So I’m sure a lot of you have heard by now that Sarah Palin’s email got hacked. I’m not going to link to any of the sites reproducing her email, I’ll just say three things. One, the hacker committed a crime. Two, Palin was an absolute idiot for using a Yahoo account for government business. Three, it’s funny that the “if you haven’t committed a crime, why do you care?” crowd is suddenly up in arms.

One of the fellas up in arms was Bill O’Reilly who decided to spend some time trying to drag liberals into things and just generally get in a big fat outrage at the world as he is wont to do. Showing that the internets are not to be trifled with, O’Reilly’s website got hacked.

The breach into BillOreilly.com came as retaliation for remarks O’Reilly made on Fox News condemning the attack on Palin’s Yahoo email account, according to Wikileaks, a site that makes it easy for whistleblowers, hackers and anyone else to leak documents.

As proof, Wikileaks posted a screenshot of the BillOreilly.com administrative interface that showed the names, email addresses, passwords, and home town of 20 subscribers of the website. In all, information belonging to 205 subscribers was intercepted, according to Eric Marston, CTO of Nox Solutions, the company that maintained the website.

You can take a gander at things on the site if you’d like. I’m looking forward to the next Factor, frankly. Once again, it’s a crime, but I’ve got no qualms with laughing when a jerk’s house gets egged, so I’ll laugh now too.

I realize that’s not exactly what was said, but Gore didn’t say he invented the internet either and I think this one’s even more hilariously off-base.

Pressed to provide an example of what McCain had accomplished on that committee, Holtz-Eakin said the senator did not have jurisdiction over financial markets, then he held up his Blackberry, telling reporters: “He did this.”

“Telecommunications of the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create,” Holtz-Eakin said. “And that’s what he did. He both regulated and deregulated the industry.”

Keep in mind that McCain doesn’t own a Blackberry and its main claim to fame, being able to send/receive email and work the internet, is something that he readily admits he is incapable of, the claim that we can thank McCain for the innovation in telecommunication in any way is just crazy. At best you could say that he sat there and said “yes, innovation is good!” and that was that. I’d bet any money that if you asked McCain if he has a Blackberry he’d respond with something about pie.

Obama’s response is gold:

“If John McCain hadn’t said that ‘the fundamentals of our economy are strong’ on the day of one of our nation’s worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

I’m really laughing over here though since the Gore/McCain parallels are getting even more absurd. McCain is a Republican version of the candidate the media painted Gore, and to a lesser extent Kerry, as. He’s a scurrilous liar and exaggerator, he flip-flops all over the place, and now he’s got his own “invented the internet” quote. Not that I’m anticipating the media doing much with it.

From the moment I saw that sentence in the Reuters article that Palin was blaming “liberal bloggers” for spreading the whole covering-up-for-pregnant-daughter thing, I knew it was going to give me headaches. I figured it would give Bill O’Reilly a new reason to bitch about DailyKos being like the KKK and some other right-wing nutjobs would follow suit.

What’s surprising me, though, is that even my fellow lefties in the media are starting to follow suit. I was listening to Sirius this morning and caught Alex Bennett, a guy who criticizes Democrats for not being liberal enough, practically burning the blogs in effigy for their awful part in spreading the rumor.

Let’s get a few things out of the way, first. I’m a blog-hound. I read the normal news and watch the cable stations, but I also love getting the opinions of liberal writers. Not just small-time folks like me, but the big ones such as those in my link list. And I can say, categorically, that none of those writers spread the story. Okay? You got it? John Aravosis didn’t touch it, nor did Greenwald, Huffington, John Amato, Atrios, Josh Marshall, the good people of Think Progress, none of ‘em.

A commenter pointed out that the article with Governor Palin praising Obama’s energy plan technically is still on the site, it’s just been buried and relocated. However, nothing can really defend the fact that “someone” has done some massive edits.

Even better, the person doing the edits is one “Young Trigg”. For those keeping score, Sarah Palin’s youngest child is named Trig. So, is it possible that Palin, or perhaps Mr Palin, decided to fire up a Wikipedia account and make a whole bunch of positive edits?

