[I've been reading dkos since it came on-line and comment occasionally, but this is my first diary entry.]
Since 2003 I've been watching with interest the radid development of the South Dakota blogosphere. It's kind of interesting how intense the politics is up there all the time when south of Valentine, Sioux City and the Missouri River things quiet down quite a bit in off years.
Anyway, my neighbors to the north has what one might called a fairly well developed blogosphere. The intense contest between Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Republican wunderkind John Thune in 2004 no doubt played a significant role in the rapid maturation of this medium among South Dakota's political observers. Daschle's defeat left a number of talented political professionals with time on their hands, some of who started their own political weblogs.
As an avid election watcher, I found myself traversing the South Dakota weblogs with some frequency as the 2004 elections approached. After November, the frequency of my visits decreased, but I made it a point to follow the various accounts of South Dakota's politics, if only to learn something from their authors' experience.
There have been some noteworthy developments of late. First, there is the interesting relationship between Sen. John Thune, his paid bloggers, and Jeff Gannon / James Guckert.
This relationship has received substantial coverage and scrutiny by South Dakota's political bloggers, as well as the national media.
Shortly after the election, one of Thune's paid bloggers (Jason Van Beek) left his weblog "South Dakota Politics" to Thune's other paid blogger Jon Lauck of Daschle v. Thune) in order to begin working for Sen. Thune in his DC office. It has now been revealed that Prof. Lauck is leaving his position as a professor at South Dakota State University to take a position as a staffer to Sen. Thune. Regardless of your ultimate conclusions on the appropriateness of paying bloggers for "research" and "debate prep," we can all thank Lauck and Van Beek for bringing the issue of FEC regulation of political speech on the Internetsto the fore in a very tangible way.
But South Dakota's blog-o-sphere has recently had to wrestle with another common problem that permeates the gray area between advocacy and journalism on the web: anonymity.
Several weeks ago, a new weblog entitled "ArgusVThune" (AVT) emerged ostensibly to counter the proliferation of anti-Thune or Thune watchdog websites. According to its own masthead, it was "dedicated to coverage of Murdo's favorite son and his perpetual opponent" --the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.*
*After reading South Dakota political weblogs for more than a few minutes you will understand that it is an item of faith among South Dakota's conservatives that the Argus Leader is hopelessly biased in favor of liberal interests and institutions and cannot be trusted to objectively cover South Dakota's political culture. This of course brings us back to Jeff Gannon, Jon Lauck, Jason Van Beek, and the Daschle / Thune race, but I digress.
AVT is an anonymous "group" weblog with a single poster who goes by the pseudonym "Steven Raider," "Stevenraiders," or Raider] for short. The name, it appears, is designed to suggest a connection to Rapid City, South Dakota, where the mascot for Stevens High School is the Raiders. Unfortunately, due to events described below, most of the posts to which I will be referring are no longer available at AVT. I have lifted most of what follows from Google's cache.
Shortly after its birth, sometime in early March, AVT began posting on South Dakota's lone House Member, Stephanie Herseth's handling of the 2005 Transportation bill. The posts came at a frantic pace. Headlines boasted "BREAKING NEWS - HERSETH IN MELTDOWN," "SD Highway Funding - 1953 levels - Herseth Legacy," and "Super-Sleuth Mercer Reports Herseth Highway Fumble." AVT offered tantalizing material with behind-the-scenes details on the inner workings of the Herseth office so vivid that they had to be true. Excerpts:
Sources at the SD Association of General Contractors are furious with the circus show Herseth is turning in on the Highway Bill.
With Herseth leaving for Europe during the height of the debate - SD AGC reps were left to deal with her staff. My source says they fail to see why she cannot get the baseline of $50 Million and on top of it rumors are swirling that Herseth needs a new definition of what a Highway is.
Developing.............
And
AP Breaking news - AVT sources accurate - Herseth loses $28 million in funding over European vacation.
As AVT reported on Monday - Herseth's European trip during highway funding negotiations had South Dakota funding reduced from $63 million to an inflation adjusted RECORD LOW of $35 million.
Despite billions more in the 2005 Highway Bill than the Thune 1997 Highway Bill - Herseth failed to even hit Thune's $50 million.
And
Pierre Transportation Officials and sources at SD Contractors say Herseth staff has given them 4 different funding levels for the Highway Bill passed last Friday.
