MORE ON BREDESEN FOR PRESIDENT, from the Tennessean. (Via Bill Hobbs).

MISSING THE POINT: I’ve gotten a lot of lefty email like this piece from Andrew Moyers:

So you think it is alright to have a gay male prostitute in the WH press room? Where were you when we needed you? You can have done great work in defending Bill Clinton’s discretions.

Dude, I think you mean indiscretions. And I did coauthor this book, which was seen as generally pro-Clinton, enough that Lanny Davis used it as a text. But, see, I’m a libertarian — I’ve got no problem with gay male prostitutes. Or even gay female prostitutes (they have those, right?). Heck, I’d legalize prostitution — gay and straight — if it was up to me, and think of its practitioners as every bit as respectable as other professionals like lawyers, lobbyists and journalists. (Maybe moreso, as I suspect the client satisfaction rate is higher . . . .)

What I don’t quite get is when the Left became such a bunch of obsessively puritanical, curtain-peering Gladys Kravitz types. Lighten up, guys! It’s only sex, and as we all know, especially post-Clinton, sex, and lying about sex, is no big deal!

UPDATE: Wrong link for “obsessively” above — fixed now. Thanks to reader Rick Francis for pointing it out!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein slams Howard Kurtz. Ouch! Mickey Kaus can only look on in wonder. And envy.

MORE: Reader Thomas Castle emails:

You are, again, missing the point entirely. The problem with Gannon isn’t that he’s a gay male prostitute, it’s that he’s a vetted WH reporter using a pseudonym and masquerading as a journalist when he is, in fact, merely a shill. THAT’S the offensive part. This business that he was booted because he’s gay, or a prostitute, or both is bogus, although I’m sure some of the fundies do indeed have a problem with it.

I don’t know. That’s not what Moyers was saying, and what I was responding to. But let’s see: “Masquerading as a journalist when he is, in fact, merely a shill” would disqualify rather a lot of the poseurs I see shouting at press conferences. As for the gay angle being why he was booted — that’s what Howard Kurtz said, and I believe it. And while you can claim that this isn’t really about the gay angle, a quick look at the juvenile gay-themed stuff on the lefty blogs suggests otherwise. I should also note that while Moyers did charge that Gannon was a gay male prostitute, I don’t think that’s been clearly established. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

For some more serious journalism, here’s an analysis of softball press conference questions that names names and quotes transcripts. Five “Gannons” are identified.

“BRITISH BLOGGERS GROW BOLDER:” I should hope so.

VIK RUBENFELD looks at revealed preferences and the left.

“AND YOUR LITTLE DOG, TOO!” And I thought catblogging was the big thing.

NEWSPAPER THREATENS BLOGGER: Seems pretty lame to me.

REGULATING “RECKLESS SEX:” A debate over at Legal Affairs.

UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt: “We need to stop looking to the criminal justice system to cure every conceivable social ill.” Indeed.

WELL, IF BILL CLINTON COULD BE THE “FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT,” WHY NOT? More evidence that some people are taking the Gannon/Guckert story farther than the facts warrant: I just got a press release from Democrats.com asking:

Did George W. Bush Have S*x with That Man, James Guckert?

Heh. I wonder if this whole thing is a Karl Rove sting operation? If so, the suckers are now firmly on the hook.

UPDATE: Aaugh! It burns! It burns!

THE BLOGGER PIECE ON CHARLIE ROSE is supposed to air tonight.

IT’S REMEDIAL GEOMETRY at the New York Times. A “lynch mob” of Euclid fans has corrected them.

UPDATE: Reader Joe Zwers emails: “I think this explains why some in the media confuse what is going on in the Sunni triangle with the overall situation in Iraq.”

Heh.

PLAME UPDATE: The subpoenas are out. In the words of Wilford Brimley, “Wonderful thing, a subpoenee.”

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the opinion, and Orin Kerr has a post noting that the opinion specifically mentions blogs and their effect on reporters’ privilege claims.

