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James O’Keefe Over the Line – Again!?!

jstuart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:49:42 +0000

New Orleans I continue to be fascinated that James O’Keefe has any credibility with anyone anywhere in the world. The list is endless from his ACORN fake costuming and scurrilous video editing to his crazed phone tapping of Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans and on to one preposterous self-aggrandizing ego trip after another including a puff piece in the New York Times magazine. A piece popped up on my Google Alerts though that surprised me so much, I wondered if it was a hoax, given how bizarre it is even for O’Keefe. The piece ran in Op Ed News by a Gustav Wynn. It has been previously reported by O’Keefe’s home town paper in New Jersey and by Keith Olbermann, so some serious credibility has been attached to the piece.

At the least, suffice it to say, this dude is still totally out of control!

Sex, Drugs and Videotape: James O’Keefe Implicated in Barn Rape Plot

By: Gustavo Wynn

As reported by Keith Olbermann, Raw Story and NorthJersey.com, disturbing charges were leveled against James O’Keefe, the undercover “pimp” made famous in videos that informed a Congressional vote to defund ACORN (later ruled unconstitutional).

A conservative blogger from Tampa has reportedly shared details indicating she believes she became incapacitated and had her underwear stolen while she was in O’Keefe’s company.

Her October 2nd visit concerned a proposal to be in one of O’Keefe’s anti-Occupy Wall Street videos, says accuser Nadia Naffe – O’Keefe picked her up at the Newark train station and stopped off at a liquor store before driving her to his parents house where negotiations got contentious and O’Keefe became verbally abusive.

Naffe claims she began to have trouble controlling her muscles and threatened to call the police when she felt O’Keefe was trying to coerce her to stay. As she testified in a criminal complaint, O’Keefe demonstrated an “intent to persuade me to spend the night in the barn”. O’Keefe and a pal instead drove her to Penn Station in NYC, Naffe reported, adding she lost consciousness during the ride.

After traveling on to Boston where she attends grad school at Harvard, Naffe alleged her bag had been rifled through, with panties and other items taken. She also reports O’Keefe made an unsolicited offer of money, but began harassing her shortly after she refused the cash, through direct messages and third parties.

On Nov. 17, O’Keefe posted a video smearing “tramp” Naffe as “filthy” and “dirty”, but since removed the video. That same day, Politico reported Naffe was one of several O’Keefe collaborators “in-fighting”, noting accounts she had been treated “disrespectfully”.

O’Keefe’s Project Veritas settled one complaint with a former associate in exchange for silence while threatening other ex-associates with legal action for breaching confidentiality agreements.

Naffe responded on Nov. 21 with a criminal complaint – O’Keefe was hauled into a probable cause hearing in a county court on December 21. O’Keefe did not speak during or after the hearing, and was relieved as the case was dismissed on an apparent jurisdictional technicality. But Judge Alan Karch did pro-actively advise Naffe she could pursue civil damages.

O’Keefe is currently being sued for deceptively editing a video that led to the firing of an ACORN employee in San Diego and he is also on federal probation after a misdemeanor conviction for entering a US Senator’s office under false pretenses in Louisiana. Despite this, many, including this reporter, believe O’Keefe has received some eye-popping special privileges during his previous run-ins with the law.

O’Keefe’s generous plea deal in Louisiana knocked felony charges down to fines and misdemeanors without jail time. His co-defendant in that case, Robert Flanagan, is the son of a U.S. Attorney in Shreveport.

But even more curiously, O’Keefe was bestowed criminal immunity for violating the privacy rights of San Diego sting subject Juan Carlos Vera by then Attorney General of California Jerry Brown in exchange for providing Brown’s office the full, unedited tapes of the encounter. After viewing the tapes, Brown also advised the victim to pursue a civil lawsuit against O’Keefe — which he did.

That lawsuit has been dragging on since our July 2010 report, but has notably become a cause taken up by heavyweight Republican lawyers in DC who are funded in part by Richard Mellon Scaife and the Koch brothers’ billionaire donor network.

