Senator or Representative?

Hint, its the third word in the article subby.

Stay classy Alaska.

If you get butthurt by a bloger or any political commentator, you should not be in politics.

One set of rules for us, another set of rules for them.

What restraining order?

I love how the Weeners to a story about a Democratic politician mentions "neocons," Michelle Bachmann, and the NRA.

"Restraining order"? Where the hell did THAT come from?

Also wondering about the "restraining order" ...

State Rep, subby. Epic fail.

Plus,

strathcona: What restraining order?

This.

How about linking to someone who uses spellcheck, or shiat, at least reads what they've written?

You weren't supposed to RTFA, you were supposed to get your neo-con knickers in a twist about libruls doing asshattery.

/not subby

I think the only factual words in that headline are "Democratic" and "blogger."

Eat a bowl of dicks, subby.

I have a feeling a ton of people will pontificate before reading the article and the relevant issues.

And outing her identity is harmful how?

/just sayin'

Rep. Doogan used the State email to threaten AKMuckraker.
Ethics violation?

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: And outing her identity is harmful how?

/just sayin'

You can't be this dim.

Can't wait for the 6th amendment right to face your accuser crazies.

Don't get me wrong, this is a dick move, and probably an abuse of government resources, but not illegal. Vote him out.

Funny.

Mike Doogan became an Alaskan icon for his humorous, sharp-witted, and often eye-opening columns on the workings of the Anchorage Assembly and the Alaska Legislature. He was a lot like a Jon Stewart, really. Us vs. Them, the Sane vs. The Power-Hungry...

It was that fame that made taking a house seat easy for him.

Now, he'll be able to look back through his memoirs and see the precise moment when he became one of them.

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: And outing her identity is harmful how?

/just sayin'

It's a douche move, but it doesn't change the fact that subby is a farkwit. No mention of a restraining order anywhere in the "article."

And Publius wept.

I commend the subbmiter, this is usually the same 'headline-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-actual-article' tactic I usually go for when submitting right-wing trollish garbage, too. Gotta go with what works. ;)

/Alaska rep is an asshole

Wait, did this politician actually *do* something wrong? I don't know much about these "bloggers" but on occasion they have been known to make accusations that are without merit, so I hear.

Hmm a democrat.

Now we get to see republicans defend bloggers and show their moral outrage over this exposure and privacy violation.

The Valerie Plame thing is still cool though.

yogaFLAME: Don't get me wrong, this is a dick move, and probably an abuse of government resources, but not illegal. Vote him out.

Depends if he actually used government resources. If he just asked people until someone told him, then there's no real abuse of resources.

HotWingConspiracy: Hmm a democrat.

Now we get to see republicans defend bloggers and show their moral outrage over this exposure and privacy violation.

The Valerie Plame thing is still cool though.

And the data mining.

Minus the lack of the restraining order thing.....

Doogan made a N00b move.

Sum Dum Gai: yogaFLAME: Don't get me wrong, this is a dick move, and probably an abuse of government resources, but not illegal. Vote him out.

Depends if he actually used government resources. If he just asked people until someone told him, then there's no real abuse of resources.

Well, according to TFA, he found out and then sent out the information through his legislative newsletter. Again, I dunno if it's precisely illegal, but it's quite a dick move, and unethical as all hell.

PoopStain: It's not facism if we do it.fark you, Democrats.

This Democrat Senator obviously knows that posting a person's identity is the same thing as approaching the person within 100 feet!!!11!!

Why does he get away with it!

WE all know it's because B. HUSSEIN OBSAMA has totally politicized the DOJ!1!

NEW boss Old BOSS we change our believe in!!


/did I do it right, subby?

I was all pissed off about this last night. Hoping for more information I read this article. Compared with the headline, and few details in the article, I've downgraded to "get your facts straight first".

/by the time I hit submit it will be alert level "meh"

Looks like this all started over dumb use of email

1) Alaskans for Truth told people that the first thing to do was to contact legislators and express their concerns.

