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Congress caught making false entries in Wikipedia
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
News.Com - Jan 30, 2006
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6033082.html
Congress caught making false entries in Wikipedia
by Declan McCullagh
We already know, of course, that politicians live primarily for re-election
and typically view the truth as an impediment to the higher purpose of
unfettered self-aggrandizement.
Still, we can be excused for feeling mildly nauseated when fresh
confirmation of this distasteful aspect of modern politicking surfaces.
The latest episode appeared last week in the form of a report that aides to
Rep. Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat, deleted references to his
broken term-limits pledge and massive campaign war chest on Wikipedia.
Then the trusty editors at Wikipedia got together and compiled a list of
over 1,000 edits made by Internet addresses allocated to the U.S. Senate and
House of Representatives. The IP address subsequently was blocked and
unblocked.
An extensive analysis reveals how juvenile official Washington secretly is,
behind the mind-numbingly serious talk of public policy.
One edit listed White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry
for "douche." Another said of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma) that: "Coburn was
voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to
Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag."
(Keep in mind these are the same holier-than-thou political climbers tasked
with writing laws telling the rest of the country how to behave. Or else.)
This juvenalia is, of course, thoroughly bipartisan. Another change to the
Iraq invasion entry shows that the anonymous congressional editor played up
the dubious connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
It's true, of course, that the cretins who are behind the Wikipedia
alterations can (and probably will) do this from their home computers in the
future. But the difficulty in policing the political class shouldn't make us
any less alarmed at the most recent evidence of its misdeeds.
*
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