From FoxNews.com:
Sources close to the South Carolina congressman charge that hackers have blitzed his campaign Web site JoeWilsonforCongress.com with a series of attacks that periodically shut down the page.
When I first read this, it sounded strangely familliar...
You may recall that during the heat of the 2006 primary race that prompted then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman to go Independent, the Connecticut politician's Web site, as a colleague of mine so eloquently noted, dropped dead.
The only problem? The claim was completely false (same source).
At the time, conspiracy theories abounded. There was twittering that liberal bloggers who backed Lieberman's antiwar Democratic rival, Ned Lamont (who went on to win the primary, by the way) were responsible for the site's inaccessibility, and Lieberman's own campaign maintained that a denial-of-service attack had occurred.
A recent Freedom of Information Act request by the Stamford Advocate, a local newspaper, turned up an FBI memo that concluded there was no evidence of an attack.
Rather, "the server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured," according to an e-mail message dated October 25, 2006 from the FBI's New Haven, Conn., office.
The FoxNews piece is a horrible attempt at journalism... it goes on to quote anonymous sources with the Wilson campaign and doesn't even try to get a comment from Miller's campaign, a computer expert, the hosting company, the webmaster, or anyone else. As you can read from the headline that excises any attribution, "Hackers Imperil Wilson Campaign Web Site", it's now a truth that's being repeated across the blogosphere as a rallying cry for donations.
Fun fact: Before doing a Google search for "Joe Wilson" hackers, guess how many outlets are reporting this besides Fox? I bet you already know the answer.