Weiner, Thomas and a Hack

This whole Weiner thing is pretty much a passing gas cloud in Washington, nevertheless it's significant in pointing out a few things. Yes, there's the old double standard of bad behavior but there's also a timing issue.

According to sources Weiner has been out in front on a campaign to get Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from any future Obamacare challenges in the Supreme Court based on the fact he has a conservative wife who works for a conservative outfit. Lo and behold his financial statement was released Friday evening just as all of this went down. Weiner was apparently unfazed enough by a possible security breach to issue a statement on Thomas today:

Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner of New York issued a statement outlining the accusations. “We knew that Justice Thomas’ family had a financial stake in opposing healthcare reform. Now we know even more. It’s pretty clear the justice has one option here: recusal.”

Weiner also cites Justice Thomas’ income from the Heritage Foundation as enough proof that he is unable to participate in the case regarding the healthcare law.

In other words, Weiner is the Dems' assigned attack weiner dog on the Thomas issue. But that makes the Friday night event all the more puzzling. Why would he want to torpedo all his work at a critical moment with a silly 'stunt'? It leads more towards a conservative dirty trick, and let's face it, Breitbart might not be as partisan as the NY Times but he's fairly partisan and doesn't have the most pristine reputation.

But that doesn't explain Weiner's curious reactions. If he didn't tweet link his underwear boner to a 21 yr old girl--that he was following for some reason--why would be refuse to answer any questions about it? Why secure a lawyer without going to the police? Could it be that he knows he's got friends in low places who'll spare no ink to explain away any embarrassing facts, including the fact that this same kind of nonsense once produced a special election in NY 26, a heavily conservative district the Democrats just won?

MORE 5/31/11

This should give everyone more faith in our major media..



Behold--actual journalists! Good job. And they got a big goose egg for an answer, which in Washington speak is never good for the politico.

MORE 6/1/11

You know it's a slow news week when the media is talking about Palin disrespecting the flag by showing one on the side of her bus and Anthony Weiner's weiner. But onward we press..

Weiner is now flip-flopping from yesterday and answering the question of whether he sent the twit pic--no. Yesterday he called a CNN reporter a "jackass" for even asking, now he's making jokes. Clearly someone has had a talk with him. Probably the internet security lawyers he hired. Maybe they also figured out that a picture could be tweeted out without his permission if a hacker got access to his yfrog address.

Meanwhile, he's still playing major league possum on the question of whether the picture is of him or not:

"I can tell you this, that there are -- I have photographs. I don't know what photographs are out there in the world of me. I don't know what have been manipulated and doctored and we're going to try to find out what happened.

Geez, how many junk photos does he have out there? By the way, just getting access to his yfrog account is not enough--the hacker would also have to have a picture of him to 'drop'. This might explain why Weiner is being so vague on the issue; if such a thing were impossible Weiner would be screaming it from the rooftops but instead he's dancing around like a marionette. He's trying to keep the notion of a prank alive by saying there might be numerous Weinerbonershots out there to 'drop' into his account.

In other words, had he never created a Boehner shot a hacker would need to create one from scratch, which could mean there's something on the photograph in question that could attach to him (sorry, can't help it). He also surely has to know that if a real internet security investigation was to be done they would simply contact Imageshack (yfrog) and ask whether there was any foreign IP access to his account on the day in question, same for Twitter. If not, his account was not hacked and HE sent the pic.

Another question is why he won't even begin to answer the question of why he was following these young girls at all, which could be the real reason he's dancing even if he didn't send the pic--he has no viable explanation for his better half. If there's ANY tragedy in this event it's probably that.

A bigger question is how long the MSM will remain interested. After some early lethargy and friendly explanations they've done their jobs rather well the last two days, but they are still not asking all the right questions yet. But partisan or not they really hate being lied to, so the dice roll here says they will keep going.

PRANK, NOT A HACK? 6/2/11

Maybe the Chinese were just running a prank:

Mrs. Clinton characterized the charges as “very serious” and said that the Obama administration was disturbed by the charges of the attacks, aimed at stealing the passwords and monitoring the e-mail of several hundred people, including senior government officials in the United States, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries, military personnel and journalists.

“We are obviously very concerned about Google’s announcement,” Mrs. Clinton said. “These allegations are very serious, we take them seriously, we’re looking into them.”

How is Weiner going to know if the Chinese were involved in his 'prank hack' unless he permits an investigation?