Most blog readers (left and right) are probably familiar with undercover journalist/provocateur James O'Keefe. He's the guy who captured video of ACORN employees all too eager to help a pimp and a prostitute set up a house of ill repute -- such ill repute that it also involved sex-trafficking of underage girls.

The story was largely ignored by the big three networks, CNN, MSNBC and most of the nation's major newspapers were late to the party and underplayed the story when they finally got around to it.

Notoriety in the blogosphere still guarantees far less name recognition than that of the latest villain on "Survivor" or Simon Cowell's new victim on "American Idol." How else would one explain how O'Keefe was able to get a job as a Census worker and have person after person tell him it's OK to fake his time card.

Scroll down for some commentary on the video itself, but let me make one major point now. O'Keefe was able to do all of this using his own name and (apparently) without a disguise of any sort because the MSM ignored his first story. If O'Keefe's earlier target had been Big Oil or the NRA or some other lefty bogeyman, then you can bet he wouldn't have been able to pull this off. No, the MSM helped O'Keefe pull this off because they all but ignored him the first time.

O'Keefe will have received the respect he deserves when he can no longer do these stings on his own.

It's one thing doing this in as a private business owner. I've had bosses tell me to add time not worked to my timecard in an effort to get me to work what they deemed necessary overtime. Overtime I would have turned down had it not been for the extra cash.

But private business can do that sort of thing. They can make those sorts of decisions when it comes to making sure a product gets out.

When government bureaucrats do it, they're spending the taxpayer's money. And as O'Keefe demonstrates, it's not as though they're paying extra to encourage workers to work a little harder. They're paying extra because they just don't mind spending your money.