What's the real story behind the US Attorney scandal?

Most of the mainstream media has missed the real story behind the firing of US Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico and his counterparts in other states. As John Atlas explains in the summer 2007 issue of Shelterforce, Iglesias lost his job in December 2005 after he declined to prosecute a voter-fraud case against ACORN, the community organizing group that had been registering large numbers of voters in the state's low-income and largely minority neighborhoods in 2004.  But this isn't an isolated incident.  Karl Rove's strategy has been to make it much more difficult for poor and minority people to register to vote and to vote, particularly in key swing states. Harrassing groups like ACORN that register and mobilize the poor, on trumped up charges of "voter fraud," has been a major tactic of the Bush administration. In firing Iglesias, Attorney General Gonzales was just following orders.  Although the Bush administration has been unable to back up its "voter fraud" charges against ACORN,  the group has had to spend time and money defending itself against the Bush administration's harassment -- another part of the Bush strategy to keep progressives off-balance and on the defensive.  Fortunately, ACORN has fought back and has continued to register voters, mobilize the poor, and win grassroot campaigns for living wages, affordable housing, and other issues.  In the short-term, making Gonzalez the scapegoat serves the Bush administration's purposes of deflecting media attention away from the misdeeds of Bush, Cheney and Rove. But having a Democratic majority in Congress has made it more difficult for B, C, and R to hide their corrupt practices, especially with people like Cong. Henry Waxman using their power to investigate and hold public hearings on everything from Bush's attempt to suppress voter registration and turnout to the war-profiteering of politically-connected corporation.