Lamont Campaign Cleared

Lockhart is a turd (4.00 / 5)

How about a real headline, like "Lieberman foolishness dismissed" or something along those lines.

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by: Scarce @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:07:21 PM UTC

A Middle School Student Newspaper Would've Done A Better Job (4.00 / 5)

"Lamont camp cleared in hacking of Lieberman Web site" - implies both that the LieberSite was "hacked" and that there was some reasonable basis for the charge that the Lamont campaign was responsible. 

"'The investigation has revealed no evidence the problems the Web site experienced were the result of criminal conduct,' said Tom Carson, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor."  The implication: although their shadowy activities did not rise to the level of a crime, those clever "Lamont camp" rascals clearly were up to no good.

Where the hell are the answers to the obvious questions:

1.  Why did the site experience problems;

2.  Was there even a reasonable basis for alleging that the "Lamont Camp" somehow orchestrated an attack on the LieberSite;

3.  Why did the investigation take four months to complete;

4.  Was the problem with the site intentionally orchestrated by the "Lieberman Camp" as a desperate, baseless, last minute election ploy; and

5.  How many tax dollars were wasted conducting a pointless and unnecessary investigation.

Of course, I'm sure we'd have answers to all these questions but for the fact that,

"[c]alls to Lieberman went unanswered yesterday."

 

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by: Brian @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 15:39:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Good questions (0.00 / 0)

Drinking Liberally in New Milford
ePluribus Media

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by: Connecticut Man1 @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 16:55:58 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

All perfect questions... (0.00 / 0)

...for an LTE and a follow up letter to the reporter, Brian Lockhart.  I hope you write one.  I will.

To give the Advocate some credit, this story was front page, above the fold.  Very prominent, not some little correction column buried inside somewhere.  If only every media outlet gave this information the kind of prominent coverage that they gave to the Lieberman campaign's baseless attacks.

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by: Maura @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 08:44:43 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I give them credit (0.00 / 0)

I think by and large the article covered far more in depth the history of the story than a typical article would. 

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by: greenpeas @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 14:17:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You're Right, Maura.... (0.00 / 0)

.....we should be grateful that someone in the mainstream media bothered to follow up on this story at all.  However, this reporter is named Brian Lockhart and four out of five Brians agree that people named Brian should be held to higher standards. 

LsTE are a good idea.  As for sending Brian Lockhart a note, I've always assumed that all literate Brians in Connecticut (and many elsewhere) read My Left Nutmeg religiously.  Therefore, I'm sure Brian Lockhart has seen our comments.

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by: Brian @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 17:09:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

to be cleared you must be charged (0.00 / 0)

In an article about investigations and the law, you don't use the word "charges" as a catch all phrase, or the word "cleared".  I think it's unethically misleading.

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by: greenpeas @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 18:09:12 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Where's the apology? (4.00 / 3)

Surely that "decent" man Joe Lieberman will trip over himself to get to a microphone to drone an abject apology for besmirching the reputation of that fine, upstanding Greenwich millionaire.

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by: BranfordBoy @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:07:46 PM UTC

petty cash? (4.00 / 1)

what ever happened to that $387,000 that Joe handed out?

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by: dad @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:20:15 PM UTC

That's What He Called "Petty Cash" (0.00 / 0)

And we all want to know where it went.

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by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:24:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Redundant (0.00 / 0)

Lieberman and Petty in the same sentence is redundant.

e.g. 
Lieberman Petty Cash = Lieberman Cash
Lieberman Petty Statement = Lieberman Statement

because Connecticut voters count: http://www.CTVotersCount.org

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by: BlastFromGlast @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 16:03:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

lol (0.00 / 0)

Drinking Liberally in New Milford
ePluribus Media

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by: Connecticut Man1 @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 18:47:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Apologies and Corrections will not be forthcoming (4.00 / 2)

The Lieberman campaign refused to comment on this - that's not surprising.

Will Mark Davis, Chris Matthews, and every other TV personality and radio host that trumpeted the Lieberman website crash as the work of Lamont or bloggers supporting Lamont? Doubtful.

Disclosure: I'm proud to work for the Service Employees International Union

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by: Matt Browner Hamlin @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:24:52 PM UTC

Hell (0.00 / 0)

..we know the evil bloggers did it, even if we can't prove it or even if it actually occurred. You following me?

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by: Scarce @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:33:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Careful (0.00 / 0)

They will quote you on this - leaving out "or even occurred."

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by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:41:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Meanwhile... (0.00 / 0)

This vile crime by Lieberman remains unsolved and unavenged.

Oh the humanity!

