Bad news: Police are "fairly confident" they've found the remains of Morgan Harrington, the 20-year-old Virginia Tech student who disappeared in October after getting separated from her friends at a Metallica concert in Charlottesville. The remains were found at Anchorage Farm by owner David Bass, who said he was out checking fences on a remote part of the property he visits only about once a year. Virginia State Police said the body has been taken to a forensic lab in Richmond so it can be identified and a cause of death confirmed.

How's this for a twist in the story plot of the guy who played the pimp in the undercover pimp-and-prostitute ACORN video that got the liberal grassroots group in hot water with Congress? Said guy, James O'Keefe, 25, has been arrested by the FBI for allegedly trying to bug the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

The Washington Post writes:

Federal investigators allege that James O'Keefe was among a group of four men who created a ruse to enter Landrieu's downtown office for the supposed purpose of repairing the lawmaker's telephones. O'Keefe and another man, Stan Dai, are accused of aiding the plot, while two others, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, are accused of pretending to be telephone company employees, according to federal court records (PDF) unsealed today.

All four, including O'Keefe, were arrested Monday and charged by federal prosecutors with entering federal property under false pretenses and with the intent of committing a felony. If convicted, Flanagan, Basel, O'Keefe and Dai face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

How'd they do it? Wearing a tool belt, of course! From the FBI press release:

FLANAGAN and BASEL were each dressed in blue denim pants, blue work shirts, light green fluorescent vests, tool belts, and construction-style hard hats when they entered the Hale Boggs Federal Building, located at 500 Poydras Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. Once in the building, FLANAGAN and BASEL sought access to the offices of Senator Landrieu. O’KEEFE was already present in the office, holding a cellular phone so as to record FLANAGAN and BASEL. Once inside Senator Landrieu’s reception area, FLANAGAN and BASEL told a member of Senator Landrieu’s staff that they were telephone repairmen, and they requested access to the main telephone at the reception desk. FLANAGAN and BASEL then manipulated the telephone system. FLANAGAN and BASEL next requested access to the telephone closet because they needed to perform work on the main telephone system. They were directed to the main office of the United States General Services Administration, also inside the Hale Boggs Federal Building, where they again represented themselves to be employees of the telephone company and stated that they needed to perform repair work in the telephone closet. Both FLANAGAN and BASEL stated that they had left their credentials in their vehicle....

ACORN's reaction on Twitter to O'Keefe's arrest: "Couldn't have happened to a more deserving soul."

The GW Patriot, a journal of politics and culture at George Washington University, reports that Stan Dai was a former editor there; Robert Flanagan is the son of the acting U.S. attorney for the western district of Louisiana. Whoops.

If you missed it yesterday, check out Rend Smith's police blotter, "Officer to Burglary Suspect: Stop Resisting Arrest (and Grabbing My Junk)."

And don't forget about the street closures on Capitol Hill tonight. Some big speech going on.

Not to be like New York or anything (though have you heard that this year's Times Square ball is "covered in 2,668 Waterford Crystals and powered by 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDS, making it capable of creating a palette of more than 16 million vibrant colors and billions of patterns producing a spectacular kaleidoscope effect"?).

But surely the powers-that-be here could come up with something to drop from the sky to ring in the new year. It doesn't have to be a ball: A giant LOVE stamp used to descend from the Old Post Office tower.

Atlanta drops a peach. Tallapoosa, Ga., drops a possum. Port Clinton, Ohio, drops a walleye fish ("Reel in the New Year"). Raleigh, N.C., drops an acorn. Lebanon, Pa., drops bologna.

In Plymouth, Wisc., "where cheese is famous," an 80-pound decorated cheese wedge will descend from a 100-foot ladder truck. Mobile, Ala., will not lower a 600-pound lighted MoonPie (the "world's largest"), but rather raise it.

Fredericksburg, Va., used to drop a pear, but this year they've switched to a pineapple!

Come on, D.C. Drop something.

"All Hands on Deck," Chief Cathy L. Lanier's unconstitutional excuse for setting up roadblocks and checkpoints, is done–but not because it violated the Fourth Amendment. No, AHOD is dead because "police union officials have long decried the AHODs as essentially a publicity stunt that generate goodwill for politicians at the expense of rank-and-file officers."

Christ almighty: "We'll stop this thing we're doing that's illegal, but only because the people we've asked to do it ARE TIRED OF DOING IT SO MUCH. " If you're disappointed that AHOD is kaput–and at least one of you is–then you obviously never had anything to hide and are probably an incredibly boring person.  The rest of us will be celebrating the return of our right to no unreasonable searches and seizures at an undisclosed location. ORWELLIAN SAPS ARE NOT INVITED.

ACORN workers did a bad, bad thing in Baltimore. Some folks at Big Government (another project by conservative maestro Andrew Breitbart) visited ACORN's offices posing as a pimp and prostitute in search of cheap housing for 13 El Salvadoran girls, who, the BG pair implied, would be underage prostitutes. ACORN had a lot of good ideas for them, including tax evasion. Check out the transcript.

Annnnnd a wingnut from Falls Church brought his shotgun to the Capitol during Obama's health care speech. Look, here's a message from one gun lover to another: We don't need this. "We" as in gun lovers, "we" as in emotionally neutral defenders of the Second Amendment, "we" as in the people who manage to detest big government without scaring other people. I don't think y'all represent the rise of the militia movement, I just think y'all are dumbasses. So cut it out and save that shottie for the gobbler in your backyard back.

ACORN is a favorite subject for rageoholic Twitterers and few others, and I suspect it won't sway many undecideds. But John G. Geer figures it's all a good thing anyway: In a Post op-ed over the weekend he argued that negative ads, if nothing else, get down to specifics. Geer's written a book-length study of the subject, but those with short attention spans can go straight to his "Attack Ad Hall of Fame." It's probably only a matter of days before McCain posts an ad featuring 25 seconds of Barack Obama's face and five seconds of a mushroom cloud; at least you don't need Fox News' permission for that.