As the "Tea Party" phenomenom was gathering steam during 2009, Democrats (trying to belittle this motivated and active opposition) coined a new dismissive: "AstroTurfing".  This term was used as a insult calling to question the "Grassroots" nature of this opposition to Healthcare "Deform" and the other myriad of socialist schemes.  According to this perspective, such active opposition was "ginned up" and "manufactured" among a bunch of supposedly "mindless" followers in response to Pied-Piper guidance from Conservative Talk Radio and the kook left-wing's favorite target, FOX News. 
 
It would appear as if the many among the shill supporters for Democrats have some actual experience with manufactured and fraudlent political opining.  One need only look so far as an apparently busy writer of multiple Letters To The Editor named Ellie Light.  That the alleged Mrs. Light writes multiple letters parroting the tired Talking Points of the Obama administration is not the issue.  The issue is that she has published in multiple papers claiming local residency in all these multiple states falsely misrepresenting herself as a "supporter" in each of them. 
 
Apparently, research is still underway uncovering more instances where this person claimed local status and submitted letters to local / regional newspapers, but currently published counts by Sabrina Eaton of The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) list upwards of 10 states (from California-to-New York-to-South Carolina) in which she has been published.  Interestingly, it appears that this scam was uncovered (not by fact-checking or reference validation), but after Ms. Eaton had only started attempting to find out if the writer happened to be someone whom she knew from a previous journalism job.  After doing a simple Google search for the writer, she found largely duplicate letters sent by someone with the same name from a multitude of claimed residences.   
Laughably, this is part of the response from "Ellie Light" to Ms. Eaton's story:
 
"...And Ms. Eaton, a "Washington" journalist, decides to spend a few minutes pasting snippets of letters into Google and come up with a story about a letter writer. I'm sure such domesticity and small-mindedness would make Sarah Palin quite proud."
 
Honestly, this response was amazing pushing the limits of arrogant hubris.  In response to being caught red-handed as a flagrant liar and political shill, Ms. "Light" takes the opportunity to take another swipe at former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.   
This should raise at least two questions immediately:

• How vast is this apparently fraudlent attempt to submit and get published "straw man" support for Democrats and the Obama administration specifically?  Has things gone so bad so quickly for Democrats that, lacking any real populist support among average Americans, they are left to manufacture "support" to give themselves some semblance of political cover? 
• Since when did Journalists abandon such basic concepts of verifying sources and validating references so that they are not being outright manipulated and unwittingly duped?