Thursday, October 23, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Why Is It Harder For Those Overseas to Buy Steyn's Book Than To Donate To Obama?

Check out Mark Steyn's Corner post. He compares how the Obama campaign's web site handles credit card transactions to his own site, and concludes that it very likely that the Obama camp had to modify the default security checks required by their merchant processor.

I had a good natured Obama-supporting reader write in:

Back in August or September (not sure which) Obama's site definitely would not take my money because I was entering my school address instead of my permanent (parent's) one.  I remember being slightly annoyed at the time.  I just tried it to donate again using my school address and it went through no problem.  That's more than a bit disappointing. 

Hopefully, the suspect funds will be returned.  Almost 2 million was refunded just last month.

There's definitely no excuse for this though.

This story may or may not make a difference in the election. It probably won't, in fact. But perhaps blatant misbehavior is what happens when you have a political press corps made up of people who fantasize about "taking out" Giuliani while covering him.

Love him or hate him, if the people administrating Obama's web site have set it up so that overseas donors can slip through the net, and that fake names and addresses can be used for stolen credit card numbers, that's a huge story, worth covering, and worth public scrutiny. If this is the case, I'm pretty sure Obama himself never heard about this; candidates usually don't get involved in setting the default security checks required by their merchant processors on their campaign web site. Nonetheless, if somebody on his campaign did this, they ought to be held accountable, and the press deciding to close their eyes and plug their ears when faced with these types of stories is the antithesis of accountability.

10/23 11:58 AMShare