2) Doogan saves a number of such emails and then responds with one email to 30 people all on the To: line. (Claim is tone was snarky, and superior, and dismissive. Still looking for copy.)

3) Some of the 30 replied, with Reply to all.

4) Doogan goes full retard.

You want to have a say? Fantastic. We need you. If you want to stay anonymous, don't put up a blog. If you want to stay anonymous AND have a say, then you'd better be very good at staying in the shadows because people hate a mystery. Even Batman gets found out occasionally.

And if you're commenting and publishing about public matters, accept as risk that people -- readers, subjects or targets -- are going to eventually figure out who you are. If you're someone yelling in the public square, don't be surprised when people look your way.

See, this is exactly why Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Obama must be..... oh wait, they had nothing to do with this story....

Umm, carry on citizens..
/Not sure why I would care about someone "outing" a blogger
//MEH

This is quite possibly the most factually incorrect headline I've ever seen on Fark. Honestly, who ever greenlit this should be ashamed. Way to not do your farking job.

That said, what a douche move by Doogan. Here's the actual bloggers response to the situation if anyone's interested: link (new window)

dogbone: If you're someone yelling in the public square, don't be surprised when people look your way.

Outrageously false analogy. Anonymous pamphlets - it's like a blog, but you put it on a piece of "paper" - have been around for centuries.

Who the hell greens a headline like that? That retarded troll Kelly Lockhart?

dogbone: You want to have a say? Fantastic. We need you. If you want to stay anonymous, don't put up a blog. If you want to stay anonymous AND have a say, then you'd better be very good at staying in the shadows because people hate a mystery. Even Batman gets found out occasionally.

And if you're commenting and publishing about public matters, accept as risk that people -- readers, subjects or targets -- are going to eventually figure out who you are. If you're someone yelling in the public square, don't be surprised when people look your way.



I'm in "meh" contingent:

* Some Democrats are assholes
* If you think you can remain totally anonymous on the Internet, you're an idiot - especially if you have a widely read local blog
* Never put anything on the Internet that you wouldn't want read on the cover page of the New York Times¹.

¹ I recently posted on my Facebook that my brothers were jerks. Didn't go into detail - just was venting. The next day, my sister-in-law (married to one of the jerks) sends me a request to be my 'friend'. Easter dinner is going to awkward this year and it's my own damn fault.

if you want to hide your identity you must use no less than 7 proxies.

Dems do tend to get emotional.

Is it illegal? No different than calling out an editorial writer at the local paper by name, methinks.

Again with the partisan ranting...this time its the EVIL DEMOCRATS. Next time it'll be the EVIL REPUBLICANS.

At no time will anybody grasp the idea that since the government is almost entirely composed of EVIL PEOPLE.

It's not a farking football game... nobody is going to 'win'.

Daily dose of political double standards, etc.

Guh.

Saying "GOVERNMENT PEOPLE ARE EVILBAD!" in response to this is just stupid. This isn't Democratic, or Republican, or "business as usual" (writ large) or any of that shiat. This, my Farkers, is Northern.

I'm from the Yukon originally, and I'll say the same thing I said when Sarah Palin first appeared on the national stage, then again when she started making herself look stupid: Northern politics are like this. I'm more surprised that the actual story was not what the headline said.

Alaska, the Yukon, the NWT... Politics are just like this up there. Everything north of 60 is a third-world hellhole stapled on to two leading first-world nations. The cold and the dark chase off everyone sane; the only people left are people who've run to the end of the highway and can't run any further, burnouts, and people who just haven't left yet.

The farking Federalist Papers were written anonymously. I hope this guy gets cancer of the ass or something.

But it's okay because Dems can not do anything wrong, according to many here.

Or when they do something wrong/elicit/morally dubious the response is:
1) But, but, but BUSH/REPS/CHENEY/NIXON!
or
2) Well, what happened is more 'nuanced' than how you presented it
or
3) Reps should be eliminated
or
4) But, but, but BUSH!