O’Keefe’s defense is being provided “pro bono” by Center for Individual Rights, a legal institute who is also currently challenging parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1964. CIR is co-directed by Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College, a charter sponsor of the Sean Hannity radio show.

In March 2011, Christopher Hajec, one of CIR’s lawyers, told TPM that his organization is representing O’Keefe for free because O’Keefe’s case stood out as a First Amendment issue. Eric Gressler and Michael Madigan of the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP also are helping with O’Keefe’s defense, even though their legal fees typically far exceed the $75,000 sought in the suit.

It’s strange that CIR and the battery of legal minds being bankrolled by wealthy Republican donors are investing so much in this case while ignoring the numerous First Amendment cases brought against undercover videographers who document abuse and health hazards in factory farms. Lawmakers in Iowa, Minnesota, Florida and New York have tried to criminalize undercover videotaping in farms, including by journalists.

Unlike O’Keefe and his defense team, Florida state senator Jim Norman says undercover sting videos are “unfair outside assaults” on intellectual and private property rights, incredibly, adding it is “almost like terrorism, the way they go in”. CIR lawyers seem way out of place asserting First Amendment rights in the O’Keefe case, while these important public health and animal cruelty cases languish.

This leads many to feel that O’Keefe is a ‘golden boy’, protected by wealthy conservative backers. Just as O’Keefe first came into the spotlight with the release of his ACORN “pimp” videos, the Village Voice exposed his relationship with super-rich sugar daddy Peter Thiel, contrary to O’Keefe’s claims of independence. Today, his Project Veritas discloses on tax forms that they are still in search of “major donors” to support their work.

In May 2011, we reported federal Judge Dembin rejected James O’Keefe’s assertion that his freedom of speech as an ‘undercover’ news gatherer trumps the privacy rights of California residents and the prohibition on surreptitious recordings. Though this defense seemed outrageous, it has already succeeded in wasting time and dragging out the case.

In October 2011, we reported that Judge Dembin compelled Andrew Breitbart to disclose all communications between he and O’Keefe as well as undercover ‘ho’ Hannah Giles. About the same time, SEC filings showed Breitbart had just received $10 million in funding from two undisclosed donors.

It is not clear what Nadia Naffe’s next step will be – O’Keefe did settle one earlier ACORN lawsuit out of court, but nothing he was accused of in the past approached anything like the date-rape scenario Naffe’s court filings suggest.

It’s also not clear whether O’Keefe obtained required permission from his parole officer to travel to Manhattan to transport the impaired blogger as described in the account.

If Naffe presses charges implying O’Keefe was involved in drugging her and weakening her senses in order to detain her, it could become an extremely serious matter for a federal parolee.

While it’s also possible some or all of Naffe’s story is fabricated or mistaken, O’Keefe hasn’t officially denied it yet. The site BigGovernment where both parties are listed contributors has whitewashed the sordid tale completely as if it’s not really happening.

Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Admits Boo-boo on “Days of Rage”

dine — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:03:28 +0000

Wall Street Protest

New Orleans I admit that I check the Google alerts everyday to see how the alternative universe is doing where this other “wade rathke” lives, who is often unrecognizable to me. The most recent episode in his “life,” was some kind of “days of rage” planned for Wall Street, which was quite the buzz on Glenn Beck’s “news” website, Blaze.com. On the right they took all of this fantasy so seriously that I actually had to turndown interview requests from various Fox News outlets wanting to know more details on what I was supposedly planning for this unknown event. Most often I was linked to Stephen Lerner, my colleague from the SEIU years, who was attracting some of the right wing love out there.
I guess the “days” happened this last weekend with not 20,000 but perhaps 1000 folks in some part in New York City, none of which is surprising. In NYC more than a 1000 folks would gather for almost anything. The real shock was to read Andrew Brietbart’s Big Government report where they conceded that all of the reports of Lerner and “Rathke’s” wild and revolutionary doings here were in fact “unfounded,” and to add a cherry on top, they even zinged Beck and Blaze for the fabulous fiction.

