Are MoveOn.Org’s Petition Numbers Inflated? Nate over at Another Attempt thinks so, and Byron York adds fuel to the curiosity.

From Nate:

Update: According to Alexa for Instapundit and MoveOn, Instapundit is at about the same location, down by about a million page views, which must not be actual page views, given this information. SiteMeter shows the page views of Instapundit at around 4 page views per second (pv/s). Assuming that the traffic percentage difference in Alexa is accurate, MoveOn is getting 50% more page views per second (2m vs 3m = 50%). That means they’d be getting 6 pv/s, not the 37.5 required to have 1,500 petition signatures in 40 seconds.

…

Update: During the 10 minute period that I was watching 3,868 signatures were added, or 23,208 per hour. Over the last 4 hours, the average rate was 14,805 per hour. Using the 5pv/s estimate of MoveOn’s site, that would 18,000 page views per hour, which is now over the current rate of petition submissions. That would also require most every MoveOn user being unique assuming they were not able to submit twice, three times, or — a thousand times.

Update: They don’t do e-mail validation, meaning you could sign up repeatedly with false information. They also don’t return any error when you submit the same information over and over again. Whether or not duplicates get added to the petition, I’m not sure. In any event, this petition is meaningless given they don’t verify submitted e-mail addresses, and one person can submit multiple “signatures” using different (real or fake) e-mail addresses.

UPDATE: Wow, GM Roper is in a good mood today!

When I read this, I laughed so hard I almost cried. The folk at MoveOn are petrified, terrified, horrified, abashed, aghast, alarmed, anxious, apprehensive, aroused, blanched, cowed, daunted, discouraged, disheartened, dismayed, distressed, disturbed, faint-hearted, frozen, intimidated, nervous, panic-stricken, perplexed, perturbed, rattled, running scared, scared stiff, shocked, spooked, startled, stunned, suspicious, terror-stricken, trembling, upset, worried and otherwise discombobulated. OMG, this is so much fun.

UPDATE 2: Bill over at INDC has more news! (As does the Politburo Diktat)

MoveOn.org petition bends laws of space and time: collects eight BILLION signatures! The organization subsequently issued a press release declaring George Bush the “most worstest President EVER in the history of the UNIVERSE! Times a kajillion!”

Even after all of these months, Mary Mapes apparently still won’t admit that the Bush Guard documents were forgeries.

She claims that a researcher has since shown her typography on other documents from the period Bush was in the Guard that suggest that the memos she obtained cannot be easily dismissed “as being forgeries.”

AI Cont’d compares her to Baghdad Bob.

Mary Mapes solidifies her reputation as the Baghdad Bob of American journalism. How else can you characterize her attempt to portray the 60 Minutes’ forged memo story as the parallel of both Plamegate and the McCarthy witchhunts.

Rathergate.com has more from the Vanity Fair article.

Mapes has recently reviewed documents culled by a private researcher who went to the Texas National Guard headquarters, as well as various archives and libraries across the U.S., and she reports that they include right-hand signature blocks, odd abbreviations, and other characteristics that were used to dismiss the Killian memos.

And responds with:

Mary, the docs were fake. It is not relevant if what was contained in the fake documents was true. There is nothing but fake documentation to back up those wild charges.

HoyStory adds:

Suffice it to say, that the only people that still believe those fakes are authentic are also waiting on the next circuit of the Hale-Bopp comet so they can visit the spaceship hiding behind it.

The Chief Brief is amazed.

Maybe I am just not high enough on the food chain to get invited to the meetings, but I am constantly amused by this Vast Right Wing Conspiracy theory of bloggers, that somehow we are all part of some Bush/Rove far right wing network dedicated to silencing enemies of the administration. What do they teach these people at journalism school that prevents them from understanding the simple fact that there are just plenty of people out there, who amazingly despite not having journalism degrees, know how to do things like web searches on Google, and use MS Word.

FRW Rants on about this Mapes’ quote: “If I was an idiot, it was for believing in a free press that is able to do its job without fear or favor.”

Do its job? What might that be, sugar? Perhaps ‘producing a story, using forged documents from a questionable top secret source, that has the potential to make the president look like a pansy-ass tool in a war situation when he’s in charge of, ya know, fighting a war currently’? I would think, since this alledged damnation of Bush was written in the 1960s, you could take a couple extra days to fact-check. The thing had been “around” for 40 years, afterall.

Apparently, her above free press statement doesn’t apply to bloggers.

UPDATE: Greg Wallace adds the following, referring to the Amazon.com description of Mary Mapes book, Truth and Duty:

“Digital McCarthyism” seems to be a little over the top considering the reality of the situation: that it was a handful of bloggers that brought down Mapes, Rather and cBS in its naked attempt to throw the 2004 general election. And when was cBS under fire from the federal government?

If you haven’t seen Chris Matthews with the DNC smear talking points memo on Alito, first go check out the video at Political Teen, then review the document itself here.

Then, to find out exactly where it came from, hop on over to RedState, who digs into the document itself, and identifies the authors as: Chris Pendergast, Douglas Graham and Devorah Adler. The American Spectator has more on Adler.

Captain Ed has more.

As has been noted elsewhere, the mouthbreathers who produced it forgot the first rule of e-mailing sensitive Microsoft Word documents — don’t do it at all. The metadata clearly indicates that the author of this goes by the name “prendergastc”, most likely Chris Prendergast, who works on the DNC. By displaying the document properties in Word, one finds out that the company holding the license for the copy of Word that created the document is — the DNC. The last person to edit the document was AdlerD, which Redstate thinks would be Devorah Adler, also of the DNC, and who makes considerably more than Chris Prendergast does. That moves the problem from an out-of-control flunky to one of deliberate smear attempts by the Democratic Party itself.

