I could barely believe my ears today at the Heritage Foundation’s blogger briefing. I thought we had declared victory over the Acorn scandal, only to learn we are far from it.

Did you know that Acorn is only defunded through October 31st?

Since the Defund ACORN Act, introduced by Republican Leader John Boehner, passed mid-September, the rhetoric has led all to believe there needn’t be more action. Not so according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). The IRS severed ties with ACORN and both the Senate and House voted to strip them of funding. However, according to Bachmann, “these votes haven’t stopped one dime from flowing to ACORN.”   

Apparently two votes on two entirely different bills from two separate
chambers don’t mean much. Bachmann says in order to get our promised
result of entirely disabling ACORN, “each chamber needs to pass the
same language and get it to the President’s desk--language intact--for
his signature into law.”

In fact the HuffingtonPost.com reports, “Obama, himself a former community organizer, has long-standing ties to the group, which he represented in 1995 in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois over the "motor-voter" law.”

Also, ACORN has received over $53 million dollars of federal money since 1994, and could be eligible for another $8.5 billion through the Obama endorsed stimulus package and other government programs.

For Obama to casually say he is unaware of these numbers is negligence of duty.

I am glad my fellow media friends were in attendance at the briefing today so we can push out this much needed message. You too can spread the word by sharing this and other similar blog posts, tweets and articles. Help continue putting pressure on Congress and our President to sign defunding ACORN into law!

It would be a tragedy for this truly inspiring, ACORN exposing, brilliant campaign of undercover journalism and grassroots communication to go to waste!

Yesterday was the only day I wished I lived in Minnesota. And that’s saying a lot: I complain about the bitter cold of North Carolina.

I sat in on the Heritage Bloggers’ Briefing to listen to Congresswoman Bachmann (R-MN) talk about energy solutions and her recent trip with Republican Leader John Boehner among others to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is, of course, more commonly known as ANWR or aw-that-place-with-the-cute-caribou-and-stuff.

I liked what Rep. Bachmann had to say.

• “Congress is not a brain trust” and does not need to create its own solution to every problem, chiefly because “when we [Congress] do meddle, when we do intervene, we usually muck it up.” The only role of Congress is to allow freedom in American energy production, and then the problem will fix itself.
• “The US is the only country in the world that has made it illegal to access our own energy.” We have more than 88 billion gallons of oil on the outer continental shelf alone, but we’ve made it illegal to tap into it. And Congressional Democrats want to sit on their hands and keep it that way.
• The area for drilling in ANWR is like “a postage stamp on a football field.” It’s 2000 acres in a 19-million acre refuge and those 2000 acres are pretty desolate and wildlife-free.

But I think there is a better way for Rep. Bachmann--and the others on the trip--to say all those things.

• Give me videos. Rep. Bachmann is a talented and engaging speaker, so she was able to explain what ANWR looked like. But imagine how much better it would be to watch a video shot by a member of Congress on the trip, narrating the scene. Most people assume ANWR is a pristine snowy wonderland of caribou and, uh, other wintery creatures. Rep. Bachmann said the area for drilling isn't. I think that would have an incredible effect on peoples' opinion. At the very least, it would change the argument from "save the caribou"/"nuke the caribou."
• Give me photos. Rep. Bachmann has a photo gallery on her site that includes photos from the ANWR trip. It's good, but there are no captions or explanations. Plus, a good number of photos are smiling almost touristy shots. ("Here we are in front of an airplane.") In an age of digital cameras and cheap memory cards, there's no excuse to not have tons of pics available.
• Give me live feeds. I perked up when I saw Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) twittering that he was getting ready for the ANWR trip. Why wasn't everyone doing that? Twittering, blogging, even recording a phone call and putting it up as a podcast--we live in a world of immediacy. No one is interested in what happened then; all anyone wants to know is what's happening now.

With energy, Republicans have a good message and a good issue. Now they just need to make sure their communications strategy--especially online--is on par.