REID PUBLISHES ANGLE POLICY POSITIONS, INVITES LAWSUIT…. Sharron Angle, the extremist Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, recently overhauled her website, scrubbing the previous site of her extremist positions on a variety of issues. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) campaign, out of the goodness of its heart, thought it would help Angle get her message out — so it re-published the GOP candidate’s original issue positions online for voters to see.
Angle’s lawyers threatened a lawsuit, claiming that showing voters what Angle said she believes would represent misuse of copyrighted materials. As of Monday, Reid’s team backed off and took down the site.
Yesterday, Reid’s campaign, after finishing a few tweaks, put the Angle materials back online.
The Reid campaign took the Web site down temporarily, but as of Tuesday evening the Angle material was back online under the auspices of the Nevada Democratic Party — though it now just consists of screen shots of her old Web site.
The party said it had archived all of Ms. Angle’s old statements so that she could not “change or suppress her record by simply having her new D.C. handlers rewrite her campaign Web site.”
The issue seemed to be over various fill-in boxes and sign-up fields on the original Angle website. When the Reid camp republished the site, those fields were still active. Now, the content is still there, but the boxes are inactive.
In a press release, the Reid campaign didn’t sound too worried about litigation: “Just to be clear to Sharron Angle and her handlers, it’s called free speech and it’s nearly absolute under the First Amendment. (We know, these ‘big Constitutional issues’ are tough for you — like when you said separation of Church & State was “unconstitutional” exactly one week ago.) The question is: what will Sharron Angle do now to hide her extreme views on killing Social Security and eliminating the Department of Education from Nevada voters? Perhaps she’s checking to see if there are any Second Amendment remedies.”
It’s unclear if Angle’s team intends to pursue legal action, but either way, Reid and his aides have to be pleased. By throwing a fit, Angle has created more negative publicity for herself, and brought more attention to her extremist beliefs. If she files suit, Reid benefits with more coverage of Angle trying to hide her own published positions. If she doesn’t, Reid benefits by having these positions in public view.
