Bachmann, ACORN duel online via petitions

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and the community organizing group ACORN have launched into a public battle, launching countervailing petitions going after each other.

Bachmann has made ACORN (the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) a key focus of her second term in Congress, trying to advance several pieces of legislation that would prohibit groups like ACORN from receiving any federal funding for its work if a member had been indicted for helping to facilitate voter fraud.

Bachmann launched a petition online a week ago in which she urges signatories to “end Pelosi’s payoff to ACORN.”

“This isn’t a political witch hunt, as many Democrats claim,” Bachmann wrote in her petition. “Yet even as fresh charges were being filed against ACORN and its employees in Nevada and Pennsylvania, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives worked to protect the stream of tax dollars to this organization.”

Today, ACORN pushed back, launching its own petition targeting Bachmann.

“Congresswoman Michele Bachmann would rather pick on ACORN than stop the foreclosure crisis — even though Bachman’s district has the highest rate of foreclosures in Minnesota,” the group said (emphasis theirs). “ACORN works hard day in and day out to help families avoid foreclosure and keep their homes. But instead of focusing on stopping foreclosures, Bachmann is on the attack — and is trying to de-fund the very work ACORN does that is keeping so many families from losing their homes.”