The Nevada office of ACORN had planned a potluck dinner at its Las Vegas office Tuesday night to celebrate the 80,000 newly registered voters its staff had signed up in Clark County as part of its work with low-income communities nationwide.

Instead, their office was raided Tuesday morning by agents of the Nevada Secretary of State and Attorney General who alleged in an application for a search warrant that ACORN had hired 59 felons through a work release program as canvassers and submitted nearly 300 apparently fraudulent voter registration cards as part of the drive.

The submitted voter cards included addresses and names that do not exist in Nevada, duplicate registrations, names culled from telephone books and names of Dallas Cowboys players, an investigator for the Secretary of State alleged in his affidavit for a search warrant.

One ex-employee of ACORN reached by the state investigator told him she began making up names for her forms on days when it was too hot to work outside. ACORN canvassers are paid by the hour. Ex-employees also said they were expected to collect 20 complete forms a shift or risk probation and termination, the investigator said in his affidavit.

The search drove ACORN and its critics to exchange charges of political maneuvering in a battleground state that voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election but is considered in play for November. Mail-in voter registration closed Saturday in Nevada.

Agents removed 20 boxes of documents and eight computer hard drives from the ACORN office in "an ongoing investigation," said Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat. "Now we begin the task of sifting through the material that was seized to determine how widespread any fraud might be."

Imagine how bad it must be if the Democratic Secretary of State feels the need to investigate. Here's the punchline...

The McCain and Obama camps have been trading blasts and Internet alerts over Republican charges that ACORN has been closely linked to Barack Obama for years, a contention the Obama campaign denies.

Obama not closely linked to ACORN? It's hard to tell where Barack ends and ACORN begins. Why do you think Jesse Jackson wanted to cut off his "nuts"? It's not like he didn't represent them when he was an attorney in Chicago or anything...

No wonder Obama has no sense of humor. Who can be jovial when their pants are constantly on fire?