#OccupyWallSt: Just a Saturday Stroll Through the Park…
by LaborUnionReport
It was supposed to be this:

On the 17th of September, we want to see 20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.
Instead, as they say about the best laid plans, it was something entirely different. It was, frankly, a stroll through a park—Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan, to be exact.
A Non-Union Non-Event

Over the summer, on the heels of Arab Spring, an anti-capitalist group called adbusters established a campaign to occupy Wall Street, beginning on September 17th. Whether coincidental or not, September 17th also happened to be Constitution Day. While there had been some unfounded unfounded speculation a few weeks ago that the SEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke were behind the OccupyWallSt movement, there were never any signs that the Marxist-Anarchist protesters had any formal union backing—nor has there been anything posted on union websites about the occupation of Wall St.
This morning, protestors did, however, call for “revolution”.

Big Government then linked back to the Blaze below.
The alternative universe of the right is a scary, scary place though. The original Blaze article may not have gone viral, but it did get traction. More than 6000 righters had “liked” it and moved it to their Facebook walls. The story had been tweeted 513 times and there were 739 comments most of which would have stripped paint off of cars.

And for all of the good work that Color of Change and others had done to get advertisers to boycott Beck during his Fox News time with Rupert Murdoch’s empire, it was disconcerting to see ads on the Blaze story from Orvis, where I’ve bought more than one fly rod and reel, and Green Mountain coffee promoting fair trade coffee, which will leave me head scratching a good part of the day. What’s up with these guys?
US Who Is Behind the ‘US Day of Rage’ to ‘Occupy’ Wall Street this September 17th?

What, exactly, is a “US Day of Rage?” Well, on September 17th we may find out for certain, but until then, The Blaze is revealing what information does exist about this very nefarious-sounding campaign.

A US Day of Rage is the title given to a day of ostensibly “non-violent” civil disobedience orchestrated by a group of radicals — that reportedly include SEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke (who, coincidentally, formerly served as president of SEIU’s local New Orleans branch) — targeting Wall Street and U.S. capitalism. It’s worth noting that the title of the movement — if its intentions are indeed non-violent in nature — appears to contradict itself slightly.

But what is perhaps even more interesting than its title is who is allegedly behind the movement.

You may recall that back in March The Blaze exposed Lerner for stating his aspirations to destroy JP Morgan Chase and cause the collapse of the entire stock market.
Now, the US Day of Rage protests, staged by a collective of activist groups allegedly in conjunction with Lerner and Rathke, are planning the actual “occupation” of Wall Street September 17, complete with a tent city set smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district. Similar protests are purportedly set to take place across the nation — and even world — at the same time. Some Day of Rage organizers are even calling on activists to squat in Manhattan’s financial district for months at a time.
The Blaze’s report on Lerner, who serves on SEIU’s International Executive Board, caught the union agitator stating:

So, a bunch of us around the country are thinking about who would be a really good company to hate? We decided that would be JP Morgan Chase. …. And so we’re going to roll out over the next couple of months what will hopefully be an exciting campaign about JP Morgan Chase that is really about challenge the power of Wall Street. And so what we’re looking at is in the first week of May, we get enough people together – we’re starting now – to really have a week of action in New York with the goal of … I don’t want to go into any details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room, but the goal would be that we would roll out in New York the first week in May.

Then, like clockwork, some 400 activists brought Lerner’s dream to fruition and converged on JP Morgan Chase’s annual shareholders’ meeting in May — this time in Columbus, Ohio rather than New York. The group that staged this particular protest, the National People’s Action, reportedly confirmed it was there as part of its “Showdown in America” campaign against the big banks. Since the location of JP Morgan Chase’s meeting was surrounded by a moat, the activists, who likened themselves to Robin Hood, even brought a collapsible bridge to “storm the castle.”

It is also perhaps worth noting that in March, The Blaze reported Rathke and Lerner called for “days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase.” Rathke mentioned some of Lerner’s key assertions:

While labeling Lerner an ex-SEIU official who was signaling that unions and community organizations were “dead,” also reported hook-line-and-sinker that in May, according to Lerner, there would be days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase signally the beginning of the anti-banking jihad.

