Chambliss Investigating Whether Staffer Posted Gay Slur on Blog
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By Judson Berger
Published September 22, 2010| FoxNews.com
Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss is investigating claims that a gay slur posted to a blog Tuesday may have come from a worker inside his office.
Chambliss' office told FoxNews.com that the Senate sergeant at arms is also conducting an internal review.
"The SAA has worked side by side with our personnel to determine whether the comment in question emanated from our office," Chambliss' office said in a statement. "That appears to be the case. There has not been a determination as to who posted the comment. That part of the review is ongoing, and is now in the hands of the Senate Sergeant at Arms."
The slur was posted Tuesday afternoon to an online article on Joe.My.God about the Senate's failure to advance a bill repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" law, which prevents gays from serving openly in the military.
The comment, "All faggots must die," was posted by a user going by the name of "Jimmy."
The attack would have disappeared into the wasteland of inappropriate online comments, except blog author Joe Jervis looked up the sender's IP address and posted it, apparently on a whim.
"I very uncharacteristically checked its IP, which I normally don't do," he said. "I have a lot of IT geeks among my readers and they geo-located it immediately. … It was definitely coming through an official federal U.S. Senate server."
Jervis said his readers traced the address to the local office of either Chambliss or Sen. Johnny Isakson, both Georgia Republicans. The offices are located next to one another.
"My army of geeks was unable to penetrate it directly to the specific computer," Jervis said.
Isakson's office flatly denied being the source of the remark, telling FoxNews.com the address "does not match any computer assigned to our office."
A Chambliss spokeswoman, though, said the incident is under review.
"We have seen the allegations and are moving quickly to understand the facts," spokeswoman Bronwyn Lance Chester said in an e-mail. "This office has not and will not tolerate any activity of the sort alleged. Once we have ascertained whether these claims are true, we will take the appropriate steps."
Jervis said he expects some staffer will be fired, but he stressed that all he'd like to hear is an apology. He acknowledged that comment pages are characteristically offensive.
"No one expects the Internet to be candyland, particularly on gay blogs," he said.
A separate comment posted on his website Tuesday evening advised Sen. John McCain, who opposed the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal, to "f--- off and die" by having a heart attack.
Jervis said that comment was "not cool." But he called the gay slur "an example of the tenor of what's going on inside the offices of the GOP, where a staffer thinks it's hilarious to do something like that."
