http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/01/27/2187074.aspx

” A law enforcement official says the four men arrested for attempting to tamper with the phones in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls.
Instead, the official says, the men, led by conservative videomaker James O’Keefe, wanted to see how her local office staff would respond if the phones were inoperative. They were apparently motivated, the official says, by criticism that when Sen. Landrieu became a big player in the health care debate, people in Louisiana were having a hard time getting through on the phones to register their views. “

Elwood – many people thought that the reasoning was absurd. The subtext was that law enforcement desperately wanted to compel Wolf to hand over his video and testify as to people’s identities, but California’s shield law precluded them from doing so in state court; the cop car was widely seen as a pretext for dragging him into federal court, where there is no shield law.

That said, it also raised questions about who is and isn’t a journalist; Wolf was clearly sympathetic to, if not actually one of, the protestors he was videotaping for his own “vlog.” There’s a good rundown on the whole thing here.

Right wing criminal?

To my knowledge, O’Keefe has not been convicted of anything.

Which do you suppose is the bigger criminal conspiracy? O’Keefe and his mini-band of merry pranksters or ACORN?

Now that’s just ridiculous.

It’s hard to believe our government could be that desperate to get something on someone.

Did they also charge him with spitting on the sidewalk?