You probably know this morning that Connecticut millionaire Ned Lamont squeaked by Senator Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary yesterday; guess Joe's makeout session with Dubya did not go as planned, kinda like the Iraq war of which Lieberman's so fond. You probably also know that Lieberman's campaign Web site crashed yesterday, and that Lieberman's folks blamed it on everything from Lamont's campaign to the entire left-wing conspiracy that controls the blogosphere; can't believe they didn't try to pin the whole thing on Mel Gibson, frankly. Reports The New York Times this morning about the whole mess:
"First, pro-Lamont bloggers speculated that the Lieberman campaign had not paid its bills. The Lieberman campaign denied that, and said its site had been attacked. Some Lamont supporters contended that the Lieberman campaign had become the victim of its own cheap Web site, which they said was easily overwhelmed, while others suggested that the whole thing was a dirty trick to distract attention from a potential Lieberman loss. Others asked why another Lieberman campaign Web site that criticizes Mr. Lamont, MeetNed.com, was working.The Lieberman campaign acknowledged that it had no evidence that its opponents were behind the crash. Connecticut officials said that they were investigating, and that they had contacted the F.B.I."
The story that's gained the most traction is that Lieberman was running a cheapo site on a barely functioning server to begin with and that it just couldn't handle the increase in traffic on election day. At least, that was the spin all over TV last night and in the papers this morning; Countdown with Keith Olbermann damned near insisted that's what happened. But a Web site consultant employed by Lieberman's campaign says that is not the truth--and that, in fact, Lieberman's site was being hosted by a Dallas-based Web company, Server Matrix, which has its offices on Stemmons Freeway. Executives at Server Matrix did not return phone calls from The Times yesterday and couldn't be reached by Unfair Park this morning. But on its Web site, Server Matrix insists, "We provide the best network in the industry with unrivaled connectivity." Good God, our site crashes every other day; I'm gonna start blaming it on FrontBurner. --Robert Wilonsky