7Until recently, the website for Minnesota’s 8th District GOP offered musical holiday greetings to Christians and Jews, rotating quotes by Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, and an essay on Barack Obama’s “great power grab of 2009.” Now it shows a burning American flag, the words “death to Israel,” masked militants with RPGs and the telltale words “HaCKeD by CWkomando.”

The site now contains no links, but only words and images, including a dedication, “For Palestine,” the repeated phrase “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great,” in Arabic) and photos of masked militants with rocket launchers and rifles. (At the online forum Yedda.com, commenter “theITguy” writes that the hacker group is “an annoying bunch of kids out of Salt Lake City, Utah, just trying to get attention,” although he offers no evidence.)

But Minnesota’s GOP isn’t the only organization that had to deal with hackers this morning. A French/Italian restaurant in Chicago had its site defaced the same way, as did a Twitter user in San Francisco. A site called GrowSmartBusiness was also hit by the group recently.

But it may not be ideology that made the Minnesota Republicans a target. What the 8th District GOP has in common with these other three sites is the same internet service provider, Network Solutions.

A call to the district GOP office for comment wasn’t immediately returned.