It’s official. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who resigned in disgrace over a bizarre sexting scandal this past June, was NOT hacked. Today, eight months after the congressman first claimed he was the victim of a hacking or a prank, the NY Daily News has broken the story that Anthony Weiner spent more than $13,000 in campaign funds to hire private investigators to track down a hacker that never existed. Weiner paid T&M, a Manhattan-based firm, $13,290 for “legal services” in the fourth quarter of 2011, financial statements filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission reveal. Sources told the Daily News, however, that Weiner hired T&M — a firm loaded with former NYPD sleuths — when he was in full spin mode over the controversy that eventually led to his resignation from the House. Two sources familiar with Weiner’s downfall said the Queens pol told investigators the same story. T&M investigated — and learned Weiner had sent them on a fool’s errand. “They did their job, and then it was time to sit down with lawyers,” another source said. “Self-denial, it dies a slow death.” Surprised? No, neither were we. The married congressman from Queens, NY initially told the public his Twitter and Facebook accounts had been hacked , after a tweet sent to a female college student in Washington state appeared in his public Twitter timeline, complete with a photo of a man’s bulging underpants. The tweet triggered the unraveling of a series of sexually explicit online messages and additional photos Weiner had shared with numerous women. More than two weeks would pass before Weiner finally came clean about his extracurricular activities. But not before embarking upon a media blitz to embellish his imaginary tale of hackers and pranksters and other political scapegoats: “You know, I can’t say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated, pictures can be dropped in and inserted,” reported HotAir . “At a time when the GOP is playing games with the debt limit, a member of the Supreme Court is refusing to recuse himself from matters he has a financial interest in, and middle class incomes are stagnant, many want to change the subject,” Weiner said in a statement emailed to POLITICO by his office. “I don’t. This was a prank, and a silly one. I’m focused on my work.” Anthony Weiner indicated at the time that he’d asked a firm to look into whether his photos “could have been taken or manipulated,” followed shortly thereafter with the announcement that he’d hired an attorney to explore “civil or criminal actions” in response to the “prank.” Now we learn that he used campaign funds to try and cover his hide. And The Hill is reporting that Weiner continued to spend more than $130,000 in campaign cash even after his resignation. This may be a good time for some to reflect on the unwarranted over-zealous scrutiny that fell upon Andrew Breitbart and other writers associated with these very websites who were accused of targeting , setting up, and/or hacking Congressman Weiner (or other ludicrous conspiracy theories ), accusations that are often still repeated today, months after Weiner’s admission and resignation. And one of the whistleblowers who stuck through the story has since had his life turned upside down, largely as a result of Weiner’s dishonesty (I won’t link to the horrid posts). Might I remind these same critics that BigGovernment , which first broke the Weinergate scandal, reported the facts and did so responsibly , despite numerous claims to the contrary. The dishonest party in this story is the one who no longer holds a seat in Congress. And that’s a fact.
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Anthony Weiner Paid $13K in Campaign Funds to Private Investigators to Chase Down Non-Existent Hacker
We have devoted many pixels to exposing the American Progressive movement’s involvement in the violent Hamas Flotilla. Extensive details can be found here: The Progressive Jihad Against Israel . Now, with the help of Progressive Democrats of America board member , and CodePink co-founder Susie “Madea” Benjamin, the American Progressive movement is taking off the Anti-Israel mask, and very public demonizing Israel (and by extension the Jews–especially the American kind) with a new social media campaign. Here are some of the vile fruits of their labor: Israel is an apartheid state and American politicians are selling out to the Jews. Check. Your Rep is not able to represent you because they are too busy helping evil racist Jewland at your expense. Check. Unpatriotic America Jews get their elected officials to support evil racist Israel at the expense of needy Americans. Check. American Jews of all parties need to stand up and condemn this vile demonizing of Israel and the Jews. Every single Jew that calls themselves a Democrat AND a supporter of a Jewish homeland of Israel has an obligation to stand against this dangerous rhetoric, or be made to own it. @MJayRosenberg , are you listening? J Street staff, are you listening? You are either for bashing the Jewish homeland for Progressive political sport, or you are against bashing the Jewish homeland for Progressive political sport.
