The internet is a wonderful thing – for people like me who like to dig around to find things.

Previously, I’d posted a story from Minnesota.publicradio.org that talked about Michele Bachmann, among others, who used taxpayer dollars for a political rally.  You can read that story here.  Then I decided to go digging through her website.  And I found something quite interesting.

If you go through her website (use this link) you’ll find the following archived stories for 2009. Here’s an image (clickable):

Now, if you’re familiar with the wonderful thing that is the Internet Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org), you can plug that same website into the search engine, and it takes us back to how her website looked less than a month after the supposed “press conference” took place.  Here’s what you’ll see (clickable):

Wow… There’s an article there from November 2nd, 2009.  Wonder why that’s been removed, eh?  So let’s just take a gander.  You can click here to read it (or, just in case she gets it deleted), a cached copy here:

So, Michele?  Since when do Congressmen have press conferences WITH ACTORS AND REPUBLICAN TALK RADIO HOSTS?  Umm, never?  No – never.  This wasn’t a press conference.  It was a Republican Tea Party rally, plain and simple.

You and the other three representatives (Tom Price R-GA, Steve King R-MO, and Todd Akin, R-MO) need to EACH cough up $3,407.50.  I don’t think you’d like it if Barney Frank (D-MA) used public funds for a Democratic rally, and neither would I.  A political rally should be paid with POLITICAL dollars, not TAXPAYER dollars.