So it might add up now that Klein Online reported Rathke’s efforts are being organized by Lerner, who, as part of his planned protests, called for “a week of civil disobedience, direct action all over the city:”

The planned Sept. 17 day of rage seems to be the culmination of Rathke’s efforts.
Those efforts are being organized by Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member who reportedly visited the Obama White House at least four times.

The aim, according to Lerner, is to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement.”

“How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich?” Lerner asked rhetorically in March.
So, it appears, Columbus could have been one of the ten U.S. cities en route to New York for the “big day.”

Labor Studies Under Video Attack

dine — Thu, 12 May 2011 13:07:10 +0000

New Orleans University based, state funded labor studies programs, frequently forced to balance curricula, research, and training between management and union perspectives, would not necessarily come up on the top 10 institutional supports for progressive movements or even the top 100, but it would be somewhere on the list, all of which means that these programs have become regular battlegrounds for the left and right, Democrats and Republicans in the ideological wars conducted at the state level, which are frequently called “budgets.” Since these wars of the budget knife sometimes get into the news these days, it was simply a matter of time before the scam stingers of Fox News and Brietbart’s BigGovernment.com got into the act, and recently they did so with the standard sloppily edited hack job on a professor , Judy Ancel, and an adjunct with tight labor ties, Don Giljum, at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC).

This story has a somewhat happy ending. After a couple of weeks of leaving these folks hanging on the ledge, the Chancellor and Provost of UMKC, issued a statement this week having reviewed the videos and scoring them as having been cobbled together with creative editing. I might say, who is surprised to find that once again (yawn and sigh!), Brietbart and his crew manufactured seemingly something out of totally nothing.

In looking at lessons various listservs have commented that standing up was important (yes), bringing the union in quickly counted (good idea!), and so forth. I hate to be cynical, but I really wonder if we don’t have a happier ending to this tale simply because it was a tree that only fell in the www.biggovernment.com forest rather than going viral on Fox and throughout the mainstream press? In itself that would be good news if (finally!), the rest of the media world is taking everything Brietbart does with a mountain of salt and a jaundiced eye, but that is hardly secure protection for the future. The odds of keeping all of these video scams pressed down on the local level where good sense and good organizing can eventually prevail still seems frightfully small to me.

In short all we may have really been reminded is that once again we only lose, when we stop fighting, and that luck is no small part of every victory no matter how big or how small. Here the targets may have been too small to really interest the rest of the big media world, the offenses too trivial even in the worst case, and the source too suspect, so pushing back fast and hard worked well. The next time I still have the same feeling that we are still scratching our ass and unprepared.

As for labor studies programs with or without video scams, the relentless progress of the state budget wars are going to continue to count coup on these programs, as labor unions increasingly shrink, unable to protect their own members increasingly, and therefore leaving their allies equally adrift.

Sherrod: Exposing the Lemmings on the Cliff

jstuart — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:12:30 +0000

New Orleans The rush to judgment, public lynching of Shirley Sherrod speaks less to me about the stark avoidance of race, though absolutely that retreat is correctly the headline, than what it further exposes about the cowardice of conviction in the mindless process of media call-and-response where seeking face time and sound bites seems to be the pursuit rather than stranding for anything whatsoever. This sidebar is becoming the overarching theme.

I take no comfort in commentators mentioning that this is similar to the public implosion of ACORN in the video gotcha, look-at-me tactics of Andrew Breitbart and his camera thugs. Maureen Dowd is right in wondering if the White House is the “new” China where they don’t have Google access there to be able to first do the simplest form of new diligence and even check on who Shirley Sherrod might be before pushing her in front of the bus. Van Jones is right in trying to get some space and understanding for the way he was hounded out of the White House as well.

Our “mouths” have become the new bloody shirt of politics in the cultural and ideological wars replacing whether or not we served in Vietnam or ever inhaled, but for some reason there is no support for connecting our minds to our mouths and being able to be heard.

A tweet passed by quickly noting that Newt Gingrich and Howard Dean on a panel in Vegas agreed that “the White House is afraid of Fox News.” I think it’s worse than that. I think the White House is afraid to stand for its convictions. And, even worse than that, I think there is a full scale retreat from principled positions with even a slightly progressive slant.