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Democrat Jews Have a Choice to Make: Condemn CodePink, or Own CodePink!
Today, at NOON EDT, BigGovernment will conduct a Twitterview with Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI). Follow @BigGovt and @ThadMcCotter or #mccotterttv for all the fun. As always, we’ll publish the full exchange later here at BigGovernment.
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Thursday Twitterview: Rep. Thaddeus McCotter at NOON EDT
BigGovernment has been informed by trusted sources that Rep. Anthony Weiner will step down today. From The New York Times : Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told friends that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House in the wake of revelations of his lewd online exchanges with women, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans. The news comes as Democratic leaders prepared to hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss whether to strip the 46-year-old Congressman of his committee assignments, a blow which would severely damage his effectiveness. From Politico : Weiner is expected to make his resignation official in a statement to the press at his Brooklyn office at 2 pm.
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Rep. Weiner to Resign
Tomorrow morning (Wednesday, June 15), BigGovernment will feature an exclusive Twitter interview with House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI). We will post 20 questions to Rep. Ryan on the budget debate, Medicare, the presidential race, and more. All questions–and answers!–will be delivered in 140 characters or less. The fun starts at 11am EDT. Follow BigGovernment on twitter here , or you can follow the interview at #ryanttv. Also, follow Rep. Ryan here . We can guarantee his Twitter feed is safe for the whole family! We will reprint the entire interview at BigGovernment on Wednesday afternoon.
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Twitter Interview with Rep. Paul Ryan
Lisa Gerstner Kiplinger's Money Power With social media in the picture, you have a powerful new weapon for getting satisfaction when a merchant wrongs you — as well as new ways to prevent a…
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Spending: Got a complaint? Tweet it
Twitter has been successful in drawing a great number of eyeballs to its application with the use of a so called verified account status. It allows the average person to track, address and even interact with what one might call celebrities in various areas of life. Unfortunately, given Democrat and Twitter official Adam Sharp’s, lack of response to accusations that another prominent Democrat’s verified account was hacked – without a blip in its verified status – one might just as readily conclude that Twitter has no genuine safeguards in place whatsoever to ensure that a verified account is truly representative of the individual it’s claimed to be for every tweet, as has previously been widely presumed. As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on individual user accounts, for privacy reasons. I label Twitter representative Adam Sharp a Democrat given his years of work for Senator Mary Landrieu – pointed out in a January 2009 press release . Allen succeeds Adam Sharp, who joined the Landrieu office in June 2004 as Deputy Communications Director and has led the communications team since being named Communications Director in 2005 and Deputy Chief of Staff in early 2008. It’s understandable, perhaps, that Sharp might be reluctant to say anything that might damage another high-profile Democrat like Weiner; however, one would think his guiding allegiance today would be his role as an official Twitter spokesperson. As he seems so unwilling to discuss a now much publicized hacking incident involving a Twitter verified account, what are people to think? When CNN political analyst Jeffery Toobin takes to the nation’s cable airwaves with statements like this : “Twitter is not a very secure environment, and doesn’t even come from the people it appears to come from.” one wonders when Twitter will realize that Rep. Weiner’s version of events is very damaging to it’s brand. Either Sharp’s political allegiance to a fellow Democrat is standing in the way of his being open, forthcoming, or genuinely responsive, to questions swirling about Representative Weiner’s allegedly hacked verified Twitter account, or he is covering up for Twitter’s inability to discern when a verified account has been compromised and is no longer worthy of the verified distinction. Which is it, Mr. Sharp? Ball’s in your and Twitter’s court, as they say. Or, game on, if you prefer, as I believe another prominent politician recently said in a different context, if you will.
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Twitter/Adam Sharp (D): Verified Account Status Bogus Marketing Ploy?
