Ha, ha.

Conservative blogger and entitled brat James O’Keefe became a darling of right-wing pundits after a series of satirical stunts culminating in the entrapment of ACORN staff across the country during a prank in which he posed as a pimp in some ACORN offices. Although information later came out suggesting O’Keefe’s footage was edited and he wasn’t exactly forthright in the campaign, the damage to the organization that works to swell voter ranks in poor areas was already done. O’Keefe blatantly admitted that wrongdoing in ACORN offices was not a concern of his, but rather the issue of brown people getting to vote:

James O’Keefe, one of the two filmmakers, said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans: ”Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” O’Keefe told The Washington Post. ”No one was holding this organization accountable.”

Now O’Keefe has landed himself and some cohorts in very hot water down in Louisiana, in an attempt to illegally wiretap Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office. An affadavit filed with the US Attorney’s Office describes the circumstances under which the “citizen journalist” was caught trying to bug the Senator’s phones:

O’Keefe allegedly filmed the men handling the main reception-area phone in the senator’s office with a cell-phone camera. The faux-repairmen, who are believed to have been attempting to tap the phones, then asked for access to the telephone closet to work on the main telephone system; asked for identification after being directed there, they said they had left their credentials in their vehicle.

The four men – O’Keefe, the two fake telephone repairman, and another alleged co-conspirator – are now “charged in a criminal complaint with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, announced the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana.” They could face up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

ACORN foe, blogger James O’Keefe, now facing 10 years in jail is a post from: The Inquisitr

“DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX!” was the tagline for the ad allgedly placed by Susan Finkelstein, a 43-year-old self described “buxom” and “blonde” Phillies fan.

In an ad posted on Philly Craigslist at 3:36 pm yesterday, Finkelstein said:

Diehard Phillies fan — gorgeous tall buxom blonde — in desperate need of two World Series tickets. Price negotiable — I’m the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!  S.

Investigators say Finkelstein was willing to be really creative to get Series tickets. A sting was immediately set up, and Bucks County public safety director Fred Harran reports that Finkelstein was willing to perform “sex acts” with two people in exchange for the tickets.

Finkelstein was charged with prostitution and related offenses.

“Desperate” Phillies fan Susan Finkelstein offers sex for tickets is a post from: The Inquisitr

In all the controversy surrounding the undercover pimp and prostitute ACORN videos last week, James O’Keefe disclosed his motives behind making the videos and getting ACORN out of the voter registration business.

Not shockingly, people are kind of okay with it. As I speculated last week, O’Keefe’s chagrin has nothing to do with danger to child prostitutes and improper tax advice. No, no, it’s about people with dark skin- people who traditionally vote against Republicans- are being reached out to in low-income areas. This tyranny will not stand! From the New York Times:

James O’Keefe, one of the two filmmakers, said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans: ”Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” O’Keefe told The Washington Post. ”No one was holding this organization accountable.”

A post over at the Daily Kos pulls together some background on O’Keefe’s investigative work, including allegations of creative editing  and more information on the source for funding O’Keefe’s hidden video. There’s also a link to a post at Democratic Underground, about the actual content of the San Diego portion of the sting. The man depicted in the video was fired for his part in the ACORN scandal. But around O’Keefe’s dubbing and narration, it seems as if he’s trying to help the prostitute, played by Hannah Giles, avoid the imaginary children being “bonded” to the pimp. It is also notable that the worker reported the action to the authorities after Giles and O’Keefe left the office.

The saddest part of all this, though, is that O’Keefe was successful. ACORN has been affected in a massive way because of the scandal- not just in the court of public opinion but also in the form of cut funding. And in turn, the organization will less effectively be able to do what they do, registering voters who may not otherwise have the opportunity to register. O’Keefe and his right-wing financiers have achieved their goal of whitewashing the vote, but has any good come of it? I think if anything much was “exposed” by these shenanigans, it was suspicion and mistrust lurking just under the surface- the knee jerk “I knew it!” response revealing the genuine feelings of many people in this country about equality and politics.

Anti-ACORN blogger reveals real motives: keep black people from voting! is a post from: The Inquisitr

Another day, another “ACORN aids and abets prostitution” scandal.

This time, those crafty kids from the Breitbart blog spinoff BigGovernment, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, are undercover as the pimp and ho duo at a San Diego ACORN office. And this time, the imaginary kid-prostitutes are from Mexico. The chinchilla remains the same. Michelle Malkin has gone into “librul media blackout” mode.

ABC News anchor Charles Gibson “explained” that he hadn’t covered the ACORN scandal because he hadn’t heard of it — an excuse you’d think wouldn’t get you very far in the news business. Then he snarked that “maybe this is just one you leave to [cable TV].”

The sting videos have exposed not one, but two rackets: ACORN’s and the ostrich media’s.

Watch the video below, where an unwitting potential John awkwardly tries to price a “date.”

Acorn blogger sting travels to San Diego, same deal is a post from: The Inquisitr

The right-wing bloggers who snared ACORN in their pimp and ho undercover sting are at it again, this time hitting up ACORN offices in grittier areas of the Bronx and Brooklyn, enticing employees to dole out information in attempt to help the ostensibly law-breaking duo.

James O’Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, claim they fund the investigations themselves. O’Keefe has pulled similar stunts before, such as the one last year when he engaged Planned Parenthood employees to earmark donated funds to abort black babies. O’Keefe’s technique is to expose the “absurdities of the enemy by employing their own rules and language.”

