Shockingly, the New York Times reports on misappropriated funds at two prominent national nonprofit groups — ACORN and the Points of Light Institute, noting a difference in how the groups dealt with their scandals:

Acorn chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board. After Points of Light noticed financial irregularities in early June, it took less than a month for management to alert federal prosecutors, although group officials say they have no clear idea yet what the financial impact may be.

Instapundit reader John Richardson notes that the NYT somehow managed to avoid mentioning  Barack Obama longstanding ties to ACORN, to which I would add that it is not the first time the paper has glossed over those ties:

The paper misses that Acorn was also a former client of Obama and that Obama helped train Acorn staffers.  And while the paper identifies Acorn as an “antipoverty” group, it is also frequently involved in scandal-ridden voter registration drives.  Both Obama and Acorn joined briefs urging the Supreme Court to overturn Indiana’s voter ID law.  Acorn’s national political arm has endorsed Obama, even as its ”non-partisan” wing gears up for another round of regstration drives.

The NYT also misses that ACORN provided the shock troops for his political campaigns, though it previously reported that Obama helped fund ACORN while he was on the boards of the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation.  The paper further missed disturbing allegations regarding the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) made by the Consumers Rights League:

• AHC has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens
• AHC relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money that may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service
• ACORN’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, but AHC has recommended ten-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and reverse mortgages (which can be detrimental to senior citizens)
• AHC may have violated federal law by failing to maintain a proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and the aggressive political activities of ACORN

The Americorps Inspector General has similarly claimed that AHC misused Americorps grant funds to benefit ACORN either directly or indirectly.

Given this track record, it is perhaps not surprising that ACORN found itself defrauded by one of its own.  It is pathetic that the ACORN insiders covered it up, ostensibly because word of the embezzlement would have put a “weapon” into the hands of ACORN’s political opponents.  It is also pathetic that the New York Times covers up the full extent of the longstanding ties between Obama and ACORN, probably for similar reasons.

(h/t Instapundit.)