Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign is accusing his opponent's campaign of hacking a protected area of their website to obtain and publish a sound clip of Arnold saying "They are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." (The Governator was talking about Puerto Rican and Cuban women.)

I don't know of any hacking allegations having been raised by North Carolina candidates, but it bears saying: it's bad; don't do it.

I say this because I understand that most people have better things to do with their lives than to know enough about computers and the internet to really understand a story about hacking. To most people, "hackers" might as well have dark and magical powers. It's a scary word, "hacked," and we're starting to see it thrown around irresponsibly in the political arena.

BlueNC is still less than a year old. In the past 11 months, we've grown from a three-man operation into a community of nearly 500 registered users with more than 1,000 unique visitors every weekday. By organizing, raising awareness, and driving money to campaigns, you, fellow members, have made our community one that can't be ignored. People and organizations who oppose a message of progress, integrity, and excellence in government won't have nice things to say about the work you're doing— we've seen it already and the trend will only grow. There are obviously a few folks around BlueNC who know their LAMP stack from a hole in the ground, and it's probably only a matter of time before a Pope Proxy or a Ted Sampley decides that the best way to take peoples' eyes off the ball is to point at BlueNC and cry "hackers!"

So I just want to take a second to say for myself that if the Democratic campaign in California did what they're accused of, then they did something wrong. Politics is a rough and tumble game, but there are still boundaries and breaking into someone's computer is plainly beyond those boundaries. Officials, candidates, and activists must maintain at least a baseline of integrity if they expect respect. I'm proud to have seen the people who are BlueNC work to meet and exceed that standard.