Fake Wash U Student Arrested in New Orleans

Joseph Basel, one of the fly-in conservatives involved in the "campus gulag" hosted by the Young Americans for Liberty at Washington University, was at the heart of the actions that resulted in the arrest of four people at the office of Senator Mary Landrieu. Here's a description of Basel's role:

"At 11 a.m., Basel entered the Hale Boggs building with his associate, Robert Flanagan, dressed up as telephone repairmen with hard hats and tool belts. They went to Senator Landrieu's 10th floor New Orleans office, where they found O'Keefe waiting.

Basel asked for access to the phone, manipulated it, tried to call it from a cell phone and said he couldn't get through. Basel and Flanagan said they'd have to fix it.

They were directed to the main office, where their credentials were requested. They claimed they "had left their credentials in their vehicle."

Under questioning, both admitted they weren't telephone repairmen and admitted to their role in the alleged phone-tapping operation."

Here's a pic of Basel after the arrest (via the AP):

And here's a pic of Basel at the Wash U campus gulag from winger Gateway Pundit's blog:


Basel has been repeatedly portrayed by the local right-wing media as a Washington University student. O'Keefe was also at the WashU event, and ironically enough secretly videotaped the administration and then edited it to make it look like they had a vendetta against the students (Basel plays a central role in this video as well).

Update: Forgot to mention that O'Keefe and Basel, along with their local friend Jon Burns, also crashed a Show Me No Hate rally in St. Louis and held "free abortions" signs while trying to secretly videotape people. O'Keefe was in town for a tea party rally.

YAL disowns Jon Burns

If you don't recall, Jon Burns was the charming fellow who said that maybe the students at Washington University were "in a gulag all along" after the university shut down a display by the Young Americans For Liberty (YAL) on campus, and then promptly went on to try to disrupt the free speech of another group a couple weekends later.

After the gulag display, Burns was paraded around the local right-wing media as the leader of YAL, who generally forgot to mention that he wasn't actually a student.  Most recently, he went around claiming that YAL had been framed for the hammer and sickle graffiti that mysteriously appeared on campus the day of their event.

I thought it was a little strange that Burns was a member of YAL despite not being a student, but I suppose it could be possible that there was a group that was open to both students and nonstudents alike.  However, in a recent article in the the Washington University students newspaper StudLife, the author (a member of YAL) made it quite clear that Burns is not even a member of their group:

A quick perusal of our Web site, however, reveals that Burns is neither a member of YAL nor a student at Washington University, but rather the owner of the construction company which erected our gulag.

In other words, Burns, the guy paraded around by Dana Loesch and Gateway Pundit as the "leader of YAL," isn't actually a member of YAL.  I'm sure they'll be issuing a correction soon.