You can look at the pre-edited article and compare it to the current one, and there’s quite a few rather suspect edits, such as that the entire section “Abuse of Power Investigation” has been renamed and the section “Concerns about the 2008 Presidential Campaign” is gone. However, when you look at specifically what “Young Trigg” did, it becomes more obvious. A few I liked:

1. In talking about the commissioner dismissal, for no good reason a detail was added about Palin’s ex brother in law being remarried and divorced again.
2. Palin was given credit for “killing” the “bridge to nowhere”, despite other evidence indicating she supported it initially.
3. Threw in some random details about playing in a championship game with a sprained ankle during school.
4. Claimed she’s “noted for her willingness to take on oil companies.”

The list goes on. The topper, though, is that “Young Trigg” asked to have the page protected. It seems after YT put all the pro-Palin crap (notice nothing’s cited, or even relevant), he/she decided it would be best if no one could do anything crazy like change things back.

Someone clearly has no idea how the internets work if they thought no one would pick up on this. You can’t go and edit out negative stuff and add blatant propaganda without getting caught. Sorry.

This is just getting ridiculous. John McCain’s campaign web site is claiming that he’s responsible for the proliferation of cell phones and Wi-Fi technology. Yes, this is the same John McCain who doesn’t know how to use a computer.

The argument is that McCain was on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. He indeed chaired the committee from 1997 to 2001, and 2003 to 2005. He’s been on the committee for a long time and is still a member, though not as the vice chairman, or even the ranking member of the Subcommittee of Science, Technology, and Innovation.

McCain’s web site specifically claims:

John McCain is uniquely qualified to lead our nation during this technological revolution. He is the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The Committee plays a major role in the development of technology policy, specifically any legislation affecting communications services, the Internet, cable television and other technologies. Under John McCain’s guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology that enables Americans to surf the web while sitting at a coffee shop, airport lounge, or public park.

Just checking, but the guys voting for McCain are the same ones who constantly mocked Al Gore on his valid claim that his work as a Senator led to the creation of the Internet (well, its development as a public use communications network, at least). Nevermind that Gore indeed pushed legislation that was vital to the development of the Internet, and that the “father of the Internet,” Vint Cerf, openly credits Gore for his work. These are the same guys who laughed at Gore, right?

No matter what Ann Coulter says, we liberals aren’t beholden to the desires of the wacko Islamic fundamentalists. Thus I’m exceedingly glad that Wikipedia decided to prove they have more balls than half of Europe and America’s governments and refuse to take down images of the prophet Mohammad just because of the protests.

More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam, which prohibits any representation of Muhammad. But the defiant editors of the encyclopaedia insist they will not bow to pressure and say anyone objecting to the controversial images can simply adjust their computers so they do not have to look at them.

The images at the centre of the protest appear on most of the European versions of the web encyclopaedia, though not on Arabic sites. On two of the images, Muhammad’s face is veiled, a practice followed in Islamic art since the 16th century. But on two others, one from 1315, which is the earliest surviving depiction of the prophet, and the other from the 15th century, his face is shown. Some protesters are claiming the pictures have been posted simply to ‘bait’ and ‘insult’ Muslims and argue the least Wikipedia can do is blur or blank out the faces.

Wikipedia has a legitimate reason to host the images: they are a source of information and asking anyone to scrub their site simply because something offends you is the height of both arrogance and stupidity. Well done, over 180,000 Muslims.

And heck, even if they didn’t have a good reason, tough nuggets. If something offends you, avoid it. It’s a non-crime. It is, in fact, a non-offense, a non-crime. You were not harmed, not damaged, your life was unaffected. Kowtowing to someone’s desires to stop offending them is just cowardice. I’m glad Wikipedia stood up.

You may have heard about this, but there is a little battle of sorts over the Yahoo internet leviathan. Microsoft has put a bid on them, irking Google just a wee bit. What you may have not been aware of (and I certainly wasn’t) was that Rupert “Fair and Balanced” Murdoch was rumored to be considering a bid of his own.

You can rest easy, though. It ain’t true.

“We are definitely not going to make a bid for Yahoo,” said the chairman of media giant News Corporation.

