Only Liberals do stupid illegal shit

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by article

4 men charged with U.S. Senate office infiltration in New Orleans
January 26, 2010 5:25 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- Four men were charged Tuesday after attempting to illegally access and manipulate the phone system in a district office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, a local U.S. attorney's office said.
Joseph Basel, 24, Robert Flanagan, 24, James O'Keefe, 25, and Stan Dai, 24, were charged with entering Landrieu's New Orleans office, which is federal property, under "false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony," according to the attorney's office.
Law enforcement officials say they believe O'Keefe is the conservative activist of the same name who dressed up as a pimp last summer and visited an office of ACORN, a liberal community organizing group, in order to solicit advice on setting up a brothel, among other scenarios.
He secretly recorded the visits on video and posted them on the Web, leading to a media firestorm.
Basel and Flanagan attempted to gain access to Landrieu's office Monday while posing as telephone repairmen, the attorney's office said in a news release.
The two men were "each dressed in blue denim pants, a blue work shirt, a light green fluorescent vest, a tool belt and a construction-style hard hat when they entered the Hale Boggs Federal Building," the release said.
After they entered the building, the two men told a staffer in Landrieu's office they were telephone repairmen, according to the release. They then asked for, and were granted, access to the reception desk's phone system.
O'Keefe, meanwhile, recorded their actions with a cell phone.
Read the affidavit (PDF)
Flanagan and Basel later requested access to a telephone closet, claiming they needed to perform work on the main phone system, the release said. Dai aided the others in planning the operation, the release said.
If convicted, the four men would each face a fine of $250,000 and up to 10 years in prison, according to the release.
"Because the details of yesterday's incident are part of an ongoing investigation by federal authorities, our office cannot comment at this time," Landrieu spokesman Aaron Saunders told CNN.
CNN Justice Producer Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

Radicals or typical behavior of people from the right side of the aisle? People are so bitter the Democrats are in powers this is what they have to resort to?

[JaJae]

I read about this on my phone while waiting in an office today. I was just about to make a thread about it, yet it seems it was turned into a hyper-partisan anti-liberal protectionist thread. It's a funny story, and personally I hope they throw the book at him and his accomplices.

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by JaJae

I read about this on my phone while waiting in an office today. I was just about to make a thread about it, yet it seems it was turned into a hyper-partisan anti-liberal protectionist thread. It's a funny story, and personally I hope they throw the book at him and his accomplices.

Just like our love of Chavez...we do it well or don't do it at all.

I think it brings into question whether or not his bullshit pimp routine at ACORN was legitimate at all.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

Just like our love of Chavez...we do it well or don't do it at all.

I think it brings into question whether or not his bullshit pimp routine at ACORN was legitimate at all.

Legitimate? You saw the video. The employees were real and were fired. How was it not legitimate?

And him breaking the law to try to get a story is stupid. I'm glad he was arrested. Wait! What? I'm not defending someone who you think I relate to? GASP!!! What a concept. You should try it sometime!

[kinggovernor]

better thread title:
pimpin' ain't easy

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

better thread title:
pimpin' ain't easy

I hope he brings his sunglasses and walking stick to prison.

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by JaJae

I hope he brings his sunglasses and walking stick to prison.

they haven't been indicted yet so we don't know the sentence range will be. I have read the affidavit, they are some piss poor social engineers

[JaJae]

More of the story broke. O'Keefe says they were not tapping their phones. They were looking to disconnect their phones because the office had issues in the past with voters getting in touch with them to voice complaints. He wanted to take down the phones and see if the office would laugh it off and ignore the problem or take steps to fix it.

I don't know if this is the full truth, but no reports have been made that the police actually confiscated equipment used to tap the phones. Either way, what they did was illegal and I really hope the book gets thrown at him. You don't just walk into a Congressional office and start fucking around like this. He got too cocky from the ACORN stunts.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by JaJae

More of the story broke. O'Keefe says they were not tapping their phones. They were looking to disconnect their phones because the office had issues in the past with voters getting in touch with them to voice complaints. He wanted to take down the phones and see if the office would laugh it off and ignore the problem or take steps to fix it.

I don't know if this is the full truth, but no reports have been made that the police actually confiscated equipment used to tap the phones. Either way, what they did was illegal and I really hope the book gets thrown at him. You don't just walk into a Congressional office and start fucking around like this. He got too cocky from the ACORN stunts.

