Was Weiner framed?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the start (of Weinergate), Rep. Anthony Weiner has claimed that his Twitter account was hacked. While he says that he cannot say "with certitude" that the photo in question is not of him, which is a bit odd, he stresses that he did not send any such photo and that he is "the victim of a prank."

Is that credible?

Yes. Yes it is. I won't get into the details, but blogger Joseph Cannon -- and you're right, Jon Stewart, it does sometimes take bloggers to do the investigative reporting that the "mainstream" media refuse to do, or are too lazy to do -- explained what might have happened in an essential post earlier today. Suffice it to say that it's incredibly easy to "hack" (although it's not really hacking) into a Yfrog e-mail account like Weiner's and from there to make it seem as if a photo originated with the Twitter account connected to the Yfrog account. Again, Cannon explains how, and he's discovered an anomaly, added to all the other evidence, that proves the photo in question must have originated somewhere else -- that is, not with Weiner.

And who was the culprit? The evidence appears to point to Dan Wolfe, "a partisan zealot" who "was obsessed with Congressman Weiner. His obsession strikes many as downright pathological." It was Wolfe who first "reported" on the the photo.

Whether Andrew Breitbart is behind it is another matter, but his right-wing site Big Government has been reporting salaciously on Weinergate from the start. And of course the photo was first published there. 

You do the math.

Even if Breitbart wasn't involved, he went with the photo, and the story, without knowing the details, which is par for the course for him. And regardless of his involvement, it seems pretty clear that this was indeed a vicious right-wing prank.

Surprised?