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So last week, WUNC's Laura Leslie finds that the NC Democratic Party has created a Twitter account that purported to be from House Republican Leader Paul “Skip” Stam. The idea seemed to be to spoof Stam by sending out updates that presented the Republican’s ideas in an unflattering way.

Click here to read Laura’s post on the whole thing.

So the scam is revealed, everyone goes ha-ha, and that's all done with, right?

Nope.

Stam used a goodly portion of his and Sen. Phil Berger’s weekly news conference to talk about the Twitter-jacking, as well as a missive sent by the NCAE that he considered misleading. (Click here for the news release.)

I asked Stam whether, as offense as this might be to him, that was just racing in politics and he ought to let it pass. Wouldn’t reacting bring more attention to it?

“Creating a false twitter account in somebody else’s name -- I don’t think that’s acceptable … Here we have the communication director of the Republican Party, Brent Woodcox,” Stam said, pointing to where Woodcox was sitting. “If he created a Twitter account, a false Twitter account in the name of Democratic official I would ask for him to be fired immediately. I don’t think that’s acceptable…I do not believe that lies and prevarications and misrepresentations are acceptable in legislative business.”

Click here to listen to a part of Stam's remarks and his answer to my question.

Although Twitter is a fast growing service, I still have the sense that its audience is relatively limited. Still, that audience is increasingly made up of the politically active and interested so it makes sense for a politician to want to defend their cyber turf.

And Stam is not the only one to take his online persona very seriously. Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has threatened to sue over Twitter shenanigans. (The Gingrich case is different. He account wasn’t spoofed, just copied on a lot traffic contrary to his liking.)

A few side notes:

• The fake account created in Stam’s name has been shut down by Twitter.
• The communications director who took responsibility for the account in question announced on Blue NC he was leaving the party's office, although I don't think it has has anything to do with this.
• You can get my Twitter missives @binker and Lauara’s @LauraLeslie
• My boss twitters @johnrobinson

So I guess we're taking this social media stuff seriously now, huh?