If it's true it would be a lesser charge I guess. But still, what an idiot. Trying to get into a government office to disconnect their phones? Pathetic...

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by JaJae

More of the story broke. O'Keefe says they were not tapping their phones. They were looking to disconnect their phones because the office had issues in the past with voters getting in touch with them to voice complaints. He wanted to take down the phones and see if the office would laugh it off and ignore the problem or take steps to fix it.

I don't know if this is the full truth, but no reports have been made that the police actually confiscated equipment used to tap the phones. Either way, what they did was illegal and I really hope the book gets thrown at him. You don't just walk into a Congressional office and start fucking around like this. He got too cocky from the ACORN stunts.

they had no equipment, they talked their way into the Senator's office then were told to go down to the GSA office. GSA does all the office services for the federal government and that is where they were asked for ID and then apprehended.

the story coming out is that they were going to disconnect the phones and see if the Senator noticed. Pretty fucking stupid, but I doubt they see jail time.

[Donkey®]

Doesn't matter why they were there. They were there to commit a felony. Messing with the phone system and getting in under false pretenses are what they are charged with intending to do. Even if they just wanted to go in and lift all the receivers off the phones...it's still a felony.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

Doesn't matter why they were there. They were there to commit a felony. Messing with the phone system and getting in under false pretenses are what they are charged with intending to do. Even if they just wanted to go in and lift all the receivers off the phones...it's still a felony.

Any kind of crime commited in a government office would be a felony, wouldn't it?

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Any kind of crime commited in a government office would be a felony, wouldn't it?

A misconception of a felony is that it is any crime that violates federal law. In actuality it is any crime that is punishable by more than a year in prison.

[DosEquis]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

better thread title:
pimpin' ain't easy

[kinggovernor]

[kinggovernor]

MSNBC: Shuster tweets 'inappropriate'
By: Michael Calderone
January 28, 2010 01:07 PM EST

MSNBC may be obsessed with the four men arrested for trying to tamper with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s telephones, but the network says reporter David Shuster crossed the line when he attacked one of them via Twitter.

Just before leaving for New Orleans to cover the story, Shuster used a Twitter message to tell conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe — one of the four men arrested by the FBI — that he’s “not a journalist,” that he “intended to tap phones” and that he “will go to prison.”

“The comments were inappropriate,” an MSNBC spokesperson told POLITICO Thursday. “We have talked to David about them.”

Still, Shuster continues to cover the story for MSNBC. At 3 p.m. Thursday, he’s expected to interview Andrew Breitbart, who pays O’Keefe a salary and published his undercover anti-ACORN videos on his website Big Government.

MSNBC has been all over the arrests at Landrieu’s New Orleans office, dubbing the alleged attempt to tamper with the phones of the Democratic senator “PhoneGate” and “Bayou Break-In.”

On Wednesday night — when other news networks were focused on President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann devoted the first 20 minutes of “Countdown” to the Landrieu case.

In addition to speaking with Shuster from New Orleans, Olbermann talked with analyst Richard Wolffe and former Nixon counsel John Dean, famous for his role in the Watergate coverup.

Fox News, by contrast, has spent relatively little time on the story.

Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group, reports that Fox devoted roughly 4½-half minutes on O’Keefe’s arrest Tuesday during its evening and prime-time shows, while spending over an hour on the ACORN tapes when that story broke on Sept. 10.

It’s quite a contrast from last fall, when Fox gave loads of airtime to the undercover videos in which O’Keefe pretended to be a pimp seeking help from ACORN. The 25-year-old activist appeared on “Glenn Beck,” “Hannity” and “Fox & Friends” and was named the “Power Player of the Week” by Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

A Fox spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

Ari Rabin-Havt, vice president of research and communication for Media Matters, said that in addition to the airtime Fox gave the ACORN story, the network also allowed O’Keefe, Hannah Giles — who appeared as the prostitute in the undercover tapes — and Breitbart to talk up their legal defense fund.

Rabin-Havt said that given the amount of time Fox provided for what he considers an “unethical piece of journalism,” the network has “some culpability” for whatever O’Keefe may have done next.

But while Media Matters sees Fox as overhyping the first O’Keefe-related story, those on the other end of the political spectrum now see MSNBC giving too much play to the second.

Seton Motley, director of communications for the Media Research Center, said that MSNBC is “hyperventilating in their coverage” and that O’Keefe’s been “convicted in the court of Twitter by David Shuster.”

