[Updated] Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s Web site is down, and the campaign says a flood of info-seeking disenfranchised voters overwhelmed it. A press release posted at the GOP blog Minnesota Democrats Exposed reports that the site was “inundated by tens of thousands of hits today – temporarily crashing the website.” MDE’s Ryan Flynn then quotes Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan (Fox 9 also published the release).
“Minnesotans and folks across the country are fed up with Al Franken’s efforts to disenfranchise thousands of Minnesota voters, and the overwhelming response we received to making this information public is proof positive of that fact,” he says.
But not so fast, says Aaron Landry, an MN Publius blogger (and Franken fan) who works as IT Manager at a St. Paul design firm by day. He commented at MDE that there’s “no way that the amount of traffic they got was the cause of the website being down.”
Then he did some digging. His conclusion: “This stunt is a completely fabricated lie.“
Two of the four points Landry makes in his post:
THE SITE IS NOT DOWN! The snip-snip session below shows how i brought (fmr) senator coleman's website back to the tubes. after you add those entries to your own /etc/hosts (more info on hosts file) you too can read about how senator coleman needs 5 more yrs to balance a budget. or how the power of FUD will get you re-elected!
