MNGOPWatch reports that Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) staffers altered the senator's Wikipedia entry. Coleman's chief of staff confirms the edits were made, but only to "correct inaccuracies". Obviously, it is no longer accurate to say the Senator owes his soul and his ass to Karl Rove...
Here's the juicy details...
Some of the changes made by Coleman's staff include:
* A description of Coleman's former political views was changed from "liberal Democrat" to "activist Democrat;" this later become just "active"
* Coleman's first-year voting record (he voted with Bush 98% of the time) was removed from the biography
* Numerous references to Karl Rove were removed from the article, including:
o Details of Coleman's role as "the lead Senate Republican defender of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove"
o Information on Karl Rove's efforts to push Norm Coleman into the 2002 Senate race
o A quote from Norm Coleman describing how Karl Rove helped alter a bill in order to secure Coleman's vote
* In a section on CAFTA, the article originally stated that Coleman "settled for quotas" when voting for the bill. Coleman's staff changed this to a claim that Coleman "managed to broker a deal with the White House that protected the sugar industry"
Now, Smilin' Norm, being the lying flipflopping little slime he is, got caught. So have other senators, include a certain Sen. Biden (D-creditcards). Wikipedia has addressed this somewhat by blocking Congressional IP addresses from editing Wikipedia, but that doesn't prevent them from going home to do it.
But as Wikipedia is a classic community commons, it is vital that we do two things. First, we have to watch it like a hawk for GOP whitewashing (and blackwashing of Democratic pages). But second, we have to NOT ENGAGE IN IT OURSELVES. No defacing their pages. And no whitewashing ours. Keep Wikipedia as honest and neutral as possible.
As with the Abramoff case, it's a lot easier to take the moral high ground when none of ours are down in the sewer with the Republicans.