The John Burns, James O'Keefe Connection

One obvious question raised from my report yesterday about the background of John Burns, spokesperson for the local anti-public transit group CBT, is how Burns, O'Keefe, and Basel know one another. Though none of them are students, they all participated in the campus gulag at Wash U that led to the campus being vandalized and campus employees being secretely videotaped. And though Basel and O'Keefe don't live in St. Louis, the two joined John Burns as he attempted to interfere with the free speech of the LGBT community at a late November rally in St. Louis. Burns and Basel were also hanging out together at the Nashville Tea Party convention a few weeks ago.

I think I've figured out the connection. With the power of the mighty Google, I found this interesting tidbit on the internet:

Unfortunately, when you click the link, the original story is no longer there, but you can see that the list is full of St. Louis Tea Party activists (Hennessy, Loesch, and Loudon). James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, of course, were also infamously veterans of the Leadership Institute.

This raises an interesting question. Was a conservative think-tank funding the trio when they vandalized Washington University, videotaped campus employees in an attempt to invent a conspiracy, and accused the university of "fraud" for asking them to pay for cleanup after they spray painted the campus? Did a conservative think tank pay Basel and O'Keefe to attend the Show Me No Hate rally and cause mischief? If so, someone should really look more into what the organizations think they are trying to accomplish.