Not surprisingly, the right-wing reaction yesterday to James O'Keefe's embarrassing guilty plea in New Orleans was to pretend the final charges were no big deal. But by down-playing and even mocking the charge and the crime (i.e. a "rinky-dink misdemeanor"), right-wing O'Keefe apologists simply advertised their contempt for the law.

In other words, it's another case of how the usual law-and-order crowd conveniently loses interest in the order part when its one of their own is caught by the law.

Keep in mind, this is how U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval, writing in a court order last week, described Keefe's illegal behavior [emphasis added]:

Duval's order says the “breaching of the security” at Hale Boggs is “an extremely sensitive matter.”

“Federal buildings and federal officers have been and are the target of threats, and on occasion the victims of acts of violence,” the order says in part. “Deception is alleged to have been used by the defendants to achieve their purposes, which in and of itself is unconscionable. Perceived righteousness of a cause does not justify nefarious and potentially dangerous actions.”

But apparently for right-wing bloggers, entering a federal building under false pretenses, post-9/11, is a laughing matter and the crime itself is beyond trivial. Michael Walsh, editor of Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism, yesterday equated the crime as nothing more than “spitting on the sidewalk.”

So naturally if in coming days a group of Arab-American political activist dress up as tech repair men and talk their way past the security check point at a federal courthouse, for instance, and then plot to take undercover videos of the inside of a judge's chambers, Breitbart's sites will have no problem with that. Because c'mon, it's nothing more than “spitting on the sidewalk.”

We'll remember that for future infractions.