High Crimes and Miscreants

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The big crime story out of New Orleans just gets curiouser and curiouser. Four young men, described by various news sources as everything from pranksters to domestic terrorists, were arrested yesterday for trying to bug the telephone system of Senator Mary Landrieu in her New Orleans office. It isn't a big story when seen in the context of Haiti, the State of the Union address, wars in the Middle East, and such, but there was a time back in the early 1970's when Watergate was also a nondescript little piece of journalism.

This story is already showing signs of being more that just some sloppy attempt at journalism by a group of goofy kids. First of all, none of the four are kids - three are twenty-four, and the other is twenty-five. All are old enough, and all are bright enough, to know that what they were attempting to do was illegal and could result in serious consequences. Indeed, all four are college graduates, and two have backgrounds in journalism. My guess is that somewhere in their education these two, James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, encountered a course on ethics in journalism.

Stan Dai, the fellow who was found outside of the Hale Boggs Federal Building monitoring listening equipment in a car, has a background in intelligence and fancies himself to be some sort of spook-in-training.

Robert Flanagan, the son of Louisiana U.S. Attorney (acting) William Flanagan, was a Congressional intern last year of Rep. Mary Fallin (R-OK). Interestingly, Ms. Fallin was one of thirty-one members of Congress who voted in favor of a House Resolution honoring the ringleader of this crime, James O'Keefe, for his race-baiting film that tried to be an expose on the community action organization, ACORN. O'Keefe is currently being sued in Pennsylvania over that cheesy piece of journalism.

Also interesting, to me at least, is the fact that my own Congressman, Trent Franks and Beans (mostly beans), was himself one of the thirty-one Republicans who rushed to honor James O'Keefe with a House Resolution. Mr. Franks was way to busy to return or acknowledge my telephone call on health care, but give him an opportunity to support a racist bit of film tripe, and he's right there!

I think the story of this attempted bugging of a United States Senator's telephone inside of a Federal building has legs, and I think that it's soon going to crawl, and then walk, and then dance. When these young men get past their fifteen seconds of fame and begin to focus on ten years in prison, they will start singing like canaries on steroids!