Ah, yes. Of course they have to blame partisan attacks…

CHICAGO – The once mighty community activist group ACORN announced Monday it is folding amid falling revenues — six months after video footage emerged showing some of its workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute.

“It’s really declining revenue in the face of a series of attacks from partisan operatives and right-wing activist that have taken away our ability to raise the resources we need,” ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said.

Good grief:

Thousands of women demonstrated outside parliament Sunday to oppose legislation banning the marriage of girls under 17. The protesters held up banners proclaiming “don’t ban what Allah made permissible,” or “stop violating Islamic sharia law in the name of rights and freedoms.” Proposed amendments to the civil status law stalled in parliament last August after severe opposition to a government proposal that would ban girls under 17 and males under 18 from marrying. Child marriages are common, especially in rural areas, where girls as young as eight have been married off.

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Véronique adds: Don’t move to Yemen. That being said, you’re safe Brigitte. Being already married. And just over 17.

It’s stuff like that about the media that drives me crazy. Why do they need to mention, twice, that he’s pro-choice? Because otherwise we’ll think he’s weird?

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon is pro-choice but says family planning programs — which include abortion in some countries — will be excluded from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s G8 initiative on maternal and child health care.

He was grilled at the House of Commons foreign affairs committee Tuesday where New Democratic Party MP John Rafferty said an important and cost-effective element of maternal health care is access to contraception and other family planning services.

Cannon said the G8 initiative “does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning.”

Cannon declined to answer when Rafferty asked whether he would ensure that funds are “secure” for the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

The IPPF has received millions of dollars annually from the Conservative government and its predecessor Liberal governments since the mid-1980s. But backbench Conservative Brad Trost (Saskatoon-Humboldt) has petitioned against the funds, supplied through the Canadian International Development Agency, on grounds the federation helps provide access to abortions.

Cannon said the MP should ask International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda. Oda and her officials have refused to state whether the government will renew an $18-million, three-year contract to the IPPF that expired at the end of 2009.

After the committee hearing, Cannon appeared to try to separate his own opinion from government policy on the G8 initiative, in which Harper seeks to harness funds and resources from G8 countries and non-government organizations to reduce millions of preventable maternal and child deaths in the developing world. This is identified by the government as Canada’s “signature initiative” for the G8 leaders’ summit Harper is hosting in Muskoka, north of Orillia, Ont., in late June.

“The point here is our political party is a political party that offers, on all of these social issues, offers members to be able to express their opinion,” Cannon said.

“I do believe that on a number of these social issues we’ve had the opportunity of making our positions known in the House. Everybody knows what my position is but from a government position, this policy, this announcement by the prime minister has nothing to do with what you’re raising.”

Cannon’s aide later said that the well-known position he was referring to is his pro-choice position on abortion.

Apparently the letters A, C, O, R, and N aren’t so cool anymore. I’m delighted. (No, it won’t change anything; I just like to see them scramble, is all. They deserve it.)

CHICAGO – Affiliates of the once mighty liberal activist group ACORN are remaking themselves in a desperate bid to ditch the tarnished name of their parent organization and restore federal grants and other revenue streams that ran dry in the wake of a video scandal.

The letters A, C, O, R and N are coming off office doors from New York to California. Business cards are being reprinted. New signs with new names are popping up in front of offices.

The breakaways are trying to shed the scandal that emerged six months ago when videos showed some ACORN workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute. But while their names are different, most groups have kept the same offices and staff.

Our very own Andrea Mrozek made a fine comment at a conference in Ottawa today:

When a member of the audience asked about women in politics being treated differently, Ms. Grey responded that even so, it didn’t give them licence to “throw hissy fits at airports.”

“Women are judged differently. We can like it, we can harangue about it, we can hate it, we can do all kinds of things, but that’s the way it is. That’s life,” Ms. Grey, one of the best-known Conservative women, later told The Canadian Press.

“We can’t give ourselves permission to lose control and have a hissy fit at an airport or wherever, in the House of Commons, because it will come back to bite us.”

Ms. Mrozek also waded in.

“Is it because someone’s a woman or that they’re just being an idiot in the public square?” she said.

For the record, I do think women are treated differently than men, in politics and most everywhere else (sometimes women get an undeserved break, other times it’s men). That’s because women and men are different. It’s just one of those things.

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Andrea updates: When I said that it was not in reference to Helena at all. It was in response to a student who asked whether I thought men and women were treated differently (and she was not covertly asking about Helena either) and I blabbed on about different factors that could play into the equation, concluding with the comment that was picked up. Anyhoo, there ya go. That’s my perspective on the whole thing. Someday I’m bound to be an idiot in the public square myself, and at that point, this comment will come back to haunt me!

LiveAction just released new pro-life posters. I especially like this one:

I am sure many of you were following the story of Baby Isaiah May. I’m sorry to say he died today, shortly after being taken off life support.

Rest in peace, little one.

We really mean it.

Have a look at this – from a 1952 Planned Parenthood pamphlet:

My, how things change…

What a horrible tragedy:

TORONTO — In one of two fatal GTA fires Sunday, a Toronto dad handed his baby son to a visiting neighbour — then gave his life in a desperate bid to find a second child in the family’s North York home.

Toronto firefighters waded through heavy black smoke and pulled the man and his 12-year-old daughter from the second floor of their 1 1/2-storey postwar Kemp Square house shortly after 3 p.m.

Neither had lifesigns, but Toronto Fire District Chief Stephan Powell said paramedics revived the girl.

This man was a hero. May he rest in peace.