Perhaps Rachel Maddow is secretly a Constitutional Scholar?
“A bill of attainder, is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial and includes any legislative act which takes away the life, liberty or property of a particular named or easily ascertainable person or group of persons because the legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment.” Seemingly therefore the issue hinges upon whether once an organization such as ACORN receives federal funds, can it ever be defunded or do you now have a right to future federal monies have they become your property? Seemingly, Dr. Maddow feels that once Congress appropriates funds it can never deny funds.
Only six acts of Congress have ever been invalidated as a violation of Article One. None involved the congressional disbursement power to a non-governmental agency.
There are
no decisions which hold that the denial of federal funds to an organization such as ACORN constitutes legislative action engaged in as a means of punishing individuals for wrongdoing.
Indeed each Congress having the absolute right to make appropriations also has the absolute right not to make appropriations, in fact all U.S. Government contracts explicitly state this, and courts have never required even rough consistency or proportionality in congressional decisions to either fund or defund.
The bottom line is that a nonprofit such as ACORN has no vested property or contractual right to receive federal contracts or grants.
Rachel Maddow is seemingly making political rather than legal points.
text of the amendment
