Is StarChild111 Actually "Jennifer George"? -Updated X 2

Jennifer Preston at the New York Times wrote a fascinating story on Friday documenting that two high school girls who seemed to be at the heart of one of #weinergate's major sub-plots did not actually exist. The IDs they provided were not real, as Preston confirmed by contacting the state and the school they claimed to attend. At this point it's not at all clear what was going on: they might have been trying to set up Weiner, they might have been trying to set up Breitbart and Dana Loesch (because, as Tommy Christopher knew but did not report, one of them claimed that Loesch and Breitbart were trying to get them to tell a story about their interactions with Weiner), or they might be real but simply disguising their actual identities.

Anyway, yesterday, someone tweeted an interesting
link that showed that one of the girls, @starchild111, who throughout #weinergate was thought to be named "Nikki", originally had the name "Jenay."


This prompted me to reexamine some of the search results for @starchild, and it appears that the account @starchild111 is actually associated with the name "Jennifer George" (click the photo for a larger view):

It's not entirely clear what to make of this information...but it certainly seems like something worth investigating.

Update: I've removed a little bit of information that singles out particular individuals (though I should note that I never provided any information that would allow anyone to be directly contacted) because there are reports of people getting angry calls. Obviously this kind of behavior, like the constant pestering from right-wing bloggers of people associated with the story, is not called for.None of the people who regularly read this blog would engage in such idiotic behavior, but I sure hope whoever is doing it stops. Keep in mind that the name might be fake, and that even if it's real there are lots of people named Jennifer George in the world, so approaching any particular individual in an accusatory manner is obnoxious and unacceptable behavior.

Update #2: Lee Stranahan says he was called by a woman claiming to be Jennifer George, who told him that she owned the account in 2009 but then deleted it, and that someone later started a new account with the same name. So far, it is not entirely clear whether that explanation is even possible. Sounds like Twitter does make accounts available after 30 days of deactivation, so this story is possibly true. But that wouldn't explain why the cache from 1/1/11 used the name "Jenay" rather than "Nikki."

Despite What Loesch Says, Breitbart Bloggers Revealed Identity of Woman In Weiner's Tweet

Since Anthony Weiner's press conference, Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch have been running around whining about how unfairly they were treated, what with people pointing out their histories of dishonesty and all. Loesch has in particular been directing her ire at Salon's Joan Walsh and hilariously demanding an apology (BTW, did Loesch ever apologize to the UMKC and UMSL professors she slandered?). Loesch is upset because Walsh tweeted that the "Breitbart empire" and other conservative blogs revealed the personal information of the woman who received the text, thus leading an army of neanderthals (my words not Walsh's) to pick through every detail of the victim's personal life. Here's what Loesch had to say about that in her self-aggrandizing pity party blog post about the topic:

She continued with her smear job by insisting that the “Breitbart empire” named the girl who received the infamous Tweet in question and “savaged” her. This is categorically false: I was the one who readied the graphic and placed the black boxes over the woman’s identity in the very first post which broke the story. The Bigs had refused to identify her.

Walsh actually later clarified her statement as follows:

One last point: Breitbots have accused me of blaming Breitbart for naming the young woman in question, based on this tweet from me Saturday night:

If the story is false, we only know about it because of the Breitbart empire and #tcot blogs, who named the girl

(You can read all my tweets on the story here.)

My point was that right-wing blogs were naming her, after Breitbart put out the story, though the original story did not. But I get the confusion: It's easy to misunderstand things on Twitter.

However, I think it's actually pretty clear that Breitbart's "empire" was primarily responsible for publicizing the identity of the woman, even though they didn't do so on Breitbart's sites. First of all, Breitbart bloggers Lee Stranahan, Patterico, Ace of Spades, and of course Jim Hoft all released the woman's name on Saturday, the day the scandal broke. In fact, Stranahan's guest post on Patterico revealing the woman's name was posted at 4:29 AM, about four hours after the story broke. So there were basically no "waking hours" whatsoever between the time the story broke and the time that Lee Stranahan, a paid employee of Breitbart, revealed the victim's name (albeit not on Breitbart's websites).

