Today was the disposition of the misdemeanor charge against conservative provocateur and filmmaker James O’Keefe and three of his associates arising out of a media stunt they attempted in Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans offices.

O’Keefe agreed to plead guilty to entering a federal building on false pretenses. He’ll pay a $1,500 fine and do 100 hours of community service, as well as going on three years’ probation.

That’s a far cry from the felony charges of wiretapping and so forth that were originally published on O’Keefe by a breathless and partisan legacy media. Virtually none of the elements of the reporting surrounding his original arrest have panned out; it was quite clear shortly after the arrest outside of Landrieu’s Poydras Street digs that the star of last year’s ACORN exposes was aiming at making an embarrassing “gotcha” film about Landrieu’s staff refusing to answer constituents’ calls in the wake of her “Louisiana Purchase” backroom Obamacare deal. That Landrieu’s people had no sense of humor and attempted to bring the wrath of the Justice Department down on O’Keefe’s head didn’t mean he was all of a sudden running a CIA black operation, as some on the loony left alleged.

The filmmaker will likely need to be a bit more circumspect in his efforts to shame left-wing operators, but he isn’t sounding that note. O’Keefe announced today that he’s got a new project going – “I plan to release a video soon of another organization we all know very well,” was his direct quote.

For our part, we look forward to more from O’Keefe. The Landrieu thing was rather lame, though – he was hardly going to break any news on Landrieu. Everyone knew she wasn’t taking constituents’ calls, and everyone knew she was treating her Louisiana detractors with disdain. The risk-reward factor on exposing her was a suspect calculation.

Another young conservative firebrand, new Human Events editor Jason Mattera, has pioneered the more effective means of shaming left-wing elected officials. Mattera has pigeon-holed virtually all of the bloated Democrats in the House and Senate at least once, with wildly entertaining and enlightening results in the cases of Charlie Rangel and John Kerry, among others. O’Keefe is more than capable of doing the same thing, but his most successful project in a career which includes illustrating the absurdity of political correctness by advocating the banning of Lucky Charms cereal at Rutgers University because it’s an insult to the Irish or exposing the racism of Planned Parenthood has been his ACORN exposes.

Hopefully his new venture will be more in line with his past successes and less with the Landrieu caper.