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by: BranfordBoy @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:39:22 PM UTC

I Had Almost Forgotten About The LieberCamp's Toaster Hacking (0.00 / 0)

Has the FBI finished its investigation into this matter?

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by: Brian @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 16:00:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Give it a 9 (4.00 / 1)

This story scores a nine on a scale of one to ten. The higher the number, the more the story has made me want to throw my computer against a wall.

Disclosure: I'm proud to work for the Service Employees International Union

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by: Matt Browner Hamlin @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:50:54 PM UTC

Adding (4.00 / 2)

I think this is the most important story to come out of Connecticut since Lamont lost the general election. THE Lieberman talking point/attack line from the primary election has now been shown to be 100% false. The line attacked Lamont, Lamont supporters, and the blogosphere on whole. Lieberman repeated during his announcement of candidacy as an independent.

We all knew it was a lie. Now the FBI says we were right.


Disclosure: I'm proud to work for the Service Employees International Union

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by: Matt Browner Hamlin @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 14:13:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

WAIT A MINUTE (4.00 / 8)

What DID the investigation reveal?

Did it reveal that Liebermans people new they were LYING to CNN on election day and trying to influence the results of that election by LYING?

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by: ctkeith @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 14:06:26 PM UTC

When will the reporters feel used? (0.00 / 0)

Isn't that the most important outcome here?  Even if I think the majority of reporters are hacks and stenographers, it occurs to me that they hate being used and lied to in order to spread a lie. 

If we want them to dig into the petty cash, we want them angry.

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by: drowsy @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 14:24:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

EXACTLY (4.00 / 3)

Can a FOIA request be filed for any of the details?
Let me put it to you this way, if Lieberman had said Al Qaeda had hacked his website, would it have taken this long to investigate & report results? 

We need to know if it's incompetence or the politicization of the FBI, or collusion by some people at the FBI.

In the Susan Haigh article, the original accusation was made of "Lamont supporters", not Lamont or the paid campaign staff.  That means anyone with a bumper sticker and a computer could have their reputation harmed by the innuendo and accusations. 

I think you have to measure the potential damage by more than whether the election was won or lost.  What happened to the electoral process and what happened to the people who supported Lamont as a result of this slur?

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by: greenpeas @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 17:21:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'd like more details (4.00 / 3)

I always figured it was a simple lack of resources or talent that made his site go away.

I'd like to hear more, since the more we know, the more it will look like the event it was - always attack, never apologize, and if you make a mistake, blame it on the opposition.

I shepherd a few servers in my work, and I knew immediately that without the phrase 'we saw suspicious activity in the logs' this whole thing was a CYA fabrication at best, a purposeful smear at worst.

Even without giving anything away, any incident report starts with 'Traffic spiked at such-and-such a time' or 'Starting at such-and-such a time, a certain IP address requested a certain URL over and over'.

If I remember correctly, this was not a database backed site, it was made of static files and images.  So the real points of weakness were the hardware and the webserver software.  Nothing pointed to a hardware error and webserver software can be compromised but rarely flakes out on its own.  So my guess is human error. 

Someone probably dropped the ball.  It may not have been the Lieberman campaign.  It could have been the vendor.

There are two major things that may not get logged but are part of server maintenance that I'd look at: bandwidth throttling and storage quotas.

I do not remember seeing a statement to the effect of 'there was no bandwidth throttling policy in place for that account.'  The campaign may have triggered a throttle at some point, a throttle that the vendor, or some random sysadmin working for the vendor but in place for safety but thought no one would ever reach so it was not posted in their Service Level Agreement.  For 10 bucks or whatever you usually do not get inifinite access to 'the toobz'.

Hard drives fill up when logfiles are not rotated.  And of course, that error is not logged if there is no remote syslog setup.  There are a few ways that sloppyness can take a server down.

Maybe I do this too often, but I blame the media.  If they did not parrot the accusation made, and interviewed anyone in their own companies who are sysadmins, they would have taken a skeptical position.

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by: drowsy @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 14:19:56 PM UTC

I did a recap of Lieberman's lies throughout the primary (0.00 / 0)

Too many to count.

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by: ctblogger @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 16:38:28 PM UTC

Where's Jon Carroll on this story? (4.00 / 4)

Since Beat the Press operates under the belief system that the MSM has laudable, tangible, standards and ethics which produce fine results, and the blogosphere is dangerously "without" them, let's see how they explain this story?

The bloggers had it figured out in hours; the FBI took months to provide essentially no more details than the bloggers provided in August.  Meanwhile, the MSM with all its ethics, standards, and guidelines -- got taken for a ride that may have affected the spread in the primary race. 

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by: greenpeas @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 17:31:57 PM UTC