"If you care about the Internet, Obama should have your vote." Just kill me, that seems easier than suffering through another 763-word endorsement for Barack Obama by a former TechCrunch writer who doesn't even live in America. Riley's no idiot. He's just a capitalist. Every four years, tech bloggers realize that political chatter draws far, far more traffic than tech ever will. So they decide to write about politics.Look, Duncan. I read Boing Boing. I'm fully aware that net neutrality is the defining issue of our time, except for copyright law which is also the defining issue of our time. What I don't need is another overlong blog post endorsing a candidate who locked up the San Francisco/Brooklyn Web 2.0 voting demographic last year. At this point, the only good gossip is if there's a Mission hipster tweeting for John McCain from a table at Ritual Roasters — and I mean doing it 100 percent unironically.

"Blame Duncan Riley," opens a Fortune report on this week's awesome saga in which an ex-TechCrunch employee unwittingly manipulated Apple's stock price. But it's not over until we bury the bodies. Here's the 100-word recap:Duncan Riley, former TechCrunch blogger, claimed last week to have insider info from a tipster who had seen new Apple price sheets. Laptops started at $800 instead of $1,099, said the tipster. Analysts - if you believe them - think a sub-$1,000 MacBook would be a big change for Apple. Riley's rumor bubbled up from his own site to VentureBeat to the New York Times' new online Technology page, where news from VentureBeat and other tech sites is merged onscreen with the Times' original reporting. Some readers who didn't bother to unpack their trust issues took the headline (note the grammar error: "a $800 MacBook") as Times-grade truth. I don't blame them. The NYT accurately broke the story on Apple's $499 Mac a day before Steve Jobs unveiled it. The only thing I remember from newswriting class is that journalists are telling stories, even when they think they're reporting the truth. Riley told a good story, peppered with enough details to make it plausible. Web surfers crazy for stock market guidance swallowed the tale without stopping to chew. Now that we all know there's no $800 laptop, journalists will pat themselves on the back about some important lesson they've learned. I'll do it myself, right after I stop by Daring Fireball to watch Duncan Riley's ritual spanking.

How do TechCrunch stories make it to Digg's front page so often? With a little help from its friends, of course. Former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley, now a foe of editor Michael Arrington, posted a screenshot from his inbox revealing what Riley calls "The TechCrunch Digg Club." It includes four writers from TechCrunch proper; seven from gadgets blog CrunchGear; two from TechCrunchIT, Arrington's incomprehensible enterprise-tech spinoff; plus two or three interns.

We figured something was up when former TechCruncher Duncan Riley created his own tech news spinoff, the Inquisitr. We figured there was probably even more backstory when he suddenly became one of our most reliable caption contest commenters (and occassional winner). Now there seems to have been a split between Riley and his old boss Michael Arrington, who in a rather passive-aggressive farewell said "My sincere hope is to have the opportunity to buy that blog some day and bring him right back into the fold." But yesterday, Riley bookmarked "Is Mike Arrington a Dick?" and then wrote an only slightly cryptic message:

Today is Duncan Riley's last day of full-time writing for Michael Arrington's TechCrunch, we learned from Techmeme. Riley will move to his own publication, the Inquisitr. "My sincere hope is to have the opportunity to buy that blog some day and bring him right back into the fold," Arrington writes in his farewell.

TechCrunch head Michael Arrington is so attentive to detail. He posted a Twitter last night asking about a Google page's redesign. "hmm, how long has the google advanced search page looked like this? http://tinyurl.com/6rb" Moments before, however, Arrington posted a now-deleted Twitter with the same question but a different URL: http://tinyurl.com/3776ez. This URL links to a Google search page, but with "site:duncanriley.com arrington asshole" filled in as the search term. Duncan Riley is a contributor to TechCrunch. A little dissension in the ranks, Michael?

TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley offers a more colorful description of Persai programmer and Uncov blogger Ted Dziuba than I could ever, ever come up with. If you missed it, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington recently tried unsuccessfully to hire Dziuba to port his Uncov-style nastiness to Arrington's platform. Style points to Riley for his use of c*nt. I had no idea he was a Unix guy.