U.S. Rep. Anthony Wiener, D-NY, announced his resignation Thursday after some embarrassing sexting and Twitter slips-ups. GOP presidential hopefuls gathered for a debate fueled by social media. Facebook's ads must disclose who is paying for them, thanks to a recent Federal Election Committee ruling. And the CIA was (briefly) hacked by LulzSec, a sometimes funny, sometimes dangerous group of online renegades.
What a week.
Weinergate Ends With Resignation
Weiner announced his resignation from office Thursday after facing a wall of political pressure that included President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the House of Representatives.
The whole Weinergate scandal started when the congressman tweeted an image of his groin to a female journalism student. Weiner first claimed his account was hacked but finally confessed to the tweet when more photos — and more relationships — turned up. His exit speech turned a little rowdy with hecklers and the media circus surrounding the scandal.
If it's any consolation, Weiner isn't the first person to lose his job over social media mistakes.
Republicans had their own media circus with the massive presidential debate that took place last week in New Hampshire. The debate included former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Atlanta businessman Herman Cain and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Hosted and broadcast by CNN, the debate featured social media integration such as live streaming the broadcast and fielding questions from Facebook and Twitter.
There was already tension between Pawlenty and Mitt Romney. Before the debate, Pawlenty had taken a jab at Romney's plan for health care, which he derided as being too similar to Obama's health care plan (the resulting portmanteau was "Obamneycare"). However, Pawlenty shrunk away from his attack when asked about it during the debate, saying that the jab was directed at Obama and not Romney, who was standing just feet away.
But Pawlenty was back and firing from the safety of Twitter a few days later with the above tweet.
Facebook Must Disclose Political Ads
However, Republican and Democratic FEC commissioners couldn't come to a compromise for the minuscule ads, so a previous ruling -- in a case brought by Google -- would apply to all character-limited Internet ads. That ruling states that short-text ads need a hyperlink to a web page that identifies the ad's sponsor.
LulzSec Takes Down the Senate and the CIA
LulzSec, a rogue group of hackers, has set its sights on taking down Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) and other big name targets. They've gone big-game hunting, taking down both the website for the U.S. Senate and the CIA's website with a distributed denial of service attack.