There’s a bit more here, too. The document comes from a template that was created on July 7th, which coincides with the nomination of John Roberts. The document/template title? “how they made their $$, personal holdings, the whole deal”. Talk about operating from a playbook! If one needs to see a reason why originalism is not just desirable but at this stage absolutely necessary, it would be difficult to come up with a better example

Possibly related, there appears to be a rumor bubbling that despite the Italian-American attacks on Alito (including the “he let the mobsters go free” argument) he may be Jewish (via Abracadabrah). I’m a bit skeptical that a few search terms make a trend or a rumor, but apparently it’s out there somehow.

And Sister Toldjah spots scare tactics from Jesse Jackson.

Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has said that Samuel Alito had a “very distinguished record'’ and “a very commendable career.'’ He went on to state that he and Souter were “truly outstanding.”

He then went on to vote for Alito, with 100% of the Senate, including the following 19 Democrats who are still Senators.

Christopher Dodd
Joseph Lieberman
Joseph Biden
Daniel Inouye
Tom Harkin
Paul Sarbanes
Barbara Mikulski
Edward Kennedy
John Kerry
Carl Levin
Max Baucus
Harry Reid
Frank Lautenberg
Jeff Bingaman
Kent Conrad
Patrick Leahy
Robert Byrd
Jay Rockefeller
Herbert Kohl

This was, of course, at Alito’s 1990 confirmation to the appeals court.

UPDATE: Human Events has lauditory quotes from Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) also. (Here is the official transcript)

Mr. President, I rise in support of the nomination of Samuel Alito, Jr. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Sam Alito is an accomplished and distinguished lawyer. He has dedicated himself to Government service and he has excelled.

…

As Chief Federal Prosecutor for one of the largest districts in the country, he has led the effort to fight bigtime drug rings and organized crime. He has made environmental crimes a high priority.

…

I believe Mr. Alito has the experience and the skills to be the kind of judge the public deserves — one who is impartial, thoughtful, and fair. I urge the Senate to confirm his nomination.

He has the respect of the bar in our State. The ABA panel that reviewed his nomination rated him “well qualified.”

If you haven’t seen Gateway Pundit’s review (and heard the audio link) of Joe Wilson’s 2003 speech (given one month before Novak’s column), check it out here.

In this speech, Ambassador Joseph Wilson:

* describes himself as the investigator sent to Niger by the government
* details the African trip as only he is capable of
* says the government sent him there and not the CIA (a lie)
* says there was nothing to the uranium story (a lie)
* describes the US as “occupiers” of Iraq (a shocking statement at the time)
* describes a conspiracy to help Israel dominate the Palestinians
* calls the Administration warmongers and a–holes
* says Bush is in office for sex

Actual excerpts:

…As I used to say when I was doing my interviews before the war, the issue of weapons of mass destruction is primortive (primordial?), it is important…(at 3:35)

…Going from 1441 to an invasion, conquest and occupation war was not the right thing to do…

… I remain on the view that we will find biological and chemical weapons and we may well find something that that indicates that Saddam’s regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons…(at 7:50)

…I remember this guys saying these warmongers,… As the sun was coming up I had my flag out there because I am not going to let these a–holes claim that they are more patriotic than I am!…(at 13:20)

…even our military officers were absolutely dismayed at the slaughter we were inflicting on those poorly trained on the way to Baghdad…(at 19:50)

…If you take out some of these countries that are, some of these governments that are antagonistic to Israel, then you provide the Israeli Government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions on the Palestinian people…(at 20:16)

…By next year,…The pressure here in the United States will begin to build, because by that time Ariel Sharon will have made life so miserable for the Palestinians that they will cross over to Jordan or you will just see a lot of bloodshed. You will see Hamas doing things every day and you will see Israeli gunships in there…(at 27:50)

…As they say in France, people get into politics for money, power and sex. And, most of the rest of the world is the same thing. And maybe here in the states its the same thing, the sex part for Mr. Bush.(at 37:35)

…Wasn’t life simpler when all our president lied about was his sex life? (at 37:45)

Michelle Malkin’s book, Unhinged, Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, is being launched today.

Buy it here via Amazon.com.

Yesterday we looked at the spin, disinformation and confusion around the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision. Today, we point you to John Hinderaker’s analysis of the Doe v. Groody decision by Samuel Alito. This is the one that is being referred to as the “strip search” case.

Groody was a lawsuit by two “Jane Doe” plaintiffs against four police officers. The plaintiffs claimed that they were illegally searched by the officers, and asked for money damages. The officers moved for summary judgment, arguing that the search did not violate any clearly established constitutional rights. By a two-to-one vote, the 3rd Circuit panel upheld the trial court’s denial of the officers’ motion to dismiss the case. Alito was the dissenter.

The case arose out of the execution of a search warrant on a meth house. In the affidavit that the officers submitted to obtain the warrant, they noted that when drug dealers see that they are being raided, they commonly hide drugs on the persons of whoever may also be on the premises, hoping that the search warrant won’t allow the officers to search them. So, in this case, the officers requested permission to search anyone they found on the premises, not just the drug dealer who was the target of the raid.

Read the rest here.

In addition to Lindsay Graham, Mike DeWine has now come out in support of the “Byrd option” which would eliminate the filibuster. He gave this indication in an interview with Hugh Hewitt yesterday, and CQ has the details.

What this really means is that the filibuster will not even be attempted, because the Democrats will want to save it for possible future use, for the “extraordinary circumstance” of replacing 85 year old Stevens with a constructionist judge.

Also, as James Joyner notes, McCain also has made positive comments in this regard, though wants to wait until the hearings to commit.