When I woke up this morning, I was all set to write a long-winded philosophical post about what I think the Democrats would do if given unbridled power when I saw M. Simon's post asking questions about anti-Semitism at Wonkette.

Regardless of whether anyone at Wonkette actually is anti-Semitic (something I have no way of knowing), echoing the "Jew-liani" and "Jew York Times" stuff strikes me as very sleazy.

But that is not what distracted me this morning. Things that don't compute always tend to catch my attention, and what I found especially interesting is the way leftist blogs are trying to allege that the "Jew-liani" video came from the right -- the evil "Swift Boat Right" to be exact.

In a number of posts (see Democratic Underground, the BRAD BLOG, and techPresident) it has been speculated that the youtube user abrad2345 is also MySpace user Public Persuasion, and that this person might be working for the "Swift Boat Right." The story is big enough to have reached ABC News.

Stevens, Reed, Curcio & Potholm (SRCP), the firm said to be employing "abrad2345" denies that this user was their employee Amy Bradford (as had been speculated), and maintains the personalities were manufactured.

Arlen Parsa, who writes for the Daily Background has been all over this story from the start (simply scroll through his blog for numerous posts), has been told to stop asserting that there is any connection between the YouTube user "abrad2345" and SRCP. Parsa elaborates here:

Despite being personally damn-near convinced that Ms Bradford (if not her employer) was behind the videos, I knew that it would be irresponsible to report what I thought to be true- as straight fact. As such, I tried to write the post in such a manner as to leave the possibility that I could be wrong about all of these things I believed to be facts, and that they could be all coincidences (the lede of my post read: "An employee of the Republican ad firm responsible for 2004's controversial "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" advertisements has apparently been producing viral videos which ridicule Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.") Obviously I could have done a better job at this.

After I published that item, which contained both information I knew to be true, and also information I merely believed to be true, it got some attention. Today, I got an email from the DC law firm Dickstein Shapiro LLP, which represents SRCP. They were worried that I had published inaccurate information, and wanted me to remedy the situation.

"The thing is complete BS," David All of Tech Republican reported an SRCP source as saying earlier today. "That person and the account is not my firm's employee (it's a fake). We're trying to figure out who created the account and myspace page. Lawyers are involved. It's disgusting."

I want to stress that I have and will in the future try to be as transparent as possible, as I consider openness to be a pillar of good blogging.

I made some mistakes- perhaps most importantly not being more skeptical of a source who in hindsight seemed to have all the right information at all the right times. If indeed it turns out that I've been taken for a ride by the person who was helping me with the research, then it certainly wouldn't be the first time that a reporter- or even a lowly blogger- was taken advantage of.

So, do I think that SRCP was involved with the YouTube ads? I honestly don't know what to believe anymore, but I am taking what SRCP says in good faith. Is there more to this story? Absolutely. And you better believe I'll be looking into it and covering it, though in a very careful manner. Let's just say that I have no desire to become famous for being "the blogger who the Swift Boat ad firm sued."

But I think the idea being parroted -- that he or the video maker is working for the right wing attack machine -- is absurd on its face.

If this video virus spreads, sooner or later someone will figure out who the actor is, which I think would go a long way towards solving the puzzle.

If you watch this one -- "Rudy Giuliani - Because we can't all be firefighters" -- it's just incredibly obvious that the actor thinks Republicans and conservatives are all a bunch of polluting, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, SUV driving cretins who want to carry their guns within 500 feet of schools. And of course, Rudy is their boy -- because he's one of them!

The video is subcaptioned "Rudy Giuliani Campaign Ad that raises doubts about Al Gore, global warming and why we should be at war with Venezuela."

I noticed a few details that might be helpful in figuring this out:

License plates

While most of them are blurred, this one showed pretty clearly:

If you check out the pictures of all 50 license plates, only California and Lousiana fit the layout and color scheme of the above. My initial reaction was that it was a California plate, though, and this was confirmed by --

PALM TREES

They're all over the place, and they are not the Palmetto variety found in Lousiana, but typical of Los Angeles area, which is home to --

THE LAPD

While I can't swear to it, that sure looks like an LAPD car to me. Maybe someone can help out here, but watching the video, I just had the feeling of driving around somewhere in Southern California. Who this man is, I don't know.

But he's sure as hell not driving around anywhere near Alexandria, Virginia.

MORE: In another video from "abrad2345" titled "Real Balls" not only are numerous palm trees visible, but so are a number of older Craftsman-style bungalow houses -- typical of Los Angeles and the older suburbs in that area.

Anyone recognize the hood?