The Lunacy and Criminality of the Unhinged Fringe Rightwingnuts
Remember that guy who posed as a pimp to bust ACORN? Well, now the dude is engaging in a bit of Watergate criminality of his own. This nutjob is taking the law into his own hands (and actually violating the law) by engaging in a surreptitious effort to wiretap Senator Mary Landrieu's phones. He and his cohorts in crime, thinking that they are engaging in some kind of college prank, are falsifying their identity, posing as telephone repairmen, all with the intent to break into and wiretap the phone lines in US Senator Mary Landrieu's offices.
I blame the damn Patriot Act and its legitimization of warrantless wiretapping for encouraging these punks to break the law. After all, if you break the law in service of some self-defined higher political good -- even if it is ideologically motivated and driven by a clear partisan agenda -- then not only will all be forgiven, it will actually be rewarded with fame and money. Hell, if the US Government can torture people to extract information, what's the big deal in wiretapping someone's phone to extract information. Where are the civil libertarians in all this.
And what's the punk's reaction? Apparently it's a Mel Gibson Braveheart moment (or maybe a Joe Wilson moment), only this time it's not "FREEEEEEDOM" or "YOU LIE" that is the clarion call at the moment of being oppressed by the state, but "TRUUUUUUUUTH"!!! The guy's a deluded publicity hound who will apparently join the parents of the Balloon Boy in hare-brained schemes to garner some attention. I'd like to know who is funding this crackpot's operation.
And you know something else? The damage to this guy's credibility will serve, in a way, to vindicate the claims of ACORN that this guy's methods are not only unfair, but also criminal.
If the rightwing wants to embrace this kid, go for it. He's yours anyway. Thank God for that.
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4 comments:
I was wondering when you were going to say something about that nitwit.
Not even the most suicidal of anons are that stupid.
As to what anonymous has thought of that kid, his cohorts and people like them : http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/ACORN#James_O.27Keefe_and_Hannah_Giles
I'd love to see the book thrown at that jackass. What was he trying to prove? Aside from that there are many better and quasi-legal methods to watch someone's communication and/or cause them pain.
Look at the Palin e-mail fiasco, no one went to jail over that. There was plenty of concern over getting jailed (I was watching it go down in real time) but no one, was charged after all the noise in the media ended.
"The damage to this guy's credibility will serve, in a way, to vindicate the claims of ACORN that this guy's methods are not only unfair, but also criminal."
Of course it does nothing to vindicate ACORN against the facts his "unfair & criminal" methods revealed about their despicable employees. This guy certainly went over the line by tapping the phone line of a US Senator, and he should pay the legal penalty for doing so... but I applaud his efforts that resulted in ACORN being stripped of all federal funding and disassociated with the 2010 census.
Eric - I think the actions of this extremely small fraction of ACORN that he exposed are pretty despicable, too. It's not that what he exposed about this small fraction of ACORN folk isn't worthwhile, isn't good, or isn't true; I'm simply noting that his current actions, which make him out to be an unhinged crackpot who thinks nothing of breaking the law in pursuit of an ideological cause, make it possible for calling his previous behavior into question. And it also makes those who consider him to be a "darling" of the conservative movement also seem to be hitching their wagons to fringe, lawbreaking, wacko nuts. In short, his current behavior makes his past behavior suspect. Let me say it this way: the fact that you link all of ACORN and its work to the behavior of a few corrupt folk would be exactly the same as my linking the behavior of this wacko, lawbreaking dude with the entire conservative establishment who don't like Mary Landrieu. See how that works? You're glad he brought down a whole organization like ACORN without any consideration of the good that ACORN has done. And I can be glad that he will tarnish the entire conservative establishment, and especially the conservative sources who funded his shenanigans, without regard for any of the good this movement does.
"You're glad he brought down a whole organization like ACORN without any consideration of the good that ACORN has done. And I can be glad that he will tarnish the entire conservative establishment, and especially the conservative sources who funded his shenanigans, without regard for any of the good this movement does."
Fair enough. If we keep up this ratio of taking down one rabid and overzealous consevative for every organization of 400,000 rabid and overzealous liberals, I am fine with the P.R. fallout. ;-)
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