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You are here: Home / Is It Too Much To Ask? I Think Not!

Is It Too Much To Ask? I Think Not!

by | 79 Comments

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Completely innocent right-wing operatives cop a guilty plea:

The four defendants who were arrested in January in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in the Hale Boggs federal complex in New Orleans pleaded guilty Wednesday morning in federal court to entering real property belonging to the United States under false pretenses.

Magistrate Judge Daniel Knowles III sentenced Stan Dai, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan each to two years probation, a fine of $1,500 and 75 hours of community service during their first year of probation.

James O’Keefe, as leader of the group and famous for posing as a pimp in ACORN office videos, received three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service.

I suppose it is a good thing they did not receive any jail time, because I don’t think I could have handled six months of “Free the Landrieu Four” posts clogging the blogosphere. Having said that, is it entirely too much to ask that O’Keefe be required to serve his community service under the watchful eyes of the New Orleans branch of ACORN? Pretty please?

Bonus points if he serves it dressed as a pimp.

Reader Interactions

79Comments

  2. 2.

    raff

    “Community service”? Man, you thought these guys hated community organizers before; now they have to work for them! Suck it, O’Keefe.

  4. 4.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    I don’t think I could have handled six months of “Free the Landrieu Four” posts clogging the blogosphere.

    Instead you’ll get six more days of ACTIVIST JUDGES! because Knowles should have rejected their guilty pleas, given them lollipops and let them go. And their attorneys are incompetent liberal thugs. Also2.

  5. 5.

    Dave

    It might be too much to ask that O’Keefe serve under ACORN–aren’t they defunct?

  6. 6.

    PurpleGirl

    I think working for ACORN is an excellent idea. Karma stings, get used to it.

  9. 9.

    Violet

    So long as they spend their time doing fun stuff like cleaning toilets, picking up trash, and other assorted real jobs, I’ll be happy. Bonus points if they have to do their community service outside during daylight hours over the summer in New Orleans. Heat and humidity will only enhance the experience.

  10. 10.

    angler

    OH BOY! I found another firebagger! It’s Harry Shearer, on Olberman disrespectin’. Go get him. git git!

    Yah, it’s a different thread but firebagging, it cannot wait to be exposed.

    Once you get into this game, it’s fun! like Where’s Waldo. We’re all firebagger douchebagger bagger-Vance bagger hunters now.

  11. 11.

    Brian J

    I wonder what Breitbart’s reaction is going to be.

    On a similar note, has everyone read the profile of him in The New Yorker? He comes across as even more of a demented little turd than I imagined–and not, as some might think, because the magazine is writing against him. Maybe it’s me, but the author of the article seems to bend over backwards to try to be as objective as possible.

    Anyway, I think this one quote, in the paragraph below, where he talks about style over substance, says it all:

    Breitbart’s parents were quietly conservative. His father was a restaurateur and, later, a lobbyist for the food-service industry; his mother was a bank executive. But their son, who attended the prestigious Brentwood School, was reflexively liberal. “It was like the water I was in,” he told me. Gary Hewson, a classmate, who is now a real-estate developer, recalls Breitbart as “a bit of a class clown, a rabble-rouser.” Breitbart says, “That was my only discernible skill.” But he was fascinated by current affairs, and in 1987 he attended summer school at American University, in Washington, D.C., so that he could witness the Iran-Contra hearings. “In hindsight, I cared more about the theatre of it all than I cared about the substance of it all,” he says. (Not long ago, Breitbart asked Oliver North to write for Big Government. North promptly called him back from Afghanistan, where he was reporting for Fox News. He has since contributed to Breitbart’s site.)

  13. 13.

    Church Lady

    Maybe he can do community service right next to Bertha Lewis. She was just arrested for disorderly conduct at an immigration rally in New York.

  14. 14.

    maus

    @Brian J:

    I wonder what Breitbart’s reaction is going to be.

    His twitter’s exploding with grandeur about how he pulled off Obamagate and taking down liberals and blah blah history will absolve me.

  15. 15.

    Scott

    Someone else will pay O’Keefe’s fine, he’ll likely skip all but the first weekend or two of community service, and he’ll be right back to swilling cheap beer with his buddies and planning bombing runs on congressional offices. And he’ll always have a place on Fox News.

