I wanted to take a few minutes and share a story I found from the Pittsburgh newspaper about everything that's taken place there in the last few days.
What was most noteworthy to me from the story was this:
In March, Ms. Todd was asked to leave a grass-roots group of Ron Paul supporters in Brazos County, Texas, group leader Dustan Costine said. He said Ms. Todd posed as a supporter of former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and called the local Republican committee seeking information about its campaign strategies.
"She would call the opposing campaign and pretend she was on their campaign to get information," Mr. Costine said last night. "We had to remove her because of the tactics she displayed. After that we had nothing to do with her."
About a month earlier, he said, Ms. Todd sent an e-mail to the Ron Paul group saying her tires were slashed and that campaign paraphernalia had been stolen from her car because she supported Mr. Paul.
"She's the type of person who wants to be recognized," Mr. Costine said.
While she definitely upped the ante on this one, she used shifty Rovian tactics in the past. She obviously needs to be far from any type of politics...hopefully any group would check her background before they let her sign on to their campaign.
I'm also very thankful that these lies were exposed quickly before anyone could be hurt or wrongly accused. I grew up near Pittsburgh and lived right in the city for a number of years. I always think of it as my hometown in a sense, which is why I think this whole incident just shocks and upsets me so much. Don't try this crap in my town! (or any town for that matter)
Something else interesting in the story:
Mr. Garcia took the widely published picture of Ms. Todd with her injuries. He said he took several photographs with a digital camera to document what had happened. He said he only gave copies of the photos to police and Ms. Todd's employer, the College Republicans. One photo appeared on The Drudge Report on Thursday, setting off a storm of media attention.
Garcia apparently was the friend whose house she went to after the "attack." It seems to imply that Garcia and Todd didn't slip the photos to Drudge, so it had to be the College Republicans. Now perhaps that's just my interpretation...but it seems to me like that's the only logical solution. (Quite possibly the College group tipped off the campaign and it went from there)
I'm sorry...I know there have already been a number of diaries about this girl, but I hadn't seen anything yet about the fact that she was already canned from Ron Paul's campaign. Plus this graph about her picture seems to support the other information out there on the campaign pumping this out to the media.
The last bit of interest from the article is what she lists as one of her favorite books: The Scarlet Letter.
Here's a link to the whole Story