Phil is absolutely right when he describes the ongoing saga of the anti-Spitzer emails as weird - here and here.

So let's take a look at what we know, in the hope of clearing up some of the weirdness. There are three people whose names come to mind in this case. One is Michael Caputo, reputedly of Buffalo and/or Florida. The other is Roger Stone, a GOP consultant. The third is Joe Bruno.

I received my first email blast from Roger Stone on March 28th. This email went to an account not traceable from The Daily Gotham. My initial thought was that these emails originated with Jon Stone, a friend and a director with the Capitol D Group. That impression soon faltered, and Jon confirmed today by phone that he has nothing to do with his namesake.

On June 13th, Daily Politics quotes Roger Stone as having 'always been a Joe Bruno Republican'. The occasion was a fundraiser hosted in his apartment on Central Park South, billed as a 'skinny-cat' protest against a high-dollar fundraiser held in his condo building in a rented room by the Spitzer campaign. This is interesting, because Stone had previously been persona non grata with Albany republicans for his support of Tom Golisano, whom he advised in his three campaigns.

On July 2nd, Fred Dicker wrote his first piece on Brunogate, titled 'GOV PLAYS DIRTY POOL VS. BRUNO'. He followed up on July 5th with GOV'S TROOPER SNOOP JOB ON BRUNO and, on July 9th, with GOV AIDES FISHED FOR BRUNO BUSTERS.

On July 9th, NYFacts.net was registered, with the identity of the registrant masked by an anonymity service.

The first Spitzer-bashing email from Michael Caputo's NYFacts.net went out on July 10th, 2007, at 12:41 PM Eastern. Since then, the group has sent out 35 further emails. Another site, Spitzerfile.com, which interestingly only loads through a redirect from NYFacts.net, went live sometime after July 10th, and has also been sending out emails.

NYFacts.net even briefly branched out into Obama-bashing on August 8th, with an email entitled "Obama pulls from all-white Harmonie Club', which contained a piece by Maggie Haberman in the Murdoch Post.

It was only yesterday that Capitol Confidential reported, and we picked up here, that comparable pro-Spitzer emails were finally being sent out, presumably under the aegis of the NYSDC.

What's happening here is very simple: the right in general and Joe Bruno in particular are trying to rebrand Eliot Spitzer. We've seen this happen before, with figures such as Howard Dean, Joe Wilson, Jim Webb, John Kerry, even Eliot himself in the 2006 campaign. The current onslaught against Spitzer is an attempt to change the attributes the public associates with him, turn them around and negativize them.

Frigging finally: CapCon notes that there are pro-Spitzer emails countering the virtual armada of republican web sites and associated email campaigns.

Now, the Dems are firing back with their own e-blasts that contain links and editorials in support of the governor. They come courtesy of Jonathan Rosen, at Berlin Rosen Public Affairs, which is working for the govenor state Democratic Committee.

Not too shabby, considering that there are now, it appears, three separate Bruno front groups - let's give that baby a name, because that's what they are - out spamming Dicker's curdled wisdom to influentials. There's NYFacts.net, SpitzerFiles.com and a third one, if I'm not confusing them, that goes automatically to my spam folder.

Of course, despite the NYSDC's vaunted blogger outreach, there hasn't even been a single email from them, or any other contact, to coordinate the Progressive response to Bruno's oily attempts to cripple the governor. Hard to see how the look-Ma-no-hands approach is effective, but I'm sure they'll get around to it one of these days.