After negotiating South Dakota share of Highway funding increases down to 46th in the Nation, Herseth staff still has no answers.
Pierre officials have made decision to bypass dealing with Herseth office and have turned to a paid lobbyist for South Dakota to get them the information they need.
Following......
Skeptical readers like me took these posts with a grain of salt. As someone who doesn't really know how House members negotiate a transportation bill, however, I'll admit AVT's accounts sounded pretty believable. Even with TO a member of the House Transportation Committee, I'll admit to having paid little attention to the twists and turns of funding for bridges and roads across Nebraska. But then I recalled Rep. O sborne's Congressional delegation trip to Europe last month. Wasn't Rep. Herseth on that trip? Is this trip the one that AVT now refers to as a "European Vacation?" Don't delegation trips occur during district work periods when Congress is out of session? I wondered how Herseth's participation in a Congressional trade mission with at least one member of the Transportation Committee could have resulted in "fumbling" highway funding in such a dramatic fashion. I was skeptical alright. But I had only hit the tip of the iceberg.
Shortly thereafter, AVT begin posting stories of Herseth's sabotage of the Daschle database in the weeks prior to the election. According to AVT, "sources" told the fantastic story of Herseth conspiring with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee operative Peter Cari to load a virus into the Daschle database in order to trick his field staff into turning out Thune/Herseth voters. As I noted the other day in the comments section of the Nebraska Democratic Party blog Nebraska Democratic Party, South Dakota's Clean Cut Kid was downright incredulous. Apparently he had run the Daschle database and easily debunked the unsubstantiated reports from AVT. The pseudonymous "Raider" was undeterred, however, and continued to press the story, finding some interest in the rumor among South Dakota's right wing bloggers. AVT's reporting was convincing enough that one of South Dakota's more prolific liberal bloggers thought it best for Herseth to get out in front of the story, lest it spread.
Then the Clean Cut Kid dropped the bomb.
An enormous post captioned "The 21 Lie Salute and the South Dakota Truth" exposed AVT from top to bottom. The post debunked every piece of innuendo, exaggeration, mischaracterization and downright falsehood produced over AVT's brief existence. It set the record straight about Herseth's handling of the Transportation bill with actual evidence. It debunks the preposterous Peter Cari computer virus allegations. But most interestingly, it appears to identify the pseudonymous Raider. I don't know shit from shinola about who is who in the world of South Dakota politics with the exception of national officeholders and their opponents, but it appears that AVT was authored by one or two of South Dakota's better known Republican operatives. The Clean Cut Kid was able to correspond via email with "Raider" and found his IP address was that of a JD Byrider affiliate with deep ties to the South Dakota Republican party. The firm's owners are under indictment for consumer fraud in Iowa (and presumably in South Dakota too).
AVT quickly responded by sarcastically conceding each point raised by the Clean Cut Kid, and then the South Dakota political blog-o-sphere got very quiet. There were posts on basketball, a water crisis, South Dakota's air force base, top Democratic and Republican political operatives, state Supreme Court arguments, but very little on what appeared to be the 800 pound gorilla in the virtual room. Things must have been a little hot to handle in what I would guess is a rather small world of political activists.
Then yesterday, AVT had a sudden emergency and went black. We are informed that:
AVT team is working furiously with www.blogger.com team to find out why all postings and archives wiped out.
Will hope to be back up shortly
We will see. As someone who has some experience with weblog software, I question the blackout. I also question the ability to work "furiously" with the blogger team when one must regularly wait several hours--if not days--to receive any response from the help desk. Or is this more hyperbole from the pseudonymous Raider? Only time will tell. Maybe this is AVT's way to gracefully climb out of the hole it dug for itself. Maybe there is an effort to scrub the archives of potentially libelous statements (I will try to offer a quick primer on Internet libel shortly). Maybe there really was a blogger bug that attacked only the AVT website shortly after the identity of the authors appears to have been revealed. Who knows? As AVT's Raider would say:
Developing........
In any event, the present activity in the South Dakota blog-o-sphere provides some great infotainment. Until the emergence of an anonymous anti-Nelson weblog gives me something to do, I'll keep watching our friends in the Rushmore State as they push the limits of legal and ethical online behavior. You figure, something's got to give.
Following........