  16. 16.

    soonergrunt

    Likely that O’Keefe took reduced charges in exchange for something like the skinny on Breitbart.

  17. 17.

    WereBear

    @ChrisS: Was he ever even dressed as a pimp in the acorn offices?

    Actually, we now know: No.

    I’d like to see as big a fuss made over that. But yes, working outside in LA summer, and performing community service with some people with everything stacked against them: it could be his Summer of My Dead Horse for James O’Keefe.

    But, honestly; probably not.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    They’ll figure out a way to make an internship at the Heritage Foundation count as community service.

  19. 19.

    Joseph Nobles

    Send these assholes to a Louisiana beach to rake oil out of the beaches.

  20. 20.

    gbear

    Hey O’Keefe, good luck with the ‘Have you ever been convicted of a crime’ part of your job interviews for the rest of your life.

  21. 21.

    TR

    I suppose it is a good thing they did not receive any jail time, because I don’t think I could have handled six months of “Free the Landrieu Four” posts clogging the blogosphere.

    Six months? That skinny little shit wouldn’t have lasted six hours in prison.

  23. 23.

    Asshole

    Just because no one was actually incarcerated doesn’t mean I can’t call for freeing the Landrieu Four anyway.

  24. 24.

    Corner Stone

    @gbear: He served his purpose re: ACORN.
    From here on out it’s wingnut welfare all the way down.
    I smell a Regnery book or two.

  25. 25.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    This is the worst punishment they could have received: helping other people, contributing to society with no possible chance of personal gain.

  26. 26.

    jenniebee

    Why would you wish that on ACORN? They’re good people and have enough to do without having to deal with his attitude for 100 hours.

  28. 28.

    Citizen_X

    @Corner Stone: Absolutely. After serving his “sentence,” he will never suffer for this. What, like regular people? Pfft!

    O’Keefe is a made man in the Wingnutosphere now.

  29. 29.

    gbear

    @Corner Stone:

    Yes, that’s true. It also means that he’s going to reach middle age having spent his life as a wingnut toadie. I foresee a future of painful divorce and alchoholism…

  32. 32.

    WereBear

    @gbear: Well, after the:

    I foresee a future of painful divorce and alchoholism…

    Perhaps he has ambitions to do a Full Limbaugh:

    Paranoic Fear and Self Loathing in the Dominican Republic

    Decorating Dorian Gray… or Wax On, Wax Off

    I Crush the Dreams of Youth… How You Can Too!

  33. 33.

    JGabriel

    John Cole:

    Having said that, is it entirely too much to ask that O’Keefe be required to serve his community service under the watchful eyes of the New Orleans branch of ACORN? Pretty please?

    I think O’Keefe’s community service should be answering phones for Landrieu’s office, no air-conditioning, with all calls recorded. Any smart-ass remarks, or rudeness, or giving callers the impression that he is anything other than a Democrat, and he goes to jail for breaking probation.

    .

  34. 34.

    Mike Kay

    @angler: I agree. Firebaggers should be stamped out. That reminds me of the proverb: what do you call a 100 firebaggers chained together at the bottom of the ocean – a good start.

  35. 35.

    TDE

    He should have to spend his time refurbishing blighted homes in any poor urban area of the country.

  37. 37.

    Corner Stone

    @WereBear: I was thinking:
    Played: How Obama Pimped Out the Nation
    or
    Black Oil/Black Heart: The story of how Obama used ACORN to destroy the Gulf of Mexico

  38. 38.

    Corner Stone

    @gbear:

    I foresee a future of painful divorce and alchoholism…

    Well, absent the wingnut part…

  40. 40.

    trollhattan

    That pasty little shit will probably be a “featured speaker” on the next National Review money-making cruise. It would be a shame if he were missing when they arrive at port.

  42. 42.

    Anne Laurie

    @soonergrunt:

    Likely that O’Keefe took reduced charges in exchange for something like the skinny on Breitbart.

    From your keyboard to the FSM’s noodly hearing-apparatus. Be nice if the lawyers actually followed the money and exposed the pallid writing insects lurking under those rocks!

  43. 43.

    salacious crumb

    damn i really wish that at least did prison time. he would have become someones prison bitch and would have been really pimped out

  45. 45.

