It's the smallest things that trip you up

This is a good example of community-based journalism, where a group of individuals follows an idea, and finds a bigger story than they thought. It's also an example of why you have to remember every detail.

The GOP, GeorgeWBush.com and the line that jumped the Congressional Firewall

In the virtual worlds of computer security, networking, and email, the lines separating the inner workings of the current government in Washington D.C. and the outer world of partisan politics exist only in theory. The recent discovery that top strategists emailed plans for dismissing 8 U.S. Attorneys using accounts on the gwb43.com and georgewbush.com domains, hosted and paid for by the RNC, is just one indication of a much bigger disregard for the necessary separation of government and private industry.

Not only are the lines now blurred, but they became so years ago. Indeed, at the very inception of the Bush Administration, there was an effort to leverage partisan loyalty on the outside to preferred vending inside of dot gov.

What the investigators did, was to take a look at both partisan websites, like ohiogop.org, and non-partisan websites, like Intelligence.House.Gov, and find out that some of the elements were reused from the partisan websites in the non-partisan websites, even when they were made by two different companies.

Interesting story, and it's going to be interesting to see if something comes out of it.

Via ex-lion tamer