If you haven't heard the news yet, don't worry you aren't alone. This broke online late on a Friday (which happened to be the Friday after the debate). dKos12 candidate
Ginny Schrader had her campaign hacked. The firewall "caught" Campaign Solutions, internet firm to Bush, the RNC, the NRCC and about a third of the Republican caucus. Then the lying began:
Denying hacking Ginny
Donatelli said she believes it is impossible for someone in her company to hack into Schrader's campaign computer without Donatelli's knowledge. She said no one associated with her firm has ever been accused of hacking in the past.
CNN July 22, 1999 - Donatelli denies hacking HRC
Hockaday Donatelli Campaign Solutions, the firm that maintains the Hillaryno.com site, denied any involvement in hacking the rival site and said it was unaware of the maneuver until contacted by a reporter. "This is not a good thing," said Becky Donatelli, cochair of the Virginia-based consulting firm that has built Web sites for a large number of Republican candidates."
more.more.more
same story:
She [Donatelli] said she had never heard of the nationally watched race between Fitzpatrick and Schrader or even knew who retiring U.S. Rep. James C. Greenwood was despite her decades of Republican involvement in campaigns dating back to Ronald Reagan's first run for president in the mid-1970s.
Visit Campaign Solutions' client list and you'll see they consult for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Yet they have never heard of the race the Democrats are targeting as one of the top 13 in the country?
This whole thing stinks
Chris Bowers has started a great discussion on leveraging the blogosphere to google the rest of this story since the press is as involved as Bush was in the National Guard:
Now that it is out of the bag, as shown
here,
here, and as Jerome wrote earlier today, it is time for all the Googling Monkeys out there to help the Schrader campaign. Someone is trying to hack Ginny's computers, and that someone is apparently connected to Republican consulting firm, Campaign Solutions. This firm, whose clients include Bush-Cheney 2004, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Pennsylvania House Republican Campaign Committee, and Representative Pat Toomey (PA), has been involved with
several hacking incidents in the past. Campaign Solutions has denied involvement.
The Fitzpatrick campaign denies any connection to the incident and Campaign Solutions:
Jim Cawley, Fitzpatrick's campaign manager, said his campaign knew nothing about the incident.
"This is, by no means, anything that we would (condone)," he said.
He also said that Fitzpatrick's campaign had had no contact with Campaign Solutions.
Proving otherwise would be very important, and might permanently change the dynamics of this campaign. Dig up whatever you can.