An incidence of friendly fire, an inadvertent firing toward one's own or otherwise friendly forces. Also, this song.
From today's Sunday Star-Times story on the events that precipitated Judith Collins' resignation:
Knowing Fairfax was investigating the hacked emails, it is believed Odgers (known by the blog name Cactus Kate) went through her own emails and found some that could be seen as implicating Collins. This correspondence then found its way to a Beehive staffer on Friday.
"I take it you found the smoking gun," Odgers said in an email to Fairfax shortly before Collins resigned. She declined to comment further yesterday.
In fact, Fairfax did not have that particular incriminating email, and the hacker known as Rawshark said yesterday he did not have it either. "That email wasn't leaked by me, I had nothing to do with it," said Rawshark, who was also the source for Nicky Hager's book Dirty Politics.
Just so we're absloutely clear about this: Judith Collins didn't resign because of anything Nicky Hager did. Rather, she resigned because Cathy Odgers gave the PM's office an email that neither Nicky Hager nor the hacker who stole a bunch of other information had seen, in which a certain blogger whom we don't name said some stuff about Judith Collins that she claims is absolutely false.
Is this is the best political scandal ever, or what?
[Addendum: For a musical summary of the above, see here.]