Was Arnold Hacked?

Did someone hack a State of California computer to obtain the comments Governor Schwarzenegger recently apologized for?

Reuters is reporting:

California police are probing if computer hackers illegally downloaded a private taped conversation of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger from state computers, a spokesman said Monday.

In the remarks, California's celebrity governor spoke of African Americans and Latinos, including a Hispanic state lawmaker, as having "hot" blood, or being passionate.

The comments were published last week by the Los Angeles Times.

Democrats rebuked Schwarzenegger, a Republican who is seeking re-election in November. State Treasurer Phil Angelides, the Democratic candidate for governor, called the comments offensive and embarrassing for the increasingly Hispanic state.

Computer hacking, not a leak within Schwarzenegger's office, is suspected. "We can confirm that we are looking into the security of the governor's office computer system," said Fran Clader, a spokeswoman with the California Highway Patrol, the agency in charge of the investigation.

Link, here.

With the recent news that HP executives were spied on via "pretexting," we are seeing a lot of information gathered using "questionable" means. Sadly enough - a lot of it seems to be coming from private investigative firms - who are supposed to operate within the law.

There is an ugly trend in the political world where "trashing" an opponent seems to be the preferred way of winning an election. With all the legitimate issues that face us today -- this is a sad commentary on the state of our political system.