And how did the Breitbart bloggers figure out who the woman was? I have no insight into that, but I'll say that one way they could have known is by reading Dana Loesch's tweet that told them exactly how to get the name of the woman. Here is Loesch retweeting something that lead directly to the tweet that identified the woman early on Saturday:


That link led directly to the Tweet Congress page, which showed a tweet revealing the woman's identity.

So maybe you think what Loesch did was irresponsible or maybe you think it's fine, but either way, it's pretty clear that Loesch and other Breitbart bloggers did play a central role in revealing the identity of the woman the tweet was directed at. In other words, they should quit their whining.

Update: I forgot to mention the fact that a post on Breitbart's site linked to Jim Hoft's despicable blog that included the names and photos of high school girls. According the html address, the title on Hoft's original post included the phrase "young, luscious hook-ups."


So yeah, real responsible journalism there.

When Dana Loesch Makes a False Statement, She's Actually Asking If It's True

Wow, I have to say, this really explains everything! Dana Loesch said today that when she makes a false statement, she's actually just asking a question about whether it's true. Now I see why she thinks she's a journalist!

As I just pointed out, Loesch retweeted this completely false claim earlier today:

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters retweeted my blog post pointing out that it was a lie:


And here was Loesch's response:



See? So when Loesch said that Media Matters wrote 9 pages, she was actually "asking" if they wrote 9 pages!

I can't tell you how much clarity this adds to her rhetoric. So, for example, when she had Andrew Breitbart on her radio show to falsely claim that Shirley Sherrod is racist, they were really just asking if Sherrod was racist!

And when she falsely claimed that a UMKC professor said that "Violence is a tactic," she was actually just asking the question, "Do UMKC professors teach that violence is a tactic?"

And so on.

At last, it all makes sense! Dana Loesch has really just been asking questions this whole time!

Ugh. Weiner Lied and I Admit I Believed Him

Sadly, I spent multiple hours this past week questioning the conventional wisdom about Anthony Weiner based on a lewd tweet he sent out which was later posted on Andrew Breitbart's websites. I still think that Breitbart covered the story irresponsibly in many (but not all) ways. For example, I think it was wrong for someone at the Breitbart sites to crop the original photo to change its context. I also think it was shameful for Breitbart to allege that Weiner had "relationships" with "quite young girls" based on sources that even he later said were questionable. And most of all, I think it was despicable for Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft to post photos and personal information of high school girls just because Weiner followed them on Twitter, and for Breitbart to allow Hoft to link to that disgusting post from his website.

But, ultimately, I made the age-old mistake of thinking that because Weiner was a smart and righteous congressman he would also be a smart and righteous person in his personal life, and in that I was definitely mistaken. I especially believed that there was no way he'd be stupid enough to post lewd photos of himself to a public forum, but he was. He sure was.

The worst part is that I do think the media did a sloppy job covering this story (unless they knew things they weren't saying publicly), yet I'm sure at this point they will conclude that their approach to potential sex scandals has been completely vindicated. I'll even bet there will be some clown writing a story about what an honest and ethical "journalist" Breitbart is in the next couple day, so we've probably moved almost back to square one on how the media treats his garbage. The media, to some extent like Congressman Weiner (though not nearly to the same degree), is also prone to having the rational parts of their brains short-circuited by things like sex , theatrics, and controversy, and this is a problem that will need to be combatted even more vigorously in the future if we're going to have any hope of reasonable discourse.

And the last thing to note is that there have been some really crappy diaries and blogs promoted by the left that claimed, without any good evidence, that Breitbart and Loesch were responsible for "hacking" Weiner's account. I argued against these posts. Here's me (amazingly?) defending Dana Loesch about an allegation that she was asking how to "hack" an account:

And here's a comment of mine on Daily Kos asking people to stop making baseless accusations:

I'm very critical of Breitbart and Loesch. If you want proof, you can see what I write about them here and here. I've also bitten my tongue for a while at the recent diaries on this subject. However, at this point, there can no longer be any doubt that these sloppy attacks on Breitbart and Loesch are doing far more to damage the credibility of the lefty blogosphere than helping anything.

