So if ACORN itself is “guilty” for something or other, based on what some of their employees did, what does that make rightwing faux “journalist” and Matt Drudge poodle Andrew Breitbart, who has now admitted that accused felon James O’Keefe worked for him?
In a rather embarrassing “interview” (really a staged dog and pony show, ostensibly meant to try and help Breitbart out of his apparent jam of being found to have been ‘palling around with federal felons’) conducted by rightwing propagandist Hugh Hewitt yesterday on the public’s airwaves following O’Keefe’s arrest in an alleged scheme to tamper with the phones of a U.S. Senator, Breitbart admitted that he “paid a fair salary” to the alleged felon.
After Hewitt asked, “so he is an employee?” Breitbart impossibly demurred: “I’m not sure that’s technically the thing, but yes, he’s paid for his life rights.”
Mmmm-kay. Having trouble seeing the distinction there. Nonetheless, what’s clear is that Breitbart pays O’Keefe for his work, whatever the hell that “work” is.
But wait, this gets far more ridiculous as these two knuckleheads proceed to blow away years of their very own propaganda. In further comments, overlooked for the most part by others so far, made by Breitbart and Hewitt in that “interview,” they succeed in moving this entire affair from the utterly ridiculous to the laughably absurd…
You’ll recall The BRAD BLOG’s years of reporting on the GOP’s fraudulent scam to accuse the community group ACORN — which has legally registered millions of low and middle-income Americans to vote over the years — of committing some sort of “voter fraud,” for which they’ve never actually been charged in any state or any court of law that we know of. Moreover, we are unaware of even an an iota of evidence that demonstrates that the group or any of their employees, or anyone who has ever been registered by one of their employees, has committed the crime vis a vis that registration.
Some of their workers, a tiny handful of their more than 13,000 employees, have been charged with committing “voter registration fraud” after being turned in by ACORN officials themselves, after the community group discovered the employees had defrauded them in light of the “fair salary” they were paid to legally help sign up new voters.
For all of that work legally registering voters and turning in those who didn’t to law enforcement, ACORN became the target of the GOP and their wingnut operatives, since so many low and middle-income voters tend to vote Democratic instead of Republican for some odd reason.
All of which, in an orgy of partisan political ejaculum, led to Breitbart’s release of highly-doctored video tapes made by O’Keefe, alleged to have been illegally procured in at least two states. The tapes themselves reveal ACORN employees breaking no federal laws that we’re aware of, at least according to two separate independent reports. Nonetheless, the tapes — and the publicity they received from the operative Breitbart and his chums on Fox “News” and wingnut talk radio — helped lead to a cowardly act passed by Congress to defund the group with a bill that is, according to a federal judge, as Ernest Canning reminds us today, “probably unconstitutional”.
Even if we stipulate that Breitbart was not paying O’Keefe to break the law, its clear that ACORN was not paying its workers to break the law either — at least no evidence exists to demonstrate otherwise. And yet, ACORN has long been charged by Breitbart, and Hewitt himself (a long-time leader in the GOP’s phony “Democrats are committing massive voter fraud through ACORN!” movement), as being a “criminal organization” for having employed those workers who did break federal law by committing voter registration fraud in order to continue receiving their “fair salary.”
So, again, if ACORN is “guilty” for all of that, what does that make Breitbart?
But as if all of that wasn’t ironic enough, Hewitt’s “interview” with Breitbart concludes this way, with an exchange so full of incredible irony that we are left gasping for air and without words to properly respond to it:
BREITBART: Yes, absolutely. That is absolutely the case.
HEWITT: Andrew Breitbart, thanks for checking in with us. I appreciate that.
Get that? Read it again if necessary. And then, if necessary, read this entire article from the top again if there remains any question of the absurdity of the entire situation, and the utter disingenuousness of Breitbart and Hewitt in that exchange.
So were they full of shit before, when they spent years demonizing ACORN as a “criminal organization” based on scant evidence of petty crimes committed by a handful of workers (none of which was actually revealed in those videos, as we noted), or are they full of shit now?
If Breitbart should not be condemned, since “Lots of people work for lots of corporations, and do dumb and sometimes illegal things that are not within the scope of their employment,” even though one of his employees has now been charged with a federal felony related to attempts to bug the office of U.S. Senator, how is it that Breitbart and Hewitt would seem to have no problem standing by their condemnation of ACORN for the “dumb and sometimes illegal things” that some of their employees did?
Yes, it defies logic. But we’re dealing with hard rightwing, dyed-in-the-wool, political operatives, con-men and scam artists here. Not actual journalists, or even respectable political commentators.
And just to make matters even more absurd, for those tea baggers and wingnuts whose eyes may be opening to the scam in which they’ve been played perfect dupes and rubes for so many years, in addition to the federal crimes alleged to have been committed by O’Keefe and his fellow conspirators at this point, there are at least two other notable federal criminals that folks like Breitbart and Hewitt haven’t told you about, but about whom you should be aware:
1) Mark Anthony Jacoby, the head of the firm hired by the CA GOP to run their voter registration operation across the state in 2008, was arrested just before the general election that year, and later pled guilty to voter registration fraud himself. His company, Young Political Majors (YPM), was also accused of having fraudulently changed thousands of voter registrations from Democratic to Republican without the knowledge of the voters whose registrations were changed (and who were therefore disenfranchised if they happened to try and vote in the ’08 Democratic primary election).
Since Fox “News” had failed to report on Jacoby and YPM, even amidst their orgy of “reportage” on “voter fraud” crimes not committed by ACORN, I was forced to report it myself on Fox.
