And, I’m sorry - I *admire* the quality in people that allows them to joke about serious matters.

You’ve done as good a job as anyone keeping track of the Tennessee angle from 500 miles away. What hasn’t stopped you before shouldn’t stop you now. And neither should the fact that I laugh about a practical joke.

I’m sorry I did not remember to mention Bush’s February visit when you asked about SmarTech. It was a half-day trip through town to talk about health-care for God’s sake, and it happened before Attorney-Gate even got on the national news media radar (about a week before). I don’t see why any business that they had at the time with SmarTech (or Coptix for that matter) would have to be carried out in person with the President and Karl Rove, instead of over a phone call with an underling. Maybe there was a reason, and maybe it did happen that way. Maybe there will emerge evidence to that effect. Maybe you will be able to shed more light on that question and on other pertinent questions.

Look, I’m sorry you & others got punked by a joke. I know it isn’t as much fun when you get the ass end of the joke. I’m just saying, keep up the work you do, and please keep your sense of humor about you the best you can.

Why not? I can’t pursue anything 500 miles away. And when I asked you pointblank “…Karl Rove spotted there last week?”, it apparently didn’t occur to you to mention Bush’s visit 3 weeks earlier. Now I read a defense of a couple of liars who admire Rove and Bush and tried to turn a serious issue into a joke.

It’s not the issue, or me, or even them I’m discouraged about, smijer.

I know it bothers you to get hoaxed, but try not to be too upset. It was a pretty harmless thing, really. They weren’t trying to memory hole anything, or participate in a cover-up - it was just a marketing prank.

I’m imagining that a lot of people are feeling like the mayor of Boston right now, and it’s natural to want to lash out at the merry pranksters that took advantage of you. I think best thing is to take it on the chin, laugh as goodnaturedly as possible and go on.

By the way I read your update there at NR - don’t be discouraged from pursuing the SmarTech angle if you think there is something there. I personally don’t know. I still doubt there is much to the Coptix angle - and if their shenanigans somehow played to the advantage of Rove, et. al., I’m sure it was accidental. But this development doesn’t say anything about the SmarTech side of the story, if there is one there.

Best as I can tell — as a non-IT person — Coptix isn’t all that connected to Smartech, except that they may share some server equipment somehow. At any rate some of the gwb43.com IT snooping more knowledgeable people have done led back to Coptix as well as Smartech.

Re timing: I hunted through the Chattanooga Times Free Press and came up with local police and the governor knowing about the trip about 2 weeks in advance. That seems like not a lot of lead time, and a fairly hurriedly arranged trip to me.

I’ve written all of this up — including the hoax development — here: Bush’s sudden February visit to Chattanooga — UPDATED. [Comment re Coptix "one and all" deleted.]

Coptix? I don’t see much about where they figure into the whole deal. I’ve met a couple of people from there, nice people one & all. I can’t speak for them, though… I know at least one of them is a Democratic Party (official?). Best of my knowledge, Coptix is a straight-up organization… At one point their servers hosted Chattablogs.