Give ACORN credit for having more testicles than brains, after the third episode of Big Government’s exposure of their office practices in protecting tax evasion and pimps. They’re now threatening to sue Fox News, James O’Keefe, and Hannah Giles for publishing allegedly doctored tapes to make ACORN look guilty, including an allegation that O’Keefe looped his lines afterward to make ACORN look guilty. Not only do the very specific responses from the ACORN workers make that argument ridiculous, ACORN’s own response does too:

John Fund says, “Bring it on”:

If this was looped, why would the ACORN workers have said this?

ACORN 4: You want to make sure you distance yourself from that. Straight up. And the other thing is — okay, I know this is no disrespect to you, sweetheart. OK? … If you buy the home, you have no knowledge of what’s goin’ on in that home. He’s just [garbled] the landlord. …

ACORN 4: All someone needs to do is get wind that you got a house and that your girlfriend is over there running a house of the women in the night. You will not have a career [in politics]. You will be smeared and tarnished for life to come.

Obviously, O’Keefe told them about the pimping and the prostitution. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have responded with these kind of specifics.

Of course, ACORN knows this — which is why they fired the four women from the first two incidents. That will make it pretty hard for ACORN to sue anyone, since the first question asked will be, “Why did you fire these women if the tape was faked?” As John Fund also points out, a lawsuit will allow for both sides to demand internal documents for discovery purposes, and right now it looks like ACORN has a lot more to lose in that transaction than O’Keefe.

Why did ACORN even make this empty threat? They need a new line for their defenders on the Left, but this is so threadbare that it won’t survive today’s exposure. Will there be more down the line? I wouldn’t bet against it.