Breitbart and Loesch are absolutely guilty of shameful behavior in this mess. They irresponsibly pushed bogus information and, as can be seen on the CNN clip, Breitbart lied when he claimed he didn't use any of @patriotusa76's (Wolfe's) dishonest smears.

However, the claims that Breitbart, "realizes some serious criminal charges are coming and he’s either a co-conspirator or an accessory after the fact to a federal felony." or that Loesch "appears to have been intimately involved in a computer intrusion crime" are simply not supported by the facts. They're not.

If you want to say that it looks suspicious and should be investigated, that's fine. But acting, as diaries on this site have done multiple times, like there is conclusive evidence that Breitbart conspired to hack Weiner's account puts a giant bullseye on Daily Kos as a site that irresponsibly throws allegations around. Breitbart is guilty of pushing a smear from an untrustworthy source. The details of what precisely happened to Congressman Weiner's phone are still being worked out. To claim more than that, and especially to do so flippantly, is profoundly irresponsible and ultimately self-destructive. We need to do better than this.

Though the lefty blogosphere is about 100 times more honest and ethical than folks like Breitbart, I nevertheless hope that they've learned some lessons from this debacle. I know I have.

Did Loesch Dana Distort The #Weinergate Image? And If So, Why?

According to the suspicious conservative who hinted about a Weiner scandal weeks ago and mysteriously was the only person to retweet the original post before it was deleted, Dana Loesch grabbed the original screen shot used on Breitbart's websites to kick of the so-called #weinergate scandal:

And Loesch's statements from that night were consistent with the suggestion:

Since the photo was deleted within hours and no one else seemed to have a copy, the Loesch/Breitbart version of the photo is the one used by every news outlet since the story broke. However, a funny thing happened since that time. Someone actually found the original photo. And, at the very least, it seems to change the, err, context of the the situation. Cannonfire, which I found via a diary by Stef at Daily Kos, points out that the Loesch/Breitbart version of photos is actually upside down, and edited to hide that fact.

Here's the version posted on Breitbart's web sites:

And here's what the yfrog image looked like before being cropped by someone at Breitbart's site:

Since the table leg clearly shows that image is upside down, here's what the actual image looks like:

The new angle on the photo changes it significantly:

The image has been manipulated. It has been rotated to look like the person is standing when in fact they are sitting. Further, Breitbart has cropped it to omit the table leg which gives this away.

An ordinary guy who wants to send photos of his junk to a woman does not stop first to rotate the photo so it will look like he's standing instead of sitting.

The upside-down image is more plausible, which is why they rotated it. The rightside-up image is ridiculous. Humongously ridiculous.

So questions: was Dana Loesch the person who cropped the image to change the context? If so, why did she do so? And what's her justification for misleadingly presenting the information?

Also, yes I know that there have been "shocking new developments" today in the story. Obviously, I can't claim to know what happened, especially when Breitbart and other publications have not yet released full information nor provided evidence for their claims. But even if it is true that Weiner is stupidly sending messages online, that does not rule out the possibility that he was hacked on this occasion. After all, why would he say that he was hacked and that he didn't send the picture but claim that he "couldn't say" that the picture was of him? It seems like he's at least trying to not state any falsehoods. Anyway, my cynical guess is that even if Weiner was provably hacked, our lame media will completely ignore that story. Cannonfire has been doing a great job on covering this story, and his take on the latest developments is worth reading.

My Response to Tommy Christopher's Response on #Weinergate

Tommy Christopher has kindly emailed a response to my earlier criticisms of his coverage of Daily Kos and Breitbart. Some of what he said was already addressed in my update, but he wouldn't have had any reason to have know that. My understanding of his defense is that (1) he was already highly critical of Breitbart earlier, (2) that he specifically restricted his criticisms to focus on the "publications" of Breitbart, rather than other communications, and (3) he stands by his original criticisms of Markos for several reasons.

