Lieberman's still fighting, but his Web site drops dead

You didn't need to go past the major news sources to be barraged by stories about Tuesday's Democratic primary in Connecticut, where the three-term incumbent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, is facing a tough battle at the hands of antiwar, liberal-blog-fueled challenger Ned Lamont. But the race took an even nastier turn last night, when Lieberman's Web site became completely inaccessible.

Of course, the response wasn't pretty.

The Web site for the conservative magazine National Review posted a note this morning that suggested Lieberman's campaign believed that techno-savvy Lamont supporters (they're the ones with the blogs, after all) had crashed the site. Several hours later, political gossip and dirt repository TPMmuckracker said that the Lieberman campaign blamed a distributed denial-of-service attack. By afternoon, Connecticut news outlets had started picking up the story.

The Lamont supporters, led by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, responded to the accusations with allegations that Lieberman's campaign probably just had its account suspended. (Moulitsas' own theory is that someone forgot to pay the Web hosting bills.)

Whichever side is right (and maybe neither one is), one thing's for sure: It probably doesn't make Joe Lieberman look too good to head into a primary without a functional Web site.