By Mike Kaszuba

Republican legislative leaders are keeping ACORN in their cross hairs.

Twenty-one Republican state senators have asked Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson to appoint a special counsel to investigate voter registration fraud charges against ACORN – the embattled community activist group known formally as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The letter to Swanson was signed by Senate Minority Leader David Senjem, along with two Republican candidates for governor, Sen. David Hann and Sen. Mike Jungbauer along with the rest of the GOP caucus.

In their letter, the senators cited a Congressional report that said "ACORN has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate."

For months, conservatives have targeted ACORN, mainly for its voter registration drives of lower-income residents who have not before been active politically. In their letter to Swanson, the Republican senators said that ACORN was responsible for 75 percent of Minnesota's new voter registrations last year.

Though the organization has been criticized in Minnesota by election officials for some of its voter registration practices, ACORN has not been linked to any widespread cases of voter registration irregularities in the state.

But in recent months, ACORN has taken hits both politically and financially as many Democratic leaders – including U.S. Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar – have voted to cut off federal funding to the group in the light of embarrassing disclosures. The organization found itself in the national spotlight recently when undercover videos were released showing a couple posing as a prostitute and a pimp who got advice at several ACORN offices across the country on how to buy a house they intended to use as a brothel employing underage girls from El Salvador.

Chris Stinson, ACORN's political director in Minnesota, said the latest Republican move was just more of the same. "It's hard to tell whether Republicans attacking ACORN is news or [that it would be] news if they stop attacking us," he said. "It's mostly a rehash of the accusations that we've been hearing on FOX News."