So I'll start first with his response about restricting his argument to "publications," or as Christopher puts it: "the publication of factual evidence." Christopher notes this restriction and then points out a number of tweets where he's been critical of Breitbart's behavior on Twitter in recent days, writing things like:

Drawing conclusions from an ambiguous fact pattern is yellow. Publicly claiming "we have more"=yellow. @AndrewBreitbart

First thing to note: it's ironic that Christopher himself was critical, just two days ago, of the idea that it's acceptable to be dishonest on Twitter yet claim that one's "publishing" has been honest:

So, by his own standards, it seems weird to argue that it's OK to differentiate Breitbart's behavior on Twitter from that on his web site. And the fact that he criticized Breitbart's tweets just bolsters my point that the target article presented an inaccurate piture of Breitbart's role in his mess. What we want to know is whether Breitbart behaved honestly and ethically, not just whether he was somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else. So it's true that Tommy Christopher circumscribed his arguments to focus only on the Big websites, but by doing so it ceases to be a helpful evaluation of Breitbart's role in the controversy.

The reality, however, is that Breitbart did not even meet the lowered bar of "somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else." As I pointed out, he allowed Jim Hoft to post links to the pictures and personal information of high school girls during his smear campaign.

Christopher's response to this criticism of Breitbart was twofold. One, he pointed out that he was critical of Hoft on Twitter. That's admirable, but not really relevant to my point that Breitbart allowed the filth on his site. Second, Christopher wrote the following:

If I am guilty of something, it is not noticing this link in Hoft's BG article, but once I did, I emailed Breitbart to alert him to it. If he sends me back an email saying he's leaving it up because she was asking for it, and I do nothing, then you will have a point. And what are you doing linking to it?

He later added, via email:

Since I alerted Andrew Breitbart to the presence of that link in Hoft's story, it has been deleted.

Well, that sounds just dandy that Breitbart decided to delete the link only a mere four days later, after everyone has already looked at it, and while he's trying to smear Markos as someone who publishes information about high schoolers. Just dandy, except for the fact that Media Matters' Eric Boehlert was criticizing Breitbart over Hoft's post four days ago, and the link has remained up until today. Here's Boehlert's criticism, which was retweeted by Breitbart:

And this was Breitbart's response:

So forgive me if I don't take Breitbart deleting the link four days later as strong evidence of the high quality of his moral character.

Finally, in my post I defended Markos's decision to not edit a recommended diary on his site:

I had found the photo myself several days ago, and chose to redact the personal information on the yfrog image I posted because one of the people was in high school. I agree with Tommy to the extent that I personally did not want to share that information. However, that is a different context entirely from what Markos is being accused of. Christopher is attacking Markos because Markos owns a site that allows community diaries and has a policy that is biased very heavily against censorship of the community part of the site. The diary in question was not written by one of the paid front page authors: it was written by one of the community members. Thus, while I personally did not want to share the full information, I don't think it's "reprehensible" for Markos to choose not to censor the content choices of diarists except under extreme circumstances (which is what he said was his policy in an email to Christopher).

And Christopher responded as follows:

3 problems with this: 1. redacting the names would have had no effect on the content's news value. 2. This was an extreme circumstance. Two minor children and their parents feared for their safety. 3. There is no "policy" against it, made clear by his offer to consider a "counter-argument" that he deemed worthy. He never argued the girls weren't being endangered, he just didn't care.

My thoughts. I agree that redacting the names wouldn't have decreased the "news value:" however, I think that a site owner making a decision to edit content of a user is a serious decision that some would have objected to. What actually happened, the author of the diary deciding to change the content, is preferable. As I said before, I personally would not divulge the girls' information, even though I previously saw the image, since I saw what happened to the women subjected to harassment after neanderthals like Hoft posted their personal information and Breitbart's site linked to it. My only point was that there is a difference between deciding what you personally write about and what is allowed to appear in a community that values free expression and investigation. Thus, though I don't agree with Markos's decision, I can see why he would (perhaps mistakenly) lean against the idea of censoring his community. And again, this is different from Breitbart's site hand-picking an article from Hoft that links to pictures and personal information of high school students. In the later case, the people who run the web site are directly responsible.