However, Mr Murdoch then added the rather less definite: “We are just not interested at this stage”.

Can you imagine a Rupert Murdoch controlled search engine? Search for Clinton and you’ll get the Amazon page for Ann Coulter’s book about Bill’s affairs and legal problems. Search for president Bush and you’ll just get a shrine. Search for Michael Moore and your information will get sent to the NSA. Liberal blogs? No way.

Suggest some hilarious possibilities for search terms and results that might happen with Murdoch’s Yahoo. I’d love to see what you come up with.

It isn’t often that the government does something that so blatantly exhibits their hostility toward dissent. Earlier we got news of that whole “how to deal with dissenters” handbook the Bush team was using, but this is just ridiculous. It seems the United States military has banned the website ThinkProgress from their network.

The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste was our guest blogger on ThinkProgress. He posted an op-ed that was strongly critical of the President’s policies and advocated a “responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq.” Previously, both the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times had rejected the piece. An excerpt:

It is disappointing that so many elected representatives of my [Republican] party continue to blindly support the administration rather than doing what is in the best interests of our country. Traditionally, my party has maintained a conservative view on questions regarding our Armed Forces. For example, we commit our military only when absolutely necessary. […]

Rush Limbaugh’s show is broadcast in Iraq on the American Forces Network right with Sean Hannity and Colmes’ respective radio shows, and they’ve blocked a progressive website.

I’d be curious as to whether Free Republic, Powerline, and Michelle Malkin are available on their networks.

So by now the story about a Wikipedia scanner that tracks who makes edits to Wikipedia pages is pretty well known. And since you can take a look at any major organization via some handy-dandy links on the right on the site itself, people are doing just that.

Naturally, being a lefty liberal asshole, I checked out what FOX was up to. Back in 2006, I raised up a stink about the Chris Wallace interview with Bill Clinton, namely the fact that FOX had attempted to pull the video from YouTube and also removed the full version from their own site. The article showed up on every major website, got me a few interviews with the MSM, the works. So when I saw that someone at FOX had made a few edits to the Chris Wallace article, particularly the “Interview with Bill Clinton” section, I was curious.

As it turns out, I’m in there, though the URL was inaccurate so I fixed it. I initially thought I had been edited out, but it turns out FOX’s edits came way before that was put in, and a potential bombshell of an article evaporated.

However, it’s damn interesting to see who edits what. For example, someone at FOX edited the article on Keith Olbermann in the trivia section in October of 2005. I have no source on this, but I’m willing to bet they added the point that O’Reilly’s show has “ratings ten times higher than Olbermann’s”. They also fiddled with an article on Al Franken, editing out a quote of his that really insulted FOX in favor of making something up that sounded a lot nicer.

What this all boils down to is the fact that these people aren’t looking at Wikipedia as a potential database of knowledge. They’re seeing it like a big bulletin board of self promotion. You know someone had a serious disdain for both the truth and the population of the country when they’re willing to edit articles not because they’re inaccurate, but because they make someone look bad.

I’d like to thank Reddit for alerting me to an LA Times article discussing Conservapedia, which is apparently a conservative version of Wikipedia. Apparently a teacher disliked the kind of facts people were pulling from it. The article starts off with possibly the best thing I’ve ever read.

Andy Schlafly was appalled. He was teaching a history class to home-schooled teens and one student had just turned in an assignment that dated events as “BCE,” before the common era — rather than “BC,” before Christ.

Home-schooled. Kid had the temerity not to mention Jesus. Andy Schlafly. Yes, the son of Phyillis Schlafly. This is off to a fantastic start!

A mild digression first. Is it just me, or does the right seem to consider facts as debatable, and then insist that their “side” needs represented? The news wasn’t what they wanted to hear, so they made a network that, rather than reporting facts, panders to what the viewers want. But I digress. I poked around on Conservapedia, and here are some fantastic gems.