An HBO documentary film maker approached me for help recently about what I refer to as his “ACORN Google Search” film. In the ACORN death watch his notion was “what was ACORN?” when a Google search revealed very little but what one of our ACORN Canada leaders called the “wall of hate” on one side and the liberals and left deserted the organization on the other side in the neo-McCarthy moment that had them running with their tails between their legs pretending they had never known, funded, or depended on the organization. He may not have a film there, but he certainly had a point.

I thought in the Age of Obama we might have gotten past that. Here was a guy who was simply too young for Vietnam and who didn’t pretend to have never inhaled. He wrote books that pretty much put a lot of it out there including his half-hug as a community organizer, yet he transcended all of what many might call “baggage” and became President. Oh, and he was black for godsakes! Yet, rather than encouraging or at least tolerating diversity, they have become fearful that any dissonance is off-message, disloyal, and helping the Republicans in this politically charged and polarized moment.

The right is speaking their mind, and frankly it’s scary. The left needs to at least saddle up with some courage to go with their convictions rather than cowering in fear that people will really hear their message clearly. With a little conviction they might be surprised at how much support they have in America, but until then we seem destined to even see great organizations like the NAACP join the lemmings in their rush to the sea.

O’Keefe Never Dressed as Pimp, Breitbart Cover-up

jstuart — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:25:30 +0000

Dallas James O’Keefe never dressed in his racist, caricature pimp suit in an ACORN or ACORN Housing office. This has been an under-the-radar dispute for more than six months, largely because it fades in importance compared to the errors a small number of workers were trapped into making. But, with the new attention on O’Keefe and his paymaster, Andrew Breitbart, the way in which both of them have misled the public while also falsely impersonating journalists, it is a piece of the sad tale that won’t go away, but neither will either of them come clean about yet. The clownish costume was probably their idea of promo for the rollout of the sting videos. Time to fess up, folks.

Media Matters, which has been a truth squad on many of these vicious attacks handles it best in a column by Eric Boehlert.

Breitbart tries, and fails, to explain away the ACORN pimp myth

February 17, 2010 11:16 am ET by Eric Boehlert

As I note in my column this week, both Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe (with some help from Fox News, of course) did their best last year to mislead the public and the press into believing that as part of his ACORN sting, O’Keefe wore his outlandish pimp costume right into the offices, and that clueless ACORN workers didn’t blink an eye.

But it’s not true. Based on all available evidence, O’Keefe never wore his pimp costume inside ACORN offices. (Raise your hand if you got duped.)

Turns out last night Breitbart, doing lots of yellling and name-calling (surprise!), appeared on a conservative radio show with blogger Brad Friedman who pressed him on the myth of the ACORN pimp. At first, Breirtbart denied any wrong doing:

“I didn’t lie about James O’Keefe. When did I lie about James O’Keefe? “

When Friedman then read out loud from an erroneous Washington Times column by Breitbart in which he claimed O’Keefe was “dressed as a pimp” while receiving advice from ACORN workers, the furious (and confused) spin began.

Go here to listen. (The fun begins at the 36 minute mark.)

UPDATED: Breitbart insisted last night he had nothing to correct in his Times column, even though he falsely reported O’Keefe was “dressed as a pimp” while receiving ACORN advice.

O’Keefe Pro and Con

jstuart — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:41:45 +0000

New Orleans What’s a guy to do? Can’t make people happy for sure! My conservative comrades in the blogosphere are dividing sharply on the positions I have taken on James O’Keefe III and he and his rightwing dunderkind and their telephone bungle up at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office. I have pretty much come down on the side that argues the guy is a self-aggrandizing hustler (not a pimp) who believes that all means justify any ends that put him in the center of the camera and story. I’ve also sided with several of the august Senators, including Republicans from Nebraska and elsewhere in the heartland who have said his credibility is shot and maybe, heaven forbid, we should even take a look at what he had the chippie did on the ACORN sting.