Some Speculation

I know that speculation can sometimes be extremely irresponsible. However, I think it's OK as long as you acknowledge that it's speculation and don't try to hide other possible interpretations of the data. So with that, let me say that I'm putting the following out there as a possible avenue to explore, rather than as something anyone should believe is true without further evidence. Ayone who wants to see speculation on the other side can google "Ace of Spades HQ" or "Gateway Pundit," and anyone who wants to see straight reporting can check out Politico or Tommy Christopher at Mediaite.

So, with that in mind, let me present some interesting facts, which may or may not be related.

(1) First of all, two Twitter users @patriotusa76 (who is the only person who retweeted the original tweet from Weiner's account) and @goatsred were tweeting about "sex scandal pictures" of Congressman Weiner several weeks ago:




Interestingly, all of the speculation thus far has focused on @patriotusa76, but @goatsred is the person who initially announced that there would be a "pics/cheating scandal" with a "powerful NE Dem," which he later changed to focus exclusively on Weiner. There's also some evidence, that I won't get into here, that @goatsred has been in communication with Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch about this story (for the record, I don't think Breitbart or Loesch had anything to do with hacking the account or photoshopping anything: I point this out only to note that @goatsred might be involved in shaping the story).

(2) Since this current story broke, neither @patriotusa76 nor @goatsread have said anything about the previous scandal they alluded to, despite the fact that they were pushing it online for weeks. You'd think they would be saying, "this is only the tip of the iceberg. We've got a real scandal" if this was completely unrelated to what they were talking about previously.

(3) As has been documented extensively, it's possible to post a yfrog photo onto someone else's account (which can automatically send a "at" message to someone on Twitter if done the right way) without knowing that person's password. Thus, if would not have been difficult for someone to post a photo to Representative Weiner's account.

(4) I find all of this espcially interesting in light of the following facts: Congressman Weiner has consistently denied that he sent the tweet; however, earlier today he said that he "couldn't say with certitude" whether the picture was a photo of himself. So he knows that he didn't send the photo, but can't (or won't) say that it's not of him.

So, putting all this together, we have a couple people who claimed several weeks ago to have "scandelous" photos of Representative Weiner. We know it's very easy for an account to be hacked. And now we have a photo posted on his account that he says he didn't post but might nevertheless be a photo of him. Is it possible that this same photo was the "scandelous" photo being discussed several weeks ago? If so, that doesn't necessarily say anything about Weiner. Perhaps it was an innocuous photo take from his computer or phone, or perhaps it's something that he's ashamed of. But it certainly is rather interesting set of facts, in my opinion.

As noted above, I don't think anyone should believe that these events are connected without further evidence. However, I do think it's an avenue worth investigating. Perhaps while reporters are lamenting how Weiner isn't answereing their questions enough, they might also consider asking questinos of other people.

Weiner's Interview With MSNBC

Here's the interview from MSNBC with Representative Weiner:


I actually think it's a plausible story. Imagine if you thought it was just a simple prank, then several days later the press starts harrassing you and suggesting that you are having an affair with everyone you follow on Twitter. I can understand his motivations for feeling like he needs to draw a line. And he's absolutely right; the press told him yesterday "if you just answer our questions this will go away," but that is absolutely not true. When he answers the questions, more come up (more on this later). This is not to say that the media shouldn't be asking questions, but I can see why he's frustrated at the process. And, quite honestly, the way the mainstream media has been handling this has been pretty sloppy and irresponsible (with idiotic questions like "why are you following women on Twitter?" when the answer is readily available).

Shoddy Daily Caller Smear Ignores Already Reported Facts

The filthy right-wing rag Daily Caller published a new story claiming that "porn star" Ginger Lee "wouldn't say what Congressman Weiner sent her in that private direct message over Twitter." This is similar slime as a story they posted yesterday claiming that Weiner wouldn't answer particular questions when in fact he wouldn't answer any questions.

