Surveillance Protest Group Storms Obama's Website

Imagine for a moment a group of conservatives disenchanted with Republican presidential nominee John McCain's position on immigration stormed his campaign website by the thousands. Do you think this would garner some media attention?

Probably 24 hours a day, seven days a week until cabbies in even minor cities around the country were discussing it with their fares, right?

Well, the ultra-liberal Nation reported the following inconvenient truth about Barack Obama's supporters Tuesday evening, and it's going to be very interesting to see just how much his adoring press covers this somewhat startling revelation (emphasis added, picture courtesy Vanity Fair):

A grassroots group of activists has been organizing on MyBo, Obama's official social networking portal, to protest the Senator's recent decision to back controversial legislation granting the President more spying powers. The effort hit a big milestone on Tuesday afternoon: It is now the largest self-organized group on Obama's website, topping networks that were launched over a year ago. The spying protest, "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right," launched last week. (See Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying, The Nation.)

Membership spiked to about 8,900 people on Tuesday, edging out a student group with roughly 8,600 members, and one organizer estimated that the growth rate reached a rapid four percent during the daytime.

Pay attention, NewsBusters, for there's a person in the middle of this that should be very familiar if you've been diligently reading all of my articles:

"To reach number one, we're going to need all of us to start talking to - and emailing - their family and friends," wrote blogger Mike Stark in a missive to the group at 3:46am on Monday. "[Obama] said he'd open up government and respond to the people instead of the special interests," he added, "so let's force him to respond." Stark also recruited members at the blog OpenLeft, while the group began drawing traffic from coverage in Wired, The Nation, TPM, Time, and The New York Times.

Does the name "Mike Stark" ring a bell? Well, it should, because this is the gentleman I debated online in January 2007. He's also had tussles with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, and was the guy that held a sign defaming Sean Hannity behind Alan Colmes during coverage of the Connecticut Democrat primary in 2004.

Moving forward, as NewsBusters pointed out, the New York Times did mention this Internet uprising on Wednesday; how many others that follow suit is yet to be determined.

Those that don't should wonder why they're even bothering covering this election.