Congressman rewrites history; nobody notices for seven months

adamg — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:49:43 -0500

Marty Meehan's staff apparently didn't like the way Wikipedia mentioned his broken promise to serve no more than four terms - or the fact that he has the largest campaign warchest of any sitting congressman - and so deleted the offending bits of information:

The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site that bills itself as the "world's largest encyclopedia," The Sun has learned. ...

Thing is, the Meehan staffers made the changes way back on July 18 (compare this June 30 version with this July 18 version that has an originating IP address of 143.231.249.141, which is registered to the U.S. House of Representatives). Meehan's office made a bunch of changes then, then came back on December 27 to make some more modifications.

It wasn't until the Sun story came out today that Wikipedians noticed and started their own flurry of modifications to the page - including a warning note:

As a result of recent vandalism, editing of this page by new or anonymous users is temporarily disabled.

Also added back in: Info about Meehan's term-limits promise:

Meehan was elected to the U.S. House in 1992 on a plan to eliminate the budget deficit and instate term limits, calling for members of Congress to serve no more than four terms. Meehan took a pledge that he would abide by the limit himself but reneged with his campaign for a fifth term in 2000, to which he was elected. ...

Still missing, though is the information about his campaign fund - which the Sun helpfully discloses is $4.8 million.

Meanwhile, Mike Capuano's Wikipedia entry is good only if you're having trouble getting to sleep. Surely somebody in Somerville can update it, no?