KwameKilstrawberry: I recently posted on my Facebook that my brothers were jerks. Didn't go into detail - just was venting. The next day, my sister-in-law (married to one of the jerks) sends me a request to be my 'friend'. Easter dinner is going to awkward this year and it's my own damn fault.

You know what the solution to that is? Don't accept the goddamn friend request.

mfaby: 2) Well, what happened is more 'nuanced' than how you presented it

If by more nuanced, you mean that (1) there is no restraining order mentioned, (2) this person is not a Senator, but a state legislator that 98% of the nation had not heard of (and thus not at all representative of the national party, in the same way that Duncan Hunter is not an accurate representation of the national Republican party), and (3) most of the posters in this thread agree that he is, in fact, being an asshat...

Then yes, we can say this Democrat did something douche, and ethically weaksauce, but as far as I can tell, not necessarily illegal.

One thing I love is that no one on the left, from Fark to DailyKos, seems to have any qualms about calling this guy a dumbass and douchebag.

Yet, I think we can all imagine the circling of the wagons that would occuring on the right if this guy had an R after his name...

yogaFLAME:Outrageously false analogy. Anonymous pamphlets - it's like a blog, but you put it on a piece of "paper" - have been around for centuries.

A Wikipedia citation...really?

Tom Paine originally published as "Anonymous," which is different than being anonymous or having an expectation (or a right to) anonymity. Common Sense was well understood even at the time of its publication to have been published by Paine by those on both sides of the pond -- so much so that at its second printing a couple of months after the first he put his name on the title page.

Publishing (and broadcasting) has been acknowledged even by the Supreme Court as analogous to speaking in the public square. If you're going to speak in the public square, then you have a responsibility for what is said, which is why libel laws apply. I guarantee you that if this individual's content had been libelous, the Court wouldn't think twice about rubber stamping the plaintiff's request during discovery. If you are self publishing via blog, you can try to hide behind a nom de plume, or de guerre, or de intarweb or whatever, but in doing so you forfeit your expectation of privacy, and no legal right to privacy in that forum ever existed for you.

In this case, if our good governmental official abused his office to strongarm someone into spilling the beans about her identity, then shame on him -- seek out ethics charges, vote him out, picket the office or whatever makes you smiley and happy. But if he came by the information legally and ethically, then shame on the blogger for being a big baby about it and for not having the backbone to take it like she dished it out.

Just to clarify, you absolutely do have the right to publish anonymously if you so choose. The government cannot and should not force anyone to declare themselves, and in this case if the governmental agent did so he should have his johnson slammed in a car door. However, if, for example, your neighbor knows that you are the blogger and he's asked about it, he can absolutely say that you are. If, by extension, that's how this name came out, then that's just the way it works - you can take steps to remain anonymous, but nobody has to take steps to ensure that you stay that way if you haven't covered your bases.

FTFA: "AKM puts the case for her anonymity well: 'It said in my "About" page that I choose to remain anonymous. I didn't tell anyone why. I might be a state employee. I might not want my children to get grief at school...'"

1) Don't put yourself into a position where that might happen, it all sounds VERY selfish to put other people in the crosshairs because you want to be an activist and have a "secret identity" too.

2) The Internet is the most traceable thing to use ever. You can't hide on it, there is no protection. Obviously, you are not that smart enough to use the tools, so don't be surprised when the house falls down around you.

3) Accountability. To re-visit point 1: If you really want what you say to make a difference, then prepare to lose everything. You can't have your cake and eat it too in this case. If the purpose of your existence is to potentially end the careers and damage the lives of others, then your risk should be at least equal to the damage your whining causes.

Finally, though. It can be debated whether or not this guy overstepped his bounds or just acted in an extreme manner to prove a point.

Either way, this AKMuckraker character needs to get over herself and put REAL time, money and effort out there to get herself elected.

If her words actually carry the importance she thinks they do, then she should be a shoo-in, right?