    El Cid

    @slag: Their lesson from Watergate was that they were horribly wronged, and in no small part because of the ‘librul medja’, which they went on a 40 years war against.

  47. 47.

    blueintheface

    “As Watergate taught us, we rightfully reject illegally breaking into candidates’ private communications for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election,” wrote Palin, who testified against Kernell in court last week.

    If guessing some dumbass’s email yahoo password is Watergate, I wonder what Palin thinks about a bunch of Republicans secretly trying to bug the offices of Democratic officials.

    And does anyone want to take a guess as to how much David Kernell is going to get? I’ll bet it’s more than a $1500 fine and a couple of trips to the probation officer a month until he gets a cushy think tank job.

  49. 49.

    Redshift

    @Tom Hilton:

    Is that a felony conviction? Does O’Keefe lose his vote?

    Sadly, the plea bargain means it was reduced to a misdemeanor.

    And in looking that up, I stumbled across some of the current wingnut reaction, ugh. Apparently this is a great victory, and they’re sure the charges were reduced to avoid something embarrassing that would have come out about Landrieu through discovery if they had gone to trial.

    Which is pretty funny when you think about it, because:

    a) Since when does discovery in your trial for illegal entry and phone tampering allow you to dig up dirt on the victim? and,

    b) If it did, wouldn’t a real conservative hero investigative journalist have risked going to trial in order to make his “investigation” a success?

    Wimps.

  51. 51.

    Michael G

    Community service? Ha!

    I’m sure the guy claims that every crooked republican scam he does *is already* community service. I’m sure he’s going to spend his 100 hours doing something like harassing illegal immigrants.

  52. 52.

    Bella Q

    @JGabriel:

    This would be exactly an appropriate punishment, given that some of my preferred options are unavailable. The Eighth Amendment can be really confining when you’re pissed off at a convicted defendant. Sigh.

  53. 53.

    Mark S.

    I prefer to think of it as performance art:

    Imagine if your job was defending Obama’s TeachFisting2Teens & promoter of kid-on-adult sex SafeSchoolCzar Kevin Jennings?

    It doesn’t make much more sense in context.

  56. 56.

    someguy

    I was hoping for hard time, at least 5-10 years. This fucking blows. They deserved a bunch of years of being made into pretty little prison wives and a short life lived in fear of being shanked for what they did. Assholes.

  57. 57.

    Yutsano

    @Mark S.: Sigh. Again more obsession with teh ghey. Drives me nuts the number of closet cases who are conservatives. Just fucking fess up and be happy.

  58. 58.

    shell goddamnit

    Instead of sticking Mr Pimp in urban areas with potentially minority populations I would prefer that he be assigned to rural white poor folk. So they can get a good look at each other, among other things.

  59. 59.

    shell goddamnit

    I think his community service should be spent amongst the rural, white poor. So they can get a good look at one another.

  60. 60.

    Kobie

    Shocking that the only community service James O’Keefe will ever do is court-ordered.

  61. 61.

    Martin

    I say give these guys ShamWow suits and frog march them into Gulf until it’s like Evian out there.

  62. 62.

    Joseph Nobles

    Another OT: I think a lot of people would like this rant from NanceGreggs over at DU:

    Dear President Obama:
    __
    A lot of people are upset with you right now. Not me, but a lot of people.
    __
    And here’s why …
    __
    On your first day in office, you should have overhauled the entire legal system, financial system, education system, healthcare system, rooted-out and fired every incompetent person with a government job, repealed DADT, saved the country from the looming economic crisis, rebuilt the crumbling infrastructure, investigated every government department and made whatever changes were necessary, re-established respect for our nation with every foreign leader and their people, put every American back to work, solved the immigration problem, fixed the mortgage crisis, reversed global warming, lowered crime, housed the homeless, fed the hungry, cured the sick, raised the dead from their graves, righted every wrong – and just generally un-do every single thing that has ever been done incorrectly, unjustly, inefficiently or ill-advisedly by your immediate predecessor, as well as every administration going back to George Washington.
    __
    On your second day in office, you should have done even more.

  63. 63.

