Last one on this, I promise.
BTW, it has been nearly twelve hours, and I still haven't heard back from any providers involved if there was a simple cause why the sites were down. That's not unusual either :-)
I finally heard back from the providers in question. The answer..... They knew of no reason why the sites were down, but the sites were working again when the providers got around to checking on Monday. The White House press spokesperson Joe Lockhart reported in his daily briefing the www.whitehouse.gov web site was not down over the weekend, just slow due to all the traffic. Nevertheless, the US Secret Service has been requested to investigate (that should be interesting...) Those were the only official reports I found. Unofficial reports included a router failure, a power failure, a denial of service. Other more extreme rumors were also attracted to the information vacuum. Significantly, no backhoes were implicated :-) -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation