How Not To Respond To An Online Political Critic: Ask The Attorney General To Jail Her For Five Years

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How Not To Respond To An Online Political Critic: Ask The Attorney General To Jail Her For Five Years

When will they learn? Slashdot points us to the story of Congressional Rep. Alan Grayson from Florida. Like most any elected official, there are people who oppose him and are trying to convince people to support his opponents. That's part of the ballgame that you play as a politician. In Grayson's case, one of his critics is a woman named Angie Langley, who set up a website called MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, which is a parody of Grayson's own CongressmanWithGuts.com (not linking to either, as I don't wish to link to any political sites). Again, this shouldn't be a surprise. Now, it turns out that Langley is not actually a constituent in Grayson's district, but lives nearby. That is a bit misleading, but hardly a major issue.



Until, that is, Grayson turned it into one by sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder (pdf) asking for an investigation of Langley and the eventual jailing of her for five years over falsely representing herself as a constituent:

These matters were brought to Ms. Langley's personal attention
through complaint to the FEC weeks ago, but she and the Committee
continue to solicit contributions fraudulently, and have stubbornly refused to
return the contributions that they already have, received. Therefore, Ms.
Langley and the Committee should be fined, and Ms. Langley imprisoned
for five years.

Again, there is an issue with falsely soliciting political contributions, but the thing is, she wasn't getting much attention for her campaign, and the issue of where she lives is really quite minor. There are always people who oppose elected officials. But sending this letter and requesting five years in jail for Langley suddenly made this a national story -- and guess who that's helping? It's certainly not Grayson. But I understand that Langley has suddenly found a lot more willing donors to her campaign. Wouldn't Grayson have been better off just focusing on his "guts" and not why someone outside his district thinks he's "nuts"?

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