Dan Riehl at Pajamas Media this morning: [1]
Conservative activist James O’Keefe has been arrested by the U.S. Marshal’s Service for allegedly attempting to bug the offices of U..S. Senator Mary Landrieu. Also arrested were Robert Flanagan, the son of a federal prosecutor [2], and two others.
O’Keefe and partner Hannah Giles rose to fame for a video sting [3] against the community activist group ACORN. The videos appeared on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website [4]. According to a report on Twitter [5], Big Government’s editors claim to have had no knowledge of events in Louisiana.
From Sister Toldja: [6]
I can’t really add much more to what Michelle Malkin [7] has said about the arrest of James O’Keefe, one half of the ACORN-exposing tag team [8], who – along with three other alleged “conservative activists – was arrested yesterday [9] on charges of attempting to wiretap Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office.
I fully believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty, but the case against O’Keefe is pretty damning and all around it’s just a sad, disappointing story. Not only is it (obviously) wrong to try and wiretap someone’s office (that is, unless you’re an Islamofascist with known ties to terrorist outfits hell-bent on killing westerners), but of course the left and the MSM will try and probably be successful at using this story to detract from the real issues O’Keefe’s stings of the various ACORN offices brought to light.
I don’t think there’s any doubt in the world about that one. Indeed, they’re already doing it. [10]Indeed, they have become nothing short of apoplectic.
The thing of it is; we’d be seeing an awful lot of praise for such as O’Keefe coming out of the left, if for example the office of Tim Pawlenty, or (chukle) Scott Brown, were the target. I think it telling that Sis already made reference to a tape of a phone conversation that made it’s way around the wires a few years ago… that incident wasn’t perpetrated by the news media, but was perpetrated by a sitting congressman. A Democrat, of course. guy you remember the reaction to that one? I seem to recall comments from the left to the effect that every revolution in history has been accomplished by what were in reality illegal acts. They all argued that breaking the law was for the greater good. Remember? And of course, a logical extension to that argument is that the government will use the law, however crafted, as a tool to remain in power, regardless of the will of the people. If you think for a while you’ll remember that one, too.
There’s going to be an awful lot of smoke being sent up by the Democrats on this one. The attempt, in short, will be to obscure what’s really going on here. See, I can’t help but think that the resulting trial is going to reveal far more about Mary Landrieu than she would be comfortable with.
Here’s why I think so:
Let’s take this independent of the morality question for just a moment. It seems reasonable to assume that there was some lawbreaking going on here. And also seems reasonable to assume that somebody who demonstrated such intelligence in the ACORN affiar does not simply go in tapping phones on a fishing expedition. You go in knowing that there’s something there to uncover, or you simply don’t take that risk.
I have to assume that there is far more to this story than we know at the moment. Personally, I will be most interested in seeing what it is that O’Keefe has on Landrieu…And I fully expect that to come out in the trial. Which, the way things time out will come out just about the time that we are due for another election.
As to whether not all the charges will hold up, I’ll reserve judgment. I’ve read the affidavit, I’m less than convinced that they will hold up, frankly, but then again, this is the Democrat party stronghold of New Orleans, where you can not only indict a ham sandwich you can convict it if you like, and have some political clout.
I will also warn you, that the mainstream media will tend to ignore anything that surfaces about corruption and Sen. Mary Landrieu… after all, corrupt Democrats , particularly in that part of the country, are hardly news.
On the other hand, the story might serve as a decent diversion from the rather lackluster state of the union message that we anticipate this evening.