By Lindsay Beyerstein
This just gets better and better. Main Justice reports that one of the men arrested along with conservative activist/pimp impersonator James O'Keefe in connection with the attempted bugging of Sen. Mary Landrieu's office is the son of an acting U.S. Attorney:
The son of acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana William J. Flanagan was arrested and charged with trying to interfere with phones at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans.
Robert Flanagan, 24, along with conservative activist James O’Keefe, 25, and Joseph Basel, 24, and Stan Dai, 24 were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony.
According to the Associated Press and The Hill, Flanagan is the son
of William J. Flanagan, who is the acting head of the U.S. Attorney’s
Office in Shreveport. O’Keefe was in the news last year for his part in
making secret videos in several offices of the community organizing
group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).
Sadly, this doesn’t hit the conservative clusterf* trifecta, as Flanagan is acting USA in place of Donald Washington who was appointed in 2001 and not in 2005 following the USA firing scandal.
Remember these names. They’ll be planning a cack-handed war for a Republican administration around 2030.
I wonder if they visited any other offices, or if this was the only one and their stupidity did them in.
Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) and his 31 co-sponsors of the resolution praising O’Keefe (which fortunately went nowhere) must be so proud.
it’s hard out here for a pimp…
Landrieu is on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee. Perhaps we’re dealing with conservative terrorists. Why are these men free to roam the streets? Shouldn’t they be hustled down to Gitmo and questioned before they can lawyer up?
Or from a different Marty and regular commenter not so much.
Marty 1
[/sarcasm]
They don’t make Plumbers like they used to.
@PaulW,
No, they make them exactly like they used to.
Who appointed U S Attorney Flanagan? Is this a Bush holdover? If so, Obama and Holder are such weaklings. It probably shows that the fruit does not fall too far from the tree. None of the conservatives have any integrity.
“Who appointed U S Attorney Flanagan?”
He only got the job this month. The prior US Attorney, appointed by Bush, stepped down on the 18th.
http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/01/07/western-louisiana-u-s-attorney-to-step-down/
This story mentions two people suggested by Landrieu, and Flanagan is not one of them.
The acting US attorney isn’t ordinarily a political appointee–it would usually be a senior career person from the office. After all, the whole point of an acting US attorney is that he’s just a temporary placeholder . . .
They really were amazingly stupid to go to the GSA office in search of the phone closet.
It’s a 14 story building. Who knows what agencies have offices there. As far as I can tell, there are Federal courts in the building, Federal Marshalls have an office, the US Attorney for eastern LA has an office, and there’s a regional Coast Guard office there.
They must have a remarkable case of petty political tunnel-vision.
If their names hadn’t been Robert, James, Joseph and Stan, but Aaqib, Khidr, Wasil and Munqad, do you think they would be out on $10,000 bail? Me neither.