O’Keefe’s employer, Andrew Brietbart and www.biggoverment.com had one of their fair haired boys, Kyle Olson, write a piece whose headline was “Sorry Wade, James O’Keefe’s Actions Don’t Excuse ACORN.” Olson probably feels he has the right to do a “Wade” shout out, because he and I are old comrades. He had been on Glenn Beck helping promote my book, Citizen Wealth, claiming he had an exclusive “interview” with me at the Octavia Book Store book signing. Dressed in short pants, he and a buddy claimed that they were health care bloggers from Michigan, and wanted to get some video from me for their blog about health care reform. The highlights of the “interview,” which consisted of Fox viewers watching me talk while signing Citizen Wealth last summer were there question about whether SEIU was working for healthcare reform and my “admission” that yes, by gum, they were (no, duh?!?) and them asking about ACORN and Health Care for America Now (HCAN), where I said I didn’t work for ACORN and asked Marie Hurt, the Louisiana director their question, and she answered in the background. Olson and O’Keefe come from the same “school” of “journalism,” Olson is just better looking. The rest of his piece was a rehash of whatever few remaining charges are still outstanding against ACORN back to the 2008 election and the highly documented partisan charges by the Republicans against the organization at that time.

On the other hand I got an email yesterday from Michael Gaynor, a conservative blogger often all over ACORN as the devil incarnate, who took me to task for being too soft on O’Keefe. Gaynor is a lawyer, so he may take these lawbreaking high jinks more seriously as a member of the bar, but he thought my description of O’Keefe’s lame quasi-apology as “weak tea” was WAY TOO KIND. A call from the Michael Volpe, who writes the Provocateur blog, wondered why I even cared about O’Keefe, and wondered if I was losing my focus. I was able to reassure him that I was mainly exercised over bad, pretend “organizing” which was nothing more than a mask for self-promotion no matter the costs and consequences.

I’m not even mentioning the folks who have written about O’Keefe and his bungling buddies who are not conservatives. Whoa! Some of the suggestions about what is likely for this callow youth in our nation’s prisons were way too gross for me. I’m sure that if O’Keefe ends up in the calaboose that he’ll figure out how to implant a camera somewhere and make prison reform his very personal issue sometime in the future. We’ll welcome his help on that often overlooked issue where most firsthand reports are not filmed and not heard.

Clown Defense for Watergate Junior

jstuart — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:48:11 +0000

New Orleans Everyone else on the right, including his old partner-in-crime from the ACORN stings has thrown him under the bus, except Andrew Brietbart, James O’Keefe’s employer and prime contractor. I was wrong about Briethart’s dancing, since he seems to be more committed to screaming it seems.

The twist from both Briethart and some of the teabuggers, which was one funny handle I read, seems to have been that this was so obviously a satire and in Briethart’s words a “clown-nose-on” spectacle that it should be seen as a prank. Wow!

When even Glenn Beck knows that there are lines you have to draw and Hannah Giles is claiming they need to be “accountable,” this is way out there. Beck’s zinger was essentially, hey, this is a Senator. Good point!

Furthermore the “clown nose” defense is absurd. Just as any CWA member in good standing who ever repaired a phone would have been embarrassed, so would any pimp who had ever worked on the streets and then observed the ridiculous appearance of O’Keefe and his racist get up as he and Hannah tried to fast talk and trick unsuspecting, way too helpful, low level staffers and receptionists that they encountered in some ACORN offices. The very fact that it was soooo obvious in any picture of O’Keefe that he could NOT have been a pimp in this world or any other is part of what made the videos so powerful.

Ironically, Briethart seems to be taking the first false step with his charges that ACORN did when confronted by the video. He’s focusing on the weeds, rather than realizing the “do right” rule has been broken. ACORN was justly upset about the gotcha tactics and other issues, including the editing and misstatements by O’Keefe and Giles, but didn’t realize immediately that that was secondary to how it looked and how it all seemed to the regular viewer. Briethart seems to be making the same mistake here of trying to hide behind the question of whether or not the federal offense was wiretapping and phone bugging or phone dismantling.

He should realize while he’s screaming that if Glenn Beck knows it’s over the line, then brother, it is way, way over the line!

