Justin's Political Corner

Usually Erick Erickson does you the courtesy of getting past the headline before lying, but now that we’re less than a month from Election Day he’s apparently decided to dispense with pleasantries.

“I Donated to Barack Obama,” declares the headline to Erickson’s latest blog post, wherein the CNN contributor documents his attempt to demonstrate that President Obama’s campaign is committing some sort of fraud through an “illegal donor loophole” that allows them to accept contributions from overseas (a right-wing meme that’s actually bit of warmed-over nonsense from 2008). Not until the 13th paragraph do we learn that Erickson, after attempting to donate to Obama as a Russian with a made-up passport number, actually had his contribution rejected by the campaign.

So he didn’t donate to the Barack Obama. Nor did he document any evidence of fraud (in fact he demonstrated that the campaign’s anti-fraud measures are working, as he would have known had he read the Obama campaign’s statement after John Hinderaker tried this same exact stunt in April). But he had to write something, right? He went to all that effort. Just for us.

And what’s the big takeaway from Erickson’s abortive identity fraud adventure? That he doesn’t know anything more than when he started because he hasn’t actually done anything of any use to anyone.

I do not know what processes the Obama campaign employs to weed these out. It actually appeared, based on the way it processed for several days, that the bank stopped it, not that Barack Obama stopped it. I do not know why they chose not to use the credit verification value system (CVV). I am glad, ultimately, that my donation was rejected. But I wonder if I had put in other data that seemed more credit — not a ridiculous fake name, a passport number of just multiple zeros, etc. would it have been rejected?

H/T: mediamatters.org