But unfortunately for the hacks at the Daily Caller, the answer to that question was already easily available and has been reported on. Ginger Lee tweeted this to another user who asked about the message:






Yet they try to imply there's a "scandal" because she wouldn't respond to them harrassing her. Right-wing blogs are despicable. Go figure.

Weinergate and Coincidence

I have been disappointed but not surprised at the shameful reaction of the conservative blogs to the unfolding #Weinergate saga. However, I've also been both dissappointed and surprised at some of the reactions from the lefty blogosphere. In particular, because of disdain at Andrew Breitbart (which I understand), some people wrote diaries at Daily Kos claiming that Andrew Breitbart had hacked Anthony Weiner's account or that the picture posted at Big Government was photoshopped. These claims are, quite frankly, completely unsupported by any evidence, and it's sad to see part of the Daily Kos community pushing them as if they had been shown to be correct. Even more sad was the fact that people who asked questions about these ideas were often attacked in the comment sections as being "Breitbart defenders."

But my focus in this diary is to point out a kind of argument that's seen on both sides of this debate. The argument goes like this: Fact X just seems too remarkable to be a result of a coincidence and therefore any story that treats it as a coincidence must be false.

On the Right side, the claim revolves around the fact that one of Anthony Weiner's previous tweets included the line "That's 5:45 in Seattle." Since the recipient of the lewd text lives in Seattle, the argument goes, it's just too improbable to think that it was a coincidence. Now, as Tommy Christopher has pointed out, Weiner's beloved Yankees were playing that night in Seattle, so it's possible that he was somehow referring to that, but so far I haven't really seen any explanation of why that line was included in a tweet about going on Rachel Maddow's show. So, it seems kinda strange.

On the other side, however, there's the strange fact that only one person seems to have seen Weiner's original tweet and retweeted it to Breitbart, Loesch, and others. And that person, @patriotusa76 on Twitter, has been making bizarre claims about Weiner on Twitter for weeks, accusing him of "following young girls." In fact, on May 11, that same guy, the one person who RT'd the original tweet, declared that there are "sex scandal pics" of Wiener and asked if he was the next Chris Lee (the NY congressman who resigned after posting shirtless pictures of himself on craigslist). Here's a screen shot:


So again, it seems like a very strange coincidence that the one person who RT'd the photo has been obsessed with Wiener for months, frequently claiming that he's having relationships with "young girls," and previously hinting that he had "scandalous" photos of Wiener. And again, I haven't seen any attempt from @patriotusa76 to explain what that May 11 tweet was about.

In both cases, there are pretty strange coincidences. However, we know that at least one of the coincidences has to be, in fact, a real coincidence. In fact, they might both be remarkable coincidences if it turns out that it was a hack but that @patriotusa76 had nothing to do with it.

So it seems pretty obvious to me that the responsible thing to say is that these coincidences are interesting, but not at all convincing. Strange things happen in the world. In fact, as conspiracy theorists prove over and over, when you dig through every potential detail of a story, you are bound to find strange coincidences. But the reality of this story so far is that there's not really enough information to make any definite proclamations. Weiner says it was a hack. Basically, whether people believe him at this point mostly has to do with whether they think Weiner is a trustworthy person. Hopefully, more facts will emerge in the upcoming days that will help reveal the truth. And hopefully, the mainstream media will start behaving responsibly and stop pushing innuendo before we have any solid information.

Breitbart Disgustingly Accuses Weiner of "Having Relationships With Young Girls"

CNN shamefully decided to have Andrew Breitbart on today to talk about his websites' role in the #Weinergate scandal, and naturally he manages to sink to a new, disgusting low. Breitbart describes Representative Weiner following people on Twitter as "having relationships" with "quite young girls." For anyone who isn't familiar, following someone on Twitter means absolutely nothing. It is about 1/500th as significant a relationship as being friends with someone on facebook. So for Breitbart to hint at some kind of sexual impropriety based on Twitter follows is unbelievably irresponsible. Shame on CNN.