Big Government Guy Dances Poorly

jstuart — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:55:40 +0000

Shreveport I tried to make my way through an understanding of the President’s new plan for a path to victory, but though I like to think that I’m as smart as the average bear, I couldn’t find it in my first reading, though it seems a lot of things are increasingly on the “dead” list including health care, comprehensive immigration reform, labor law reform, cap-and-trade, and probably your favorite issue as well. Hey, just as we thought maybe at the least we might get some financial reform, he puts the shoulder rub on Tim Geithner, who is the Secretary of the Treasury giveaway and a huge weight around the President’s neck. Guy wanted someone to thank him for their not being a “depression,” while not realizing that tens of millions of people think there is a depression and find it all just a matter of degree without a real difference.

If all of that didn’t confuse me enough, I found something almost identical in reading the Washington Independent which was trying to parse whether or not James O’Keefe, the inept ACORN scammer and lowlife Senator Landrieu wire tapper, was working for Andrew Breitbart and his biggovernment.com websites, but was “not” working for them. Huh? Which is only to say that he was a direct subcontractor (we’ll have to see how “independent”) and that Breitbart doesn’t want the bungling on his shoes, despite the fact that he has relished the indirect smear tactic and O’Keefe repeatedly. It’s all too rich…when what goes around, comes around, and they still pretend to not get it.

Breitbart will throw O’Keefe under the bus. Bank on that. But, the tire tracks are all over him too and no amount of dancing will make that go away. The kid gloves are on for sure, but no amount of ducking and weaving will keep these punches from falling.

James O’Keefe: Not Working for Big Government, But on the Payroll

By David Weigel 1/27/10 10:31 AM

Justin Elliot catches Andrew Breitbart giving a factual-but-tortured explanation of how Big Government was not responsible for James O’Keefe’s bungled phone plot against Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). The interviewer is Hugh Hewitt — for what it’s worth, a veteran of the Nixon administration who once ran the 37th president’s official library.

AB: So when [O'Keefe] puts a story out there, it’s on the Brietbart sites, the Big sites, that he can tell people what transpired. So…

HH: Do you pay him for that?

AB: Yes.

HH: And are you free to tell me how much you pay him?

AB: I’ll… perhaps at another date, but he’s paid a fair salary.

HH: Is he… so he is an employee?

AB: I’m not sure that’s technically the thing, but yes, he’s paid for his life rights. And he’s, you know, he’s still… we reserve the right to say yes or no to any of the stories that he puts up on our site as we do to any other contributor who comes to the site.

HH: Will it be a mischaracterization to say he was working for you when he went about this?

AB: Well, I mean, no. He was not involved in anything that was related to Big Government, or Breitbart.com.

HH: And I think that’s the key thing. Lots of people work for lots of corporations, and do dumb and sometimes illegal things that are not within the scope of their employment. And this was not within the scope of his employment.

AB: Yes, absolutely. That is absolutely the case.

From the outset, Breitbart and Big Government editor-in-chief Mike Flynn have said that O’Keefe was acting on his own, and that they had no knowledge whatsoever of what he was planning in New Orleans. No one has proven them wrong. But Big Government, like many conservative news sites, has run repeated stories linking unions to ACORN based on minor financial ties — or less.

A Jan. 6 story at Big Government accused ACORN and “big labor” of being in cahoots because “ACORN files labor organization financial reports for SEIU 880 and SEIU 100 with the U.S. Department of Labor.” A Jan. 5 story made the case against National Labor Relations Board nominee Craig Becker because he was endorsed by ACORN founder Wade Rathke. A December 2009 story about Health Care for America Now accused the organization of being a front group for ACORN because ACORN members were listed as state contacts. “In short,” argued reporter Larry O’Connor, “HCAN is ACORN.” It’s hard to imagine that if this story was flipped — if someone on the ACORN payroll was busted spying on a senator — Big Government would give ACORN a free pass.

I give Breitbart and Flynn the benefit of the doubt on this story. But if the standards and scrutiny that Big Government applies to left-wing groups are flipped back on the Website, it’s going to be tough to argue that it’s not at all connected to O’Keefe’s potential crime. Again, I’m not stating an equivalence between this situation and the ACORN scandals. I’m just saying that if O’Keefe was paid by Big Government, this story isn’t going away.