The other night, a funny thing happened on the way to an idea… With an absurd attack against Sarah Palin, the MSM proved a point I was going to make about the potent power of Twitter better than I ever could. But, first, a little background. Let me see a show of hands. How many of you sit home frustrated by MSM bias, lies, misinformation and double standards? Wow. That many. So my idea was to write an article encouraging people (meaning, you) to sign up for a Twitter account and help us to smoke out MSM bias — to urge you to tweet about it and sound the alarm online whenever you see it. It’s a ridiculously simple process and not only will you feel better, but word will spread and the culprits will know you’re spreading that word. The idea most certainly isn’t to get the hopelessly corrupt media to stop being hopelessly corrupt. If plummeting circulation rates and embarrassing ratings can’t get them to change their ways, nothing will. But more people policing the MSM and spreading the word on Twitter is a beautiful thing, good for America — and what better way to expose them than through the art of mockery? For example… The MSM has set for themselves a Sarah Palin Standard whereas any perceived mistake the Governor makes becomes an instant part of the noisy MSM narrative. The idea, obviously, is to destroy her. And yet, when she hits a grand slam like she did with her speech in Madison Saturday , the coverage pales in comparison to, say, when the MSM spends 10 days blaming her for those heinous murders in Tucson. With this double standard in mind the other night, I suggested to my Twitter family (and yes, it feels like family) that we tweak and make fun of the MSM for all but ignoring ( or obfuscating ) the sharpest attack on President Obama from a potential GOP challenger yet. So it went a little something like this: Hi @mikeallen: Did you know @politico’s only coverage of Palin’s base-energizing #WI speech was a misleading @AndyBarr34 item. Can u cover? Or, regarding another glaring MSM double standard: (you have to open the link to get the joke) Hi @davidgregory I’ve attached video of racial incident involving Tea Party. Hot stuff. Have u covered? http://bit.ly/hbJ1yG Again, no one here is trying to convince anyone in the MSM to do their jobs honorably. We all know that’s a complete waste of time. But what isn’t a waste of time is pointing out the MSM’s glaring double standards to as many people as possible. These tweets can get re-tweeted, the effect can be exponential, and those addressed in the tweets know this. All good. To be clear, you don’t call anyone names or swear at them or get angry. You tease them some and have a little fun pointing out their biases in the ultimate hope that others re-tweet you and the message gets out to as many people as possible. And then you move on to the next biased “journalist.” Now, I don’t know Rebecca Mansour, we’ve never met, but she’s one of three-plus thousand people following me on Twitter and I’m one of the three-plus thousand following her. I work for Andrew Breitbart, she works for Sarah Palin — so it kinda makes sense — and like a few others, she joined in on my reindeer games. A sample here , here , and here . But guess what happened? The MSM freaked out. Obviously annoyed at the very idea anyone would question or tease them, Slate’s Dave Weigel apparently got the ball rolling by spinning Mansour’s playful tweets into this full-blown headline: Pay Attention to Sarah Palin ! In the two years and eight months that Sarah Palin has been a political celebrity, I’ve never heard a conservative complain about the media ignoring her. Not until last night. See what Weigel did there? An obvious tweak at the MSM’s biases is twisted into a completely phony story about Palin whining about not getting enough MSM attention. But wait! There’s more. Somewhere out there some form of a JournOlist still exists and so the same media that couldn’t quite bring themselves to give a home-run, base-energizing Palin speech anywhere near the attention they gave a crosshairs map the suspected Tucson shooter never saw , DID see a story in a Palin aide joking about media coverage on Twitter. But only because they could twist it into a negative against Palin. See: Here . Here . Here . Here . Here . Here . A few tweets, the MSM gets irked, and once again gives guys like me an opportunity to expose their insidious agenda. That’s the power of Twitter. It’s a beautiful thing. You really should join us.
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Twitter Power: Mock the MSM and Watch Them Launch Phony Attacks against Sarah Palin
Pentagon officials say two Russian aircraft buzzed a U.S. Navy warship in the Arctic’s Barents Sea last week, each coming within about 50 yards of the frigate. Barents Sea – Russia – Arctic – Polar Regions – Business
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Russian aircraft buzz Navy ship twice in Arctic
Political face-offs should be about more than scripts and soundbites. Massachusetts can make them better for candidates and voters alike by learning from the past. Massachusetts – United States – Politics – Products and Services – Arts
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Making debates matter again