Here are Breitbart's idiotic claims:

Debunking Breitbart's Hilarious Claims of 'Just Reporting The Facts" On Weinergate

In a post on Big Government, Andrew Breitbart absurdly argued that his websites have been "responsible" in their coverage of the #Weinergate scandal:

Ever since we first broke this story on Big Government and Big Journalism, we’ve been cautious in our reporting, making every effort to present the facts of the story in a fair and accurate way. For example, in connection with our original report, we noted that Congressman Weiner claimed his Facebook account was hacked, and we withheld the name and identity of the woman who allegedly received the offending photo from Congressman Weiner’s account.

Unfortunately for Breitbart, the facts do not support his claim. First of all, as I documented this weekend, Dan Riehl wrote a post accusing Congressman Weiner's spokesperson of "lying" without supporting his contention. As is typical of Breitbart's bloggers, he chose the least charitable interpretation and then pretended that there were no other explanations available.

Second, while Breitbart's bloggers were careful on their blogs, they clearly were declaring that Anthony Weiner was guilty on Twitter. For example, Breitbart has called Weiner (D-9") throughout the events, he explicitly disawoved the notion of presumed innocence, and he outright claimed that the "facts add up against Weiner:"

Likewise, John Nolte, Editor of Breitbart's Big Hollywood, joked about Weiner on Twitter in a way that clearly assumes guilt:

Furthermore, Breitbart declared that Weiner's contention that his account was hacked was "implausible:"


Similarly, though Breitbart bloggers did not "out" the victim (the person who was the target of the lewd tweet) on their websites, they repeatedly "outed" her on Twitter. Both Nolte and Larry O'Connor, editor of Breitbart TV, directly linked to stories discussing her identity and revealing personal information about her:


Breitbart blogger Lee Stranahan put out the victim's name on his first post, and shamelessly linked to every piece of personal information about her he could find online.

So I'll admit that some of the claims in Daily Kos diaries (which, as everyone should know, are not diaries that represent the views of the front-page bloggers) were pretty sloppy. For example, the immediate knee jerk claims that Breitbart had "hacked" the site or was responsible for the photoshopping only served to make liberal bloggers look bad. However, the claim that Breitbart, for the first time in his life, "responsibly reported" on this story is also laughable. The facts will come out through investigation, and having a mob of people publicly pushing innuendo and personal information of private citizens is irresponsible.

The Problem With The Right-Wing's Yellow Journalism on Weinergate

On Friday night, a photo of an erection in shorts was posted on Congressman Anthony Weiner's twitter account, seemingly directed at a woman from Seattle. Weiner posted shortly after telling people that his account was hacked but, unsurprisingly, the goober's from Breitbart's websites are declaring that this is all-but-conclusive proof that Weiner is engaging in scandalous behavior. Unlike a recommended diary at Daily Kos, I don't think that Breitbart photoshopped the photos or that they weren't really posted on Weiner's account. However, I think there are pretty clear reasons to think that the account was hacked.

Basically, the "Weiner is guilty" crowd is arguing for the following idea: Weiner intended to DM (Direct Message) the picture, but accidently sent it publicly. The idea is that it is improbable but not impossible that Weiner would be so sloppy as to send a lewd photo publicly. But the problem with this theory is that EVEN if the message had been sent in a DM, it wouldn't have been private! The photo was posted to RepWeiner's yfrog account. Yfrog is an application that allows you to post photos. It does allow the option of direct messaging: however, any and all of the photos you post on it are publicly available. So even if Weiner sent a DM through his yfrog account, the photo would be available to the public.

At this point the "Weiner posted the photo himself, but meant to DM it" theory becomes completely ridiculous. Because it would mean that he intended to post a lewd photo of himself in a publicly-viewable yfrog account listed under the name RepWeiner. It was already highly implausible that Weiner would be so incompetent as to accidently send a lewd photo publicly but while intending to send it privately, but the idea that he would post a lewd photo under his name in a public forum and then also make the mistake of accidently tweeting it publicly is all-but too implausible to take seriously.

Any honest, sane, ethical purveyors of information will wait for the full facts to come out to make declarations of what ultimately happened; which of course is exactly why the Breitbart bloggers are doing the exact opposite.