    Yutsano

    @Martin: I am in full agreement with your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. In all seriousness, O’Keefe had better either do something productive relating to the oil spill or go clean South of I-10’s house until all the hours are fulfilled.

    @Joseph Nobles: That whole column is some beautiful snark-fu right there. I bet there’s a ton of firebaggers who were in total agreement right until the last couple of paragraphs where she reveals the spoof. Teh awesomeness, it tingles.

  64. 64.

    Joseph Nobles

    OK, a Reuters story on the don’t-jinx-it maybe-plugged oil leak. It appears to be only mud coming out right now. If they are successful in this stage, the flow of mud will stop. And then they can pump cement in to cap it. And then the relief wells down the road will be the icing on the cake. Fingers crossed.

  65. 65.

    Martin

    @Joseph Nobles: If they cement it, they’ll stop drilling on the relief wells – won’t be needed – they’d just be drilling into cement.

  67. 67.

    soonergrunt

    @Redshift:
    Funny enough, they actually do think this way. The upcomming General Court-Martial of an Army LTC by the name of Lakin is providing them with all sorts of fapping fodder.
    Lakin is a birther, and has refused to deploy to Afghanistan on the grounds that Obama cannot be the legitimate Commander in Chief, and therefore cannot give a lawful deployment order.
    The birthers are salivating at the prospect of getting to subpoena records from the President for the defense. When they get told that courts-martial don’t work that way and that there’s ample settled military law on this and Lakin is going down like the prison bitch he’s about to become, they don’t deal well.
    http:\\www.caaflog.com is a blog by military lawyers about military appellate practice, and they’re covering the Lakin issue pretty extensively. The birthers have invaded this relatively quiet little blog about an esoteric topic.
    Wackyness ensues. Good times.

  69. 69.

    someguy

    @Joseph Nobles:

    A lot of people are upset with you right now. Not me, but a lot of people. And here’s why …on your second day in office you should have done more…

    Um, it’d help if he did anything progressive actually. It’s been 18 months. HCR is a corporate welfare bill, there’s no cap & trade and almost nothing with alternative energy, we’re doing more offshore drilling and ramping up in Afghanistan instead of getting out (a decision Obama made which we can’t pin on Bush) and the tax code still isn’t any more progressive than it was when he took office, despite large Democratic majorities in both houses. We’re still in Iraq, Gitmo is open, and we’re still eavesdropping on people’s phone calls.

    Oh yeah, he’s been a rollicking success for liberals. Bill Clinton may have been the “first black president” but based on his third way moderation, Obama is the First Black Bill Clinton.

  70. 70.

    kay

    @Joseph Nobles:

    It appears to be only mud coming out right now.

    I heard a Rice engineer yesterday who said what you’re seeing is a good sign. I just decided to bank on him, rather than the punditry. Call me crazy. He also said we’d know relatively quickly if top kill was a massive failure, so the time that has elapsed alone is a hopeful thing.

    The engineer was squeezed in for 2 minutes in between the wall-to-wall coverage of noted oil spill expert, James Carville.

  72. 72.

    kay

    @Paul L.:

    Paul, the judge probably didn’t return the illegally obtained footage to O’Keefe because it was illegally obtained.

    He was trespassing.

    A fact that O’Keefe admitted when he entered the plea.

    Harsh, I know, but judges can hardly be handing back ill-gotten gains to admitted crooks.

  74. 74.

    kay

    @Paul L.:

    Thanks for the link though. I’m having a difficult day, and the comments are absolutely hysterical:

    If this is true, he made a tactical mistake. I would think Brietbart would know enough to advise him on this but maybe O’Keefe just wanted it to be over.

    Keep ’em coming.

  75. 75.

    QuaintIrene

    s it entirely too much to ask that O’Keefe be required to serve his community service

    Is there any hints of drug or alcohol abuse? He could go on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

  76. 76.

    Mitch Donahue

    Sorry. ACORN no longer in New Orleans. The Republicans have done their work well.

  78. 78.

    scarshapedstar

    Actually, I think part of his sentence ought to be a public service announcement that he DIDN’T DRESS AS A PIMP AND THE VIDEOS WERE DOCTORED.

  79. 79.

    Nancy Irving

    They will probably do their community svc as interns at the Heritage Foundation.

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