Watergate Washouts

Bugging a Democratic Senator's office phone isn't quite what it used to be:

Federal officials charged four men on Tuesday with plotting to tamper with the telephone system in the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. One of the men was a filmmaker who gained fame last year by secretly recording members of the community group Acorn giving him advice on how to set up a brothel.

All four of the men arrested Monday in New Orleans, each in his mid-20s, were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana. They appeared in court on Tuesday,

If convicted, the four would face sentences ranging from a fine to 10 years in prison.

The filmmaker was James O’Keefe, 25, who has gained renown in conservative circles by poking fun at the left through pranks and undercover video...

...In September, Richard W. Rahn, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote a column in The Washington Times hailing Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Giles as examples of technologically savvy, “smart amateurs” who “with courage and good judgment are becoming effective investigative journalists.”

Mr. Rahn said Tuesday that he did not have enough information on Mr. O’Keefe’s arrest to offer a different assessment.

Dirty tricksters born forty years too late to work for Tricky Dick Nixon. Maybe G. Gordon Liddy will take them out to the woodshed?