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Stunning Story On Shaun Kenney
By Greg L | 13 December 2006 | Blogs, US Senate | 11 Comments
Via NLS I saw Shaun Kenney is making the claim that the Webb campaign has amassed opposition research dossiers on a number of Virginia bloggers which they intended to use in order to counter any negative coverage of the campaign. Shaun writes:
If you are a Virginia blogger, chances are that the Webb campaign has an opposition research book on you. Bloggers that made the cut include Chad Dotson, Jim Hoeft, Ben Tribbett, Waldo Jaquith, Josh Chernila, Lowell Feld, Jim Riley, J.C. Wilmore, Jon Henke, and a host of others. These are not your typical background checks either… a significant amount of money was spent crafting the kind of opposition research one would typically find on a candidate running for public office.
It seems as if the Webb campaign made a strategic decision to unleash this opposition research if something damaging came out against their candidate, simply to personally slander the blogger making the claim.
Once source for this information described it as “Nixonian”. Not only were Republican bloggers thoroughly researched, but Democratic allies of Webb as well, in the event they turned on the Webb campaign.
Note: quote has been edited to correct a few mis-spelled names.
If this is true, now that Jim Webb has been elected one he now has an almost unlimited capacity to silence political dissent using the power of his public office. Shaun is absolutely right to raise the specter of Richard Nixon in this context.
I really hope this is not the case.
UPDATE: NLS Reports his sources confirm the story, but the breadth of background information the Webb campaign gathered on constituents is uncertain. Meanwhile the “Liberal Progressive” celebrates Webb acting like a Nixon-wannabe as evidence that bloggers have gained prominence. I wonder how she’d feel if the subjects of this personal treasure hunt happened to be reporters from the Richmond Times-Dispatch instead of Republican and Democratic political bloggers?
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11 Comments
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Its really quite astounding what we are learning about Jim Webb in the near two months since he was elected.
Ahem, it’s “J.C. Wilmore.”
I seriously doubt Webb knew anything about this. I have a feeling that Vanden Berg’s ears are burning though.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m more cynical than your average bear but I’m just not surprised at this. Quite the contrary, I had expected this to have happened before now. Certainly Webb isn’t alone in this type of enterprise. I expect that as blogs grow beyond the core of each party and exert more influence that those writing the blogs will come under more scrutiny. Is it fair or decent? No! but some folks put their interests in front of all else.
As to it silencing political dissent, that’s ridiculous. This blog started off completely anonymous and it would be trivial to do it again. (I was actually going to post from Russia but I can’t read Russian so I couldn’t figure out the proxy settings…;)
Oh, and “Feld” is spelled wrong too.
All it takes to reveal an anonymous blogger is money, and often not a whole lot of it. I’ve done it. Now we see that anyone who wants to speak about what the Democrats are doing is subject to personal retribution if they happen to upset the wrong people.
I look forward to seeing more information develop on this.
JC - thanks for the spellchecks. I copied Shaun’s post, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was typing a little faster than usual with this story.
I bet that’s true!
How do we know that the Webb campaign didn’t compile dossiers on reporters, too?
If it was worthwhile for them to compile dossiers on bloggers, who have relatively marginal impact, how could they fail to do the same with reporters who have demonstrably more potential impact? I expect they did just that, if they went to the trouble to try to dig up dirt on lil old Jim Riley.
Having an idiot stalker is one thing. Having the office of a sitting US Senator stalking you is plain disturbing.
So in one month, we have found out that Jim Webb wants to punch out the president for checking in on his son, and now his campaign built dossiers on bloggers to attack them personally? See, thats what really bothers me. In a free society, when people exprese opinion they should not have to worry about their credit reports, background, et al revealed as a response. Ugh. These next six years are goinng to be very very VERY long.
Who said we were still living in a free society, MC?