TPM crashed by cyber terrorists

UPDATE: TPM is back up and running. they have the full story on their site, and no further direct evidence of the involvement of "Anonymous" at this point, but the story is still developing.

This evening Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted a note on TPM's Facebook page describing a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) that caused the site to crash at about 5:00 this afternoon.

There has been no claim of responsibility, but the attack comes on the heels of TPM's publication of fourteen mugshots of members of Anonymous, the "hacktivist" group that has been linked to related attacks on media and other outlets for taking action against Wikileaks.

This attack on freedom of the press is a serious threat, and demonstrates an ugly totalitarian streak in an organization that has allegedly taken a position in favor of public dissent.

Anyone who has been supportive or sympathetic of Anonymous to this point should reconsider supporting an organization that appears to be attempting to crush, rather than support, dissent.

Thanks, Josh!

Back when I started blogging I was hoping to do what Josh Marshall does: mostly take a lot of news and information that's already out there, combine it with analysis and other information, some of which might come from my unique perspective, and see what meaning I can gather.

In those early years I was also amazed that Josh seemed to keep the same kind of hours that I keep, putting up great posts late at night.

Fortunately for the world, Josh is better at it than I am. He's also done a tremendous amount of original reporting, and made and kept alive stories that never would have gone anywhere without him. Among the chief examples are his work on the long-running Duke Cunningham bribery scandal, Bush's plans to kill off Social Security (including the umbrage the Bushies took when critics started using the term, privatization, that the Bushies had started out with), and the Bush administration's purge of inconvenient U.S. Attorneys.

Talking Points Memo just celebrated its tenth anniversary in operation. I don't know exactly when I started reading it, but it was almost immediately that I concluded that it was essential reading to understand politics and public life in the United States.

Congratulations, Josh, and thanks!