2) Republican superstar propagandist Ann Coulter committed two third-degree federal felonies and one first-degree misdemeanor related to her own act of actual voter fraud in the state of Florida in 2006. Various political, and possibly illegal, maneuvers by her former-Bush attorney and former FBI-boyfriend resulted in running out the statute of limitations clock before she could be officially charged, but documents long-posted by The BRAD BLOG reveal beyond a shadow of a doubt that she committed those crimes — and ultimately got away with them.
She also, however, still faces complaints for having committed voter fraud in the state of Connecticut, where there is no statute of limitations for the crimes, prior to moving to Florida. Those complaints are still pending.
UPDATE 1/28/10: Breitbart goes on MSNBC, blows himself up. Again. Details, video now here…
UPDATE 2/15/10: Flip-flop. Breitbart tells Internet radio show, O’Keefe “technically not salaried”. Details now here…
LOL, don’t just love it when wingnuts put the noose around their own necks?
This is a beautiful thing! It’s Christmas again! Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful!
It’s a beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight, walking in a Winter Wonderland!
So will the Dems in Congress, that piled onto Acorn when the doctored, sometimes illegal, videos, going to pile onto these idiots? In a time of terrorism, you enter a federal building with intent to bug phones, WTF? Shouldn’t Congress be passing a resolution condemning this. And what if it had been young black men doing this in Repub Senators office.
Remember, the supposed bad acts of Acorn on the videos were not “initiated” by Acorn but by these conservative children making up a fake story (never shown on video released) that they were trying to help the prostitute escape a violent situation. Acorn employees did not go out of there way to committ crimes, rather others went out of their way to create fake situations to trick Acorn into looking bad (no crimes committed by Acorn). The few part time employees over the years caught actually fraudulently filling out voter registration forms were turned in by Acorn themselves, not caught by federal agents.
But these conservative children went out of their way to commit crimes, they initiated something obviously illegal in both the secret taping of their Acorn videos and this bugging attempt of a Senator.
Who do I consider worse, someone who is tricked into looking bad by someone lying to them and then editing out the lies but who really did nothing illegal, or someone on his own decides to initiate a crime, who is not tricked into anything, but pre-meditates and does it.Hmmmm
In Republicanland ,you are a kid a lot longer.
RIP Howard Zinn
Fuck Acorn.
A lot of people don’t like ACORN, primarily because they feel that helping poor people, or encouraging poor people to vote, smacks of “too much democracy.” The anti-ACORN bunch aren’t averse to a little fascism, or even a lot of fascism, the only thing they fear is too much democracy.
Howard Zinn was a great educator and will be missed. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, the framers of our Constitution, and the corporate oligarchy that runs this country, he never feared too much democracy–in fact he opposed fascism and supported democracy. R.I.P.
I still can’t get over that quote from O’Keefe’s lawyer referring to him as a kid. 25 years old and still a kid? While preteens are being charged as adults. And as Karen above says- it can’t be said enough- in a time of terrorism… time to throw this meme back into the faces of those who invented this fraudulent and ironic concept. If these men were middle-eastern- or any other non-white race- the word terrorism would be in all the headlines about this story.
Gee, I love this irony: Conservatives accused ACORN of criminal activities and one of their “heroes” allegedly found some something. Later the judiciary found nothing and cleared ACORN from the charge but the conservative dressed as a pimp who wanted to fasten a crime on ACORN was arrested and is now a felon.
Me thinks God hates conservatives.
LOL
Salon article, “My Right Wing Degree” tells you all about these tricksters. Morton Blackwell and Rove taught them everything.
It is apparent to me, that the longer we Democrats do nothing to hold republicans responsible for their illegal and morally reprehensible actions, thses actions and crimes will continue?
Why shouldn’t they feel that they could get away with this? History has proven over and over again that crime does pay for republicans.
And by history, I start with Nixon and Watergate, Iran COntra, Bush and all his crowd.
These ‘adults’ need to be punished.
Unfortunately, Diane, the Democrats will not allow Republicans to be punished. O’Keefe and his buddies were just following orders, and according to Obama (and Eichmann), those who are just following orders, no matter how illegal, should not be punished. And of course Nancy “impeachment is off the table” Pelosi and Harry Reid were not among the 75 Representatives and 6 Democratic Senators (and one Independent, Bernie Sanders) who voted against the Defund Acorn Act–those who refused to violate their oaths of office came primarily from the Congressional Black and Progressive caucuses.
Unless you Democrats can find some way to influence your party’s leadership, you will never be able to hold their Republican colleagues responsible for anything. Your leadership and the Republican Party’s leadership both get their marching orders from policy-making bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations, both rely heavily on donations from the same multinational corporations, and are both are members of the same wealthy elite who own a lot of defense stocks.
It isn’t that the Democratic Party doesn’t have the votes to pass legislation in Congress, it is that the minority of Congressional Democrats who oppose torture, wars of aggression based on lies, and crimes against humanity, don’t have the votes to influence the agenda within their own party. Indeed, in voting against the bill of attainder, they risked their own party’s wrath and jeopardized their seniority and committee assignments. First control your own party, then you can criticize the other one.
(Full disclosure: I’m an election boycott advocate and I don’t vote in unverifiable elections for candidates I cannot hold accountable.)
“i(R)ony”: when stunning intellectual dishonesty is combined with 100% fitting cosmic Karma that involves the douchiest of reichwing douchebags. The plain ol’ word irony just doesn’t even come close.
Excellent blog!
I am glad this activist was caught. I am appalled that this scum would attempt to attack Federal Telecommunications, and then reverse his story to make himself appear to be the victim of big government… He is essentially a terrorist, and he believes his actions are justified by some greater good (much like other known terrorist such as the shoe and underwear bombers and Osama Bin Laden).
I hope he gets the book thrown at him – literally and figuratively.
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