Right wary of defending O'Keefe

Conservatives find themselves caught in a tough political position by the arrest of James O'Keefe, a onetime emerging hero to the cause whose latest exploits could prove him too volatile to touch. O'Keefe exploded onto the right-wing media scene in the fall of 2009 with a series of videos that prompted calls for congressional investigations into ACORN, including one video showing employees of the community organizing group advising O'Keefe and young woman–who posed as a pimp and prostitute–on effective strategies in breaking the law. His work elevated conservative media mogul Andrew Breitbart's recently launched sites Big Government and Big Hollywood and was used as the central talking point in an effective conservative argument that the mainstream media could no longer be counted on to expose real scandals, thus bolstering the power and prestige of their own outlets. But now that O'Keefe has been arrested along with three the men by FBI agents for allegedly trying to tamper with the phones of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), conservatives are slow to defend the 25-year-old journalistic rebel.