe, bungler-in-charge, was not his boy, and realized that he needed to stop shouting and start ‘splaining.

Breitbrat? Zing! How adult of you, Wade.

Similarly, current ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis issued a statement upon the news:

The recent arrest of James O’Keefe, is further evidence of his disregard for the law in pursuit of his extremist agenda. From the day that O’Keefe’s undercover “sting” videos came out, ACORN leadership pledged accountability for its own staff while pointing out that the videos had been shot illegally and edited deceptively in order to undermine the work of an organization that has empowered working families for four decades.

It’s as if O’Keefe’s problem somehow is vindication for the corrupt web of organizations she oversees.

Bad news, Bertha: it’s not.

Regardless of what O’Keefe and his friends did or didn’t do, the facts remain: ACORN has been accused of voter registration fraud in multiple states, and its Nevada trial is set to begin this spring. The government’s star witness in that case is a former ACORN employee.

Several ACORN employees gave dubious tax and housing advice to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute, with much of it caught on camera. Their actions were shameful and the case could be made, I believe, should the government want to pursue one (which it apparently decided not to), that ACORN staffers were providing tips to defraud the IRS and HUD. They were also caught aiding people who supposedly were attempting to smuggle underage girls into the United States for nefarious purposes.

Meanwhile, several former ACORN employees and national board members have leveled serious accusations against the group, including being loose with its taxpayer-provided resources and allowing those resources to be comingled with political funds.

Much more can be found in the report issued by Congressman Darryll Issa (R-CA), the ranking Republican member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

I suppose in ACORN’s world, where morals and ethics are all relative, Bertha might have a case. But in the real world of average, law-abiding citizens, the organization is plainly corrupt.

And the reality is, ACORN was set on a course of corruption and sleight-of-hand tactics by Wade Rathke – the man that has the gall to criticize James O’Keefe. It was Rathke that held virtually everything close to the vest and out of the reach of other ACORN leaders, including financial books and organizational charts.

If it wasn’t for Rathke and his – dare I say – poor organizational skills, there would not have been anything for James O’Keefe to expose in the first place.