IN THE MAIL: Two books by Tony Daniel: Metaplanetary, — which I’ve actually read and liked — and Superluminal, which I haven’t read yet, but which looks quite good. (And which wasn’t the inspiration for this song by the same name.)

IRAQI ELECTIONS: Patrick Ruffini has a very interesting map and analysis.

JEFF JARVIS RESPONDS to blog critics. And Howard Kurtz has a pretty good roundup, too.

HERE’S A NICE ARTICLE ON BLOGGING from Charlie Madigan of the Chicago Tribune. It stands in pleasant contrast to some of the less-impressive efforts elsewhere:

Shut up with your whining and appreciate the fact that after generations of stagnation, something new has arrived. And like all new things, it’s going to take awhile for it to work itself out.

Conventional journalism seems aghast that a whole collection of independent voices from all sides of the political spectrum are popping up now to pick and smear and slander and point accusing fingers, wreck careers, cast aspersions and introduce something besides a century-old sense of entitled hierarchy to the formula for news presentation.

Read the whole thing.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO LAW PROFESSOR PAUL CAMPOS has more on the Ward Churchill story:

Over the past few days I’ve been bombarded with e-mails regarding the Ward Churchill scandal. Many have expressed astonishment at how someone like Churchill could have been hired in the first place, let alone tenured and made chair of a department.

It’s a good question, but it’s not one that any of the academics who’ve written me have asked. We already know the answer.

Read the whole thing.

HERE’S A BIG COLLECTION of military bloggers.

LIBERTARIAN GIRL has been unmasked as a fraud. But did she get a White House press pass?

UPDATE: Get Tom Maguire on the case!

DANIEL DREZNER IS ASKING FOR YOUR HELP in democratizing Belarus.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Looks as if things will be heating up for Kojo Annan and Benon Sevan.

UPDATE: Lots more U.N.-scandal perspective here, from Roger Kimball.

YOU CAN SEE VIDEO of the Kudlow & Company segment on Eason Jordan with me, Hugh Hewitt, and John Hinderaker, over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Here’s video of Bob Beckel and Bob Zelnick discussing the subject on Hannity & Colmes, and here’s video of Howard Kurtz and Judy Woodruff on CNN.

And here’s Rony Abovitz, who originally blogged this story.

JACK SHAFER IN SLATE: “I would have fired Eason Jordan.”

Jordan’s dereliction is less a mistake than it is proof of brain rot. The supreme editor of a news organization can’t expect to make unsupportable inflammatory statements and maintain the respect of his truth-seeking troops at the same time. CNN did the right thing to show him the door. I would have done the same.

It would be nice to see the video.

I DON’T DO A LOT OF EDUCATION-BLOGGING — but the Carnival of Education is full of links to lots of edublogging posts.

And here’s a carnival of new blogs.

STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE:

Since no one who has wielded unaccountable power is ever happy to suddenly find themselves being held to account, it comes as no surprise that the media is now squealing like a stuck pig.

And so the media has reaped what it sowed. The media legitimated and perpetuated the Sixties radicals’ critique of authority. In doing so, however, it sowed the seeds of its own loss of authority. Since some of those seeds turned out to be dragons’ teeth, the media is now reaping the whirlwind.

“Question authority! Er, but not us!”

MORE PUNDIT PAYOLA?

Eric Wesson, a columnist for the Call, an African American newspaper in Kansas City, offered plenty of praise last year for the successful House bid of Democrat Emanuel Cleaver. “Rev. Cleaver,” he wrote, “has the experience to get things done and getting people to work together, he unites people. . . . Rev. Cleaver is a master at getting others to see his vision and surrounding himself with role players to make the vision become a reality. . . . I admire his honesty.”

Cleaver’s campaign last summer paid $1,500 to a firm called One Goal Consultants. And the sole owner of One Goal Consultants, according to state records, is Wesson.

He did some work for the campaign, but it looks like another item that should have been disclosed.