From the page on Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton may suffer from a psychological condition that would raise questions about her fitness for office. A recent book entitled The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Rodham Clinton examines the Senator’s instability, incoherent speeches as both student and First Lady, casual disregard for the law, and ever-changing opinion on the Iraq war. These character flaws, analyst Bay Buchanan writes, make Hillary overly dependent on gurus and outside experts, with no internal compass to guide her, displaying all the classic symptoms of “clinical narcissism.” The American Psychiatric Association describes this condition to include feelings of superiority, self-importance and “fantasies of unlimited success, fame or power.” The author further states, “We are not talking about self-infatuation, we are talking about a clinical condition that could make her dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander in Chief.”

Naturally, Bay Buchanan is a source. How about George W Bush? Surely they’re rough on him as well, there’s no way they can be that soft-handed on the president.

The deal cut with Democratic leaders in exchange for their acquiescing to fund the troops calls for the President to sign legislation raising the minimum wage. [3] One commentator remarked, “Despite all the talk of standing up to George W. Bush, despite all the bravado about taking control of Congress, despite the so-called mandate to change direction, Democrats caved….They claim that the majority of Americans are with them on the Iraq issue, but…President Bush, at the weakest moment of his presidency, still bested his Democratic rivals.”

Amazing. In an article about Bush, a quote that lambastes Democrats is quoted in full. Michael Moore?

Some of his work includes the pseudo-documentary films Fahrenheit 9/11, Roger and Me, and Bowling for Columbine, and the books Dude, Where’s my Country, Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. and Stupid White Men.

Later, in discussing SiCKO, the word “documentary” is placed in quotes, and a picture is offered showing Moore “ranting.” How about social security?

African-Americans would be among those with the most to gain from transforming Social Security into a system of individually owned, privately invested accounts, similar to IRAs or 401k plans.

According to a study by researchers at Harvard University, virtually every woman-single, divorced, married, or widowed-would probably be better off financially under a system of personal retirement accounts, the earnings of which could be shared by spouses.

…at least they acknowledged that it wasn’t cited. Rather than go into gay marriage, which seems to only consider James Dobson a reliable source on the topic, I’ll move right along to science. What’s it got to say for creationism?

Accordingly, creationists point out that there are over one hundred million identified and catalogued fossils currently in the world’s museums.[11] Creationist insists that if macroevolution happened, then there should be “transitional forms” in the fossil record that show the intermediate life forms. Another term for these “transitional forms” is “missing links”. If creationism is true then there should be a lack of transitional forms or at the very least there should be merely a handful of disputed transitional fossils.

There is little consensus among scientists about how macroevolution is said to have happened as can be seen below:

The entire article spends its time arguing against evolution. But hey, it’s an article on creationism, I suppose that’s par for the course. Obviously the article on evolution will fight for the other side. Since, after all, it’s fair and balanced like FOX.

There is little consensus among scientists about how macroevolution is said to have happened as can be seen below:

No, I’m not repeating myself. The same damn section is in the article on evolution. It gets better.

Dr. Henry Morris, in order to illustrate that the macroevolutionary position is not verified by experimental data, quoted a leading evolutionist regarding this matter. Dr. Morris wrote the following:

Opponents of the macroevolutionary position assert that evolutionary scientists employ extremely implausible “just so stories” to support their position and have done this since at least the time of Charles Darwin.

In addition, the biological world has the strong appearance of being created as can been below:

Every section in the article fights against evolution. There is nearly nothing in the full screed that is arguing for it. At this point I think it’s fair to remind everyone that “fair and balanced” in the conservative mind seems to mean “give my opinion plenty of coverage”.

I only scratched the surface on all of this. Conservapedia is a joke, and has nothing to do with being even-handed or fairly representing the facts. Its entire purpose is to offer a conservative viewpoint on everything. As Schlafly put it:

The whole point of his encyclopedia, he said, is to provide a different angle on the facts — ones that a student researcher wouldn’t necessarily find on Wikipedia, or in the school library.

Yup. A different angle on the facts. That’s what they’re calling it now.

Rechan found this lovely bit in the article on, of all things, kangaroos.

According to the origins theory model used by creation scientists, modern kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah’s Ark prior to the Great Flood.

…and of course…

After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land[5] with lower sea levels during the post-flood ice age, or before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart[6], or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters.

By the way, if you run into any real gems in the ‘pedia, put it in the comments and I’ll add it to the main article. I only did the basics here.