Watergate redux: Right-wing ratfuckers busted for trying to bug Landrieu

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Evidently, James O'Keefe, the right-wing "activist" who posed as a pimp to bust ACORN last year (but with doctored tapes), is not just a douchebag but a criminal douchebag.

O'Keefe and three other ratfuckers like him were arrested yesterday in conjunction with what The Times-Picayune calls "a plot to tamper with phones in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans."

That's right, this jackass tried to bug Landrieu's phones.

There's been a ton of reaction in the blogosphere -- check out Memeorandum -- but here are a few highlights:

-- Digby: "[I]t's interesting that the ratfuckers are still out there doing their thing and that the media still falls for it every time.

-- Libby Spencer: "And what will the 31 House Republicans who sponsored a resolution honoring O'Keefe have to say now, I wonder? Probably nothing unless the "liberal media" decide to ask them. Don't hold your breath."

-- Larisa Alexandrovna: "There is a pattern in far right politics that I have yet to see on the left, despite various levels of extremism on both sides. The right appears to have a pattern of Cold War type tactics when it comes to domestic politics, illegal surveillance of political opponents being one of the key features."

See also Roy Edroso.

What's interesting is how conservatives are covering this. Take Fox News, for example, which has long been one of O'Keefe's major boosters. I'm not sure it was outwardly "devastated," as Think Progress put it, but its initial report included the "context" excuse: It's a "very weird story," but the "context," namely, that they might have been looking for ACORN-related evidence, could excuse them.

Thankfully, other conservatives are being less combative. Even Michelle Malkin was unusually resigned to the facts of the case, though she got her digs in nonetheless, suggesting that these four ratfuckers were acting a lot like Democrats. Huh? Whatever. It's just the sort of partisan bullshit you expect from her. Meanwhile, the far, far more sensible Ed Morrissey called O'Keefe "an idiot."

That's putting it nicely.