Santorum's got some splainin' to do!

Not really sure what this means, exactly. But here's the story.

Eric Miller, a member of Santorum’s campaign staff, created and registered www.smalltowndefenders.com at the request of Santorum’s deputy campaign manager Luke Bernstein, Hazleton solicitor Christopher Slusser confirmed.

The Web site promotes Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta’s controversial illegal immigration ordinance and seeks signatures of those who support it. Miller was asked to help the mayor’s office with the technical aspects of launching the Web site, Slusser said.

Here's the site, for those who are curious.

I think there might be something fishy here - the text of the ordinance itself isn't on smalltowndefenders.com - why not?. All that's there is a message from the mayor of Hazelton and an opportunity to sign a petition. I am curious as to what happens to all those names - the website's been built by Santorum staffers. Does Lil Ricky get access to all that data?

In any event the ordinance should be here it is at the city's official website, though I haven't been able to dl the pdf file. Traffic around the site is probably too congested.

Our good friend Virginia Davis does her job of explaining it all:

The Republican senator’s re-election campaign is not connected to the Hazleton ordinance, Virginia Davis, a spokeswoman for Santorum, said Tuesday. The work performed for Barletta is a “non-issue” since it was done on personal time, she said.

Barletta, a Republican, is a regional campaign coordinator for the two-term senator. As a campaign coordinator, Barletta works to raise money for Santorum’s campaign.

Slusser said it might seem “a bit ironic” that the two men who helped with the Web site also work for Santorum. The site was “not ever intended to be a site that was created at the behest of (Santorum),” he said.

Actually, that's not irony. The Wikipedia has a great example of irony (the best I've read in a while):

In June 2005, the State of Virginia Employment Agency, which handles unemployment compensation, announced that they would lay off 400 employees for lack of work because unemployment is so low in the state.

Now that's irony. What's going on with this Hazelton ordinance website isn't irony. It's politics as usual. Perhaps someone should send Davis a dictionary.

Anyway I have a question: Lil Ricky goes ballistic and makes a baseless charge that "Casey operatives" are stalking his property in Penn Hills - and yet his spokewoman can, with a straight face (especially important in Senator Man-on-Dog's office), state that there's no connection between a website constructed by an actual Santorum operative and the Santorum campaign itself.

Yea, right.

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