Joseph Basel

While the Twitterati buzzed about former Fox 9 anchor Robyne Robin’s selection as DFLer Matt Entenza’s running mate, others were tweeting about the BP/Deep Horizon oil spill, the national debt and their own campaigns. And, wait, is that James O’Keefe accomplice Joe Basel quoting Martin Luther King’s most famous speech on the occasion of his [...]

Minnesota native Joe Basel, along with conservative activist James O’Keefe and two others, pleaded guilty this morning in a New Orleans court to charges of entering federal property in January under false pretenses. O’Keefe, who’s best known for posing as a pimp in now infamous gotcha videos targeting ACORN, received the stiffest sentence for his [...]

NASHVILLE — Justin Elliot picked up on my observation that Joseph Basel was here at the National Tea Party Convention and wondered how Basel was allowed to leave his home state of Minnesota before the Landrieu phone tampering case came to trial. I asked him.

Activists like James O’Keefe and Minnesota’s Joseph Basel — who were recently arrested for trying to tamper with phones at Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office — don’t represent the best of the conservative movement’s recent investment in college journalism. “For every James O’Keefe,” said the head of one network for conservative college media, “there are 50 serious journalists coming out of these programs.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Louisiana has confirmed what social media and all other signs strongly suggested: The Joseph Basel charged with a felony at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office is indeed from Minnesota.

Updated: A Joseph Basel — possibly of Minnesota and involved in an alleged phone-tampering against Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — follows veteran rightwing prankster James O’Keefe on Twitter.

Gawker’s been googling and finds that Joseph Basel, who was arrested with ACORN gotcha guy James O’Keefe yesterday, may be the same Joseph Basel who attended the University of Minnesota – Morris.

In September, Rep. Michele Bachmann hailed as “brilliant” James O’Keefe, who with Hannah Giles orchestrated a sting operation at a Philadelphia ACORN office, posing as a pimp and a prostitute. Today, it appears that may have been an overestimation. Days after the duo was named in a federal lawsuit for the ACORN sting, O’Keefe was [...]