Asians behaving badly... dirty political sneakery edition! Yesterday, federal officials charged four men with plotting to illegally access and manipulate the telephone system in the New Orleans office of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu: 4 Arrested in Phone Tampering at Landrieu Office.
The men -- James O'Keefe, Joseph Basel, Robert Flanagan and Stan Dai -- were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for February 12.
The arrest is getting a lot of attention because one of the men, O'Keefe, is the conservative activist who gained fame last year by secretly recording members of the community group Acorn giving him (disguised as a pimp) advice on how to set up a brothel. The video damaged Acorn's reputation and prompted Congress to cut off some of its federal money.
But let's turn our attention to the Asian dude in the sneaky wiretap crew, 24-year-old Stan Dai. Media Matters has compiled some details about the mysterious Mr. Dai, who is based in the D.C. area and has frequently been involved in conservative causes: O'Keefe's three alleged accomplices: Conservative activists Dai, Basel and Flanagan.
More details about him here. Interestingly, it seems that Dai is not only a sneaky political conspirator, but also a literary satirist, having penned a work called -- I kid you not -- The Penis Monologues, with awesome passages like "My Angry Penis" and "The Giant Coochie Snorcher That Could." Sounds like a masterpiece -- definitely the work of a man who would attempt to bug a senator's office.
It's not exactly clear what the men were trying to do in Landrieu's office, or what kind of information they were trying to gather. But the guys posed as telephone repairmen, dressed in "blue denim pants, blue work shirts, light green fluorescent vests, tool belts, and construction-style hard hats." Worst disguises ever. More here: 4 charged in U.S. Senate office infiltration in New Orleans.
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