“I think what the MSNBCs of the world are trying to do is to undo what [O’Keefe] did to ACORN with this,” Motley said.

Breitbart also thinks the media have gone overboard.

“For those in the mainstream media committed to report the false and libelous narrative of ‘Watergate Jr.,’ ‘wiretapping’ and ‘bugging,’ I predict much egg on your J-school grad faces,” Breitbart wrote on his Big Journalism site.

Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, noted that the different levels of coverage between the ACORN story — presumably bad for liberals — and the O’Keefe arrest — presumably bad for conservatives — is just par for the course.

“One thing we’ve seen repeatedly on ideologically oriented shows, in cable and radio, is not only the ideology evident in how a subject is treated but whether a subject is covered,” he said.

During the campaign, Jurkowitz pointed out that Fox hosts Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity focused more on issues such as the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while MSNBC hosts Olbermann and Rachel Maddow offered more coverage of issues relating to Sen. John McCain’s campaign tactics.

“If you were watching the Fox hosts or the MSNBC hosts, you’d be getting different subjects of the campaign covered,” Jurkowitz said. “You are getting in some ways a different world.”

MSNBC: Shuster tweets 'inappropriate' - Michael Calderone - POLITICO.com

@JamesOKeefeIII a) you are not a journalist b) the truth is you intended to tap her phones c) it's a felony d) you will go to prison.
Twitter / David Shuster: @JamesOKeefeIII a) you ar ...

@jamesokeefeIII oh, and did I mention that your tweet will help prosecutors prove intent? Keep at it, young man. I'm enjoying this a lot.
http://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/8265158310

[Donkey®]

Fox and MSNBC counter-act each other.

[DosEquis]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

Fox and MSNBC counter-act each other.

Its like the gatekeeper and the key master. We have to get these two together.

[kinggovernor]

Statement from James O’Keefe

The government has now confirmed what has always been clear: No one tried to wiretap or bug Senator Landrieu’s office. Nor did we try to cut or shut down her phone lines. Reports to this effect over the past 48 hours are inaccurate and false.

As an investigative journalist, my goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions, as I did last year when our investigations revealed the massive corruption and fraud perpetrated by ACORN. For decades, investigative journalists have used a variety of tactics to try to dig out and reveal the truth.

I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill. When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.” I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken. In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office – the people’s office – to ask the staff if their phones were working.

On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation, particularly given the sensitivities that people understandably have about security in a federal building. The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Senator Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their Senator. We video taped the entire visit, the government has those tapes, and I’m eager for them to be released because they refute the false claims being repeated by much of the mainstream media.

It has been amazing to witness the journalistic malpractice committed by many of the organizations covering this story. MSNBC falsely claimed that I violated a non-existent “gag order.” The Associated Press incorrectly reported that I “broke in” to an office which is open to the public. The Washington Post has now had to print corrections in two stories on me. And these are just a few examples of inaccurate and false reporting. The public will judge whether reporters who can’t get their facts straight have the credibility to question my integrity as a journalist.

Big Hollywood Blog Archive Statement from James O?Keefe

"On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation"

you think?

[kinggovernor]

Statement from James O’Keefe

The government has now confirmed what has always been clear: No one tried to wiretap or bug Senator Landrieu’s office. Nor did we try to cut or shut down her phone lines. Reports to this effect over the past 48 hours are inaccurate and false.

As an investigative journalist, my goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions, as I did last year when our investigations revealed the massive corruption and fraud perpetrated by ACORN. For decades, investigative journalists have used a variety of tactics to try to dig out and reveal the truth.

I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill. When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.” I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken. In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office – the people’s office – to ask the staff if their phones were working.

On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation, particularly given the sensitivities that people understandably have about security in a federal building. The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Senator Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their Senator. We video taped the entire visit, the government has those tapes, and I’m eager for them to be released because they refute the false claims being repeated by much of the mainstream media.

It has been amazing to witness the journalistic malpractice committed by many of the organizations covering this story. MSNBC falsely claimed that I violated a non-existent “gag order.” The Associated Press incorrectly reported that I “broke in” to an office which is open to the public. The Washington Post has now had to print corrections in two stories on me. And these are just a few examples of inaccurate and false reporting. The public will judge whether reporters who can’t get their facts straight have the credibility to question my integrity as a journalist.

Big Hollywood Blog Archive Statement from James O?Keefe

"On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation"

you think?