As I said the last time we posted about O’Keefe’s ACORN stunts, while I understand the drive to expose hypocrisy, it burns me that he only seems to target organizations that help the struggling masses. You’d find just as much, perhaps moreso, hypocrisy in groups that work on behalf of folk wealthier than those who patronize Planned Parenthood and ACORN, but two kids in their twenties wearing Party City pimp and ho costumes aren’t going to be able to blag their way in there. And as Chris Rock once famously said in his “Bigger and Blacker” show, “if it’s all white, it’s all right. Right, righties?

O’Keefe is able to keep “exposing” these organizations because they’re vulnerable. They’re locally run by people who have been and possibly continue to be poor or connected to at-risk communities. They’re not staffed by savvy legal types, and not utilized by people who have trust funds or interest-bearing accounts or access to top-tier investment advice. So what have they done? Blocked a few college students access to low-cost birth control and gynecological visits? Heartwarming. Made it so the 99% of genuine, in need people who really do require free or low-cost tax advice won’t be able to get it as easily, if at all? Pardon me if I don’t think this “journalism” achieves any noble ends.

And “funded themselves” my jiggly white posterior. This is about as “guerilla” as Pizza Hut’s Jim Breuer out-takes.

Pimpin’ ain’t easy part 2: ACORN snagged in NYC blogger sting is a post from: The Inquisitr

Fox News is calling for a formal investigation of controversial community organization group ACORN after an undercover investigation of a Baltimore area ACORN office.

ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) works on behalf of low and moderate-income families to promote justice and strengthen communities that are struggling. BigGovernment.com, a companion site to Andrew Breitbart’s blog, targeted the organization (as they explain) irritate and embarrass them, and perhaps prevent the organization from reaching out to lower income communities (which traditionally vote Democratic) in future campaigns.

Brietbart blogger James O’Keefe described the prank campaign, designed to give ACORN a “taste of their own medicine,” in response to videos circulating of the group breaking locks on foreclosed homes:

…whether it’s by banning Lucky Charms cereal because it’s racist against Irish people, calling Planned Parenthood saying you want to donate money for black abortions in the name of Margaret Sanger, or making Sen. Snowe sign an oversized bailout check for a billion dollars to Amtrak, in her own office.

In this instance, a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute scheming to import young prostitutes internationally ask ACORN for tax advice. Trafficking in humans is deplorable, but the invented scenario puts ACORN in a tough spot. No one can argue that it’s in any way defensible to advise pimping teenagers, but impoverished communities operate in real, reality-based fear and hatred of “snitching.” If word got out that the organization reports legally questionable behavior, even those in need legitimately seeking assistance may be put off out of fear of deportation or prosecution of poverty-related issues surrounding housing, immigration, or inability to pay fees or fines. Of course, it doesn’t make protecting harmful illegal behavior in any way okay, it just means that the situation was invented to place a public organization in a very precarious spot, for sport.

While BigGovernment.com admits that the scenario is entrapment, by concocting a situation unlikely to occur in real life, the “investigators” have created much brouhaha about very little actual action. It should also be pointed out that the actions in the video reflect the poor judgment and lack of action on one representative of a large organization. There is no evidence that this is any kind of reflection on ACORN policy- it’s more like a poor reaction on the part of one individual to a surreal and absurd situation.

Below are the videos showing the “pimp” and “prostitute” seeking advice on taxes.

BigGovernment.com implicates ACORN in prostitution subterfuge is a post from: The Inquisitr

The FBI, taking lessons from Dateline’s To Catch A Predator, have been hanging out in some pretty bad neighborhoods on the web lately. While there they are spreading around some hyperlinks that supposedly will lead you to videos of minors having sex. Only thing is they are actually leading to a government server and garbage files. Then they are going out and arresting anyone who happens to have clicked on them.

This is according to a post over at CNET News.com who has been reviewing the legal documents surrounding this new method of entrapment (choice of word is mine). It seems as well that the courts so far don’t seem to have any problem with this new police method that has been used recently in Pennsylvania, New York and Nevada.

The most recent victim; and in my opinion anyone entrapped this way is a victim, was a doctoral student at Temple University by the name of Roderick Vosburgh.

Federal agents knocked on the door around 7 a.m., falsely claiming they wanted to talk to Vosburgh about his car. Once he opened the door, they threw him to the ground outside his house and handcuffed him.

Vosburgh was charged with violating federal law, which criminalizes "attempts" to download child pornography with up to 10 years in prison. Last November, a jury found Vosburgh guilty on that count, and a sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 22, at which point Vosburgh could face three to four years in prison.

As Declan McCullagh points out in his post the implications of this type of FBI hyperlink-enticement technique are sweeping

Using the same logic and legal arguments, federal agents could send unsolicited e-mail messages to millions of Americans advertising illegal narcotics or child pornography–and raid people who click on the links embedded in the spam messages. The bureau could register the "unlawfulimages.com" domain name and prosecute intentional visitors. And so on.

I’m the first person who would be willing to take any pedophile out back and beat the ever living snot out of them and then leave them for the mother’s of the children they have abuse to finish off; but this newest technique smacks of outright entrapment. Anyone with even a modicum of computer experience will tell you how easy it is to manipulate hyper-links – hell spammers have been doing it for years. The number of innocent people who are snagged everyday by these types of links is a testament to how bad of an idea this is.

Talk about the ultimate Rickrolling – only this could land you in jail for years.

Clicking that link could land you in jail is a post from: The Inquisitr