US Senate Campaign 2008

Just after the DFL Feminist Caucus announced they'd endorsed Al Franken, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN4) stopped by the press area and said she is still concerned about Franken and the distraction some of his past writings on porn and violence against women are posing for Democrats.

"I am just speaking for myself," McCollum said, adding that she was unaware of the feminists' endorsement of Franken.

She said she's very interested in how Franken is going to address these issues in the speech he will give in an hour or so asking DFL delegates for their support. She's looking for Franken to explain what he will do to stop these issues from being a distraction and redirect the focus toward the pressing issues that Democrats should be addressing, such as high gas prices and improving infrastructure like bridges.

"[Franken] has the potential to be a very big distraction," McCollum said. "We should be talking about what we are going to do" about gas prices and building or repairing bridges.

McCollum reiterated what she's said this week, that she finds Franken's writings offensive and unfunny.

She called on Franken to be "forthright" and tell people "how are you going to get beyond talking about" his past.

McCollum also said she is not encouraging former Senate candidate Mike Ciresi to get back into the race.

Wired magazine reported yesterday that CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith matched every one of the millions of 'anonymous edits' on the popular reference website Wikipedia to the organizations where the edits originated. Every anonymous Wiki edit created an IP address record, and he simply matched those IP addresses to available lists of who controls them. He quickly discovered that everyone from the Central Intelligence Agency to the New York Times and the Church of Scientology have anonymously changed entries, generally to quietly promote their respective organizations' agendas and PR interests, or else delete embarrassing material. (You can try Griffith's lookup system yourself!)

The Minnesota angle is that someone on the Fox News Channel computer network (working from IP 12.167.224.228) changed several entries about U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken, back when he was hosting a show on the Air America network. Staff at the Franken campaign told PIM, "We are beginning to suspect the Fox News Channel has something of a bias when it comes to Al."

Originally, Franken's entry said:

Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the [[National Public Radio]] program ''[[Fresh Air]]'' on [[September 3]], [[2003]], Franken said that Fox's case against him was "literally laughed out of court" and that "wholly (holy) without merit" is a good characterization of Fox News itself.

The Fox staffer changed it (here's the exact revision):

Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the liberal [[National Public Radio]] program ''[[Fresh Air]]'' on [[September 3]], [[2003]], Franken said that Fox's case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales.

The Brit Hume Wiki entry once contained:

Many groups and commentators, including [[Media Matters for America]], and liberal broadcasters [[Al Franken]], and [[Keith Olbermann]], have claimed that Hume distorted Roosevelt’s views.

but the same Fox terminal changed it to

Many groups and commentators, including [[Media Matters for America]], and liberal broadcasters [[Al Franken]], and [[Keith Olbermann]], have claimed that Hume distorted Roosevelt’s views in an attempt to ride Mr. Hume’s coat tails in the ratings race as Mr. Hume hosts the highest rated political program on cable television.

More fun stuff below the fold...