Posted on 11/09/2005 11:58:39 AM PST by Anti-Bubba182
BALTIMORE -- Inside the MD4BUSH mystery are questions of timing, motive, and who knew what when.[snip].....
......[snip]MD4BUSH signed on to Free Republic in early October and immediately added new dirt to the rumor -- writing on Oct 8: "Yeah, he cheats on his wife. I heard he is not allowed in the house and is living in some new high-rise near City Hall."
MD4BUSH then wrote to Steffen directly by commenting on Maryland politics, using language to depict an Internet user who was a true conservative, and suggesting there was a need to play dirty in 2006.
In mid-October, Steffen and MD4BUSH exchanged private e-mails on the Web site during which MD4BUSH again fueled the rumor. The user then prodded Steffen to learn how best to spread it. Steffen, in response, told MD4BUSH to stay away from the mayor's personal life.
Sometime after that, still in the fall, someone gave the private online exchanges to The Washington Post.
Sources said at least one top aide to O'Malley was aware of the online postings in November. The aide denies that. Miller reported that several weeks before the story broke, one O'Malley associate outside City Hall knew enough about the story to try to help The Washington Post reach a key figure in the rumor.
The mayor again said he doesn't know the identity of MD4BUSH, and repeated he's just grateful that whoever it is exposed what he called a campaign of smear. O'Malley also said he did not know about the MD4BUSH postings when he brought up the rumor himself in November.
MD4BUSH did leave an as-yet undisclosed electronic trail in the Free Republic postings -- a trail a source describes as "sloppy".
(Excerpt) Read more at thewbalchannel.com ...
In spite of the Democratic Party condemenation of the tactics of MD4Bush, the only lesson I believe they actually learned is in the BOLD above.
Don't be "Sloppy" and leave an electronic trail.
And Notice O'Malley is still grateful to MD4Bush which sends the appropriate signals to Democratic Operatives.
Why doesn't freerepublic come out with all this and reveal who it was? As opposed to teasing us with hints and pieces.
The policy hurts in this case because MD4Bush was an obvious rat, but is appreciated by most users.
"He would not release it without a subpoena or other operation of law."
Even if he did, who's to say that MD4BUSH used his real name?
IP tracing?
JimRob guards the reputation and principles of this site like a pitbull on steroids, and rightly so.
MD4Bush PING!
You couldn't say for certain. In this case however, MD4Bush registered from an MDDems.org email. It had to be a valid email to validate the password. MDDems.org is a small outfit, particularly in between elections. If anyone from that organization did this, it is damaging to the party.
This story confirms what is obvious from reading the public threads. MD4Bush was a Democrat agent provocateur, who posted nasty rumors about the Democrat Mayor, hoping to entrap Steffen. Steffen refused to bite. Nowhere on these threads does Steffen spread rumors about the mayor or anyone else.
It goes on to say that MD4Bush tried to entrap Steffen in private Freepmails, but once again Steffen told him NOT to spread personal rumors. I can't verify that, not having access to those Freepmails, but it seems likely from the pattern of the public evidence, and the fact that the Washington Post was unable to quote anything directly incriminating, although they SAID that there was rumor-spreading by Steffen.
In other words, the only thing Steffen was guilty of was posting on FreeRepublic, which is labeled by the leftist press as a far right-wing site. STEFFEN NEVER SPREAD ANY RUMORS ABOUT THE MAYOR IN ANY OF HIS POSTS OR EMAILS. He resigned although he had done nothing wrong, in order to make it harder for the Washington Post to spread more lies about Governor Erlich.
In contrast, the Democrat operative spread vicious rumors about several Democrat politicians, including the accusation that Senator Mikulski is a lesbian. And he broke the FR rules by giving someone else his password. And he lied about what happened to the Washington Post.
Above all, however, the Washington Post has repeatedly lied about this matter and has refused to correct any of its numerous lies. The Washington Post participated in a vicious and corrupt political smear job, probably from the start when it was set up. Probably it has also broken the law, by accessing a private web site without the formal permission of the owner. Or at least so they say, since they claim not to know who MD4BUSH is. Somehow they got his password, but they claim not to be able to prove whether it was freely given to them or stolen.
I still want to know how NCPAC's personal information got in the public domain.
I doubt that would have been enough for the WaPo to run with it.
FR bans obvious lib usernames before they post a lot of the time, so if he used an e-mail address from an obvious liberal website, why wasn't he banned right away? How do we know what e-mail address he used anyway?
The registration process is automated and available 24/7. No
one would see the email source until there was a problem or complaint to draw attention. The MD4Bush user name would not draw attention by itself and the email would have to be looked up.
Thanks. I thought that someone would see the address. I guess not, but it is a pretty poor job of covering your tracks on the troll's part.
IIRC don't you have to give a name when you register?
Would MD4Bush be dumb enough to give his real name? Now that would be more than sloppy......It'd be down right stuck on stupid.
He gave a real email that went back to mddems.org. That email
corresponds to some official there.
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