Coptix Pranksters Play with Karl Rove Photo

So the employees at Coptix, a Chattanooga internet firm, doctored the photo of Karl Rove carrying a Coptix folder and then spread it around on all kinds of blogs and social networking sites. Coptix even went to the trouble of planting "comments by the picture to stir up more dialogue and 'see how big we could get it.'"

Presumably we should be spending our time talking about Coptix's prank instead of facts like:

On March 23, 2007, "the National Journal disclosed that Karl Rove does "about 95 percent" of his emails outside the White House system, instead using a Republican National Committee (RNC) account."

And from US News & World Report: "According to CREW, the Presidential Records Act appears to require that internal documentation be kept and that it should be handled in official channels. The separate accounts are outside those channels. 'It appears that White House staff members routinely violated the law by using RNC E-mail accounts for official business,' said CREW's Melanie Sloan."

Gee, could there be a connection between Republican illegal activity and the Coptix pranksters?

"Jeff Averbeck, president of SmarTech, said the company hosts a server for the RNC that translates Internet domain names into numerical addresses. He said Coptix also holds an additional copy of that information -- which he said is like a "telephone book" -- for the RNC."

And do the Coptix pranksters only spread misinformation on April 1st, 2nd and 3rd?

Is this just a harmless prank, or is it "simply a lie," as the director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet maintains?

Not to worry, Michelle Malkin is on the case, and it must have been a real slow news day cause she wrote reams and reams about lefty bloggers and the photo:

"Now, look at all the heavy breathing from left-wing blogs about the name on the folder, 'Coptix:'"

Daily Kos
Guerilla Women TN
Wonkette

"Like Wonkette, other left-wing bloggers are bitterly attacking Coptix for their "dirty trick"--instead of owning up. . . You were had. Can you all swallow and make stand-alone corrections (here is how conservative bloggers make corrections, by the way)?"

As I'm sure you can imagine, we've had some really brilliant comments from some of Michelle's heavy breathing readers.

We do regret the error because we should know better than to believe anything that might come from a firm connected to the Republican Party.

Coptix Admits Guilt
The Coptix Chop Shop
GOP Stooges Now Claim Sleestak-Rove-Coptix Picture Is Fake
Coptix Dirty Tricks
Late Nite FDL: The Correction

RNC Bush Karl Rove Coptix GWB43.com News Politics Chattanooga Tennessee White House Email Republicans Rove Picture