Not since 1999's "Blair Witch Project" have I seen a homemade video more filled with ghoulishness and revulsive candor. The recent footage of ACORN workers advising a "pimp" and his "prostitute" how to circumvent the law in order to set up a brothel is priceless and instructive.

What does it say of our 80,000-page tax code that a crew of disheveled but determined amateurs can pick it apart so nonchalantly? The federal tax code is the magnum opus of generations of legislators, inspired by egalitarianism, but subsequently weakened by expediency, misshapened by greed, and finally bloated beyond reason by its own appetite for more of itself. That this scandal can then largely be ignored by the mainstream media is disheartening. Charlie Gibson's assertion that he was unaware of the revelations, even as they spread across the Internet, is simultaneously shocking and predictable. There is a line in the political sand, dividing the truth from spin, over which the liberal press will not cross.

Churchill called Russia "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." America's openness precludes it from becoming an enigma. The mystery, though, is why so many avert their eyes from the obvious, and hold their noses, throwing the country's fate at the mercy of election cycles. The national deficit is nearing the point at which the meter will have to be, post-collapse, recalibrated back to zero. At that point, we may all need the services of those ACORN workers.

Alexander Lee

Carol Stream